In 1950, the Museum’s Hayden Planetarium began accepting reservations for the first trip into space as part of a publicity campaign for its exhibition Conquest of Space. Last month, Peter Schroth, a lawyer living in Queens, got a blast from the past when the Museum uncovered his letter and invited him for a tour of Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration.Schroth was seven when he wrote the following request.
Though interplanetary tourism is not yet possible, our fascination with space travel persists. Discover what the future holds for space exploration in the Museum’s exhibition Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration. To see more of the Hayden letters and tell us where in space you’d like to go today, click here.
A number of the Museum’s after-hours series were recently featured in TheNew York Timesarticle “Staying Up Late in Museums.”
Reporter James Barron noted the Museum’s history of offering stellar programs “since long before [the movie] ‘Night at the Museum,’” highlighting past SciCafes, including last summer’s Hunting the Hidden Reptiles of Madagascar. Check out the next SciCafe, which will feature bioluminescence experts John Sparks and David Gruber, on Wednesday, November 2.
The ongoing restoration of the Museum’s iconic Hall of North American Mammals, which will be completed in Fall 2012, was featured in a New York Times video this weekend. Look for the full story in the Sunday, October 23 paper’s Fine Arts & Exhibits section.
Associate Curator Lorenzo Prendini, the Museum’s resident scorpion expert, was recently featured in a CBS video about scorpions’ evolutionary history and their role in indicating climate change.
In the video below, Prendini recounts his most dangerous skirmish with a scorpion, which he was searching for at night using UV light. This technique causes scorpions to glow blue, much like the scorpions, part of Prendini’s research, featured in Picturing Science: Museum Scientists and Imaging Technologies on view in the Akeley Gallery.
This Op-Ed by Ellen V. Futter, President of the American Museum of Natural History, was recently published in the Huffington Post.
The United States did not become a great and powerful nation by rejecting science. In fact, this is the country whose forefathers include citizen scientists such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Teddy Roosevelt. This is the country that put a man on the moon, cured polio, and developed the computer. The country of Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Rachel Carson; of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
So in this election season, let’s not politicize issues that aren’t inherently partisan. Let’s not undermine our ability to address areas of broad consensus where the stakes are staggeringly high—most especially the central role of science in advancing our society, economy, and future.
The fact is Americans agree on many things. We know we need jobs. We know we need to train and develop our workforce. We know we need to be safe. We know we need cures to existing and emerging health threats. We know we need food, shelter, and natural resources for a growing world population. We know we need solutions to looming environmental threats. And we know we need our country to be competitive in a global economy.
Among the most powerful levers we have to deal with these vexing problems are science, innovation, and technology—and, especially for workforce development, science education. Indeed, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) asserts that since World War II, the United States’ world leadership in science and engineering has been the key driver of our nation’s dominant world position, economy, and quality of life. Read more »
This Op-Ed by Ellen V. Futter, President of the American Museum of Natural History, was recently published in the 
