Project Editor: Susannah Hall, UCARE, 2008

The History of the UNL Physics & Astronomy Departments

The Physics Department has been very interested in their history at UNL, especially Dr. M. Eugene Rudd. During the late 1980s, he wrote Science on the Great Plains: The History of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Over the past decade, he has used his retirement to clear out the attic in Brace Laboratory and clean the instruments accumulated there. The Physics Department website has an entire subsection for History, including a Brief History of the Department (written by Dr. Rudd), a Scientific Instrument Gallery (assembled by Dr. Rudd), lantern slides, an explanation of the Minnich telescope, and a section on the scion from Newton's apple tree which was planted on the UNL campus in 1991.