Michael D. Barton

I finished my undergraduate degree at Montana State University in Bozeman, MT, majoring in the History of Science (SETS) and minoring in Museum Studies. I started graduate school at the same university in the Fall of 2008, again in the history department. My interests are with Charles Darwin, the development of evolutionary theory, natural history, the history of natural history museums, the evolution-creation debate and the general history of science. I am fortunate to work on a project to transcribe the letters of the 19th-century physicist John Tyndall, and my graduate research will also be on John Tyndall. This blog is a place for me to share with interested folk news & views on Darwin, evolution, and natural history, with occasional posts about other science-related topics. I am married to a librarian whom I met here in Bozeman, Montana, and we enjoy spending time with our 3-year-old son and watching him get excited about the world around him. I can be contacted at darwinsbulldog AT gmail DOT com.

A paper I wrote for a history internship in Yellowstone National Park in the summer of 2007 was published in Yellowstone Science:

Barton, Michael D. “Between Heaven and Hell’: Religious Language in Early Descriptions of Yellowstone National Park.” Yellowstone Science 16:3 (2008): 16-23. [PDF]

My internship work and article were featured in the Billings Gazette in December 2008: “Romanticism fills early writings on Yellowstone, research finds.”

I also blog at Transcribing Tyndall, a companion blog to working on the John Tyndall Correspondence Project.

View my Darwin Day 2009 post where I discuss my past and what tempted me to start (and continue) a Darwin blog.

Listen to my appearance on BBC Radio’s “Pods and Blogs” program on February 17, 2009 here.

View my CV here.