The papers of John Pearson comprise manuscript notebooks of lectures and experimental write-ups compiled by Pearson when he was a student at Chelsea Polytechnic, 1954-1957, and include notes on electricity, optics, electronics and circuit theory, electromagnetic theory, diffraction gratings, wave mechanics and X-ray physics.

Records of the Department of Physics of Imperial College, 1882-1985, including a departmental history from 1851-1960; papers relating to courses, 1885-1982, including course syllabus, 1885, 1903, 1928; laboratory experiment papers, 1982; research on uranium, 1940-1941; laboratory notes, 1895; papers relating to a departmental photograph, [1893]; lecture notes, 1892;
correspondence, including with the adminstration department, of Professor Hugh Longbourne Callendar, 1908-1929; Professor Robert John Strutt, 1908-1920; Professor Alfred Fowler, 1910-1924; Professor Frederic John Cheshire, 1917-1925; Professor Louis Claude Martin, 1917-1950; Professor Alexander Oliver Rankine, 1927-1937; relating to photography, 1945-1951; Rectors' correspondence, 1955-1980; purchase of equipment, 1965-1974; examination papers, 1933-1969; inventories of apparatus, 1947-1969; students' newspapers, 1985;

papers relating to Astronomical Physics, including reports of the Solar Physics Committee, 1882-1911; demonstrations and practical work, 1889-1931; Spectroscopic laboratory record, 1906-1936, equipment, 1912; examinations notebook, 1883-1921; Astronomical laboratory visitors' book, 1907-1914 (KPA);

correspondence of Professor Herbert Dingle, 1928-1944, principally relating to the acquistion of a spectrograph (KPAB); correspondence of Reginald William Blake Pearse, 1931-1950 (KPAC); papers written by Sir William de Wiveslie Abney (printed), 1874-1917 (KPC);

course booklet for Atmospheric Physics, [1977] (KPM); papers of the Applied Optics Section, including correspondence, 1912-1918; minutes and correspondence of the Technical Optics (later Applied Optics) Committee, 1918-1974; papers relating to events, including open day, 1961; Jubilee celebrations, 1968; 60th anniversary celebrations, 1978; general papers, 1943-1979 (KPT); inventory of apparatus, 1917-1960 (KPTA).

Extensive correspondence of Sir Joseph Larmor relating to his work on electromagnetic theory, optics, analytical mechanics, and geodynamics.

Manuscript volume, 15th or 16th century, containing the 'Perspectiva Communis' of John Peckham, in three parts, beginning 'Inter philosophie consideracionis studia ... '. Bound (perhaps from the first) with two printed works, the Arithmetica of Jordanus Nemorarius, edited by Jacques le Fêvre (Johannes Higman and Wolfgang Hopyl, Paris, 1496), and the Geometria speculatiua of Bradwardine (Paris, 1495).

Papers of Professor Dennis Gabor, 1911-1985, comprising biographical papers, 1961-1985, principally press cuttings, articles, obituaries;

early papers and family correspondence, 1911-1975, comprising diary, 1911; papers, including details of classes, examinations, and certificates relating to the Joseph Technical High School, Budapest, 1918-1922, the Berlin Technische Hochschule, Charlottenberg, 1921-1922; personal papers, notably permits, identity cards, certificates; papers relating to employment at British Thomson Houston Company, 1934-1948; correspondence with the Foreign Office, with Andre Gabor, 1945-1969; diplomas, 1943-1974; photographs and posters, 1904-1975, principally of the Gabor family, research apparatus, the 1971 Nobel prize winners;

research papers, 1933-1974, including correspondence, reports, drawings, comprising essays, 1936-1946; papers concerning plasma theory, 1933-1955; optical design, 1940-1963; electron microscope, 1943-1957; communication theory, electron optics, statistical physics, 1943-1954; stereoscopy, 1940-1961; diffraction microscopy, 1948-1952; interference microscopy, 1949-1974; information theory, 1951-1965; mathematical theory of freedom, 1951-1962; thermo-nuclear power project and plasma theory, 1958-1966; flat TV tube, 1938-1971; papers and correspondence relating to his books Inventing the Future and The Mature Society, 1959-1974; correspondence and papers relating to patents, 1933-1966;

papers relating to his work at Imperial College, 1948-1972, including National Research Development Corporation research grants, 1953-1972; appointment as Mullard Reader in electronics, 1948-1967; inaugural lecture, [1959], 1970-1979; correspondence with staff and students, 1949-1973, notably with Rectors, 1949-1973, Willis Jackson, Head of Electrical Engineering, 1960-1968; lecture notes, 1948-1962;

correspondence, photographs and papers relating to the Nobel Prize, 1971-1978; papers relating to Samuel Roslington Milner, including memoir, obituary, 1959, correspondence, 1944-1967, notably concerning the publication of Milner's book; papers relating to CBS Laboratories (a division of Columbia Broadcasting System), 1942-1975, comprising correspondence and papers relating to Gabor's consultancy, including correspondence with Peter Carl Goldmark, 1942-1972;

general correspondence, 1932-1975, principally concerning research interests, including with Max Born, 1942-1965; Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, 1956-1970; Cecil Reginald Burch, 1952-1975; Sir Charles Galton Darwin, 1944-1952; Morris Leopold Ernst, 1960-1972; Michael Edward Haine, 1943-1968; John Anthony Hardinge Giffard, 1949-1971; Sir Harold Hartley, 1959-1966; Arthur Koestler, 1946-1973; Sir Rudolf Ernst Peierls, 1945-1950; Michael Polanyi, 1953-1964; Sir Karl Raimund Popper, 1964-1972; John Boynton Priestley, 1957, 1964; Royal Society, 1958-1974; Sir Henry William Hugh Warren, 1943-1951; list of publications, printed articles and reviews, 1928-1974; tapes and slides, 1964-1972, comprising interviews, lectures, lecture slides.

Papers of Jean-Baptiste Biot, c 1800-1937, including correspondence and a translation of Biot's Memoir on the Circular Zodiac of Denderah.

Notes of lectures delivered in Cambridge by Nicholas Sanderson. Subjects covered include hydrostatics, tides, sounds, optics, mechanics and astronomy.

Notes by John Dixon on medical matters and on things of personal interest to him such as astrology and photography spanning his entire career, 1848-1903. MS.5191 comprises more formal material, namely certificates and indentures.

Scientific and other papers sent to the Royal Society, presented at meetings of Fellows, or commissioned by the Society. They form a complementary series to the Early Letters, both of which were superseded by the Letters and Papers. Many of these items, referred to as the 'Guard Books', are duplicated in the Register Book of the Society. The classification is a simplified form of the 'Philosophical Transactions' abridgment by John Lowthorp. This arrangement was completed in 1741 by Thomas Birch. The majority of the papers in these volumes are manuscript, but a few printed documents occur throughout the series. Some of the papers are earlier in date than the grant on 15 July 1662 of the First Charter to the Society. The Committee of Trades seems to have been associated with the earlier meetings of those philosophers who subsequently became Fellows, and produced a number of practical papers, some of which were written in 1639 and which are mostly found in Volume 3(i). There are still earlier documents, mostly in Volume 25, which may have been included in the gift, in 1667, of the Arundel Library.

Collection comprising three manuscript notebooks of theoretical problems relating to mechanics compiled by James Clerk Maxwell mainly during his employment at King's College London, including exam questions on aspects of mechanics and geometry, 1860-1865; problems on the collision of elastic spheres and the dynamic relation between other solid bodies; the refraction of light; the relationship between heat and volume in materials; attraction between particles, 1860-1873; notes on the works of leading authorities on mathematics and physics including Arthur Cayley, Franz Neumann and Siméon Poisson, 1867-1873; bibliography of textbooks mainly on mechanics, [1860-1865]; list of scientific instrument suppliers, [1860-1865]; outline of the contents of Maxwell's Treatise on electricity and magnetism (1873).

The papers of John Edmund Bowen consist of two manuscript notebooks containing notes on lectures delivered by Professor Joseph John Thomson, Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge, 1911-1912. Bowen's notes consist of detailed summaries of Thomson's lectures on subjects including the discharge of electricity through gases, recombination of ions, recent developments in researches on light and electricity, scattering of electromagnetic radiation and the quantum theory of light.

Experimental notes, working papers, correspondence and lecture summaries compiled by Charles Wheatstone, 1836-1875, and photographs collected by him in that period. Notably including papers relating to the development and testing of the telegraph, [1836-1960]; descriptions of experiments and test results concerning the measurement of electromotive forces and electrical potential, [1840-1875]; experimental observations on the nature of magnetism, electricity and thermodynamics, including electromagnet design, batteries and dynamos, [1834-1855]; working papers relating to optics including experiments into refraction, colouration of compounds and polarisation, [1850-1875]; drafts of lectures on sound and musical instruments prepared by Wheatstone, [1832-1837]; material relating to the management of the Wheatstone collection of scientific instruments and library, 1890-1992; biographical material relating to the life of Wheatstone, the invention of the telegraph and Wheatstone's musical instrument manufacturing business, with unrelated newspapers, 1757-1975; stereoscopic photographs and glass negatives taken by Roger Fenton, Samuel Buckle, Jules Duboscq and others, featuring landscapes, still lifes, panoramic scenes of cities including Paris and Moscow and the interior and exterior of the Crystal Palace, Hyde Park, Sydenham, 1851, and especially the Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1855, [1850-1901]; artefacts on loan from Department of Physics, King's College London, including telegraph apparatus, a nail fiddle and other prototype musical instruments, [1834-1875]; exhibition of scientific and musical instruments, [1834-1875].