200 Years of Discovery

In March 2012, the Academy of Natural Sciences will kick off a yearlong bicentennial celebration with exciting events, special programs, and public engagement activities, along with the grand opening of The Academy at 200: The Nature of Discovery. This spectacular exhibit celebrates the Academy’s groundbreaking discoveries of the past and present and provides a glimpse into the future of one of the world’s greatest natural history museums.

The festivities begin Bicentennial Weekend, March 24 and 25, with the public exhibit opening and celebration!

Two hundred years ago, the Academy of Natural Sciences set out to answer big questions about our world. Nature was a series of vast mysteries, and natural science, still in its infancy, was barely able to tease fact from fantasy. Maps and texts, literally and figuratively, were filled with blanks. The planet itself was a puzzle.

As we celebrate our Bicentennial, we now have answers to many of those questions. We no longer wonder (as Thomas Jefferson did) if mastodons inhabit the Dakotas. We appreciate the size, shape, and age of the world, and we understand the Earth and its inhabitants with ever-growing precision. In just 20 decades, Academy scientists have helped to solve some of the deepest riddles of our planet. Now entering our third century, we are adding new questions to our ongoing quest to understand our world. How can we balance human needs with those of the Earth? What can we do to improve our understanding of the ways we are changing the planet? How does our changing planet affect our daily lives? We look forward to sharing our questions, discoveries, and more with you as we move forward.

Learn more about the Academy’s history.