Museums of natural history and natural science are concerned with the natural world; their collections may contain specimens of birds, mammals, insects, plants, rocks, minerals, and fossils. These museums have their origins in the cabinets of curiosities built up by prominent individuals in Europe during the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Specimens from the natural world were also included (albeit as part of an encyclopaedic collection) in some of the earliest museums: the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, England, the British Museum in London, and the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. With the development of the natural sciences in the 19th century, museums exhibiting objects from the natural world flourished and their number multiplied. In the United States and Latin America their collections often included objects of physical and social anthropology as well as the natural sciences. Later, natural science museums responded to new trends of nature conservation and broader environmental matters. Some established programs for recording biological data for the area they serve, to facilitate environmental planning (often in conjunction with local planning authorities) and to provide information to assist in the interpretation of ecological displays.

Major museums, such as the Natural History Museum in London, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, hold enormous comparative collections from the natural world, including the type specimens from which species have been named. Such museums are international centres of taxonomic work and sustain considerable research programs.

Science and technology museums

Museums of science and technology are concerned with the development and application of scientific ideas and instrumentation. Like museums of natural science and natural history, science museums have their origins in the Enlightenment. Some of them developed from the collections of learned societies, others from private collections such as the Teylers Museum at Haarlem, Netherlands, in the 18th century. A later development in science museums involved the applications of science, so that museums began to preserve the material evidence of technological as well as scientific endeavour. Some science and technology museums concentrate on demonstrating science and its applications; in these museums the preservation of process is emphasized over the preservation of objects.

Science museums are particularly popular with children as well as adults and often provide opportunities for their visitors to participate through demonstration models and interactive displays. Well-known examples of these are at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, the Science Museum in London, and (of a more specialized nature) the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Other specialized institutions include transport museums, such as the National Railway Museum in York, England, or the Swiss Transport Museum on the shores of Lake Lucerne. Of more recent establishment are industrial museums, which often include a large technical component.

Museums devoted to modern science, such as the Palace of Discovery in Paris, also provide demonstrations of scientific theory. In India, where museums of science and technology are seen as having an important role in education, the National Council for Science Museums has established a network of such museums across the country. Performing a similar function are science centres where science is demonstrated but where there is not normally a responsibility for collecting and conserving historical apparatus. A pioneer in this field is the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto.

Some science and technology museums, such as the very popular Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago or the Technological Museum in Mexico City, are of a more technical nature. These museums are often sponsored directly or indirectly by industries, which occasionally found their own museums in order to preserve their heritage and promote their work. Other museums highlight a specific product resulting from the application of science and technology, such as the American Clock & Watch Museum in Bristol, Connecticut.