Oxford University Museum of Natural History

The Oxford University Museum of Natural History, sometimes simply Oxford University Museum, is a museum that displays many of the species natural history collections in the University of Oxford. It also has an auditorium which is used by the Departments of Chemistry, Mathematics and Zoology. At the museum, the Pitt Rivers Museum closes at.

History

In 1850, the history of the University 's Honour School of Natural Science with the whole of Oxford scattered institutions in a number of colleges. Similarly to the anatomical collections of the University and the Natural History species.

Sir Henry Acland (1815-1900), Regius Professor of Medicine encouraged the establishment of the museum, which was then completed 1855-1860. Some departments moved into the new building, including astronomy, geometry, experimental physics, mineralogy, chemistry, geology, zoology, anatomy, physiology, and last but not least Acland's medicine. With increasing size of some of the departments had to leave the building in the direction of other sites again.

1884 another part of the building was added on the east side that houses the ethnological collection of General Pitt Rivers.

The last thing the Department of Entomology left ( Hope Department of Entomology, founded by Frederick William Hope ) in 1978, the building and went to the zoologists. Nevertheless is still a functioning entomological laboratory on the first floor.

The largest part of the collection of the museum consists of the natural history exhibits of the Ashmolean Museum, which come from the collections of the Musaeum Tradescantianum of John Tradescant (father and son), by William Burchell and the geologist William Buckland. In addition, the Christchurch Museum donated his osteological and physiological exhibits, most of which were collected by Acland.

The building

The neo-Gothic building was conceived by the architect Benjamin Woodward ( 1816-1861 ). It consists of a rectangular base over which could be accepted by cast iron columns glass roof spans that the area is divided into three parts. Cloistered arcades run around the ground floor and the first floor. They are formed by columns which are each made from a different variety Stone from the UK. The stones were selected by the geologist John Phillips. The decorations on the stone and iron bars indicate shapes found in nature, such as branches and leaves, with the Pre-Raphaelite style combined with a scientific.

The ground floor there are statues of eminent scientists like Aristotle, Euclid, Roger Bacon, Charles Darwin and Carl Linnaeus.