Milner

Milner’s Scientific Text Books

As early as 1782 (when he began lecturing in chemistry), Milner had set up a chemical laboratory in Queens’ stable yard. When he became Queens’ president in 1788 he transformed a section of the president’s lodge into a well-equipped workshop replete with lathes, air pumps, grind stones, bellows, and work benches. It seems not unlikely that part of the lodge could have resembled the engraved images on display here. Both volumes are from Milner’s vast collection of textbooks on sciences that he bequeathed to Queens’ college library. Milner’s library was full of scientific and mathematical publications, including the most up-to-date, many sent by their authors. For all his professed abhorrence of Continental philosophy, he was not averse to the new foreign knowledge, even if only as a means to challenge what he considered to be dangerous modes of scientific thought.