Guide
The collection of the İstanbul University-Cerrahpaşa Geology Museum reaches back to 1915, the founding year of an institute of geology in the Abdülkerim Paşa mansion at Vefa. Through the efforts of its founder and head, Professor Walther Penck, with the help of his assistant Hamit Nafiz Pamir and support obtained from Europe, a rich library was established and collections of stones and materials and laboratory instruments were acquired.
Museum work began again in 1946, when the teaching of geology started within the Faculty of Science. Solid wooden cabinets were made so that specimens could be displayed systematically and by theme, fossil and mineral specimens and collections were bought from abroad, and material from the scientific work of the period was gathered.
More than 8,000 specimens and objects are recorded in the inventory. The collection holds trace, plant, micro, invertebrate and vertebrate fossils, minerals, rocks — igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary — coal specimens, and teaching posters belonging to the various branches of geology.
