the museum around 1900. It was renamed the Museum of Science in 1939, under the directorship of Henry Bradford Washburn, Jr., a renowned American mountaineer.

The Boston Museum of Natural History of 1830/1864-1945 should not be confused with the private Warren Museum of Natural History (1858-1906, formerly on Chestnut Street in Boston). The contents of the latter collection, including the first intact mastodon, were relocated to the American Museum of Natural History