Science Sculpture

Edwardian architects tended to work with a favourite sculptor on large commissions. Edwin Cooper was the architect of our Eskdale Terrace building, and he used Albert H Hodge (1875-1917) - they’d worked together in Hull and London. Hodge designed and created the bas-relief that can be found on the wall next to our Art Department and the Computer Science corridor.

This is what a writer in the June 1908 NOVO magazine had to say:

It will, perhaps, have been observed that there is, built into the end wall of the Science Block, a perfect masterpiece of exquisite stone-carving. This, we are assured, is a faithful copy of the original, which was at one time in the Royal Academy, and is regarded as one of the finest specimens of its kind. One could not doubt this, on close examination; for the true artistic moulding, the delicate naturalness of the extended arm of the central figure is worth of none less than a Michaelangelo. Particularly, however, is to be commended the ingenuity of the artist in his choice of mystical signs. Besides several names of scientists, there is the dark expression: - “Lux in tenebris”. Now, what light these throw upon the meaning of the sculpture is, as far as we know at present, beyond the understanding of all. Can anyone solve the riddle?

Originally when our buildings were first opened in 1906, the sculpture would have been on the outside wall of the science block. It was obscured when the 1956 building with lecture theatre and changing rooms was erected, difficult to see as it was high up on the staircase. With the more recent developments to our buildings in 2019 it is now in full view.

A plaster model of the sculpture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1907. In the 1907 volume of Academy Architecture the entry for this sculpture was given the title ‘Science’. On the sculpture itself you can see a list of scientists’ names:

  • Isaac Newton
  • William Thomson Kelvin
  • Marie Curie
  • Herbert Spencer

On the other side is carved ‘Lux in Tenebris’, which translates as ‘light in darkness’, taken from the fifth verse of the Gospel of St John.