A page from Darwin’s manuscript On the Origin of Species, the foundation text of evolutionary biology. (Cambridge University Library, DAR 185.109.f6r)
What better way to celebrate Charles Darwin’s 203rd birthday than by reading the famed naturalist’s scientific works in his own handwriting? You can do just that on Sunday, February, 12—also known as “Darwin Day”—and every day after on the Darwin Manuscripts Project website.
Free and available to all online, the Darwin Manuscripts Project is the most comprehensive catalogue of Darwin’s scientific manuscripts ever compiled. The project is based at the American Museum of Natural History and developed in close collaboration with Cambridge University Library, whose physical collection is the foundation of the new database, and the Biodiversity Heritage Library—represented by the Natural History Museum in London. This new tool will also include holdings from all other library—based Darwin collections globally.
The database at the project’s core—DARBASE (Darwin Union Manuscripts Catalogue)—includes some 45,000 Darwin documents, including writing from Darwin’s time aboard the HMS Beagle, early drafts of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection and the Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, as well as his notebooks and botanical books. Read more »
Curator John Sparks will be blogging about the upcoming exhibition Creatures of Light. Photo courtesy of John Sparks
Curator John Sparks will be blogging weekly about the upcoming exhibition, Creatures of Light, which opens on Saturday, March 31.
In just a little over a month, on March 31, the American Museum of Natural History will open our latest exhibition, Creatures of Light: Nature’s Bioluminescence, which focuses on the amazing diversity of organisms that produce light across every conceivable habitat. Every exhibition we produce is a collaboration between the Museum’s research scientists and the exhibition team, which includes writers, designers, artists, and media specialists. I’m the curator for this exhibition, which means that I oversee the scientific content and bring expertise from my research—in this case, on the evolution of bioluminescent signaling systems in marine fishes. We’re hard at work on the show this month, and I’ll be writing weekly posts from behind the scenes to offer some glimpses of what goes into producing a major exhibition. Here’s my first dispatch:
Getting the Light Right
Scientific accuracy is our top priority. Although it may seem trivial, getting the color (or wavelength) of the emitted light just right for this exhibition’s many models of bioluminescent creatures—fireflies, glowworms, siphonophores, and ponyfishes—is fundamental to accurately reproducing the diversity of natural light that organisms use for a variety of functions. Read more »
Gospel, jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, soul music, and hip-hop are the result of an ever-evolving African-American musical journey that has produced unique musical forms and traditions. The Museum will celebrate this legacy on Saturday, February 18, with the Global Weekends program The African-American Musical Mosaic, which will include performances by the Harlem Quartet, First Corinthian Baptist Church Choir, Charles Mack, Sandra Reaves-Phillips, and a special collaboration between Darryl “DMC” McDaniels of the hip-hop group Run-DMC and the IMPACT Repertory Theatre choir. In this video, DMC shares what performing at the Museum’s event means to him.
For more information about the program, click here.
In the past 16 years, astronomers have discovered more than 700 exoplanets, or planets that orbit other stars. If scientists find signs of life on these planets, it will profoundly impact everything from religion and philosophy to art and biology. In this podcast from the fall, astronomer Ray Jayawardhana shares some of the ideas from his book, Strange New Worlds, about life beyond our solar system.
Dr. Jayawardhana’s talk was recorded at the Hayden Planetarium on October 3, 2011.
Carl Zimmer's new book evolved from a question he posed on his blog.
When science writer Carl Zimmer noticed some scientists sporting serious tattoos, he wondered how many others enjoyed highbrow body art. After posing the question on his blog, Zimmer received a flood of responses and photos, many of which he recently compiled in his book Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed. On Thursday, February 16, Zimmer will be one of four panelists at the Museum’s Beyond a Trend: Enhancing Science Communication Through Social Media, part of Social Media Week NYC. Zimmer recently answered a few questions about how new media are shaping his writing.
What could you do with a blog about science tattoos that you couldn’t do in a book, and vice versa?
Carl Zimmer: Blogs and books are different media, with different strengths and weaknesses. With a blog, you can spontaneously add things and make corrections. And people can make comments. Sometimes, people would point out that the equation in someone’s tattoo had a plus sign instead of a minus, which was probably pretty embarrassing. But since the blog was happening in real time, it was more disorganized. For the book, I was able to create miniature essays for various tattoos and arrange the tattoos in a logical progression from math to physics to chemistry and so on. Read more »
