LINDA HALL LIBRARY

NUMBER 59 • SPRING 2017

HEDGEHOG

magine the fear, anxiety, and horror one feels when loved ones disappear and no one knows if they’re dead or alive. It’s a dilemma faced by families around the world, including in the United States.

Helping such families is the life’s work of Lori Baker, a forensic anthropologist at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. She feels their pain so deeply it sometimes consumes her. But that empathy drives her mission: to identify the remains of their relatives and give family members closure, no matter how tragic the circumstances.

“If I had disappeared when I was a student and traveling through Central America, my family wouldn’t have known what to do,” Baker said. “I can easily imagine the desperation these families feel.”

Baker, an associate professor of anthropology at Baylor, specializes in molecular and forensic analysis of skeletal remains. She is the founder and executive director of the Reuniting Families Project.

A major focus of Baker’s mission is determining the identity of people who died as they attempted to migrate into the United States from Mexico and Central America, and uniting the remains with their loved ones.

The task poses huge challenges. Baker and her teams have worked on at least 500 such cases since 2003 and have succeeded in their quest about 20 percent of the time.

Forensic Anthropologist is

remains and reunite them with families

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B Y J U L I U S A . K A R A S HSpecial to the Linda Hall Library

Bringing ClosureBringing Closure

The Linda Hall Library recently welcomed two new vice presidents; one to manage fundraising and the other to oversee access and digital services.

On October 31, 2016, Amy Scrivner joined the Library as the Vice President for Development. She comes to Kansas City from Cincinnati where she managed development and raised money for a number of social service and cultural non-

years working in development, Amy has executed annual fund and planned giving campaigns, in addition to being involved in organizations’ community relations campaigns and volunteer programs.

Scrivner is no stranger to Kansas and Missouri. She grew up in the Kansas City area and was looking for a chance to be closer to family. The Linda Hall Library turned out to be a good opportunity.

“I am thrilled to be back in Kansas City with family,” Scrivner said. “It’s an honor to come to work at a place with such a great reputation, and I love the idea of promoting the intellectual history of science, engineering, and technology.”

Jane Davis started at the Library on February 6 as the Vice President for Access and Digital Services. Jane will oversee the Library’s departments of technical services, digital initiatives, preservation, and stacks maintenance. One of her priorities will be to improve the Library’s ability to make more of its print holdings accessible and available digitally.

Library News

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“Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. The only point in the case which deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning from effects to causes, by which I succeeded in unraveling it.”

- Sherlock Holmes to Dr. John Watson in The Sign of the Four

After more than a century in print, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective remains the best exemplar of both the profession

and forensic science, which had been in use in criminal investigations for more than 100 years..

A Study in Scarlet, was in 1887, not long after Sir William Herschel had advocated

years after French and Italian physicians laid the foundations of modern pathology. Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele devised a method to detect arsenic poisoning in corpses in

method to forensics in 1832. Austrian jurist Han Gross published a in 1893 combining knowledge that had not been previously integrated such as psychology and physical science and which could be used in criminal investigation.

Conan Doyle insisted that Holmes was inspired by his mentor,

by Police Surgeon Sir Henry Littlejohn. Both doctors provided Conan Doyle, himself a doctor, with a link between medicine

and Conan Doyle’s own experience, it is small wonder that

based upon observable fact.

Opening on March 16, Connecting the Dots: The Science of CSI, will explain the history of crime scene investigation

photography, and trace evidence. West Gallery visitors will have an opportunity to use their newly-acquired knowledge to solve a crime scene staged in the East Exhibition Gallery.

Come join us and help solve the crime. As Sherlock Holmes famously announced, “the game is afoot!”

President’s Message

Two New Vice Presidents Join the LHL Staff

“LHL is really well known for its print materials, and I want to raise the level of our digital materials to that level,” she said. “We will take a look at our methods of delivering electronic resources to make them easier to use and more intuitive.”

Davis spent the past four years at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, managing digital library

of digital resources for the public and managing partnerships with a variety of organizations including government agencies and cultural heritage institutions. Prior to her work at the Federal Reserve, Davis was a cataloging team leader she at Middle Tennessee State University for eight years.

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Vatican Observatory Director to Speak at the Library in March

In collaboration with Rockhurst University, the Linda Hall Library will offer a special evening lecture with the director of the Vatican Observatory. In “From Galileo to Laudato Si’: Why Science Needs Faith,” Brother Guy Consolmagno, SJ, will discuss his work and the intersection of faith and science at 7:00 p.m. on March 29 at the Library. Br. Consolmagno was appointed director of the Vatican Observatory in 2015. He is also President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation.

A native of Detroit, Consolmagno earned undergraduate and Master’s degrees from MIT, and a PhD in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona. He served in the U.S. Peace Corps in Kenya and taught physics at Lafayette College before entering the Jesuit order in 1989. Brother Consolmagno has been at the Vatican Observatory since 1993.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

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Library to Host Astronomer David Levy in June; Sponsor Viewing of Total Eclipse in August

to view the total solar eclipse on August 21.

St. Joseph is well situated to see the totality of the eclipse which will last approximately two-and-a-half minutes. Trip details are still in formation at press time. The Library will provide buses to St. Joseph and return the same day. Complete details will be available through the Hedgehog Express e-newsletter, on the Library’s website, and on social media.

In preparation for the event, the Library will host astronomer David Levy on June 15 who will discuss the solar eclipse. Complete details are forthcoming and will appear on the Library’s website. In 2015, Levy donated his journals and observation logs to the Library and intends to donate additional materials this summer.

Harvard Professor will Discuss Natural Selection at Spring Bartlett LectureHarvard University Associate Professor in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Andrew Berry will deliver the 15th annual Paul D. Bartlett, Sr. lecture, “What Darwin Didn’t Know: Evolution Since the Origin” at 7:00 p.m., April 6 in the Library’s Main Reading Room. The general public can register for tickets beginning March 16.

Berry lectures on evolutionary biology at Harvard, and has written about Alfred Russel Wallace, who with Darwin, discovered a theory of evolution by natural selection. Berry’s 2002 book about Wallace, , concerns the life of a public intellectual whose writing extended beyond the subject of natural selection to embrace the issues of conservation and women’s suffrage.

Some of Berry’s work relates to the Library’s Spring Exhibition Connecting the Dots: The Science of CSI. Berry co-wrote the book DNA with James Watson, who with Francis Crick, discovered the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. Written on the 50th anniversary of the discovery, the book examines the history and the controversies of DNA-based technologies,

The event is co-sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Club of Kansas City.

he Linda Hall Library gives Peter Karsten a little feeling of New York City. Karsten, a Linda Hall Library Annual Fund donor, grew up on the east coast and moved to Kansas City about 10 years ago after living in midtown Manhattan for many years. Karsten and his wife, Sally Barhydt, have come to call Kansas City home even as they identify touchstones to remind them of New York.

Retired from his job editing engineering trade publications and textbooks at McGraw Hill, Karsten has developed a soft spot for the Linda Hall Library. He frequents the Library’s evening programs and regularly attends the annual Cockefair lectures which feed an interest in science and technology that dates back to his days at Lehigh University where he earned an engineering degree.

around the Climate Change Symposium in 2009,”

Karsten said. “The Library brought in a number of heavy hitters for that event. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was well known even back then, and we knew of him from the Hayden Planetarium in New York, where he works.”

Karsten and Barhydt are also reminded of New York by living in downtown Kansas City where they can take advantage of the arts and cultural scene, especially local theater and the Kansas City Symphony. Kansas City’s other advantages are not lost on them, either. Karsten enjoys the metropolitan area’s open spaces by hiking Indian Creek, the Rock Island Spur, and other local trails. Barhydt grew up in Kansas City, and the pair moved here to be near her family. The lower overhead of moving to the Midwest meant an opportunity for international travel, Karsten said.

Beginning in 2010, Karsten and Barhydt have traveled across Europe, and with rare exception, have not gone to the same destination twice. One

the River Shannon in Ireland. Among the other passengers was retired U.S. Air Force General Richard Myers, former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and current president of Kansas State University.

It’s a common practice for Karsten to search out libraries during his travels. Among his favorites are the Long Room at Trinity University in Dublin and the library at the Melk Abbey on the Danube River in Germany.

“Literature was my favorite subject in school,” Karsten said. “I’ve had a lifelong love affair with books. I was surrounded by books growing up, and my parents loved books.”

Karsten and Barhydt are planning another trip soon, this time to Norway. While he’s there, Karsten likely will be taking in a library.

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Meet a Supporter

For Peter Karsten, the Linda Hall Library Offers a Touch of New York

Bringing ClosureBringing Closure

And the numbers of such cases are ramping up. “When you have more people crossing, there are more people who get into trouble and more people die,” she said.

Baker took a circuitous route to her life’s work. A native

to go to college.

“I went to Baylor and found out about anthropology by accident,” she said. “I had a sociology class in which the professor talked about anthropologists she had interacted with and the work they did. It sounded fascinating.”

Baker’s undergraduate years at Baylor also made her

the Texas-Mexico border. “That stayed with me,” she said. “Especially the apathy toward these people as individuals, the stripping of human dignity, the fact that they were found and no one put any effort into the

Baker earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in anthropology from Baylor in the 1990s and, in 2001, a PhD in anthropology from the University of Tennessee. She studied mitochondrial DNA and shared her expertise with friends who were seeking to identify remains involved in human rights cases.

Baker’s mission came into sharp focus when she was helping to set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Peru in 2001. Forensic researchers from around the world told her heart-rending stories of cases they were working on, such as one involving a mass grave of children in Guatemala. They were surprised to learn from Baker about the problems occurring on the U.S.-Mexico border, and they volunteered to come to the United States

When Baker got home to Tennessee, she told her husband she was going to start a project to identify deceased border crossers and repatriate their remains to their families.

border, so how are we going to do that?’ I said ‘I have no

Baker’s plan got a boost when Baylor asked her to interview for a forensic science position in 2002. She was afraid her aspiration would be deemed inappropriate, but

“I like to think it was divine intervention,” she said.

Yet Baylor’s support could not clear away all the obstacles that Baker and her team members would face.

“Getting this information and matching

terribly cumbersome prospect,” she said. “Families report the missing to all sorts of organizations. It may be written

way to contact families to be able to put in information on these cases, and we still struggle with this.”

Another major obstacle is limited resources in the Texas counties where many such cases occur. “It should be shocking to most people where we are in forensic science in many counties in Texas,” she said.

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Baker noted that Brooks County, Texas, where much of her work has been focused the last few years, is mired in poverty and overseen by a small number of low-paid

she said.

and sought help for Brooks County. “They said yes,” she

deal with many of these issues, one of which was to pay

have a proper forensic investigation.”

Baker also cited the crucial role played in her work by organizations such as the Colibri Center for Human Rights in Tucson, Arizona, and the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team.

“These international migration cases are impossible to do without strong collaboration from all different sectors, from people in all different nations,” she said.

Chuck Heurich, senior physical scientist and program

Justice Programs, said he is familiar with Baker’s work. “She makes a tremendous impact. Each case is impactful in a tremendous way to that particular family,” he said. “She has helped set the standard for this kind of work.”

Baker said her work takes a big emotional toll on her, but the ongoing need for it drives her on.

“We have a grieving process, and this grieving process can’t go forward with unanswered questions,” she said. “We have hundreds of families every year that are affected by this. Every mother that we’ve spoken to, they say ‘thank you for doing this, and thank you for giving me back my loved one.’”

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“I had a sociology class in which the professor talked about anthropologists she had interacted with and the work they did. It sounded fascinating.”

Last October, Terence Schiefer, a curator of insects at the Mississippi Entomological Museum, emailed the Linda Hall Library to request a high-

in one of our books, Insectes recueillis en Afrique et en

(Insects collected in Africa and America). The work was published in Paris, between 1805 -1821, by French-born naturalist Ambroise Marie Françoise Palisot de Beauvois.

Schiefer is revising a subgenus of the long-horned beetle genus Prionus. He’s especially interested in a species native to the United States and Canada called Prionus brevicornis. To establish its taxonomy, Schiefer needed to closely examine how the antennal segments of another beetle, Prionus beauvoisi, were drawn in Beauvois’s book.

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Beetle-Mania

B Y T A N I A M U N ZVice President for Research and Scholarship

century entomologist turning to an early-nineteenth-century work in search of answers to such specialized questions. I decided to pay the Beauvois and its eponymous bug a visit. The book is part of the Library’s rare book collection and is an impressive folio-size volume, written in French and beautifully illustrated. Hand-colored copper plate engravings depict insects of all shapes and colors in exquisite detail. Schiefer’s beetle, Prionus beauvoisi, is an unassuming black creature that shares the page

name – Prionus brevicornis, the species Schiefer is trying to sort taxonomically. [Figure 1]

The Library’s copy offers an unexpected reward. Slipped between its pages are two hand-painted pages of insects that were prepared (and signed) by the Swiss-born artist, Jean-Gabriel Prêtre, presumably to instruct engravers

Prêtre specialized in animal and botanical art and contributed his work to many of the period’s best-

volume Description de l’Egypte (Description of Egypt, 1809-28) that is also in the Library’s collections.

look as though they’ve just wandered onto the page and arranged themselves for inspection. But the artist also left an accidental trace that reminds us of the painstaking process that created the lovely creatures –

the beetles. [Figure 2]

I followed up with Schiefer to learn more about his work. He explained that Prionus beauvoisi had been named a distinct species in 1915 by a scientist called Auguste Lameer. Intriguingly, it seems that Lameer described the species, not from a physical specimen, but from a copy of the very book in our collections. Usually, when a species is named, the physical

as the type specimen or holotype – is put on deposit in a collection for future research. But the beetle in

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question seems to have been lost some time ago – queries to London and Paris turned up empty handed.

essentially the ‘Type’ specimen of Prionus beauvoisi.”

When I asked why this type specimen would have been lost by the early twentieth century, Schiefer sent me an article that details Beauvois’s life. In an otherwise technical paper on the taxonomy of stinkbugs, two entomologists, Daniel Perez-Gelabert and Donald Thomas, describe a life more harrowing

Haiti, the United States, and back to France; but no

matter where he went, trouble seemed to follow him.

incarceration, being banished from France because of the Revolution, a Slave revolt in Haiti, and a pirate attack. Finally, when it was safe to return to his native France, he sent his extensive collections ahead; but the ship carrying the specimens sank off the coast of Nova Scotia.

Thus, the beetle in question may already have been

1805, more than a hundred years before it was named by Lameer. Beauvois was luckier (although one

hesitates to use the term); he made the journey back to France in 1798. When he set out to prepare his Insectes recueillis he only had a few specimens, drawings, and notes to rely on.

I sometimes think of the plagues, wars,

in the Library’s collection must have escaped to land safely on our shelves in Kansas City. But that Beauvois’s book even made it to press seems like a miracle. And to think that a slice of modern-day science continues to hinge on the exact representation of antennal segments of a beetle produced in the early twentieth century reminds us of the enduring value careful and determined scholarship can have. As Schiefer noted, “taxonomy is a science where old stuff matters.” [Figure 3].

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March 16 – “Death, Forensic Science, and Reuniting Families” Lori Baker, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Baylor University, discusses her work with the Reuniting Families Project, an organization she founded. (Sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Gridley Family Foundation.)

March 29 – “From Galileo to Laudato Si” Brother Guy Consolmagno, Director

(This event is co-sponsored by Rockhurst University)

April 6 – “What Darwin Didn’t Know: Evolution Since the Origin.” The 15th Annual Paul D. Bartlett, Sr. Lecture with Andrew Berry, Lecturer in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Harvard University. (Co-sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Club of Kansas City.)

April 8 – “How Do I Become a (Forensic Scientist)?” An event for high school

(Sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Gridley Family Foundation.)

May 4 – “The Art of Invisibility: Kevin Mitnick in Conversation with Jeff Lanza.” (Sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Gridley Family Foundation.)

May 17 – “The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World – And Us” Richard Prum, the William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology, Ecology, and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University. A Rainy Day Books author event.

June 15 – Astronomer David Levy will share insights about the total eclipse on August 21.

Calendar of Events

4/6

4/8

3/29

5/4

3/16

5/17

6/15

lindahall.org. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook to learn more. All lectures are free and open to the

public; however, an e-ticket is required. Learn more about the lectures and register for tickets at:

lindahall.org

Collections

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Finding Beauty

in Nature

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B Y B E N G R O S S

Linda Hall Library Associate Vice President for Collections

hroughout the summer of 1900, millions of people traveled to Paris to attend the Exposition Universelle—a grand world’s fair celebrating the latest achievements of science and industry.

Upon arrival at the Place de la Concorde, visitors entered the fairgrounds through a monumental cast iron gate designed by the architect René Binet. While Binet’s handiwork received a great deal of public attention, few realized his design had been inspired by one of Europe’s best known scientists—Ernst Haeckel.

showcasing the diversity of nature in lavishly illustrated works like his recently published (Art Forms in Nature).

Kunstformen der Natur

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Haeckel had launched his career as a marine biologist, studying tiny unicellular creatures called radiolaria. His intricate drawings of these microscopic animals, which would later inspire Binet, revealed a fascination with organisms’ internal structures and taxonomic

Darwin. Haeckel quickly embraced the theory of evolution and came to believe that his radiolaria provided empirical evidence in support of Darwin’s ideas. Haeckel’s investigations impressed the Englishman, who later praised the young researcher as “one of the few who clearly understands Natural Selection.”

Over the coming decades, Haeckel emerged as the leading European proponent of Darwinism, ultimately publishing more books on evolutionary theory than the theory’s namesake. In his writings, Haeckel combined Darwinian evolution with older Romantic ideas concerning the fundamental unity of nature. He coined the term “ecology” to describe the relationship between plants, animals, and their environments and popularized the use of phylogenetic tree diagrams to show how different species were related. Famously, he also argued that as it matured, an organism’s

ancestors—or as he put it, ontogeny (the development of an organism) recapitulates phylogeny (an organism’s evolutionary history).

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Whenever possible, Haeckel backed up his arguments with visual evidence. His illustrations occasionally provoked outcry. Several biologists took issue, for example, with his embryo drawings, arguing that they exaggerated the similarities that existed between different species. Despite these attacks, Haeckel’s efforts to reveal the hidden patterns and symmetries that suffused the natural world remained deeply appealing. No work embodied that vision more than his

The book was published in ten installments

ten lithographed plates and textual explanations, showcasing what Haeckel referred to as the “inexhaustible plethora of wonderful forms” found in nature. Haeckel sketched each illustration himself before passing it to his lithographer along with instructions concerning colors and dimensions. In some cases, he presented pictures of a complete organism, while in others he emphasized portions of

was a masterpiece

It proved enormously popular with artists, captivating members of the blossoming Art Nouveau movement like Binet as well as surrealists like Max Ernst. Yet for all of

Library’s History of Science Collection did not own a full copy of Haeckel’s book—only

of the Library’s staff began searching for a complete edition of Kunstformen der Natur, eventually acquiring one from a bookseller in Germany. Today Library visitors can peruse the book in its entirety, drawing inspiration from its beautiful artwork and the brilliant scientist responsible for its creation.

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This event is free and open to the public; however, you must have an e-ticket. Learn more and register for tickets at

www .lindahall.org

Join us as Brother Guy Consolmagno, SJ, the Director of the Vatican Observatory, shares how our faith and core beliefs supply the motivation needed for scientific

exploration. This event is co-sponsored with Rockhurst University.

5109 Cherry StreetKansas City, MO 64110

7:00 p.m.Saturday, MARCH 29

From Galileo to Laudauto Si’:Why Science needs Faith

LINDA HALL LIBRARY

NUMBER 59 • Spr ing 2017

HEDGEHOG

HEDGEHOGis published twice a year by

The Linda Hall Libraryof Science, Engineering & Technology

5109 Cherry StreetKansas City, Missouri 64110

816.363.4600fax 816.926.8790

www.lindahall.org

The Spring 2017 issue shows an i l lustration of a hedgehog from

Volume 8 of Georges-Louis Leclerc,

(1760). You can browse all 44 volumes of this natural history encyclopedia

History of Science Collection.

Cover Photo: Dr. Lori Baker in the field for the Reuniting Families Project. (Photo

courtesy of Dr. Baker.)

Exhibition and related programs are sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and Gridley Family Foundation