biology

Miranda Lowe

Miranda Lowe is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Miranda Lowe rather than just read about it. In short: Miranda Constance Lowe is a British museum curator. She is principal curator of crustacea at the Natural History Museum, London and a founder member of Museum Detox.

Key takeaways

Miranda Lowe belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Miranda Lowe to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Miranda Lowe from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Miranda Constance Lowe is a British museum curator. She is principal curator of crustacea at the Natural History Museum, London and a founder member of Museum Detox.

Career She has particular expertise in peracarida and coral taxonomy, and she manages the museum's collections in crustacea and cnidaria. She has published work on the museum's collection of 182 glass sea creatures made by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka. She is a committee member of NatSCA, the Natural Sciences Collections Association. In 2018 Lowe and Subhadra Das of the Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy co-authored "Nature Read in Black and White: decolonial approaches to interpreting natural history collections", described by the Linnean Society's head of collections as "eye-opening". They went on to be founding members of Museum Detox, an organisation bringing together BAME museum workers in the UK. In July 2020 Lowe was appointed as a Trustee of York Museums Trust. In September 2020 she appeared on BBC Radio 4's The Museum of Curiosity, when her hypothetical donation to this imaginary museum was a moon jellyfish. In December 2020 she explained about bias in the fossil record within the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture about Planet Earth given by Christopher Jackson. Four months later she was elected chair of the Board of Trustees overseeing the United Kingdom arts diversity charity Culture&.

Selected publications Miller, C. Giles; Lowe, Miranda (February 2008). "The Natural History Museum Blaschka collections". Historical Biology. 20 (1): 51–62. doi:10.1080/08912960701677531. S2CID 85173379. Lowe, Miranda; Boulter, Carolyn J. (2015). "Darwin's Barnacles: Learning from collections". In Boulter, Carolyn J.; Reiss, Michael J.; Sanders, Dawn L. (eds.). Darwin-Inspired Learning. Springer. pp. 273–284. ISBN 978-94-6209-833-6. Retrieved 24 September 2020. Sivell, Duncan; Beale, Joe; Reilly, Nicky; Lowe, Miranda; et al. (November 2019). "The wildlife garden at the Natural History Museum: Developments of the flora and fauna. Update 2018-2019 - Twenty-four years of species recording". The London Naturalist. 98: 248–258. Retrieved 24 September 2020. Syperek, Pandora; Wade, Sarah; Lowe, Miranda; Sabin, Richard (27 May 2020). "Curating Ocean Ecology at the Natural History Museum: Miranda Lowe and Richard Sabin in conversation with Pandora Syperek and Sarah Wade". Science Museum Group Journal. 13 (13). doi:10.15180/201314.

Honours and awards In November 2020 she was included in the BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Power list 2020. In 2021, Lowe and Subhadra Das were awarded the Society for the History of Natural History President's Award. The citation said that "their efforts have together sent a clarion call to museums and heritage organisations to acknowledge colonial histories and to take action." Lowe was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2022 Birthday Honours for services to science communication and diversity in natural history.

References

External links Ep7: Decolonising natural history with Miranda Lowe (In Pursuit of Plants)

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Miranda Lowe

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Miranda Lowe claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Miranda Lowe before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Miranda Lowe ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Miranda Lowe

In research: Miranda Lowe appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Miranda Lowe in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Miranda Lowe is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century British zoologists, British women curators, Commanders of the Order of the British Empire, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Miranda Lowe outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Miranda Lowe in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Miranda Lowe means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Miranda Lowe out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Miranda Lowe in simple terms?

Miranda Constance Lowe is a British museum curator. She is principal curator of crustacea at the Natural History Museum, London and a founder member of Museum Detox.

Why does Miranda Lowe matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Miranda Lowe?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Miranda Lowe.