Maritime Madams: Mary Jane Rathbun

Mary Jane Rathbun (1860-1943) was a marine zoologist who discovered thousands of species of crabs. Her work helped establish the basic taxonomy of crustaceans. 

For Further Reading

• Mary Jane Rathbun: Hail the Crustacean Queen!
• Mary Jane Rathbun American marine zoologist
• Mary Jane Rathbun Papers, 1886-1938 and undated

This month, we’re talking about Maritime Madams. Whether through scientific study, aquatic exploration, or legendary prowess, they harnessed the power of the bodies of waters that cover our earth. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Ahoy for Wonder Media Network. I'm Jenny Kathlin, and this
is Wamanica. This month, we're talking about maritime madams. Whether
through scientific study, aquatic exploration, or legendary prowess, these women
harness the power of the bodies of water that cover
our earth. A woman walks on the beach. She notices

(00:25):
a claw poking out of the sand. She leans down
and with her thumb and index finger gently picks up
a small crab shell. She brushes off some sand and
tenderly places it in a sample jar. This woman was
never intimidated by pinching crustaceans. Instead, she spent her life
peeling back their hard shells to become an expert on
the species. Please welcome. Mary Jane Rathbun. Mary Jane Rathbun

(00:53):
was born in Buffalo, New York, in eighteen sixty. She
was the youngest of five siblings, and her mother died
when Mary Jane was just a year old. Mary Jane
grew up to be a small woman, standing just four
and a half feet tall. In eighteen eighty one, three
years after Mary Jane graduated from school, her brother Richard,
asked her to join him out in Cape Cod. The

(01:13):
two gathered their things, traveled through the northern woods of
New York, across Massachusetts, and all the way down to
the hook of Cape Cod. The brother and sister landed
in Woodshall, Massachusetts, spitting distance from Martha's vineyard. When they arrived,
the sound of the ocean was inescapable, the air was salty.
Out at sea, fishermen hoisted up nets filled with fish, lobsters, crab,

(01:34):
and shrimp. This was the first time sand got on
Mary Jane's shoes as she stood out and looked at
the vast gray Atlantic. But there was work to be done.
Her brother was a scientific assistant for the US Commission
of Fish and Fisheries. He worked mainly with invertebrate marine fauna.
Mary Jane, with plenty of time on her hands, decided

(01:57):
to assist her brother. Her days were spent arched over
at time, labeling, identifying, recording, and itemizing vast numbers of
crustaceans dredged up from the ocean. One in particular took
her heart, the crab. Mary Jane was so excellent at
cataloging she was promoted to a clerkship and given a
small salary. The National Museum in Washington, d C. Caught

(02:20):
wind of this peculiar woman carefully organizing crustaceans up in
Cape cod Before she knew it, Mary Jane moved again,
this time down to the nation's capital. She set to
work at the National Museum's Department of Marine Invertebrates. She
worked as a copyist, focused on cataloging and record keeping.
The museum didn't have budget for any permanent assistance, so

(02:40):
Mary Jane's days were spent in silence and solitude, hearing
nothing more than the sound of her pen pushing against paper.
A desk full of catalogs, sketches, publications, illustrations, boxes of samples,
and books kept her company. In front of her lay
her notebook, where she diligently took notes. She organized samples
into collections, writing catalogs and filling pages with diagnostic keys, figures,

(03:05):
and detailed descriptions of the specimens she researched. When she
wasn't writing papers, she was corresponding with other carcinologists, confirming, debating,
or hypothesizing in long letters about crabs. Mary Jane had
plenty to write about, given the specimens and fossils from
all over the world arrived at the museum's doorsteps. Mary
Jane showcased new species and genus of crabs, featuring specimens

(03:28):
from as far south as the Galapagos in Africa, as
far west as Japan, Hawaii, and the Maldives. But fortunately
the world didn't just come to her in boxes and jars.
Mary Jane traveled to Europe to examine specimens and other museums.
In eighteen ninety six. She worked in Copenhagen, Berlin, Geneva, Paris,

(03:48):
and London. By nineteen oh seven, Mary Jane was promoted
to assistant curator. Just seven years later, she was put
in a bind. The Smithsonia needed to allocate her salary
towards another position, so Mary Jane graciously resigned. But she
was so dedicated to her work that she continued to
volunteer at the museum. Now living off a small inheritance

(04:10):
her father had left her, she even continued to mentor
her successor at the Smithsonian. Her accomplishments did not go
unrecognized by the academic community. She received an honorary master's
degree in nineteen sixteen in a doctoral degree in nineteen seventeen.
She already had eighty papers under her belt, but after retiring,
had enough information ready to write four monographs. Over the

(04:33):
next thirty years, she categorized dozens of new families, genera, species,
and subspecies. When she wasn't working on her books, she
was working on scientific papers. She still visited woods Hull
and traveled up the coast of Maine on field excursions.
She sometimes traveled with an illustrator who captured her subject's colors.
It was only during the First World War that she

(04:53):
put down her magnifying glasses and pens. By the time
of her death, Mary Jane Rathman was one of the
world's few leading experts on crustacean taxonomy. Ecologists still rely
on her exceptional classification and research to this day. Over
her decades long career, she published more than one hundred
and fifty articles and four monographic handbooks, all while identifying

(05:16):
more than a thousand species, sixty three genera, and five
higher categories of crustaceans. Mary Jane died on April fourteenth,
nineteen forty three. She was eighty three years old. After
her death, she donated ten thousand dollars to the Smithsonian
to put towards decapov research. All month, we're talking about

(05:38):
Maritime Madams. For more information, find us on Facebook and
Instagram at Wamanica Podcast special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my
favorite sister and co creator. As always, will be taking
a break for the weekend. Talk to you on Monday.