ATWATER, D Z; FAUTIN, D G: Online biographical database of taxonomists of sea anemones

As part of a taxonomic database of sea anemones, I am developing a module dedicated to anemone taxonomists. Most of those taxonomists are now dead. I am gathering anecdotes about and biographies of them through library research and contact with people who have knowledge of them. For living taxonomists, I seek all of this information, along with more traditional information that can be found in their curriculum vitae, such as their educational backgrounds and professional histories. I strongly encourage anybody with knowledge of any of these people to submit it to me. This is all part of a larger database that will allow users to search for the species those taxonomists described, the papers they wrote, and museums in which they deposited specimens. Users will also be linked to information on others in the database with whom the person of interest collaborated, or other taxonomists who named species after the person of interest. People after whom species in the database were named – e.g. Robert Falcon Scott – may also be included. All of these data are accessed and displayed using ColdFusion software, which directly queries the database, and writes each taxonomist’s web page “on the fly.”

This research was supported by NSF grant DEB99-78106 to Daphne G. Fautin as part of the program Partnerships to Enhance Expertise in Taxonomy (PEET)