The John Crerar Collection of Rare Books in the History of Science and Medicine consists of over 25,000 volumes ranging from incunabula to the 20th century. The volumes were transferred to the Special Collections Research Center upon the John Crerar Library’s merger with the University of Chicago in the early 1980s. The collection includes the classic works of Vesalius, Galileo, and Newton; collections of lichen, algae, and wood samples; compilations of clippings and articles on aeronautics; books on anatomy and machines with models and moveable parts; and other novel uses of the book format to communicate and preserve information.
The John Crerar Library was founded by the will of John Crerar (1827-1889), a prominent and influential Chicago railway supply company manager. Crerar was a lifelong reader and an active member and former president of the New York Mercantile Library, as well as being instrumental in bringing William Makepeace Thackeray to America on his famous lecture tour of 1852. In addition to leaving a number of bequests to Chicago institutions in his will, Crerar asked that the remainder of his estate to be used "for the erection, creation, maintenance and endowment of a Free Public Library" for the citizens of Chicago. While he did not specify the subject scope of the library, his executors initially focused the collections on sciences, philosophy, arts, economics, and sociology, later narrowing the scope as a result of the post-World War II explosion in scientific publishing to science, medicine and technology. In 1981, a merger agreement was signed between the John Crerar Library and the University of Chicago, and the Crerar collection was moved to Hyde Park. General collections were combined with the University's science and medicine holdings in the newly constructed John Crerar Library on the University's campus while rare books and manuscripts were transferred to the Special Collections Research Center to be maintained as distinctive collections separate from the University’s rare book and manuscript collections.
See also the John Crerar Manuscripts Collection and the John Crerar Library Records, both held in the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center.
Related past exhibits
A Library for All Time: The History of the John Crerar Library (2014)
Animal-Vegetable-Mineral: Natural History Illustration from the John Crerar Collection (1991)
Great Is the Gift that Bringeth Knowledge: Highlights from the History of the John Crerar Library (1989)
