major American museum of science and technology, founded in 1830 in Boston, Massachusetts, as the Boston Society of Natural History. The society moved to permanent quarters in 1864, when it became known as the New England Museum of Natural History. Having outgrown its original building, it moved in 1948 to an area on the Charles River now known as Science Park and was renamed the Boston Museum of Science (Boston was later dropped).

The museum's permanent exhibits feature such topics as rocks and minerals, plants, mounted animals, models of manned space capsules, computers, the universe, the human body, and electricity, and the museum includes a five-story tall, domed film theatre. The Charles Hayden Planetarium (1958) is on the museum grounds.