By Nick Woltman | [email protected] | Pioneer Press PUBLISHED: May 17, 2018 at 8:34 pm | UPDATED: May 17, 2018 at 10:41 pm
An Illinois couple has donated $2 million to the Science Museum of Minnesota, the largest gift in the St. Paul museum’s history. The donation, from Barbara and Roger Brown of Highland Park, Ill., will endow a new position at the museum and fund its study of birds, according to a Science Museum news release. The Barbara Brown Chair of Ornithology will direct the museum’s biology department, curating its and building on its avian collection, conducting research and fieldwork and collaborating with other scientists and museums across the country. “The Science Museum of Minnesota’s new ornithology department will do scientific research, but they’ll also attract the non-scientific public,” Barbara Brown said in the museum’s statement. “I think there are a lot more people interested in birdwatching in the United States than there used to be.” The Browns’s daughter-in-law, Alison Rempel Brown, is CEO of the Science Museum, and the couple has visited the downtown St. Paul museum several times. Barbara Brown, who said her interest in nature and conservation was sparked in part by Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring,” is the former president of the Evanston North Shore Bird Club and was a scientific associate in the mammal division at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History for 47 years, according to the statement. “Not only is this donation significant in terms of its size, but it’s also so important because it helps us reach the goals outlined in our new strategic plan to extend our influence beyond our walls,” Laurie Fink, the museum’s vice president of science, said in the statement. “I’m looking forward to this new science professional joining our staff, bringing a new perspective and new ideas for ways we can build and learn from our collection and share that knowledge with visitors to our museum — and with other researchers around the world and the constituents they serve.” The collection this new chairperson will oversee includes thousands of vertebrates, invertebrates and plants, including specimens of extinct and endangered birds, such as the passenger pigeon. ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
