Rosa Smith Eigenmann (October 7, 1858 – January 12, 1947) was an Americanichthyologist (the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish), as well as a writer, editor, former curator at theCalifornia Academy of Sciences, and the first librarian of theSan Diego Society of Natural History. She "is considered the first woman ichthyologist in the United States."[1][2] Eigenmann was also the first woman to become president ofIndiana University's chapter ofSigma 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.
Rosa Smith was born on October 7, 1858, inMonmouth, Illinois, the youngest of Lucretia (Gray) and Charles Kendall Smith's nine children. Smith's parents, originally fromVermont, had moved toIllinois to begin publishing a newspaper. Charles Kendall Smith founded theMonmouth Atlas in 1846, but sold it in 1857.[3][4] Seeking a warmer climate for family health reasons, the Smiths moved toCalifornia in 1876 and settled inSan Diego.[1][5]
Smith completed her secondary education at the Point Loma Seminary in San Diego.[1][6] Smith also attended a five-week course at a business college inSan Francisco, where she was one of only two women in the class. (The other wasKate Sessions, later an important San Diego horticulturalist known as the "Mother of Balboa Park.")[7]
Smith had a lifelong interest in natural history. She began by observing and collecting bird and animal specimens in California and joined the San Diego Society of Natural History (San Diego Natural History Museum) in 1878 as an associate member.[1][7] Smith became the first woman with full membership in the Society in 1879, and also served as the Society's librarian and recording secretary for several years during the 1880s.[8]
Smith metDavid Starr Jordan, a notedichthyologist fromIndiana University inBloomington, Indiana, while he was visiting San Diego in 1879. The circumstances of their meeting are uncertain, but Jordan may have heard Smith read her paper at a meeting of the San Diego Society of Natural History about a new species of fish.[9] At about this time, she had discovered theblind gobyOthonops eos living in caves underneath thePoint Loma peninsula. Jordan was impressed and encouraged her to continue her studies as one of his zoology students at IU. Smith accepted Jordan's offer, and spent the summer of 1880 touringEurope with Jordan and some of his colleagues and students. After returning to the United States, she spent two years studying at IU before an illness in the family caused her to return to San Diego in 1882 without earning anundergraduate degree.[5][1]
Photograph of Carl H. Eigenmann and Rosa Smith Eigenmann, 1889.
Smith met fellow IU studentCarl H. Eigenmann, aGerman scientist who was pursuing adoctorate degree inichthyology, through her studies with professor Jordan. Eigenmann corresponded with Smith while she was living in San Diego and also traveled to California, where the couple were married at Smith's home on August 20, 1887.[1][3]
The Eigenmanns had five children. Lucretia Margaretha Eigenmann (1889–1965), the eldest, was mentally disabled; their only son, Theodore Smith Eigenmann (1893–1970), later became institutionalized after serving in the army in 1918.[3] Although family responsibilities prevented her from pursuing her own research, she continued to work as an editor on her husband's papers.[3][5] The three other Eigenmann's children pursued professional careers. Charlotte Elizabeth Eigenmann (1891-1959) graduated fromStanford University and pursued an editorial career. Adele Rosa (Eigenmann) Eiler (1896-1978) accompanied her father on the Irwin Expedition toSouth America in 1918-1919, and received a medical degree from Indiana University in 1921. Adele and her husband, John Oliver Eiler, later moved to San Diego. Thora Marie Eigenmann (1901-1968), a graduate of theUniversity of Missouri, became a writer.[10]
Rosa Eigenmann bore most of the family responsibilities for raising their children, although she continued to collaborate on scientific research with her husband.[5] Family responsibilities also prevented her from pursuing her own research after 1893, but she continued to work with her husband as an editor of his research papers.[3]
Around 1879 Smith discoveredblind goby (Othonops eos) living in underwater caves at San Diego'sPoint Loma peninsula. The discovery led to her additional training in the natural sciences at Indiana University and launched her work as an ichthyologist. Smith published her first articles in 1880, which included "On the occurrence of a species of Cremnobates at San Diego, California," in theProceedings of the U.S. National Museum, andA list of fish of San Diego California (1880), which was submitted to the San Diego Society of Natural History. TheAmerican Museum of Natural History also published several of Smith's articles.[11][12]
After returning to San Diego from Bloomington, Indiana, in 1882, she focused on publishing formal descriptions of the blind goby and other species of fishes. By the age of twenty-eight, several of her papers had been published in theProceedings of the U.S. National Museum. In addition, theSmithsonian Institution had asked her to make a collection of surf perch from the San Diego area.[1][6] With her family's involvement in newspaper publishing in California, it is not surprising that she also worked as a journalist, becoming a reporter for theSan Diego Union, possibly its first woman reporter, while continuing to write and edit scholarly papers.[12]
Following Smith's marriage to Carl Eigenmann in 1887, the couple immediately left forHarvard University, where they studied the Agassiz collections of South American fishes and collaborated on research. The Eigenmanns also spent the summer of 1888 atWoods Hole, Massachusetts, the site of aU.S. Fish Commission station. Their first collaboration, a study of South American freshwater fishes that were in the collections at Harvard,[5][1] was published in 1888 as "A list of the American species of Gobiidae and Callionymidae, with notes on the specimens contained in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, at Cambridge, Massachusetts," as well as "Preliminary notes on South American Nematognathi" which appeared in theProceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, and "South American Nematognathi" in theAmerican Naturalist.[13] In addition to collaborating on research with her husband, she was granted special student status at Harvard to studycryptogamicbotany withWilliam G. Farlow in 1887–88.[3][14]
After their return to California in 1889, the Eigenmanns established a biological station in San Diego and continued their studies of fish in the region. The Eigenmanns also held appointments as curators at theCalifornia Academy of Sciences.[1][6] In 1891, after David Starr Jordan left his position at Indiana University to become chancellor of Stanford University, Eigenmann's husband, Carl, replaced Jordan as professor of zoology at IU and the Eigenmanns returned to Bloomington, Indiana. Carl Eigenmann was later named chair of the zoology department, and in 1908 he became the first Dean of the Graduate School.[5][10]
Rosa Eigenmann authored twelve published papers on her own between 1880 and 1893 and co-authored another twenty-five more with her husband, Carl, including notable works on fresh-water fishes in South America and on various species of fishes in western North America. Due to their research and publication, "the Eigenmann and Eigenmann authority" became well known throughout the ichthyological community.[1][3][15]
Eigenmann was proud of women's academic accomplishments, but she felt that women in science had not received proper recognition because there were so few women working in the sciences. As she told thePacific Coast Women's Press Association in 1891: "In science as everywhere else in the domain of thought, woman should be judged by the same standard as her brother. Her work must not simply be well done for a woman."[3]
Eigenmann's last co-authored publication with her husband, Carl, was "Preliminary descriptions of new fishes from the Northwest," which appeared in theAmerican Naturalist (1893).[13] After her retirement from active research in 1893 to care for her family, she continued to edit her husband's papers on research topics that included fishes of thePacific coast, blind cave vertebrates fromKentucky and southern Indiana, and South America's freshwater fishes. In 1893 she also delivered a lecture at the Smithsonian Museum on the topic of women in science, which was later published.[1] In addition, she served as president of The National Science Club for Women in 1895.[10]
Eigenmann's husband, Carl, never fully recovered from his high altitude expeditions inChile in 1918, which weakened his health. In 1926 the Eigenmanns left Indiana and returned to San Diego. Carl Eigenmann suffered a stroke in a year later, and died on April 24, 1927.[3] Rosa Eigenmann continued to live in the San Diego areaCoronado, California, following her husband's death, but she was no longer scientifically active.[5]
Rosa Smith Eigenmann died on January 12, 1947, in San Diego, California, of chronicmyocarditis, which followed a series of difficult eye operations. Her remains are buried in San Diego'sGreenwood Memorial Park cemetery.[3][5]
David Starr Jordan, who was Eigenmann's former professor, credited Eigenmann and her husband, Carl, with identifying 35 new genera,[16] and others have credited the couple with providing the initial descriptions of nearly 150 species of fishes. She was also the first woman to become president of the Indiana University's chapter of Sigma Xi, an honorary science society.[5][6]
A list of the fishes of San Diego, California (San Diego, California: privately published, 1880) (List was submitted to the San Diego Society of Natural History, November 5, 1880.)[11]
"On the occurrence of a species of Cremnobates at San Diego, California,"Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum (1880) 3: 147–49[11]
"Description of a new gobioid fish (Othonops eos) from San Diego, California,"Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum (1881) 4: 19–21[11]
"Description of a new species ofGobiesox (G. rhessodon) from San Diego, California,"Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum (1881) 4: 140–41[11]
"Description of a new species ofUranidea (U. rhothea) from Spokane river, Washington territory,"Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum (1883) 6: 347–48[11]
"The life colors of Cremnobates integripinnis,"Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum (1883) 6: 216–17[11]
"Notes of the fishes of Todos Santos bay, Lower California,"Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum (1883) 6: 232–36[11]
"On the life coloration of the young ofPomacentrus rubicundus,"Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum (1883) 6: 652[11]
"Notes on fishes collected at San Cristobal, Lower California, by Charles H. Townsend, assistant, U.S. Fish commission,"Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum (1885) 7: 551–53[11]
"On the occurrence of a new species ofRhinoptera (R. encenadoe) in Todos Santos bay, Lower California,"Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum (1886) 9: 220[11]
"Description of a New Species of Euprotomicrus,"Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences (1890) 2 (ser. 3): 35[17]
"New California Fishes, "American Naturalist (1891) 25: 153–56[18]
"A list of the American species of Gobiidae and Callionymidae, with notes on the specimens contained in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, at Cambridge, Massachusetts,"Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences (1888) 2 (ser. 1): 51–78[13]
"Notes on some Californian fishes, with descriptions of two new species,"Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum (1888) 11: 463–66[13]
"Preliminary notes on South American Nematognathi"Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences (1888) 2 (ser. 1): 119–72; and 2 (ser. 2), pp. 28–56[13][19]
"South American Nematognathi,"American Naturalist (1888) 23: 647–49[13]
"Contributions from the San Diego biological laboratory,"The West-American Scientist (1889) 6: 44–47[13]
"Description of a new species of Cyprinodon,"Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences (1889) 2 (ser. 1): 270[13]
"Description of new nematogathoid fishes from Brazil,"The West-American Scientist (1889) 6: 8–10[13][19]
"Notes from the San Diego biological laboratory. The fishes of Cortez banks; additions to the fauna of San Diego; fishes of Aetna springs, Napa county, California; fishes of Allen springs, Lake county, California,"The West-American Scientist (1889) 6: 123–32; 147–50[13][19]
"On the development of California food fishes,"American Naturalist (1889) 23: 107–10[13]
"On the genesis of the color-cells of fishes,"The West-American Scientist (1889) 6: 61–62[13]
"Recent additions to the ichthyological fauna of California,"Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences (1891) p. 159–61[13]
"A catalogue of the fishes of the Pacific coast of America, north of Cerros island,"Annuals of the New York Academy of Science (1892) 6: 349–58[13]
"A catalogue of the fresh-water fishes of South America,"Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum (1892) 14: 1–81[13]
"New fishes from western Canada,"American Naturalist (1892) 26: 961–64[13]
"Preliminary descriptions of new fishes from the Northwest,"American Naturalist (1893) 27: 151–54[13]
Co-authored with John Swain:
"Notes on a collection of fishes from Johnson's island (700 miles S.W. of the Hawaiian group) including descriptions of five new species,"Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum, (1882) 5: 119–43[11]
^abcdefghijHubbs, Carl L., "Rosa Smith Eigenmann," inJames, Edward T. (1971).Notable American Women 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Vol. I. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. p. 566.OCLC167545.
^Some sources suggest that Rosa Smith was frail child and suffered poor health due totuberculosis. As a result, her parents were advised to move to a warmer area of the country. See Brown, "Early Women Ichthyologists,"Environmental Biology of Fishes, pp. 25–26; and "Rosa Smith Eigenmann," inWomen in Science: A Selection of 16 Significant Contributors, p. 15.
^abcdefghi"Rosa Smith Eiganmann" inWomen in Science: A Selection of 16 Significant Contributors, p. 15.
^abByrd, Bridgette Anne (1999).Rosa Smith Eigenmann: American Ichthyologist, 1858-1947 (M.A. Thesis). San Diego: University of San Diego.
^Engstrand, Iris; Bullard, Anne (1999).Inspired by nature: The San Diego Natural History Museum after 125 years. San Diego, Calif.: San Diego Society of Natural History. p. 29.ISBN978-0-918969-04-0.
^Some of Smith's family members later suggested that she met Jordan when he rented a horse and buggy from her father. See "Rosa Smith Eiganmann" inWomen in Science: A Selection of 16 Significant Contributors, p. 15.
^abc"Eigenmann Mss".Lilly Library Manuscript Collections. Lilly Library, Indiana University Bloomington. 6 December 2013. Retrieved2014-10-10.
^abcdefghijklDean, Bashford; Charles Rochester Eastman, ed. (1917).A Bibliography of Fishes. Vol. II. New York: American Museum of Natural History. p. 463.{{cite book}}:|author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^abHubbs, "Eigenmann, Rosa Smith," inNotable American Women 1607–1950, p. 565.
^Byrd reported inRosa Smith Eigenmann: American Ichthyologist, 1858-1947 that Eigenmann was the first woman to attend graduate-level classes at Harvard.
^Dean, Bashford; Eugene Willis Gudger, ed. (1923).A Bibliography of Fishes. Vol. III. New York: American Museum of Natural History. p. 55.{{cite book}}:|author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Bashford and Eastman,A Bibliography of Fishes, v. I, p. 367.
^abcdeJordan, David Starr (1919).The Genera of Fishes, Part III. Leland Stanford Junior University Publications University Series. Stanford, California: Stanford University. pp. 445–46.
Byrd, Bridgette Anne (1999).Rosa Smith Eigenmann: American Ichthyologist, 1858-1947 (M.A. Thesis). San Diego, California: University of San Diego.
Dean, Bashford, and Charles Rochester Eastman, eds. (1916).A Bibliography of Fishes. Vol. 1. New York: American Museum of Natural History.{{cite book}}:|author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Dean, Bashford, and Charles Rochester Eastman, eds. (1917).A Bibliography of Fishes. Vol. II. New York: American Museum of Natural History.{{cite book}}:|author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Dean, Bashford, and Eugene Willis Gudger, eds. (1923).A Bibliography of Fishes. Vol. III. New York: American Museum of Natural History.{{cite book}}:|author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
"Eigenmann Mss".Lilly Library Manuscript Collections. Lilly Library, Indiana University Bloomington. 6 December 2013. Retrieved2014-10-10.
Engstrand, Iris; Bullard, Anne (1999).Inspired by Nature: The San Diego Natural History Museum after 125 years. San Diego, California: San Diego Society of Natural History.ISBN978-0-918969-04-0.
Jordan, David Starr (1919).The Genera of Fishes, Part III. Leland Stanford Junior University Publications University Series. Stanford, California: Stanford University. pp. 445–46.
"Rosa Smith Eigenmann".Women in Science: A Selection of 16 Significant Contributors. San Diego Supercomputer Center. Retrieved2018-07-25.
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