Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
In the early 1800s, Philadelphia\u2019s loose cohort of natural scientists became obsessed with learning all they could about the plants and animal species of the New World. <\/p>\n
They shipped dried specimens to Britain for naturalists to identify and catalog. And when the American naturalists discovered a new species, the Brits named it and took the credit for the findings in their medical journals. <\/p>\n
When the Crown enacted trade restrictions in 1807 \u2014 ultimately leading to the War of 1812 \u2014 American botanists, herbologists, and entomologists had enough with Britain\u2019s interference. <\/p>\n
Six Philadelphia gentlemen and amateur naturalists \u2014 Gerard Troost, Nicholas S. Parmentier, Camillus MacMahon Mann, Jacob Gilliams, John Shinn Jr., and John Speakman \u2014 held a meeting Jan. 12, 1812, in Speakman\u2019s Old City<\/a> apothecary. Their goal: to map out a plan to be recognized as scientific experts on what grew on their own soil. <\/p>\n On March 21, they took the official name, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia<\/a>. <\/p>\n The Philadelphia Historic District will celebrate the the Academy\u2019s beginnings at its Ben Franklin Parkway home on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The party, or \u201cFirstival,\u201d is part of a series of yearlong fetes honoring events, places, and organizations with Philly roots in honor of America\u2019s 250th birthday. <\/p>\n \u201cAmericans were doing the research and risking their lives to cull these specimens,\u201d said Robert M. Peck, curator of artifacts and senior fellow emeritus at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe [Philadelphians] were feeling left out of the picture,\u201d said Peck, the author of the 2012 book A Glorious Enterprise: The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and the Making of American Science<\/a>. \u201cBy forming our own academy and publishing our own journals, we were able to take control of the science and discovery in America for Americans.\u201d <\/p>\n Thomas Say is listed as the seventh founder, though he didn\u2019t attend the first meetings, Peck said. Still, Say is the most famous of the early members as he is the father of American entomology and conchology.<\/p>\n The academy was a private club in the beginning, opening its nature collections to the public in 1828 when it was housed at the Swedenborgian Church at 12th and Sansom.<\/p>\n By the mid-19th century, the academy was as important in Philadelphia\u2019s science and education circles as Ben Franklin\u2019s highbrow American Philosophical Society<\/a>. In 1849, the society transferred Thomas Jefferson\u2019s fossil collection to the academy, where it remains today. During the mid-19th century, the academy acquired the bird skins from John James Audubon\u2019s collection, and the pressed plants gathered by explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark<\/a>. <\/p>\n In 1868, the academy made paleontology history when Benjamin Waterhouse unveiled a 15-foot-tall complete dinosaur skeleton of Hadrosaurus foulkii <\/a>built from the bones of the plant-eating dinosaur excavated in Haddonfield<\/a> 10 years before. <\/p>\n \u201cBefore then, people didn\u2019t understand what dinosaurs really were, how they really looked,\u201d Peck said. \u201cThis is the first time the world had ever seen what a dinosaur really looked like and it shaped how we still see them today.\u201d<\/p>\n During the 19th century, the Academy was the founding home of the American Association for the Advancement of Science<\/a> and the Entomological Society of America<\/a>, in 1848 and 1859 respectively. <\/p>\n In 1876, the Academy moved to its present building on the Parkway, where, exactly 100 years later, the Please Touch Museum<\/a> opened its 2,200-square-foot pilot. (It is now located in Memorial Hall on the Centennial campus in West Philadelphia<\/a>.) <\/p>\n The Academy went on to become a home base for scientists who study a wide range of climate-related topics, from global warming in Mongolia<\/a> to avian bird flu in Vietnam.<\/p>\n In 2011, the Academy of Natural Sciences became a subsidiary of Drexel University, retaining its own board and legal status as a separate nonprofit organization. In April, The Inquirer reported Drexel was in discussions to sever ties with the Academy unless <\/a>it agreed to grant Drexel its building, endowment, and significant collections. <\/p>\n This week\u2019s \u201cFirstival\u201d is Saturday, Aug. 1, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway.<\/p>\n The Inquirer is highlighting a \u201cfirst\u201d from the Philadelphia Historic District\u2019s 52 Weeks of Firsts<\/a> program every week. A \u201c52 Weeks of Firsts\u201d<\/a> podcast, produced by All That\u2019s Good Productions, drops every Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min In the early 1800s, Philadelphia\u2019s loose cohort of natural scientists became obsessed with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[109030,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-256142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-academy-of-natural-sciences-history-phialdelphia-firstival","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}