Johns Hopkins’s ‘Eureka! Rare Books in the History of Scientific Discovery’

Kris Coronado in the Washington Post:

“There are books in this room of which there are only a dozen copies that survived in the world,” says Havens, curator of rare books and manuscripts at Johns Hopkins University’s Sheridan Libraries, as he gestures to the 55 pieces on display in one room.

Hopkins’s George Peabody Library — a rare-books collection within the university’s Sheridan Libraries — is debuting “Eureka! Rare Books in the History of Scientific Discovery,” a collection of more than 300 works bequeathed to the university last fall, after the November 2009 death of Hopkins alumnus Elliott Hinkes, a Los Angeles oncologist and rare-book collector.

These artifacts are quite impressive in themselves. Yet what makes them all the more intriguing is their collective illustration of pivotal moments in scientific history: discoveries that forever altered our perspective of the world.

More here.