Founded in 1941 in Norwalk, Connecticut by the electrical engineer, industrialist, and historian Bern Dibner,[2] the library holdings include important scientific literature from antiquity to the 20th century.
[3] Highlights of the collection include one of the world's most complete sets of the works of Isaac Newton, including books owned and annotated by Newton, as well as some sixty manuscripts by Newton, multiple books about Leonardo da Vinci, all of Darwin's works, and important manuscript and print materials by Louis Pasteur, a 1544 edition of Archimedes' mathematical text Philosophi ac Geometrae and many important original works from the 18th and 19th centuries.
[3][4] Generally, the collection's strengths are in the early modern period, and include strong holdings in the history of mathematics, astronomy, and color theory.
[7][6] After residing there for more than a decade, the collection needed to be moved due to the pending demolition of the building which housed it.
[8] In November 2006, 67,000 volumes of the Burndy Library (47,000 rare books and 20,000 reference books), along with several hundred small manuscript collections and a collection of artwork and objects, were transferred to the Huntington Library in San Marino, California as a gift of the Dibner family and the Dibner Fund.