“Travels on the Edge” An Illustrated Lecture by Robert McCracken Peck

Join the American Philosophical Society on Tuesday, September 22, 2026 to welcome Robert McCracken Peck for an illustrated lecture titled “Travels on the Edge.”

Adventure tales told, with humanity and warmth, about some of the world’s most remote and fascinating places and their inhabitants

For almost fifty years, Bob Peck has traveled the world as the official photographer, historian, and chronicler of scientific expeditions from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, America’s oldest natural history institution, now part of Drexel University. He has discovered three new frogs in the Andes, collected several new species of fish on the Orinoco River, and helped study little-known insects in rarely visited parts of Africa and the Caribbean. He has made seven extensive expeditions to Mongolia to study its wildlife and document the fast-changing lives of its nomadic herdsmen. He has witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, traveled with camel caravans across the Gobi Desert, faced down headhunters in Ecuador, and been put under house arrest in China.

His new book, Travels on the Edge: A Naturalist's Notes from the Back of Beyond (APS Press, 2026), is a collection of essays recounting his remarkable experiences. While carrying readers to some of the most remote and inaccessible parts of the world, it celebrates the challenges and joys of scientific research. Bob brings a rich human perspective to regions few people have had a chance to explore. In an illustrated lecture he will share with us some of the highlights (and frightening low points) of his extraordinary career.

Robert McCracken Peck, curator of art and artifacts and senior fellow of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, is a writer, naturalist, and historian who has traveled extensively in North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Mr. Peck is the author of Specimens of Hair: the Curious Collection of Peter A Browne (2018),The Natural History of Edward Lear (2016), A Glorious Enterprise: The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and the Making of American Science (2012), with co-author Patricia Tyson Stroud; Land of the Eagle: A Natural History of North America (1990); Headhunters and Hummingbirds: An Expedition into Ecuador (1987); A Celebration of Birds: The Life and Art of Louis Agassiz Fuertes (1982); and co-author of All In The Bones: A Biography of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (2008). He has also written for newspapers and a wide range of popular and scholarly publications.