Home is where the lab is
Every month, Emeritus Professor of University History Leen Dorsman describes something you must know about the long history of Utrecht University.
On the outskirts of the old inner cities, just within or just outside the boulevards, there are impressive buildings, which are laboratories built at the end of the nineteenth and the start of the twentieth century.
Currently, laboratories are in a peculiar state, with outsiders often associating universities with people in white coats researching natural phenomena or developing new medicine in laboratories, which
became a central part of sciences in the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century.
A university, however, is more than that, and during its first centuries, laboratories barely played a role, with no special building built for them if they existed at all.
Author's summary: Utrecht University's history of laboratories is explored.
- Laboratories were built at the end of the nineteenth and the start of the twentieth century.
- They are often associated with people in white coats researching natural phenomena or developing new medicine.
- Laboratories became central to sciences in the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century.