Source: School of Life Sciences
Written by: School of Life Sciences
Translated by: Tan Shan
Proofread by: Professor Li Mingguang
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

On May 6, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage announced that the Museum of Biology, Sun Yat-sen University was rated as a national second-grade museum. Up till now, there are altogether 223 national second-grade museums in China, and the Museum of Biology, Sun Yat-sen University becomes the first national second-grade museum exclusively managed by a university.
The Museum of Biology, Sun Yat-sen University deposits a collection of nearly one million specimens, including thousands of type specimens, and the earliest specimen was collected in 1808; it has four specialized collections, namely, a herbarium, an insect collection, a zoological collection, and a fossil collection; it receives a large number of domestic and foreign researchers every year and enjoys a high status among international and national museums. Meanwhile, the Museum also takes an active part in civic education and has been successively named as municipal, provincial and national education bases.

The recognition of the Museum of Biology at the national level has positive significance for its future development, especially the orientation and construction of Sun Yat-sen University museum clusters; in the meantime, it accumulates experience for university museums to apply for the rating of national museums and is conducive to further development of university museums.