Miriam Rothschild wrote more than 350 scientific papers, published 11 books, and despite never getting a formal degree, holds eight honorary doctorates – including from both Oxford and Cambridge. Her expertise was also utilized during World War II, working as a systematic codebreaker at Bletchley Park, with Alan Turing and Joan Clarke. And from 1993-94, she was the first female President of the Royal Entomological Society.
Last week, we talked about the female American entomologists who have contributed greatly to not only the study of insects, but the methods and means of controlling them, with an eye on making it safer for everyone. This week, we’re looking at their European counterparts. Many of these ladies fought just to be able to do research, and their contributions changed the world.
Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717)
If it were not for her illustrations, it might have been another 100 years before we discovered butterfly metamorphosis. Likely trained by her stepfather, Maria Merian created stunningly detailed works of art. While her male counterparts were creating drawing and paintings based on preserved specimens, she became famous for capturing images of living insects and plants. As a young woman, she was not permitted to travel for research, so she focused on silkworms and other insects in her backyard.
A naturalist as well as a painter and engraver, Merian used sales of her artwork, along with a small stipend from the City of Amsterdam, to finance a scientific expedition to Dutch Suriname. She was the first entomologist, male or female, ever to do so. There she documented, with illustrations, insects at different stages of metamorphosis alongside their host plants. She returned to Europe and published Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, a scientific text that would later be used by Carl Linnaeus as he developed his two-part naming system for species we still use today.
Her work brought hundreds of new butterfly and moth species to England. Additionally, by including an insect’s food plants in her drawings, she became one of the first scientific illustrators to represent species ecology.
Emma Hutchinson (1820-1905)
It all started with a moth. Fascination with a specimen her 5-year-old son caught evolved into a passion for lepidopterology. She began raising moths from egg to adults, documenting their full life cycle. She raised species that were poorly studied, like the pinion-spotted pug moth, and almost single-handedly saved the Atala butterfly from extinction.
As a woman, she was denied membership in her local naturalist society, so she published in the Entomologist and Young Naturalist journals. One of her most famous articles, “Entomology and Botany as Pursuits for Ladies,” encouraged young ladies to study butterflies, instead of just collecting them, which spurred women across England to pursue STEM educations.
The Ormerod Sisters (1823–1896, 1828–1901)
On paper, Eleanor and Georgiana couldn’t have looked more different. One was an artist who collected and studied shells for their unique patterns, the other an autodidact who studied insects and how they impacted her family’s and neighboring farms. But when Georgia discovered her illustrations could make her sister’s work more understandable, a partnership was born that changed pest control as we know it.
Eleanor Anne Ormerod (1828–1901)
Bored on her family’s Gloucestershire estate, Eleanor Ormerod started taking a closer look at the insects troubling the local farmers. She never formally studied at university, but her interest in insects continued to grow, to her parents’ dismay. After her father died, Eleanor began publishing “Reports of Observations of Injurious Insects and Farm Pests,” every year for nearly 25 years. She wrote in language accessible to her audience. She even sent out questionnaires to farmers in other areas to find out what agricultural insect pests they were dealing with in places she could not travel to.
Over time, she gained attention and notoriety that allowed her to give lectures on agricultural entomology, and the importance of insect pest identification and control at several universities. She helped identify agriculturally important insects in South Africa, the West Indies, and New Zealand. Towards the end of her career, she acted as an unofficial (aka unpaid) government entomologist and was the first woman recipient of an honorary law doctorate from the University of Edinburgh.
Georgiana Elizabeth Ormerod (1823 – 1896)
Five years older than her sister, Georgiana Ormerod was the more proper Victorian daughter. She spent her days reading, drawing and collecting shells. Her collection of more than 3000 species of Conchs and other sea life is housed at Beaumont Park Natural History Museum in Huddersfield.
Eleanor enlisted Georgiana’s help illustrating her annual reports on farm pests, drawing them at all stages of the life cycle. She also translated missives from farmers in languages Eleanor didn’t know. Georgiana’s drawings were later used in agricultural colleges. She also took her love of literature and curated a philanthropic project distributing books. She was also known as a woman of deep, devoted faith.
Margaret Fountaine (1862-1940)
Biographers note that Margaret Fountaine likely died a happy woman, succumbing to a heart attack in Trinidad. She was discovered collapsed on a mountain path at 78, on an expedition, her butterfly net still in hand. An inheritance from her wealthy uncle gave Fountaine unusual freedom. No one could stop her, so she travelled to more than 60 countries across the globe in search of new specimens and rare species of butterflies.
Over her lifetime, she collected more than 22,000 butterflies. She published in The Entomologist and Transactions of the Entomological Society, with detailed descriptions of the life cycles and host plants of her discoveries. Later, her beautifully illustrated sketchbooks brought the different life stages of many new butterfly species to everyone.
She was inducted into The Royal Entomological Society in 1898, becoming the first and only woman there, and joined the Linnean Society in 1912, a rare honor.
Evelyn Cheesman OBE (1881-1969)
By the time Queen Elizabeth inducted Evelyn Cheeseman into the Order of the British Empire, she had collected more than 70,000 specimens of insects, animals and plants. Many of them she was the first and only person to discover and to this day scientists are still rediscovering her finds.
A real life Allan Quatermain, Cheeseman journeyed to the most remote places on the planet and made contact with indigenous peoples and species unknown to the western world at the time. For years, she collected specimens for the Natural History Museum. She even, reportedly, got trapped in a giant spider’s web, and later sent a poison tipped dagger to King George V, as a gift from King Ringapat of Malekula, a cannibal.
In 1920, she became the first female curator of the House of Insects at the London Zoo.
Alwen M. Evans (1895-1937)
You have to wonder if some of these entomologists were too dedicated to their work. Alwen Evans is still revered as a world-renowned expert on malaria-carrying Anopheline mosquitos. That’s in spite of dying from pneumonia at age forty-two. She had just finished her most famous work, Mosquitoes of the Ethiopian Region.
As tragic as that is, it’s remarkable she didn’t die sooner. She believed that mosquitoes played a part in disease transmission and traveled to Africa to find and study mosquitoes, even feeding live specimens on her arm during the journey back from the swamps. She became the first female lecturer in entomology at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in 1921, and just seven years later earned her PhD from the University of Manchester.
Her work lives on in the intricate drawings of mosquitoes she created, still used today as a teaching resource.
Dame Miriam Rothschild (1908-2005)
As we mentioned earlier, Rothschild was extremely accomplished and productive. She became the leading authority on fleas. She performed detailed analysis of the biomechanics of their jumping, the wide diversity of the flea, and analyzed their role as disease vectors. She also studied how monarch butterflies use internal chemicals to ingest the toxic milkweed they eat.
Rothschild was the first female trustee of the Natural History Museum, and in addition to her scientific studies, was an advocate for animal welfare, gay rights, and research into mental health.
It’s always fascinating to dig down into the roots of the scientific knowledge and discoveries that we take for granted today. Even more so as we realize some of these amazingly smart and adventurous women from the past were so far ahead of their time that we’re still catching up to them! Without their work, often done at odds with their families and society, we wouldn’t be able to provide services like Green Perimeter Plus or our exclusive No Bites Zones Mosquito Protection Program. We’re thankful for them and we hope you’ve enjoyed learning about them. For more details on how Good News Pest Solutions protects your family and pets with effective, safe solutions, or to schedule your first appointment, please give us a call!