Mary Jane Rathbun (June 11, 1860 – April 4, 1943) was an American zoologist who specialized in crustaceans. She worked at the Smithsonian Institution from 1884 until her death.[1] She described more than a thousand new species and subspecies and many higher taxa.
Biography
Mary Jane Rathbun was born on June 11, 1860, in Buffalo, New York, the youngest of five children of Charles Rathbun and Jane Furey. Her mother died when she was only one year old, and Mary was therefore "thrown on her own resources."[2] She was educated in Buffalo, graduating in 1878, but never attended college.[2]
Rathbun was 4 ft 6 in (1.37 m) tall, and was noted for having a dry sense of humor.[2]
Rathbun's first publication was co-written with James Everard Benedict and concerned the genus Panopeus; it was published in 1891.[2] She officially retired on December 31, 1914, but did not stop working until her death.[2] Her largest work was Les crabes d'eau douce ("Freshwater crabs"), which was originally intended as a single publication, but was eventually published in three volumes between 1904 and 1906.[2]
She wrote or cowrote 166 papers in total, including descriptions of 1147 new species and subspecies, 63 new genera, one subfamily, 3 families and a superfamily, as well as other nomenclatural novelties.[2] The taxa first described by Rathbun include important commercial species such as the Atlantic blue crab Callinectes sapidus,[5] and the tanner crab, Chionoecetes bairdi.[6]
Taxa
A number of taxa have been named in honor of Mary J. Rathbun:[7]
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