The woman New York parents should thank when they take their tykes to look at the dinosaurs, Ellen Futter is president of the American Museum of Natural History.

The New York native grew up in Port Washington. She graduated from Barnard in 1971 and went to earn a JD from Columbia. In 1981, at age 32, she became president of Barnard, the youngest person ever to run an American college. She spent 13 years at Barnard before being hired away by the Museum of Natural History in 1993.

As head of the Museum, Futter has overseen an expansion of the institution's physical structure, presiding over the construction of the $210 million Rose Center for Earth and Space (including the new Hayden Planetarium), as well as the renovation of the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, bankrolled by real estate titan Paul Milstein. Those big-name corporate donors also helped to elevate the museum's profile in the city, and Futter has been using the institution to bring hot-button scientific issues, such as climate change and evolution, into the public eye. But while Futter has doubled the size of the museum's endowment over the last decade, she's not without her detractors. Some of the more science-minded employees at the museum have complained that corporate donors often exert too much influence on exhibits and that Futter goes too far to please those with the big checkbooks. [Image via Getty]