Philadelphia's most famous citizen and America's first great scientist gives his name to the Franklin Institute in front of you. The Franklin Institute was founded in 1824 and has occupied this neoclassical building on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway since 1934. Benjamin Franklin, the printer, inventor, author, diplomat, and founding father who lived in Philadelphia for most of his life, is commemorated by a 20-foot marble statue in the Rotunda of the Universe — one of the finest portraits of any American founder in any medium.
Franklin's scientific work was genuinely revolutionary: his experiments proving that lightning was electrical in nature, his invention of the lightning rod, his studies of ocean currents and the Gulf Stream, and his work on optics placed him among the greatest scientists of the eighteenth century. The museum contains a walk-through human heart, a Baldwin steam locomotive, a planetarium, and rotating exhibits that have introduced generations of Philadelphia schoolchildren to science. The Benjamin Franklin National Memorial, with its massive marble throne-like chair, is in the Rotunda and is one of the most impressive memorial spaces dedicated to any founder.