Darwin Centre puts scientists on show to public

(Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

The Cocoon, an eight-storey, 65 metre building-within-a-building, houses the museum?s collection of 17 million insects and three million plants

They are rare and reclusive creatures, not often seen outside their natural habitat of the laboratory or the field trip and liable to take fright at the slightest sign of intrusion. Few people ever get the chance to observe the research scientist - Homo sapiens scientificus - at close hand.

From next week, however, they will be on display at the Natural History Museum in London, where visitors will be able to observe them in their natural environment. In an encounter that may one day rank alongside David Attenborough and the gorillas, they will be able to watch them as they work and - assuming they do not hide when disturbed - even talk to them as they go about their business.

“Hello,” said one encountered by The Times today. “I’m Gavin.” Good news, then: they are friendly.

Putting scientists on show is part of an array of radical new measures at the museum’s £78 million new Darwin Centre, the last phase of which was unveiled today.

It includes the Cocoon, an eight-storey, 65 metre building-within-a-building which houses the museum’s collection of 17 million insects and three million plants... and Gavin and John.

Dr Gavin Broad, insect curator, and John Hunnex, herbarium technician, were discovered in The Times’s very own David Attenborough moment working in the specimen preparation area.

They were separated from the public by a sheet of glass - no doubt it is crucial to the survival of this subspecies not to contaminate their environment - but it was possible to talk to them via an intercom. “I’m looking at insects and identifying them, particularly wasps from South America,” said Dr Broad who, it must be admitted, looked a little nervous.

Mr Hunnex was tamer. He had obviously come across humans before and even waxed enthusiastic about the prospect of doing his work under the critical gaze of hundreds of schoolchildren. “I am very positive,” he said. “We are always being enthused about the public engagement of science and putting over what goes on behind the scenes at the museum.”

As well as Gavin and John, or whoever is taking their place that day, the top three storeys of the Cocoon involves a wealth of interactive displays, from how to work out the DNA sequence of mosquitoes - and thus fight malaria - to how to identify pondwater algae. A volunteer guide walks around with a tray hung from her neck, like an ice-cream saleswoman at the cinema, only hers is filled with beetle specimens which you are invited to put into groups.

The interactive theme is continued in the Centre’s Attenborough Studio, where talks are given by the museum’s scientists up to three times a day on subjects ranging from the history of the giant squid to the secrets of spider dating.

Dr Michael Dixon, the museum director, said the centre would change the whole perception of the museum. “Work which has historically gone on behind the scenes will be presented to the visiting public.”

Source