Otago Museum marketing manager Kate Oktay said Nelson-born Lord Rutherford was the father of science in New Zealand and the museum hoped to nurture the next generation of budding scientists.
It planned to run a series of three ballots once every five to six months to decide the winners. Each ballot would be for 50 family passes schools being eligible to apply for five passes.
The passes would allow two adults and two children into the Otago Museum’s Tuhura Otago Community Trust Science Centre.
Applications for the first ballot opened yesterday and would be open for a month.
The winning schools would be able to distribute the tickets as they saw fit, such as using them as raffle prizes.
The giveaway was made possible with funding by the Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies, which was also sponsoring giveaway tickets to Auckland’s Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT).
