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Cambridge University Library

 

Some of the world’s most valuable books and manuscripts – texts which have altered the very fabric of our understanding – will go on display this week as we celebrate 600 years of Cambridge University Library with a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition of our greatest treasures.

Lines of Thought: Discoveries that Changed the World opens free to the public on Friday 11 March until Friday 30 September 2016, and celebrates 4,000 years of recorded thought through the Library’s unique and irreplaceable collections. More than 70 per cent of the exhibits are displayed to the public for the first time in this exhibition.

Tracing the connections between Darwin and DNA, Newton and Hawking, and 3,000-year-old Chinese oracle bones and Twitter, the exhibition investigates through six distinct themes how Cambridge University Library’s millions of books and manuscripts have transformed our understanding of life here on earth and our place among the stars.

The six Lines of Thought featured in the exhibition are: From clay tablets to Twitter feed (Revolutions in human communication); The evolution of genetics (From Darwin to DNA); Beginning with the word (Communicating faith); On the shoulders of giants (Understanding gravity); Eternal lines (Telling the story of history) and Illustrating anatomy (Understanding the body).

University Librarian Anne Jarvis said: “It’s extraordinary to think that the University Library, which started in 1416 as a small collection of manuscripts locked in wooden chests, has now grown into a global institution housing eight million books and manuscripts, billions of words, and millions of images, all communicating thousands of years of human thought.’

Objects going on display for the first time during Lines of Thought include: the Book of Deer, Vesalius’s 3D manikin of the human body, William Morris’s extensively annotated proofs of his edition of Beowulf, a wonderful caricature of Darwin, and works by Copernicus, Galileo and Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the discoverer of pulsars.

“For six centuries, the collections of Cambridge University Library have challenged and changed the world around us,” added Jarvis.  “Across science, literature and the arts, the millions of books, manuscripts and digital archives we hold have altered the very fabric of our understanding.

“Only in Cambridge, can you find Newton’s greatest works sitting alongside Darwin’s most important papers on evolution, or Sassoon’s wartime poetry books taking their place next to the Gutenberg Bible and the archive of Margaret Drabble.”

In addition to the physical exhibition, we have selected one iconic item from each theme within the exhibition to be digitised and made available within a free iPad app, Words that Changed the World, which is available to download from the Apple Store. Readers can turn the pages of these masterworks of culture and science, from cover to cover, accompanied by University experts explaining their importance and giving contextual information.

The exhibition is also available to view online, and items from the exhibition have also been digitised and made available on the Cambridge Digital Library.