2020 Sep 10
Linda Shi, "Green Infrastructure Beyond Flood Risk Reduction"
7:30pm to 9:00pm
Location: 
Online Event, Graduate School of Design
This lecture explores whether it is possible to achieve both social justice and environmental sustainability in efforts to mitigate urban flood risk. The expanding scale of urban flooding under climate change has renewed interest in large-scale restoration projects that make room for water in metro centers. However, ecologically functioning green infrastructure – unleashed rivers, sprawling wetlands – is inconsistent with the current governance landscape of fragmented local governments seeking to maximize local land values and minimize affordable housing. Moreover, even...
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2020 Aug 28
Sharks: Streamlined Swimmers
Fri Aug 28 (All day) to Fri Oct 30 (All day)
Location: 
Online—Harvard Museums of Science & Culture
Ongoing Online Exhibit
Sharks are some of the oldest and, from an evolutionary perspective, some of the most successful marine vertebrates ever to have lived. They have spent their entire evolutionary history in the aquatic environment, and the body design in many species has been honed over hundreds of millions of years to increase swimming performance. Learn how body form, fins and even the skin, work in concert, enabling sharks to slice through water and execute complex maneuvers with startling speed and precision.
...
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2020 Aug 17
Virtual Summer Science Week: Ins & Outs of Skeletons (Session 2)
Repeats every day until Fri Aug 21 2020 .
9:30am
9:30am
9:30am
9:30am
9:30am
Location: 
Online via Zoom
Investigate the ins and outs of skeletons through a virtual museum experience. Using observations of skulls, bones, and live animals, we will explore how animals use their skeletons for support, protection, and movement, and see how bones and fossils can help us solve ancient mysteries. Extend the fun at home with daily activities. A small packet of materials will be sent to your home upon registration.
Additional supplies needed: Thin cardboard-like poster board about 11" x 11" or two cardboard paper towel rolls, kitchen string, strong tape 3/4" wide or narrower (electrical...
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2020 Aug 04
Animal Snack Time: Marine-Tank Edition
2:00pm to 2:30pm
Location: 
Online Event
Interested in what a spider crab eats? Want to see a sea star up close? Curious about what a horseshoe crab does with that long tail? Grab a snack and join human museum staff members Javier and Ryan as they spend thirty minutes feeding, interacting with, and discussing these amazing animals. This event is free and will be hosted on the Zoom webinar platform.
Register by 1:00 pm on August 4. After registering, participants will receive a confirmation email with instructions on how to participate using Zoom.
This even is free and open to the public, but registration...
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2020 Aug 03
Virtual Summer Science Week: Spineless Wonders (Session 2)
Repeats every day until Fri Aug 07 2020 .
9:30am
9:30am
9:30am
9:30am
9:30am
Location: 
Online via Zoom
Come explore the amazing world of insects, spiders, and other invertebrates, virtually, at the museum! During the live Zoom sessions, see a tarantula up close, help find millipedes, and listen to the hiss of a giant cockroach. Complete your own investigations at home as you learn how to collect and study creepy crawlies. A small packet of special collecting materials will be sent to your home to help with your discoveries.
Additional supplies needed: An empty clear plastic jar with a lid and holes for insect collecting (for example, a cleaned peanut butter or mayonnaise jar);...
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2020 Jul 27
Virtual Summer Science Week: Ins & Outs of Skeletons (Session 1)
Repeats every day until Fri Jul 31 2020 .
9:30am
9:30am
9:30am
9:30am
9:30am
Location: 
Online via Zoom
Investigate the ins and outs of skeletons through a virtual museum experience. Using observations of skulls, bones, and live animals, we will explore how animals use their skeletons for support, protection, and movement, and see how bones and fossils can help us solve ancient mysteries. Extend the fun at home with daily activities. A small packet of materials will be sent to your home upon registration.
Additional supplies needed: Thin cardboard-like poster board about 11" x 11" or two cardboard paper towel rolls, kitchen string, strong tape 3/4" wide or narrower (electrical...
Read more about Virtual Summer Science Week: Ins & Outs of Skeletons (Session 1)
2020 Jul 20
Virtual Summer Science Week: Earth Explorers (Session 2)
Repeats every day until Fri Jul 24 2020 .
9:30am
9:30am
9:30am
9:30am
9:30am
Location: 
Online via Zoom
Dig into Earth Science with this virtual museum experience. Explore volcanoes, crystals, and fossils! During the live Zoom sessions, experiment with “lava,” solve a sandy mystery, and see real museum specimens. Continue your investigations at home as you grow crystals, collect rocks, and make your own fossils! A small packet of special materials will be sent to your home to help with your discoveries.
Additional supplies needed: An empty clear plastic jar with a lid (for example, a cleaned peanut butter or mayonnaise jar), a handful of small rocks (will be used for an activity...
Read more about Virtual Summer Science Week: Earth Explorers (Session 2)
2020 Jul 13
Virtual Summer Science Week: Earth Explorers (Session 1)
Repeats every day until Fri Jul 17 2020 .
9:30am
9:30am
9:30am
9:30am
9:30am
Location: 
Online via Zoom
Dig into Earth Science with this virtual museum experience. Explore volcanoes, crystals, and fossils! During the live Zoom sessions, experiment with “lava,” solve a sandy mystery, and see real museum specimens. Continue your investigations at home as you grow crystals, collect rocks, and make your own fossils! A small packet of special materials will be sent to your home to help with your discoveries.
Additional supplies needed: An empty clear plastic jar with a lid (for example, a cleaned peanut butter or mayonnaise jar), a handful of small rocks (will be used for an activity...
Read more about Virtual Summer Science Week: Earth Explorers (Session 1)
2020 Jun 22
Virtual Summer Science Week: Spineless Wonders (Session 1)
Repeats every weekday until Fri Jun 26 2020 .
9:30am
9:30am
9:30am
9:30am
9:30am
Location: 
Online via Zoom
Come explore the amazing world of insects, spiders, and other invertebrates, virtually, at the museum! During the live Zoom sessions, see a tarantula up close, help find millipedes, and listen to the hiss of a giant cockroach. Complete your own investigations at home as you learn how to collect and study creepy crawlies. A small packet of special collecting materials will be sent to your home to help with your discoveries.
Additional supplies needed: An empty clear plastic jar with a lid and holes for insect collecting (for example, a cleaned peanut butter or mayonnaise jar);...
Read more about Virtual Summer Science Week: Spineless Wonders (Session 1)
2019 Nov 07
Adversity, Belonging, and Survival Among Baboons
6:00pm
Location: 
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge
Join the Harvard Museum of Natural History for a public lecture with Susan Alberts, Robert F. Durden Professor of Biology and Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University. 
The social environment—both in early life and adulthood—has major effects on human health and survival. But how and why does the social environment get “under the skin” to also affect our physical health? Susan Alberts pursues this question by studying wild baboons in Kenya. Baboons, like humans, evolved as savannah dwellers. They rely on social relationships to solve problems and—like humans...
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2019 Oct 26
Fabulous Fungus Fair
2:00pm to 4:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford St., Cambridge
Explore the wondrous world of fungi! Join Harvard students for a closer look at the mushrooms, yeasts, and molds found in gardens, forests, and labs—even in our own refrigerators. This is an opportunity to investigate fungal diversity and participate in hands-on activities led by Harvard students.
Note: Regular museum admission rates apply.
Learn more about Fabulous Fungus Fair.
Read more about Fabulous Fungus Fair
2019 Oct 21
Voices of the Rainforest
6:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums, Menschel Hall, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge
Voices of the Rainforest is an experiential documentary about the ecological and aesthetic coevolution of Papua New Guinea’s Bosavi rainforest region and its inhabitants. The film immerses viewers in the rainforest, making myriad connections between the everyday sounds of the rainforest biosphere and the creative practices of the Bosavi people who sing to, with, and about it.
Following the screening, Steven Feld will discuss the film with Amahl Bishara, an associate professor of anthropology at Tufts University.
...
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2019 Oct 06
Reptile Day
11:00am to 1:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford St., Cambridge
Celebrate reptiles! Join Harvard students from the Harvard College Conservation Society for a variety of reptile themed activities including a scavenger hunt, storytime, and crafts. Come learn about the history and diversity of reptiles, and why they need to be conserved! All ages are welcome.
Please note: Regular museum admission rates apply.
Learn more about Reptile Day.
Read more about Reptile Day
2019 Jul 13
Exploring Science Together: Bugs!
10:30am to 12:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford St., Cambridge
Take a closer look and explore the world of minuscule bugs! Learn through hands-on activities designed to show you how to classify and identify these numerous and diverse creatures! Participate in activities in our incredible arthropods gallery. Observe and touch live invertebrates, and then go outside and collect some of your own. Dig in the dirt and learn how invertebrates help people compost food waste into soil. Create your own scientific equipment that will help you continue the study of entomology at home.
All activities are designed to be fun and interactive experiences...
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2019 May 22
Ethnobotany at Harvard
12:00pm to 2:00pm
Location: 
Harvard University Herbaria, 22 Divinity Ave., Cambridge
Historically, plants have provided humans with most of our drugs, fibers, food, dyes, perfumes, building materials, and even musical instruments. But how has this diverse and fascinating field been studied and what has been learned? In fact, for over 100 years, Harvard has played a pivotal role in the study of human-plant interactions, leading to the creation of the field of ethnobotany.
In this interactive lecture we will explore the science and history of some of the most important Harvard botanists and explorers through their unique specimens—now housed in the Harvard...
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2019 Apr 23
Film Screening: Lobster War: The Fight Over the World's Richest Fishing Grounds
6:00pm to 8:00pm
Location: 
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge
Lobster War is an award-winning documentary film about a conflict between the United States and Canada over waters that both countries have claimed since the end of the Revolutionary War. The disputed 277 square miles of sea known as the Gray Zone were traditionally fished by U.S. lobstermen. But as the Gulf of Maine has warmed faster than nearly any other body of water on the planet, the area’s previously modest lobster population has surged. As a result, Canadians have begun to assert their sovereignty, warring with the Americans to claim the bounty.
Directed...
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2019 Apr 10
Lecture: Chasing Ants (And Their Microbes) in the Rainforest
6:00pm
Location: 
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge
Microbes play critical roles in the biology and health of human beings, but we are not the only species that benefits from intimate relationships with microbes. Ants, for instance, rely on the microbial communities living in their guts to process food and make strong armor.
Corrie Moreau will discuss this unique aspect of ant biology and what it tells us about the diversity and dominance of ants in terrestrial ecosystems, the evolutionary history of social insects, and the broad-scale evolutionary patterns of life.
...
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2019 Apr 09
Lecture: Self-Domestication in Bonobos and Other Wild Animals
6:00pm
Location: 
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge
Domesticated animals such as dogs, pigs, and horses often sport floppy ears, patches of white hair, and other features that are unknown in their wild ancestors. These traits—collectively referred to by scientists as a “domestication syndrome”—are the result of breeding less aggressive individuals.
Drawing from his new book, The Goodness Paradox (2019, Pantheon Books), Richard Wrangham will show that our cousin apes, the bonobos, also exhibit a domestication syndrome, making them the first clear example of a “wild domesticate.” Self-domestication in the wild now seems...
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2019 Apr 02
Living with White Sharks
6:00pm
Location: 
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge
The Cape Cod white shark population has increased in recent years in response to the dramatic increase in the seal population. Shark sightings—some close to popular swimming and surfing beaches—are becoming more frequent and negative interactions between sharks and humans have become a real concern.
Gregory Skomal has studied and tracked white sharks in the Atlantic for more than 30 years. In this lecture, he will examine the behavior, ecology, natural history, and population dynamics of this species, and how scientific research can help sharks and humans coexist in the Cape...
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2019 Feb 20
The Amazonian Travels of Richard Evans Schultes
6:00pm
Location: 
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Richard Evans Schultes—ethnobotanist, taxonomist, writer, photographer, and Harvard professor—is regarded as one of the most important plant explorers of the twentieth century. In 1941, Schultes traveled to the Amazon rainforest on a mission to study how Indigenous peoples used plants for medicinal, ritual, and practical purposes. A new interactive online map, produced by the Amazon Conservation Team, traces the landscapes and cultures that Schultes explored in the Colombian Amazon. Plotkin and Hettler will share this map and discuss the relevance of Schultes’ travels and...
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