Women Carcinologists at the US National Museum (National Museum of Natural History)

Surely you have heard of the famous US National Museum female carcinologist, Mary Jane Rathbun, but there are a number of other female carcinologists who worked or were associated with the Museum that also deserve the stage light, most notably Harriet Richardson Searle, Mildred Stratton Wilson, and Isabel Canet Pérez Farfante.

Fig. 1. Mary Jane Rathbun

Harriet Richardson Searle

Harriet Richardson Searle was known as the First Lady of Isopods, and one of the earliest woman carcinologists (Mary Jane Rathbun preceded her by only 5 years!).  With a career spanning more than 20 years and 80 publications, very little is known about her.

Fig. 2. Harriet Richardson Searle

Richardson was born on 9 May 1874 in Washington, DC. She obtained her B.A. (1896) and Master’s (1901) degrees from Vassar College at Poughkeepsie, New York, and her Ph.D. (1903) from Columbian University (now George Washington University), Washington, DC. 

Richardson focused her research on isopod systematics, with her first publication in 1897 on the Socorro Isopod, Thermosphaeroma thermophilum. This thermal water isopod, endemic to Sedillo Spring in Socorro County, NM, is now on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Her Ph.D. dissertation was a 266-page “Contributions to the Natural History of the Isopoda” containing information on a miscellany of isopods in the Museum’s collections.

Her association with the US National Museum (now National Museum of Natural History) began in 1896, and in 1901 was appointed Collaborator in the Division of Marine Invertebrates. In 1952 she was given the museum title of Research Associate. She worked at the museum for over 20 years, all unpaid, describing over 70 new genera and 300 new species of isopods and tanaids. Her best known work, “A monograph on the isopods of North America” (1905, reprinted 1972), is an overview of isopod systematics, literature, distributions, and habits of all the species (terrestrial, freshwater, and marine) that is still used today.

Her research material expanded beyond the U.S. National Museum. Richardson wrote reports in foreign publications, including materials from the National Museum of Natural History, Paris and the Rothschild collections from East Africa. She also wrote some of her papers in French. She was honored by many contemporaries with a number of isopod species named after her.

Soon after marrying in 1913, Richardson’s research work diminished; her last publication was in 1922.

Harriet Richardson Searle was a member of the Biological Society of Washington, and the Washington Academy of Sciences, and the Washington Society of Fine Arts. Richardson was also an active member of the Daughters of the American Revolution where she was Regent of the Captain Molly Pitcher Chapter (1914-15). She died on 28 March 1958 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery with her husband and son.

 

Mildred Stratton Wilson

Wilson was born in Seaside, Oregon on 25 April 1909. She obtained her B.A. with honors from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1938, and then joined her husband in Washington, D.C. With a letter from her professor, S.F. Light, Wilson was introduced to W.L. Schmitt at the U.S. National Museum (USNM) where she continued work on freshwater copepods.

Fig. 3. Mildred Stratton Wilson

Her studies of C. Dwight Marsh’s collections as well as her own resulted in major publications on the revision of North American diaptomids.  At the USNM she was appointed Assistant Curator (1944-46) during WWII, and was in charge of the Division of Marine Invertebrates. In 1946 she moved to Alaska with her husband, but continued her freshwater copepod work and association with the USNM as honorary Collaborator in Copepod Crustaceans, and in 1960 she was appointed Research Associate, Division of Crustacea.

Mildred Stratton Wilsoncontributed greatly to the knowledge of the genus Diaptomus, harpacticoids, and caligoids, among others. She was a woman of remarkable talent and strength of character. She would often conduct her research in home laboratories, working on her own collections from Alaska using a specialized net she and her husband devised. Despite much hardship and physical disadvantages due to poor health, she continued with her studies until her death in 1973.

 

Isabel (Isa) Canet Pérez Farfante

Isa, as she was affectionately called, was born on 24 July 1916 in La Habana, Cuba, and received her undergraduate training at the University of Havana. She served as professor of biology at the Instituto de La Vbora and assistant professor of zoology at the University of Havana until 1942.

Fig. 4. Isabel Canet Pérez Farfante

She attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University where she obtained a master’s degree in biology in 1944, followed by a doctorate in 1948. Isa was one of the first women to attend Harvard University, and was the first Cuban woman to earn a doctoral degree from an Ivy League Institution. Returning to Havana, she served as professor and researcher of zoology at the University of Havana until 1960.

After leaving Cuba with just a suitcase, Isa joined the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 1961 as a researcher in charge of commercial shrimps in US waters. She was also an Associate in Invertebrate Zoology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) at Harvard University from 1961 to 1969.

In 1966 she joined the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) as Systematic Zoologist at the NMFS Systematic Laboratory in the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C. until her retirement in 1986. From 1987-1997 she was a Research Associate in the NMNH Division of Crustacea.

Isa authored zoology textbooks, and numerous papers on the systematics and reproductive morphology of penaeoid shrimps, most notably landmark studies of the commercial genus Penaeus. She was a senior author of the book “Penaeoid and sergestoid shrimps and prawns of the world” (1997).

Fig. 5. Penaeoid and sergestoid shrimps and prawns of the world

Isabel Pérez Farfante's name is synonymous with penaeiod systematics.  Her keys and descriptions of penaeid genera are still considered essential references today.

By Rose Gulledge

References

• Bauer, R. T. 2010. Isabel Pérez Farfante de Canet 24 June 1916-20 August 2009. J. Crust. Biol., 30(2): 345-349.
• Damkaer, D. 1988. Mildred Stratton Wilson, Copepodologist (1909-1973). J. Crust. Biol. 8(1): 131-146.
• Damkaer, D. 2000. Harriet Richardson (1874-1958), First Lady of Isopods. J. Crust. Biol. 20(4): 803–811.
• McLaughlin, P. A., and S. Gilchrist. 1993. Women’s contributions to carcinology. History of Carcinology.— Crustacean Issues 8: 165–206.

Comments

[Angela Anny]

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