How a grade-school field trip led to Harvard professorship
Anne Monius was 8 years old when she strayed from her class during a field trip to Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. After all, there were giant dinosaurs and ferocious tigers to investigate. While wandering the exhibit spaces, she came across a room of art students sketching the taxidermied animals stored behind glass cases. “What are you doing? Where are your parents?” asked one of the students who caught Monius staring. Monius explained she was at the museum for her class field trip, but then started asking her own questions. What were they doing? And why were they all drawing? The student explained in detail about his class and why they were drawing the stuffed tiger. “It was like I had been living in a broom closet, and somebody opened up the door, and I had no idea what was going on,” Monius recalls today. “But I wanted to know.” Outside the museum, just...