Mary J. Rathbun

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." She was educated in Buffalo, graduating in 1878, but never attended college.

Rathbun was 4 ft 6 in (1.37 m) tall, and was noted for having a dry sense of humor.

Rathbun first saw the ocean in 1881 when she accompanied her brother, Richard Rathbun, to Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He was employed as a scientific assistant to Addison Emery Verrill, alongside Verrill's chief assistant, the carcinologist Sidney Irving Smith. Rathbun helped label, sort and record Smith's specimens, and worked on crustaceans ever since.

For three years, Rathbun worked on a voluntary basis for her brother, before being granted a clerkship by Spencer Fullerton Baird at the Smithsonian Institution.

After 28 years of working at the museum, Rathbun was promoted to assistant curator in charge of the Division of Crustacea. In 1915, after her retirement, the Smithsonian Institution designated Rathbun an "Honorary Research Associate", and in 1916 she was granted an honorary master's degree by the University of Pittsburgh. She qualified for a Ph.D. at George Washington University in 1917. Rathbun was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Washington Academy of Sciences, and the Wild Flower Preservation Society.

Rathbun died in Washington, D.C., on April 4, 1943, at the age of 82, from complications associated with a broken hip.