science museum opened in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., in 1933 by the philanthropist-founder Julius Rosenwald (Rosenwald, Julius), chairman of Sears, Roebuck, and Company. He had seen the Deutsches Museum in Munich and wished to locate a similarly interactive museum in the United States. He was determined to house the museum's collections in the Palace of Fine Arts, the last building remaining from the World's Columbian Exposition that had been held in Chicago in 1893. The structure, which had been designed expressly for the exposition, had served as the temporary home of the Field Museum of Natural History until 1920 and had begun to disintegrate from neglect. It was rebuilt of more-permanent materials from 1928 to 1932 and was opened to the public during the city's Century of Progress Exposition (1933–34).

The museum has major exhibits on mining, automobiles, telecommunications, aviation and aeronautics, space travel, agriculture, time, and medicine. It also has a 3,000-square-foot (280-square-metre) model railroad and a World War II German U-505 submarine. Many of the exhibits are interactive.