Archives After Dark: Small Critters, Big Risk

Reading Room, Gottesman Research Library and Learning Center
Enter at 79th Street and Columbus Avenue.

Doors open at 6:30 pm, lecture starts at 7 pm.

General Public: $15
Members: $12

What can a giant mosquito tell us about putting a spotlight on public health?

More than 100 years ago, the Museum first displayed an enormous mosquito model to educate visitors about insect-borne diseases like malaria and yellow fever. Today, Museum scientists continue to investigate the relationships between biodiversity and public health. Join Jairo Moreno-González, a postdoctoral fellow in the Museum’s Division of Invertebrate Zoology, to discover how climate change is reshaping the distribution of medically significant venomous scorpions across tropical areas of the Americas and what these shifts could mean for human health.

Then, step into the Museum’s archives to explore a chapter of its early history: the Hall of Public Health. Opened in 1913 under the direction of bacteriologist Charles-Edward Winslow, this gallery was dedicated to connecting turn-of-the-century advances in the biological sciences to human health and featured exhibits such as “Insects and Human Disease” and “Water Supply Sanitation.” Through this look back at the Museum’s past, discover how early efforts to communicate new science behind public health connect to challenges scientists are working to investigate and share with the public today.