Women's History Month

• Maria Sibylla Merian
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Sibylla_Merian
  • BHL: no works in BHL. Online version of Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium from GDZ: http://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/dms/load/img/?PPN=PPN477653782&DMDID=DMDLOG_0002
  • Other Info: (April 2, 1647 – January 13, 1717) was a naturalist and scientific illustrator who studied plants and insectsand made detailed paintings about them. Her detailed observations and documentation of the metamorphosis of the butterfly make her a significant, albeit not well known, contributor to entomology.[1]
• Mary Anning
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning
  • BHL: http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/2270489
  • Other Info: (21 May 1799 – 9 March 1847) was a British fossil collector, dealer and palaeontologist who became known around the world for a number of important finds she made in the Jurassic age marine fossil beds at Lyme Regis where she lived.[2] Her work contributed to the fundamental changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the earth that occurred in the early 19th century.
• Anna Atkins
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Atkins
  • BHL: none; photographs of british algae on NYPL digital gallery: http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchresult.cfm?parent_id=288165&word=
  • Other Info: (16 March 1799 – 9 June 1871[1]) was an English botanist and photographer. She is often considered the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images.[2][3][4] Some sources claim that she was the first woman to create a photograph.[3][4][5][6]
• Jeanne Villepreux-Power
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Villepreux-Power
  • BHL: no works in bhl; Favored Argonauta argo: http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/11643165
  • Other Info: (1794–1871) was a pioneering female French marine biologist who in 1832 was the first person to create aquaria for experimenting with aquatic organisms.
• Mary Leakey
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Leakey
  • BHL: no works by Leakey; Discovered the first fossilized Proconsul skull - learn more about Proconsul in #bhlib http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/36944637
  • Other Info: (6 February 1913 – 9 December 1996) was a British archaeologist and anthropologist, who discovered the first fossilized Proconsul skull, an extinct ape now believed to be ancestral to humans, and also discovered the robust Zinjanthropusskull at Olduvai. For much of her career she worked together with her husband, Louis Leakey, in Olduvai Gorge, uncovering thetools and fossils of ancient hominines. She developed a system for classifying the stone tools found at Olduvai. She also discovered the Laetoli footprints. In 1960 she became director of excavation at Olduvai and subsequently took it over, building her own staff. After the death of her husband she became a leading palaeoanthropologist, helping to establish the Leakey tradition by training her son, Richard, in the field.
• Jane Goodall
  • Wikipedia:
  • BHL: no works by Goodall; See chimpanzee in #bhlib http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/19058557
  • Other Info: (born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall on 3 April 1934),[1] is a British primatologist, ethologist,anthropologist, and UN Messenger of Peace.[2] Considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best known for her 45-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania.[3] She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues.
• Eugenie Clark
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenie_Clark
  • BHL: none; writing on her discovery with Moses Sole: http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/1551134
  • Other Info: (born May 4, 1922 New York City), sometimes referred to as The Shark Lady, is an American ichthyologist known for her research on poisonous fish of thetropical seas and on the behavior of sharks. She is a pioneer in the field of scuba-diving for research purposes.
• Dian Fossey
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dian_Fossey
  • BHL: none; known for "saving mountain gorilla from extinction;" see gorilla in #bhlib http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/33499965
  • Other Info: (/daɪˈæn ˈfɒsi/; January 16, 1932– December 27, 1985) was an American zoologist who undertook an extensive study of gorilla groups over a period of 18 years. She studied them daily in the mountain forests of Rwanda, initially encouraged to work there by famous anthropologist Louis Leakey. She was murdered in 1985; the case remains open.[1]Called one of the foremost primatologists in the world while she was alive, Fossey, along with Jane Goodall and Birutė Galdikas, was part of the so-called Leakey's Angels, a group of three prominent researchers on primates (Fossey on gorillas; Goodall on chimpanzees; and Galdikas on orangutans) sent by archaeologist Louis Leakey to study great apes in their natural environments.[2][3]
• Isobel Eliza Toom Bennett
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isobel_Bennett
  • BHL: none; beautiful illustrations of life and life from the Great Barrier Reef, as well as photographs, here: http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/38767981
  • Other Info: (9 July 1909 – 12 January 2008) was one of Australia's best-known marine biologists. She assisted William John Dakin with research for his final book, Australian Seashores, regarded by many as "the definitive guide on the intertidal zone, and a recommended source of information to divers".[1] Following Dakin's death in 1950, she saw the book through to publication in 1952, and she continued to revise and reprint it until 1992. In later editions, she was listed as a co-author, then first author.[2] She also wrote nine other books, and was one of the first women to go south with the Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE).[3]
• Alice Eastwood
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Eastwood
  • BHL: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/creator/4632
  • Other Info: (1859 in Toronto, Canada - October 30, 1953 in San Francisco, California) was a Canadian American botanist. Born in Toronto, she moved to the United States at 14, and from age twenty to thirty, was a teacher in Denver, Colorado and taught herself botany. In 1890 she assumed a post in the herbarium at the California Academy of Sciences. Eastwood was given a position as joint Curator of the Academy with Katherine Brandegee in 1892. By 1894, with the retirement of Brandegee, Eastwood was procurator and Head of the Department of Botany, a position she held until she retired in 1949.In her early botanical work, Eastwood made a number of collecting expeditions to the edge of the Big Sur region, which at the end of the 19th century was a virtual frontier, since no roads penetrated the central coast beyond the Carmel Highlands. In those excursions she discovered a number of plants theretofore unknown, including Eastwood's willowand Hickman's potentilla. Eastwood was credited with saving the Academy's type plant collection after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Opposing curatorial conventions of her era, Eastwood segregated the type specimens from the main collection. This classification system permitted her, upon entering the burning building, readily to retrieve 1500 specimens.
• Beatrix Potter
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrix_Potter
  • BHL: none; known for Peter Rabbit, but also scientific illustrator; interested in breeding and raising herdwick sheep; drawn to mycology and did lots of scientific illustration in this realm. One of our favorite mycology titles: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/105016
  • Other Info: She did scientific illustrations too. She also saved a large part of what is now the Lake District National Park. (28 July 1866 – 22 December 1943) was an English author, illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist best known for her imaginative children’s books featuring animals such as those in The Tale of Peter Rabbit which celebrated the British landscape and country life.
  • Potter proposed that lichens were a symbiotic relationship between algae and fungi. She was one of the first in the world to suggest this although gender codes of the day prevented her from being recognized as a scientist. She studied lichens with a microscope and suggested that algae converted sunlight to energy and fungi stored water and extracted minerals from rocks, the symbiosis being the lichen. Women were not allowed to attend meetings of the Linnean Society of London thus when she had a paper to present, it was read by a man. Linda Lear. 2006. Beatrix Potter: the extraordinary life of a Edwardian Genius
• Elizabeth Blackwell
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Blackwell_(illustrator)
  • BHL: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/creator/706
  • Other Info: (1707[1[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Blackwell_%28illustrator%29#cite_note-blackwell-synergy.com-0|]]] –1758), was a Scottish botanical illustrator and author. She achieved fame as a botanical illustrator, and was both artist and engraver for the plates of "A Curious Herbal", published between 1737 and 1739. The book illustrated many odd-looking and unknown plants from the New World, and was designed as a reference work on medicinal plants for the use of physicians and apothecaries.
• Lilian Snelling (1879-1972)
  • Wikipedia: none, entry for Curtis' Botanical Magazine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis%27s_Botanical_Magazine
  • BHL: none; Curtis' Botanical Magazine: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/706
  • Other Info: Lilian Snelling was the principal artist for William Curtis’s Botanical Magazine for 30 years, and contributed over 830 illustrations before her retirement in 1952 (she was succeeded by Margaret Stones). Until 1948, Snelling was one of the last botanical artists who worked in the 19th century tradition of drawing her original watercolors onto zinc plates for publication. She then hand-painted a master print for a team of professional colorists to copy.
• Sarah Ann Drake (1803-1857)
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Drake
  • BHL: Orchidaceæ of Mexico and Guatemala in BHL: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/15471
  • Other Info: Sarah Ann Drake illustrated some of the most famous works of her time (including James Bateman’s Orchidaceæ of Mexico and Guatemala), yet biographical details are scarce. Though Miss Drake produced over 1,500 illustrations during her career, we know little more about her than the place in London where she lived and the names of the botanists for whom she worked.
• Mary Treat (b. 1830)
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lua_Adelia_Davis_Treat
  • BHL: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/creator/17694
  • Other Info: Mary Treat studied both Botany and Entomology and was a correspondent of famous Botanist Asa Gray, Entomologist Charles V. Riley and shared a common interest in carnivorous plants with Charles Darwin. She not only wanted to observe nature, she wanted to share it. She was considered an amateur, but also garnered the respect of many notable names in natural history. If anything, her popularizing and accuracy of her work is her enduring legacy.Treat's contributions to both botany and entomology were extensive—four species of plants and animals were named after her, including an amaryllis, Zephyranthes treatiae (now called //Zephyranthes atamasca// var. //treatiae//), and an ant species (Aphaenogaster treatiae).
    
    
• Anna Botsford Comstock (1854-1930)
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Botsford_Comstock
  • BHL: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/creator/1698
  • Other Info: Anna Botsford Comstock enjoyed the support of her husband, noted Entomologist John Henry Comstock in all of her endeavors. In fact, each helped the other succeed in whatever they wanted to do, whether it was writing, teaching, lecturing or illustrating. A skilled illustrator and engraver, Comstock’s reputation as a teacher and contributor to the field of natural science garnered her the respect of colleagues across the country.Throughout her life, Comstock illustrated her husband's lectures and publications on insects. She had no formal training in this illustration; she would study an insect under a microscope then draw it. While her husband was chief entomologist in the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 1879 to 1881, she prepared the drawings for his 1880 Report of the Entomologist on citrus scale insects. She then reentered Cornell and received a degree in natural history in 1885. Then she studied wood engraving at Cooper Union, New York City, so she could prepare illustrations for her husband's book Introduction to Entomology in 1888. Also in 1888, she was one of the first four women admitted to Sigma Xi, a national honor society for the sciences.Comstock made engravings for the more than 600 plates Manual for the Study of Insects (1895), Insect Life (1897), and How to Know the Butterflies (1904), the first written by her husband and the latter two co-authored by them. Her engravings were also featured in exhibits and won several prizes. She both wrote and illustrated several books, including Ways of the Six-Footed (1903), How to Keep Bees (1905), The Handbook of Nature Study (1911), The Pet Book (1914), and Trees at Leisure (1916). She also wrote the novel Confessions to a Heathen Idol (1906). Liberty Hyde Bailey and her husband told her they expected The Handbook of Nature Study to lose money, but it became a standard textbook for teachers and was later translated into eight languages, with over twenty printings.
• Jeanne Baret/Jean Bare
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Bar%C3%A9
  • BHL:
  • Other Info: (French naturalist who disguised herself as a man and is thought to have been the first woman to travel around the globe)(sometimes spelled Baré or Barret) (July 27, 1740– August 5, 1807) was a member of Louis Antoine de Bougainville's expedition on the ships La Boudeuse and Étoile in 1766–1769. Baret is recognized as the first woman to have completed a voyage of circumnavigation.[1[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Bar%C3%A9#cite_note-0|]]][2[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Bar%C3%A9#cite_note-1|]]]
    Jeanne Baret joined the expedition disguised as a man, calling herself Jean Baret. She enlisted as valet and assistant to the expedition's naturalist, Philibert Commerçon (anglicized as Commerson), shortly before Bougainville's ships sailed from France. According to Bougainville's account, Baret was herself an expert botanist. collected and studied many botanical specimens during the voyage. Voyage was first expedition circumnavigating the globe with professional naturalists and geographers aboard.
    
    
• Sue Hendrickson
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_Hendrickson
  • BHL:
  • Other Info: (paleontologist who discovered Sue)
• Lucy Evelyn Cheesman
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Cheesman
  • BHL:
  • Other Info: British Entomologist
• Margaret Mee
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mee
  • BHL:
  • Other Info: Botanical Artist
• Mary Katharine Brandegee
  • Wikipedia:
  • BHL:
  • Other Info: Another early female botanist and colleague, initially hired Eastwood, was Mary Katharine Brandegee.She and her 2nd husband became leading botanists in San Diego.
    1. http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/v55-4/v55-4carter.pdf
       
       http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/archon/?p=creators/creator&id=8
• Barbara McClintock
  • Wikipedia:
  • BHL:
  • Other Info: (1902–1992), American geneticist
• Mabel Osgood Wright
  • Wikipedia:
  • BHL:
  • Other Info: http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2012/03/04/news/doc4f543b3232d10402396340.txt
• Libbie Henrietta Hyman
  • Wikipedia:
  • BHL:
  • Other Info: invertebrate zoologist
• Elizabeth Knight Britton
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Britton
  • BHL: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/creator/3992
  • Other Info: (Bryologist) http://library.nybg.org/finding_guide/archv/E_G_Brittonf.html. There are only a few of her titles in the BHL but we can work on adding more.
• Katherine Esau
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Esau
  • BHL:
  • Other Info: Esau was a pioneering plant anatomist--perhaps the greatest plant anatomist of the 20th century. (per Wikipedia)
• Lynn Margulis
  • Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Margulis
  • BHL:
  • Other Info: She is best known for her theory on the origin of eukaryotic organelles, and her contributions to the endosymbiotic theory, which is now generally accepted for how certain organelles were formed.
• Birute Galdikas
  • Wikipedia:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birut%C4%97_Galdikas
  • BHL:
  • Other Info:
• Cynthia Westcott
  • Wikipedia:
  • BHL:
  • Other Info:
    http://www.apsnet.org/about/history/pioneeringplantpathologists/Pages/WestcottCynthia.aspx
• Rosalind Franklinhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin

• Hannah English Williams (died 1722): http://www.jstor.org/pss/27567948 (first page of article);
  http://www.scmuseum.org/women/Williams.html (from page:
  Hannah English Williams (?-1722), a naturalist, is considered the first female in the British American colonies to gather plants and animals for scientific study.
  
  For other current possibilities, this is an interesting course syllabus: Meg Lowman of New College Floridasyllabus_women_in_naturaal_history_08.doc Can also suggest lots of other possibilities like May Berenbaum, initiator of the insect fear festival at the Universtiy of Illinois. Or Jane Lubchenco, current head of NOAA.