Mary H. Hinckley

Mary Hewes Hinckley (6 April 1845—5 June 1944) was an American herpetologist, who made important contributions to the study of frogs in North America. Her mother died when Hinckley was 12 years old. about her hometown. Mary Hewes Hinckley died on 5 June 1944, aged 99.

Hinckley was one of four American women to whom Anna Allen Wright and Albert Hazen Wright dedicated their 1933 Handbook of Frogs and Toads. They named her as one of those who "in addition to serving the public and science generously, have in the last half-century contributed most notably to the study" of herpetology.

Legacy In a foreword to a 1995 edition of the Handbook of Frogs and Toads, Roy McDiarmid wrote:Having recently read several papers by Mary Hinckley written in the 1880s on the morphology and development of North American tadpoles, I concluded that had more tadpole workers followed her example and presented stylized illustrations of tadpole mouthparts, we would be further along in our quest to comprehend the variation and distribution of larval traits, and their value in discerning frog phylogeny. In a 2024 biographical article on Hinckley, C. Kenneth Dodd Jr. argued that while much remains unknown about her life and work:Mary Hewes Hinckley clearly possessed a keen intellect and was insightful beyond her contemporaries, as well as an illustrator of great aptitude. She should be acknowledged as an important early contributor to North American herpetology, specifically in regard to the study of the life history and ecology of frogs.