Physics Museum

The collection of the Physics Museum at the University of Melbourne comprises some 350 items of historical and scientific interest, concentrating on scientific apparatus constructed by former professors and staff for research purposes. It includes equipment and photographs spanning the history of the School of Physics, which was established as the School of Natural Philosophy in the 1880s.

There are significant holdings of ruling engines and diffraction gratings developed by Henry Grayson and Professor T.R. Lyle, as well as apparatus emerging from optical munitions research directed by Professor T.H. Laby during the Second World War.The Physics Museum, along with the University of Melbourne Herbarium in the School of Botany, the Tiegs Zoology Museum in the Department of Zoology, and the F.A. Singleton Museum in the School of Earth Sciences, is one of four Cultural Collections managed by the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne.  It owes its creation to the dedication and forethought of Associate Professor Ed Muirhead, Chairman of the School of Physics from 1980 to 1986, who initiated the current displays in the 1980s and arranged the cataloguing and photography of the collection.

The exhibits were installed with generous financial assistance from the Ian Potter Foundation. The Physics Museum website  http://www.ph.unimelb.edu.au/museum/ includes a searchable catalogue of the collection.

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