My name is Janet Frasier. I am marketing director of the Museum and lead the community book discussion. Over this year, I hope to interview a handful of Museum curators and Utah researchers this year to get their professional and personal perspective on Darwin's work within their own development as a scientist.
I started the conversation with Dr. Sarah B. George, executive director of the Utah Museum of Natural History. Sarah is a biologist, one with a strong interest in museum collections. Prior to coming to Utah, Sarah was a curator of vertebrates at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. In her current role since 1992, Sarah is leading the Museum toward its new home, the Rio Tinto Center, scheduled to open in early 2011.
JF: When did Charles Darwin first enter your consciousness?
SG: I knew his name from early science classes, but he really didn’t register more than Pasteur and van Leeuwenhoek and Linnaeus did. I knew them all as scientists who had made great discoveries.
JF: What were your early attitudes toward "Origin of the Species" and the theory of evolution?
SG: As a military dependent, I went to a variety of Catholic and public schools, and evolution was the basis of the life sciences I was taught in these many schools. I had a lot of curiosity about how nature worked and why organisms look and function they way they do. It was clear to me from an early age that the evolution was the process behind the incredible variability in life.
I cannot tell you when I first heard about “On the Origin of Species,” but I can tell you when I read it! I had just started my doctoral program and was headed out for a 10-week field expedition in Sonora, Baja Sur, Baja Norte, and southern California. I knew that I had to be prepared for comprehensive exams not long after I returned in the fall, so I took “Origin” with me. Coincidentally, I also took Barbara Tuchman’s “A Distant Mirror” along and I remember being struck at some point in the summer that she was simply documenting a catastrophic selective event in human evolution from an historian’s perspective.
JF: What attracted you to biology as a field of study?
SG: My dad was a doctor who did his orthopedic residency in the 1960s in a military hospital. He sometimes sneaked me into rounds, where most of the patients were recovering from battle wounds in Vietnam. It was fascinating to me how they reconstructed these young people.
Science was definitely an interest, but wasn’t a conscious career choice until some years later. For that inspiration, I have to credit my high school biology teacher, Mr. Martin, who said that he thought I should major in biology and go to medical school. I thought, why not? Early in college, however, I took a class in mammalogy, got a job working in the university museum’s collection and never looked back!
JF: In your study and research as a biologist, how did you encounter Darwin’s influence?
SG: My field of study, systematics and biogeography, was all about reconstructing evolutionary trees of groups of species and connecting the divergent points in those trees to past geologic events and current-day geography. My work was all about evolution. I am in awe of Darwin’s keen observations and ability to detect pattern, given what was NOT know about plate tectonics, genetics, and other phenomena that we know about today.
JF: What sense of legacy do you feel with Darwin’s life as a naturalist in building collections?
SG: The nineteenth century was an extraordinary time for biological exploration and discovery—Darwin, Alfred Wallace, Joseph Banks, John Audubon and sons. They observed and documented the diversity around them and left collections as legacies of the biota of that time. When I started school, collecting was still focused on discovery, but on a finer scale than the 19th century—developing an understanding of patterns of diversity on a local scale rather than on continental scales. By the way: A great film that plays up the adventure of 19th century collecting is “Master and Commander”—the character of Dr. Stephen Maturin is based on Joseph Banks.
JF: As a biologist turned museum director, what contribution do you feel museum collections make to science and culture?
SG: With the benefit of collections that span more than 200 years, we have an extraordinary database that documents change in populations, species, geographic distributions, genetics, etc etc etc. Museum collections yielded the hard data that documented the devastation that DDT was having on avian egg shell density and hence viability. Museum collections are documenting changes in altitudinal distributions of plants and animals that almost certainly are the result of climate change. I could go on, but won’t! Suffice to say that museum collections, properly identified and databased, are more important than ever as tools to measure change over time and distance.
JF: What is the role of modern naturalists?
SG: Observing, documenting, and studying change in the world around us and providing a platform of data that we can use to make decisions about our future.
JF: If you were an adolescent today, how would you approach Darwin? What would you read to learn more about him?
SG: I’d beg to carry his bags! One of the great side benefits to being a naturalist is the opportunity to spend a lot of time in the field and to travel the world.
Oh, you mean how would I approach learning about Darwin! I would read “Origin”—it is surprisingly easy to read—or Darwin’s “Journal and Remarks” that we know as “Voyage of the Beagle.” Try “The Illustrated Origin” by Richard Leakey or if you can find it, “Darwin for Beginners.” And if you are more into adventure, dive into Patrick O’Brian’s series of novels about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin.
JF: One last question: Both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on February 12, 1809. Which one do YOU think has had more influence in western culture?
SG: Without question, Charles Darwin! Abraham Lincoln had a profound effect on the course of American history, but Darwin changed our way of understanding the world around us.
JF: When did Charles Darwin first enter your consciousness?
SG: I knew his name from early science classes, but he really didn’t register more than Pasteur and van Leeuwenhoek and Linnaeus did. I knew them all as scientists who had made great discoveries.
JF: What were your early attitudes toward "Origin of the Species" and the theory of evolution?
SG: As a military dependent, I went to a variety of Catholic and public schools, and evolution was the basis of the life sciences I was taught in these many schools. I had a lot of curiosity about how nature worked and why organisms look and function they way they do. It was clear to me from an early age that the evolution was the process behind the incredible variability in life.
I cannot tell you when I first heard about “On the Origin of Species,” but I can tell you when I read it! I had just started my doctoral program and was headed out for a 10-week field expedition in Sonora, Baja Sur, Baja Norte, and southern California. I knew that I had to be prepared for comprehensive exams not long after I returned in the fall, so I took “Origin” with me. Coincidentally, I also took Barbara Tuchman’s “A Distant Mirror” along and I remember being struck at some point in the summer that she was simply documenting a catastrophic selective event in human evolution from an historian’s perspective.
JF: What attracted you to biology as a field of study?
SG: My dad was a doctor who did his orthopedic residency in the 1960s in a military hospital. He sometimes sneaked me into rounds, where most of the patients were recovering from battle wounds in Vietnam. It was fascinating to me how they reconstructed these young people.
Science was definitely an interest, but wasn’t a conscious career choice until some years later. For that inspiration, I have to credit my high school biology teacher, Mr. Martin, who said that he thought I should major in biology and go to medical school. I thought, why not? Early in college, however, I took a class in mammalogy, got a job working in the university museum’s collection and never looked back!
JF: In your study and research as a biologist, how did you encounter Darwin’s influence?
SG: My field of study, systematics and biogeography, was all about reconstructing evolutionary trees of groups of species and connecting the divergent points in those trees to past geologic events and current-day geography. My work was all about evolution. I am in awe of Darwin’s keen observations and ability to detect pattern, given what was NOT know about plate tectonics, genetics, and other phenomena that we know about today.
JF: What sense of legacy do you feel with Darwin’s life as a naturalist in building collections?
SG: The nineteenth century was an extraordinary time for biological exploration and discovery—Darwin, Alfred Wallace, Joseph Banks, John Audubon and sons. They observed and documented the diversity around them and left collections as legacies of the biota of that time. When I started school, collecting was still focused on discovery, but on a finer scale than the 19th century—developing an understanding of patterns of diversity on a local scale rather than on continental scales. By the way: A great film that plays up the adventure of 19th century collecting is “Master and Commander”—the character of Dr. Stephen Maturin is based on Joseph Banks.
JF: As a biologist turned museum director, what contribution do you feel museum collections make to science and culture?
SG: With the benefit of collections that span more than 200 years, we have an extraordinary database that documents change in populations, species, geographic distributions, genetics, etc etc etc. Museum collections yielded the hard data that documented the devastation that DDT was having on avian egg shell density and hence viability. Museum collections are documenting changes in altitudinal distributions of plants and animals that almost certainly are the result of climate change. I could go on, but won’t! Suffice to say that museum collections, properly identified and databased, are more important than ever as tools to measure change over time and distance.
JF: What is the role of modern naturalists?
SG: Observing, documenting, and studying change in the world around us and providing a platform of data that we can use to make decisions about our future.
JF: If you were an adolescent today, how would you approach Darwin? What would you read to learn more about him?
SG: I’d beg to carry his bags! One of the great side benefits to being a naturalist is the opportunity to spend a lot of time in the field and to travel the world.
Oh, you mean how would I approach learning about Darwin! I would read “Origin”—it is surprisingly easy to read—or Darwin’s “Journal and Remarks” that we know as “Voyage of the Beagle.” Try “The Illustrated Origin” by Richard Leakey or if you can find it, “Darwin for Beginners.” And if you are more into adventure, dive into Patrick O’Brian’s series of novels about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin.
JF: One last question: Both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on February 12, 1809. Which one do YOU think has had more influence in western culture?
SG: Without question, Charles Darwin! Abraham Lincoln had a profound effect on the course of American history, but Darwin changed our way of understanding the world around us.
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