Robert Gunther

Robert Theodore Gunther ( born August 23, 1869 in Surbiton, Surrey; † March 9, 1940 in South Stoke, Oxfordshire ) was a historian of science and founder of the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford.

Life and work

The father of Robert Gunther, Albert Günther (1830-1914), was director of the Zoological Department of the Natural History Museum in London. Robert Gunther enjoyed his education at University College School in London. From there he moved in 1888 to the Magdalen College, Oxford, after he had already spent a year at University College there.

Since 1920, he wrote a 14 - volume work Early Science in Oxford, of which the last volume appeared in 1945. First, this work was published under the auspices of the Oxford Historical Society. A fifteenth, by his son Albert Everard Gunther 1967 of edited tape showing a portrait of Gunther on the book cover.

Between 1926 and 1930, Gunther the Museum of the History of Science in the building of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, but this creation was not without problems: Apparently did not share many of his colleagues Gunther's penchant for historical scientific instruments, which in also spiteful comments Gunther Early Science about some of his predecessors in venerable institutions and the failure of these instruments of posterity can be read to obtain. The first exhibition was composed largely of exhibits of scientific instruments, which came from the collection of his friend Lewis Evans.

After a short illness, Gunther died at a friend's house. He and his wife Amy, nee Rolfe are buried in Heacham, Norfolk in the tomb of their family, whose biography of Gunther had written.

Writings (selection )

• Early English Botanists and Their Gardens. Kraus Reprint, New York, 1971 ( unaltered reprint Oxford 1922).