In 2021 in the wake of the George Floyd murder and the ensuing racial reckoning in the United States, the Library created a project to highlight contributions of Academy staff and scientists whose contributions may have been overlooked due to their identity. The history of science is often filled with the accomplishments of White male scientists, and by telling these stories we want to create a fuller and truer picture of our history. Academy Library Staff and Careers in Science high school interns created profiles using archival materials to shed light on these stories.
To tell the whole story, we also had to set the context about the Academy’s own colonial history, which would explain why so few people from underrepresented groups were allowed into the field of science. These individuals faced barriers to make their way at the Academy, but they also had their own biases and at times racist views, and we felt it necessary to tell their story in its entirety.
You can meet the first cohort of students and Library staff from 2021, and hear their reflections on working this project and the people they profiled.
Baptista was an ornithologist who used bird calls to pinpoint species to the San Francisco neighborhoods where they lived.
Bracelin was a botanist who worked at the Academy, UC Berkeley, and the US Department of Agriculture.
Frizzell was an arachnologist who brought order to the spider tree of life—albeit as an unpaid researcher.
Keen was a malacologist and invertebrate paleontologist, and the first women to teach in the Earth Sciences department at Stanford.
Lemmon was a Botanist, one of the first women members of the Academy, and helped name the state flower.
McClintock was an Academy Botany Curator, who helped build the collections and worked on the conservation of plants in San Francisco.
Sonoda was an ichthyologist who survived a Japanese internment camp during World War II.
Head into the archives with our interns as they uncover the stories of barrier-breaking Academy staff.
In order to show a more complete and accurate depiction of the history of the Academy, and science as a whole
An Academy researcher reckons with the racist legacy of Academy president and ichthyologist David Starr Jordan.
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