The Junior Academy provided not only scientific instruction for high school students, but specific, hands-on employment and experience at the museum where they learned about museum operations, exhibit design and taxidermy. This effort morphed into the Chicago Junior Academy of Sciences in the mid-1960s. The target audience for these clubs was high school children and teachers, but it reached a more diverse audience due to the quality of the lecturers and the enthusiasm of the club members. He implemented a “Science Seminar and Workshop Program” in 1959 that created science clubs in the fields of astronomy, biology, geology, microscopy, ornithology and ultimately herpetology and chemistry. Perhaps his greatest legacy for the Academy was his passionate commitment to develop educational programming to encourage budding zoologists. He even invented his own photographic equipment, like the binocular camera, to capture better photographs during his birding expeditions. Beecher was also active in the community promoting practices that would help reduce the number of bird deaths due to window collisions, such as dimming the lights in downtown buildings during migration periods. He revamped the museum’s exhibition spaces to be more inviting and informative. Beecher, PhD, a visionary science educator and influential ornithologist, was director of the Chicago Academy of Sciences from 1958-1983. She collected 2,000 specimens on this journey, one of which was later named as a new species of lichen, Bryum atwateriae. She and her husband traveled to California regularly and on one particular trip they stopped in Yellowstone National Park. William Stimpson, but unfortunately her entire collection was destroyed, along with the rest of the Academy’s holdings, during the Great Chicago Fire in 1871.Īlthough her health did not allow her to travel extensively, she personally collected on all of her trips and her friends abroad sent her items as well. She deposited most of her collection at that time with the Academy for safe keeping at the urging of Academy director Dr. Atwater in 1839 and in 1856 the couple moved to Chicago, where she connected with the Chicago Academy of Sciences. These items, some thirty boxes of plants, shells, minerals and cultural artifacts, remain a part of the Academy’s collection to this day.Ītwater developed her interest in botany while attending boarding school in Troy, New York where the study of plants was part of the standard curriculum since it was an activity that a “proper” lady could take with her wherever she went. Beecher | Robert Kennicott | Herman Silas Pepoon | William StimpsonĮlizabeth Emerson Atwater, a noted naturalist and collector, willed her collection to the Chicago Academy of Sciences. Jump To: Elizabeth Emerson Atwater | William J. Keep reading to learn more about just a few of the notable people from our institutional history. Since its founding in 1857, the Chicago Academy of Sciences / Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum has counted an incredible array of notable scientists and educators among those who have contributed to its collection and have led the institution.
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