Jewish Immigrants’ Aid, The Blue Card, 1942–1943, stamps from a booklet created by the Blue Card Foundation, a charity organization established in 1934 that continues to provide aid to Holocaust survivors and their families in the U.S. 📷 Science History Institute

Institute Launches ‘Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race’ Project

The Science History Institute is proud to announce the launch of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race, a podcast and magazine project that explores the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine. Published through Distillations, our highly acclaimed digital content platform, the project will examine the scientific origins of support for racist theories, practices, and policies. Innate also features a number of free public events—including a First Friday kick-off celebration on February 3—highlighting the stories told through the project.

You can now experience our Science and Survival outdoor exhibition through a new short film. Drawn from the Papers of Georg and Max Bredig and reproduced on the Institute’s building façade, Science and Survival recounts the harrowing story of the Bredig family’s struggle to escape the Nazi regime and reveals the importance of professional and personal networks to their survival. 

Our Lunchtime Lecture series continues with a virtual talk by Deirdre Cooper Owens, a historian of medicine working at the intersection of science, race, and gender. This Lunchtime Lecture is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of the Institute’s Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race project.

Jewish scientist Marietta Blau, 1937. 📷 AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Gift of Eva Connors

Join our museum’s Gallery Guides for a “drop-in” Women in Chemistry Tour highlighting the central role of women in shaping chemistry and the material sciences throughout history.

Join us at February’s First Friday for the launch of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race, a Distillations podcast and magazine project that examines the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine. First Fridays are free and open to the public. Attendees will receive a 10% discount to National Mechanics restaurant.

Our “drop-in” Water Tour explores the importance of water and the histories of pollution and protection that have changed our relationship to this vital substance.

Our next virtual Science on Tap features Jason Weckstein, associate curator of Ornithology at Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, who will guide us through Belém, Brazil, where he co-led a research team to discover and describe the region’s bird and bird parasite diversity.

Subhadra Das, former curator of the Galton Collection at University College London, will discuss the colonial and racist ideas that framed the work of Francis Galton, a Victorian scientist who coined the term “eugenics” in 1883. This virtual Lunchtime Lecture is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of the Institute’s Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race project.

Max Bredig’s German identification card, 1937. 📷 Science History Institute

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Gurs Concentration Camp, small black and white photo of the barracks at the Nazi internment camp in France, after 1944. 📷 Science History Institute

Our digital collections house more than 13,000 curated items, including oral history interviews with leading scientists who were forced to flee the Nazi regime and a broad array of materials from the Papers of Georg and Max Bredig:

Undated photo of Reinhold and Ruth Benesch. 📷 Department of Biochemistry, Columbia University

Jewish biochemists Reinhold Benesch (1919–1986) and Ruth Erica Benesch (1925–2000) worked together for 40 years studying hemoglobin, an oxygen-carrying protein found in red blood cells. Their research transformed the way scientists viewed the respiratory system. Married in 1946, the Benesches met in London where both had settled after escaping Nazi persecution—her from Germany and him from Poland. They moved to the United States and eventually became professors at Columbia University. To honor their close scientific partnership, Reinhold is known on occasion to have signed their research papers with the initials “R²B².”

View of our Science and Survival outdoor exhibition, which features large-scale reproductions of correspondence belonging to German Jewish chemists Georg and Max Bredig and reveals the family’s struggle to escape the Nazi regime. 📷 Science History Institute/Meredith Edlow

Our museum is open Wednesday–Saturday, 10am–5pm. Admission is free.

You can also explore our digital exhibitions, book a group tour, or check out our museum programs and activities.

Our museum is free to visitors because of donors like you. 📷 Science History Institute