The Science Museum Group (SMG) consists of five British museums: * The

Science Museum A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in ...

South Kensington South Kensington, nicknamed Little Paris, is a district just west of Central London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Historically it settled on part of the scattered Middlesex village of Brompton. Its name was supplanted with ...

, London * The Science and Industry Museum in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...

* The

National Railway Museum The National Railway Museum is a museum in York forming part of the Science Museum Group. The museum tells the story of rail transport in Britain and its impact on society. It is the home of the national collection of historically significant ...

York York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...

* The Locomotion Museum (formerly the National Railway Museum Shildon) in

County Durham County Durham ( ), officially simply Durham,UK General Acts 1997 c. 23Lieutenancies Act 1997 Schedule 1(3). From legislation.gov.uk, retrieved 6 April 2022. is a ceremonial county in North East England.North East Assembly �About North East E ...

* The

National Science and Media Museum The National Science and Media Museum (formerly The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, 1983–2006 and then the National Media Museum, 2006–2017), located in Bradford, West Yorkshire, is part of the national Science Museum G ...

(formerly the National Media Museum and the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television) in

Bradford Bradford is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Bradford district in West Yorkshire, England. The city is in the Pennines' eastern foothills on the banks of the Bradford Beck. Bradford had a population of 349,561 at the 2011 ...

Items in the SMG collection that are not on display are usually stored at the

National Collections Centre The National Collections Centre, near Swindon, England, is the collections management facility for the Science Museum Group and the Science Museum Library & Archives. Overview The Science Museum originally took ownership of the 545-acre forme ...

Swindon Swindon () is a town and unitary authority with borough status in Wiltshire, England. As of the 2021 Census, the population of Swindon was 201,669, making it the largest town in the county. The Swindon unitary authority area had a population ...

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

History

The origins of SMG lie in the internationalisation and optimism of the

Great Exhibition The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, also known as the Great Exhibition or the Crystal Palace Exhibition (in reference to the temporary structure in which it was held), was an international exhibition which took pl ...

of 1851, which enabled the foundation of the South Kensington Museum in 1857. The term "National Museum of Science and Industry" had been in use as the Science Museum's subtitle since the early 1920s. Prior to 1 April 2012 the group was known as the National Museum of Science and Industry (NMSI). The

, formerly the National Media Museum, was established by the Science Museum in 1983. The Science Museum was run directly by

HM Government ga, Rialtas a Shoilse gd, Riaghaltas a Mhòrachd , image = HM Government logo.svg , image_size = 220px , image2 = Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (HM Government).svg , image_size2 = 180px , caption = Royal Arms , date_est ...

until 1984, when the Board of Trustees was established and NMSI was then adopted as a corporate title for the entire organisation. At this point NMSI became a

non-departmental public body In the United Kingdom, non-departmental public body (NDPB) is a classification applied by the Cabinet Office, Treasury, the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive to public sector organisations that have a role in the process o ...

under the auspices of the sponsoring government department, the

Department for Culture, Media and Sport , type = Department , logo = Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport logo.svg , logo_width = , logo_caption = , seal = , seal_width = , seal_caption = , picture = Gove ...

. From January 2012 the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester became part of the Science Museum Group. From 2017 Locomotion, The National Railway Museum at Shildon, became part of the Science Museum Group. In 2010 the

Science Museum, London The Science Museum is a major museum on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London. It was founded in 1857 and is one of the city's major tourist attractions, attracting 3.3 million visitors annually in 2019. Like other publicly funded ...

opened its climate science gallery Atmosphere which, as at April 2021, has been visited by over 5 million people. In 2021 the

also opened a temporary exhibition 'Our Future Planet' which explores the science of carbon capture. Environmental campaigners criticized the decision of SMG to appoint Shell as a major sponsor of this exhibition. Throughout 2021 SMG is hosting Climate Talks which are a series of online talks, Q&As and events exploring problems arising from

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...

. In October 2021, the SMG announced that a new climate change gallery to be opened in 2023 at the Science Museum would be sponsored by an arm of coal producer

Adani Group Adani Group is an Indian multinational conglomerate, headquartered in Ahmedabad. It was founded by Gautam Adani in 1988 as a commodity trading business, with the flagship company Adani Enterprises. The Group's diverse businesses include po ...

. SMG continues to work to reduce carbon emissions from operations, recruitment and supply chain, and by using resources efficiently. On 15 April 2021 SMG announced that it expects to achieve overall Net Zero/Carbon Neutrality by 2033.

Collection

The collection includes: * Alan Turing's

Pilot ACE The Pilot ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) was one of the first computers built in the United Kingdom. Built at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the early 1950s, it was also one of the earliest general-purpose, stored-program computers ...

computer * '' Flying Scotsman'' *

Charles Babbage Charles Babbage (; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer. Babbage is considered ...

's drawing and models *

Dorothy Hodgkin Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin (née Crowfoot; 12 May 1910 – 29 July 1994) was a Nobel Prize-winning British chemist who advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of biomolecules, which became essential fo ...

's model of penicillin *

Tim Peake Major Timothy Nigel Peake (born 7 April 1972) is a British Army Air Corps officer, European Space Agency astronaut and a former International Space Station (ISS) crew member. He is the first British ESA astronaut, the second astronaut to b ...

Soyuz TMA-19M Soyuz TMA-19M was a 2015 Russian Soyuz spaceflight to the International Space Station. It was launched on December 15, 2015 from Baikonur Cosmodrome, transporting three members of the Expedition 46 crew to the International Space Station. TMA-1 ...

spaceship *

Helen Sharman Helen Patricia Sharman, CMG, OBE, HonFRSC (born 30 May 1963) is a British chemist and cosmonaut who became the first British person, first Western European woman and first privately funded woman in space, as well as the first woman to visit ...

's space suit * Winifred Penn-Gaskell's collection of stamp cards and covers *

Richard Arkwright Sir Richard Arkwright (23 December 1732 – 3 August 1792) was an English inventor and a leading entrepreneur during the early Industrial Revolution. He is credited as the driving force behind the development of the spinning frame, known as ...

's water frame spinning machine Over 350,000 of the items in the SMG's collections are available to view online at SMG's Search Our Collection web page.

Chairman and Directors

The chairman of the group is Dame Mary Archer who was appointed by Prime Minister

David Cameron David William Donald Cameron (born 9 October 1966) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. He previously served as Leader o ...

for the four-year term from 2015 from 2018. Dame Mary Archer was reappointed as Chairman 2019–2022 in January 2018. The following have been directors of the National Museum of Science and Industry, the Science Museum and the Science Museum Group: * Dame

Margaret Weston Dame Margaret Kate Weston, DBE, FMA (7 March 1926 – 12 January 2021) was a British museum curator who was the director of the Science Museum, London, between 1973 and 1986. She began her career as an electrical engineer before joining the ...

DBE FMA (1973–1986) * Sir

Neil Cossons Sir Neil Cossons FMA (born 15 January 1939) is a British historian and museum administrator. Biography Cossons was born in Beeston and studied at the University of Liverpool. He was the first director of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust fr ...

OBE FSA FMA (1986–2000) * Dr

Lindsay Sharp Lindsay Gerard Sharp is a museologist who lives near Wollongong/Gerringong in the coastal hinterland of New South Wales in Australia. He works as a museum consultant and writer. Born in Britain and raised in Australia, Sharp earned his doctorate ...

(2000–2005) * Prof.

Martin Earwicker Martin John Earwicker (born 11 May 1948) was Director of the National Museum of Science and Industry group of British museums (including the Science Museum, the National Railway Museum, and the National Media Museum) from 2006 until 2009. Prior ...

FREng (2006–2007) The following have separately been directors of the NMSI: * Prof.

FREng (2007–2009) *

Molly Jackson Molly Jackson was acting director of the National Museum of Science and Industry (NMSI) in England, from 6 April to 23 September 2009. From June 2004 she was the managing director of NMSI Trading Ltd. Prior to that (1993 to 2003) she had held a ...

(2009) * Andrew Scott CBE (2009–2010) *

Ian Blatchford Sir Ian Craig Blatchford, FSA (born 17 August 1965) is the director of the Science Museum Group, which oversees the Science Museum in London, England and other related museums. He was previously deputy director of the Victoria and Albert Muse ...

(2010–)

References

External links

*
The official print website
containing over 40,000 images from the various museum collections {{authority control National museums of the United Kingdom Science and technology in the United Kingdom Museums sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Non-departmental public bodies of the United Kingdom government Museum organizations