In Southeast Asia there exists a flower so exotic and strange it has captured the attention of scientists, artists and nature lovers alike. Measuring over 29 inches in diameter, weighing around 22 lbs and having no stems, roots or leaves, the genus Rafflesia, also known as the corpse flower (not Continue Reading
Mary Elizabeth Rice was the first director of the Smithsonian Marine Station in the 1970s, where she created a program to support visiting scientists and fellowships for graduate students and postdoctoral students. Over the years, work done at the research station has led to over 800 scientific papers and been Continue Reading
When Patricia McDonald began work as the Education Officer at the Australian Museum in 1953 she was only 24, with a science education degree from Sydney University and one year’s teaching experience. Her office was a room in a tin shed with no water or power. From these humble beginnings, she transformed museum education.
When Elsie Bramell (1909-1985) began working at the Australian Museum in 1933 she was the first woman and the first university educated person to take up a scientific position in the Anthropology Department. She was appointed Scientific Assistant, senior to her colleague and future husband Fred McCarthy, who had worked Continue Reading
![Bertha Parker Pallan [Cody] (1907-1978) is considered one of the first female Native American archaeologists.](https://untoldstories.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Bertha-Parker-Pallan-1-e1535561454766.jpg)
Bertha “Bertie” Parker Cody is widely considered to be the first female Native American archaeologist. Cody, who also went by her Seneca name Yewas, was born in Chautauqua County, New York in 1907. Her mother, Beulah Tahamont, was an actor of Abenaki descent. Her father, Arthur C. Parker, was an archaeologist of mixed Seneca descent, and the first president of the Society for American Archaeology.
Wang Hao-t’ing (using the Chinese naming order with family name first) was a Chinese artist who was commissioned to accompany the American Museum of Natural History’s (AMNH) Third Asiatic Expedition in 1921-1926 to document frogs, snakes, salamanders, and lizards in the region. Hao-t’ing painted beautiful, strikingly realistic watercolor paintings of Continue Reading
K. Janaki Ammal was born in Kerala, India on November 4th, 1897. One of the first women in the U.S. to earn a doctorate in botany, she went on to develop new hybrids of sugarcane. After shifting here focus to research, she published The Chromosome Atlas of Cultivated Plants.
![Margery Carlson (1892-1985) Botany Research Associate shown [outdoors] with some of the packs of [plant] specimens she collected on expedition. © The Field Museum, B80585.](https://untoldstories.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Margery-Carlson.jpg)
“Every collector hopes that he will be able to bring home some species unknown to science, never before described or even given a botanical name.” – Margery Carlson¹ An Auspicious Beginning Dr. Margery C. Carlson was born in November 21, 1892 in Arthur, Illinois.²,³ She was named after the marguerite Continue Reading
In 1891, Yvette Borup was born to Mary Brandreth and Col. Henry Borup in Paris, France¹. Though both parents were American, Borup would spent the majority of her early life in Europe, as her father was a military attache in France, then later Germany. During her time in Germany, Borup Continue Reading
Libbie Hyman was one of the most influential vertebrate and invertebrate zoologists of all time. She single-handedly wrote and illustrated an unprecedented six-volume, 4,000-page treatise on approximately 1 million invertebrates. “ …Whole academies in more than one country have attempted to do what she has done. The debt of every zoologist Continue Reading
