Elias Ashmole, F.R.S., Founder of the First Public Museum of Natural History

Abstract

MAY 23 next will be the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Ashmole, antiquary, herald,. and man of science. He included among his interests not only the entire world of Nature, but, like some physicists of the present day, he delighted to explore the regions of the preternatural. He has often been blamed, and we think unjustly, for devoting so much time to astrology and alchemy, which were the “scientific” pursuits in fashion at that period; but we should dwell upon what has lasted of his work rather than upon what was trivial and ephemeral. So far as science is concerned, the outcome of his lifework will always be memorable, for he became the founder of the first public museum of natural history in Great Britain; next, he must be regarded as the founder of the first university chemical laboratory; and, thirdly, he founded the first chair of chemistry in Oxford.