Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS) will debut a new exhibit in honor of the college’s 125th anniversary, dedicating it to Penn State’s first president, Evan Pugh. “Evan Pugh: Student to Scientist” will debut on Friday, October 14, in the EMS Museum and Art Gallery.

Outside of being Penn State’s first president, Pugh was a science pioneer that found a way to combine chemistry and agriculture after becoming interested in the European way of farming and making his way to Germany in 1853 to study the method.

“We recently unboxed the museum’s historic instruments and technology collection, which had been stored for over a decade,” Patti Wood Finkle, collections manager of the EMS Museum, said. “It was exciting to research and create an exhibit based on actual objects that had been owned and handled by Penn State’s first president, Dr. Evan Pugh.”

During his time in Europe, Pugh developed and conducted an experiment that earned him a spot in the London Chemical Society and later gained the attention of the new Farmer’s High School. The school offered Pugh the president’s job, and he insisted the school’s science labs have state-of-the-art-equipment and supplies for success.

Ceramic crystal models, lab supplies from the first graduating class of 1861, and a piece of equipment from the nitrogen experiment will be featured in the exhibit. Herbaria images from the Pennsylvania Agricultural College Herbarium (PAC) and Pugh’s scientific equipment that he returned from Europe in 1859 will also be on display.

The exhibit will be open for a year, and more information is available on the EMS Museum and Art Gallery website.