At the age of five, Stephen Jay Gould was transfixed by a dinosaur skeleton he saw on a visit to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in Manhattan. His encounter sparked a lifelong affinity for museums. As he grew up, Gould eschewed playing stickball at the weekend to visit the dinosaurs, and eventually did his PhD at Columbia University in New York to be near his beloved museum. By the time he died in 2002, Gould had spent most of his career at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. He was one of many scientists who traced their early inspiration to museums.
Scientists who work in museums enjoy a dynamic mix of laboratory and field research, collection managing, outreach and education, and exhibition design. The primary advantage is research flexibility, says Kathlyn Stewart, a research scientist in palaeobiology at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. "My work focus is a research programme of my design using museum collections," she says, contrasting this with universities, where teaching and advising students is the focus, or industry or government, where scientists may have little say in their research focus.
Scientists interested in the museum career path should proceed with some caution, however — jobs are not plentiful. "Even internationally it is a very small job market," says Niel Bruce, a senior curator at the Museum of Tropical Queensland in Australia, who has made several international career moves. Still, for scientists with a natural history bent who are itching to have an impact on the public, museum work can be a rewarding departure from more typical career tracks.
R. T. NOWITZ/CORBIS
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
On display: from exhibits on show to behind-the-scenes collections at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum.
Collections and disciplines
Opportunities at museums are largely confined to natural history. Museum research is driven, and often defined, by institutions' specimen collections — extensive libraries of natural history objects that are conserved and catalogued. The physical sciences are more likely to be encountered at science centres, which are more hands-on than collection-based. Life sciences tend to be overrepresented, particularly zoology. A large natural history museum might employ ornithologists, mammalogists, entomologists and ichthyologists, along with botanists, archaeologists, geologists, astronomers and palaeontologists.
Some larger museums do have impressive labs. The genomics labs at the AMNH, for example, are enabling John Flynn, chair and curator of fossil mammals, and his collaborators to sequence 30 genes for every species of living carnivore. But that's rare. More often, a museum scientist in need of a molecular-biology lab must collaborate with a university researcher, says Spencer Lucas, interim executive director at the Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque, New Mexico. So scientists at smaller museums find inventive ways to get data and scrutinize specimens with the latest technology. "We take specimens into the local hospital late at night," says Thomas Williamson, curator of palaeontology at the New Mexico museum. "If someone comes into the ER with a head trauma, the doctors pull our fossil out of the CAT scanner."
The advent of genomics has translated into new ways to look at material in collections, whether studying Neanderthal DNA or using genomics to catalogue specimens as part of conservation-biology projects. This should mean new job opportunities for scientists at museums, according to John Bates, chair of zoology at the Field Museum in Chicago. But those new studies require support.
R. MICKENS
John Flynn is part of a project to sequence mammalian genes at the American Museum of Natural History.
Fortunately, private funds and earned revenue are helping to sustain museums, says Alan Friedman, former director of the New York Hall of Science. For example, the US$484-million renovation project under way at the California Academy of Sciences since 2005 will see the museum reopen later this year. The project, including a 'living roof' of plants, was funded by donations, membership fees, and the city and state.
More than academic
The path from museum research to exhibition design can offer opportunities not feasible in the academic environment. Dennis Blanton, curator and archaeologist at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta, Georgia, recalls how an accidental observation led to an interdisciplinary study and a novel exhibition. Last summer Blanton discovered a local riverbed exposed by drought. He morphed from archaeologist to palaeontologist when radiocarbon dating revealed the sediments to be about 35,000 years old. "The ecosystem had never been seen before," he says. Sedimentologists and other experts were brought in and many botanical specimens analysed. The result was an exhibition showcasing a 'virtual walk' in a 35,000-year-old Georgia forest. "The museum embraced the discovery and allowed me to pursue analysis," he adds.
Museum palaeontologists typically spend one to three months a year in the field, taking fossils back to the museum for painstaking preservation and preparation, which must be done to study as well as display fossils. But old collections can yield new information. "A researcher can make connections that are not obvious, find overlooked structures, or realize that characteristics once thought not to be important are now recognized to be important," says Lucas.
D. L. BRILL/BRILL ATLANTA
Exhibiting and teaching: Tim White (top), Dirk Van Tuerenhout (bottom).
Patience is mandatory. Developing an exhibition from concept to reality takes time, usually years. For example, Tim White, co-director of the Human Evolution Research Center, part of the Berkeley Natural History Museums consortium at the University of California, led the team that discovered three Homo sapiens idaltu crania in 1997. But not until 2005 did replicas go on display at the Expo 2005 in Aichi in Japan, and at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa. Preparing a fossilized cranium for study and display entails collecting, cleaning, preserving and assembling many tiny pieces. One cranium was found in 180 fragments, which had to be sifted from thousands and then assembled using other skulls as guides.
Exhibition design involves repeated evaluations, says Friedman, to identify and address public misconceptions about science. For one exhibition, Friedman and his colleagues worried about using technical terms for microscopic organisms. Kids liked the names, just as they like those of dinosaurs. But most visitors, adults included, had no idea that paramecia and amoebae were actually living organisms. The scientist-designers needed to take a step back and answer the question 'what is life?' in their display.
There is ample interplay among museum scientists and academia. Many museum scientists have duties akin to those of university professors, and some scientists have joint appointments. It is common to write papers for peer-reviewed journals and, in some countries, to seek external research grants. Flynn, for example, currently oversees US National Science Foundation grants for research, collections and education. Curatorships at large museums are tenured.
Some museum scientists teach undergraduate courses. Dirk Van Tuerenhout, curator of anthropology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science in Texas, teaches anthropology at the University of Houston. It helps connect him with a "different demographic", he says, and forces him to stay current in his field. "The best universities integrate jobs, so that their professors can do research, teach and do outreach based on their museum platforms," says White. The pay is usually in line with comparable academic positions, he adds.
Inspiration and education
Experienced museum scientists interested in having a broader impact can help guide and start new museums and centres. Friedman is a consultant for the Science Center of Tech Valley, which is evolving from New York's existing Schenectady Museum & Suits-Bueche Planetarium. The museum began with an archive of documents and artefacts from when Thomas Edison founded nearby General Electric. Today it also celebrates locally developed imaging technologies. The planned science centre will include a 'living lab' for ongoing experiments.
Museums have long collaborated with universities, whose graduate students have access to the collections. But starting soon, more museum scientists may be trained entirely at museums. A new PhD programme in comparative biology at the AMNH, part of the Richard Gilder Graduate School, is accepting its first students. The school will highlight research unique to museum scientists, focusing on phylogeny and interactions among species, says Flynn. PhD students will provide public education programmes and develop exhibitions, while interacting with academic researchers whose universities are associated with the museum. The first class for the four-year programme will have four students. But eventually class size will grow to 18, Flynn says, and students may stay an extra year to develop a formal course or public educational programme. The only other PhD programme based in a museum is at the national museum of natural history in Paris, says Flynn.
Mostly, though, museums are vessels for inspiration such as that experienced by the young Stephen Jay Gould. Whether helping to start a new museum or just designing an innovative exhibition, museum work is most valued by those scientists hoping to make an impact with the public. "When I work on an exhibition, I realize that maybe a million visitors a year will see it," says Flynn. "That's an incredible opportunity."