Kate Stephens | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | ca. 1853 |
| Died | August 29, 1954 |
| Nationality | American |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Conchology, Paleontology |
| Institutions | San Diego Natural History Museum |
Kate Brown Stephens was an American naturalist and the curator of mollusks and marine invertebrates at the San Diego Natural History Museum from 1910 to 1936.
Stephens was born c. 1853 in London, England. Her father, Thomas Brown, was a cab driver; her mother, Mary Tyler Brown, died when Kate was in her late teens or early twenties. [1] Helping to raise her younger brother George while the family lived in the Kensington area of London, Kate is said to have worked at the Natural History Museum. [2] She immigrated to the United States around 1888-1890. [3] She lived for a short time in the city of San Diego, working as a dressmaker, before moving out to the Witch Creek area in eastern San Diego County, where she may have taught school. [2] In 1898, she married ornithologist and mammalogist Frank Stephens [4] and began working with him as a collector and naturalist. Her early field work included collecting butterflies, but her research interest area was shells and fossils, and she became known as the authority on terrestrial and marine mollusks of the San Diego region. [5]
Stephens accompanied her husband on many collecting trips in the early 1900s, including a four-month expedition in 1902 to the Colorado Desert for the U. S. Biological Survey. Her field notes from that trip and others record in detail traveling and camping in the California and Arizona desert regions. She and her husband were among the naturalists on the 1907 University of California Alexander expedition to southeastern Alaska. [6] [7]
In July 1910, the San Diego Society of Natural History hired Stephens as curator of collections, and she effectively became the San Diego Natural History Museum's first paid employee. Her husband served as the director and Curator of Mammals for the museum's first eleven years, and together the couple significantly influenced the scope and direction of the new museum. [8] Widely considered an authority on the algae and shells of the Pacific, Stephens was the museum's curator of mollusks and marine invertebrates; her work included identifying fossil shells of the San Diego County in connection with paleontological work conducted by Frank Stephens [9] and U. S. Grant IV. [10] At the museum she taught natural history to local children; among her students were Laurence Huey, later the museum's curator of birds and mammals, and Carl L. Hubbs, ichthyologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Five molluscan species were named in her honor:
In addition, a chaenopsid blenny, Neoclinus stephensae , was named in her honor in 1953 by Carl. L Hubbs, Stephens having collected the type. [11]
Retiring from the museum in 1936, Stephens continued her interest in conchology into her 90s, until disabled by vision loss in her later years. [12] Stephens died on August 29, 1954, in San Diego.
Kate Stephens's field notes have been digitized by the San Diego Natural History Museum Research Library and are available on the Internet Archive.
William Healey Dall was an American naturalist, a prominent malacologist, and one of the earliest scientific explorers of interior Alaska. He described many mollusks of the Pacific Northwest of North America, and was for many years America's preeminent authority on living and fossil mollusks.
Carl Henry Eigenmann was a German-American ichthyologist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who, along with his wife Rosa Smith Eigenmann, and his zoology students is credited with identifying and describing for the first time 195 genera containing nearly 600 species of fishes of North America and South America. Especially notable among his published papers are his studies of the freshwater fishes of South America, the evolution and systematics of South American fishes, and for his analysis of degenerative evolution based on his studies of blind cave fishes found in parts of North America and in Cuba. His most notable works are The American Characidae (1917–1929) and A revision of the South American Nematognathi or cat-fishes (1890), in addition to numerous published papers such as "Cave Vertebrates of North America, a study of degenerative evolution" (1909) and "The fresh-water fishes of Patagonia and an examination of the Archiplata-Archelenis theory" (1909).
Rosa Smith Eigenmann was an American ichthyologist, as well as a writer, editor, former curator at the California Academy of Sciences, and the first librarian of the San Diego Society of Natural History. She "is considered the first woman ichthyologist in the United States." Eigenmann was also the first woman to become president of Indiana University's chapter of Sigma Xi, an honorary science society. She authored twelve published papers of her own between 1880 and 1893, and collaborated with her husband, Carl H. Eigenmann, as "Eigenmann & Eigenmann" on twenty-five additional works between 1888 and 1893. Together, they are credited with describing about 150 species of fishes.
The San Diego Natural History Museum is a museum in Balboa Park in San Diego, California. It was founded in 1874 as the San Diego Society of Natural History. It is the second oldest scientific institution west of the Mississippi and the oldest in Southern California. The present location of the museum was dedicated on January 14, 1933. A major addition to the museum was dedicated in April 2001, doubling exhibit space.
George Sprague Myers was an American ichthyologist who spent most of his career at Stanford University. He served as the editor of Stanford Ichthyological Bulletin as well as president of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. Myers was also head of the Division of Fishes at the United States National Museum, and held a position as an ichthyologist for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. He was also an advisor in fisheries and ichthyology to the Brazilian Government.
Carl Leavitt Hubbs was an American ichthyologist.
Paul Bartsch was an American malacologist and carcinologist. He was named the last of those belonging to the "Descriptive Age of Malacology".
Kurtzia arteaga is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Mangeliidae.
Neoclinus stephensae, the yellowfin fringehead, is a species of chaenopsid blenny found in the eastern Pacific ocean. It can reach a maximum length of 10 centimetres (3.9 in) TL. The specific name honours the collector of the type, the British-American conchologist Kate Stephens who was Curator of Mollusks and Marine Invertebrates at San Diego Natural History Museum and who was over 100 years old at the time the species was described.
Odostomia lastra is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Pyramidellidae, the pyrams and their allies.
Odostomia profundicola is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Pyramidellidae, the pyrams and their allies.
Odostomia stephensae is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Pyramidellidae, the pyrams and their allies.
Pyramidella adamsi, common name the Adams' pyram, is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Pyramidellidae, the pyrams and their allies.
Turbonilla gilli is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Pyramidellidae, the pyrams and their allies.
Turbonilla hypolispa is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Pyramidellidae, the pyrams and their allies.
Turbonilla mörchi is a species of minute sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Pyramidellidae, the pyrams and their allies.
Frederick Baker was an American physician and civic activist in San Diego, California. He was the prime mover in founding the Marine Biological Institution, which became the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He was also a co-founder of the Zoological Society of San Diego and thus of the San Diego Zoo. He was a naturalist and an amateur malacologist.
Ida Shepard Oldroyd (1856–1940) was an American conchologist and Curator of Geology at Stanford University for over 20 years, who curated what was for a time the second largest collection of mollusk shells in the world. Oldroyd and her husband, Tom Shaw Oldroyd, amassed one of the largest private shell collections in California. Ida was recognized as an active and early pioneer of conchology in the western United States. She was a charter member of the American Malacological Union, of which she served as vice-president in 1934 and as honorary president from 1935 to 1940.
Frank Stephens (1849–1937) was an American naturalist and the first director of the San Diego Natural History Museum. He was considered the pioneer naturalist of the Southwest, studying the mammals and birds of California, Arizona, and Baja California. His personal specimen collection of 2,000 birds and mammals, donated in 1910, was the foundation of the San Diego Natural History Museum's Birds & Mammals Department, now a major resource on bird and mammal species of western North America, including Baja California.
Clark Hubbs was an American ichthyologist who was professor of zoology at the University of Texas from 1963 until he accepted emeritus status in 1991. He was a leading figure in ichthyology in Texas, teaching students who went on to be renowned in the field, was involved in ichthyological societies and was an editor of scientific journals. Hubbs was also an environmental activist, fighting to conserve freshwater ecosystems.
Media related to Kate Stephens at Wikimedia Commons
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