Rosa Smith Eigenmann

Rosa Smith Eigenmann (October 7, 1858 – January 12, 1947) was an American ichthyologist (the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish), as well as a writer, editor, former curator at the California Academy of Sciences, and the first librarian of the San Diego Society of Natural History. She "is considered the first woman ichthyologist in the United States." Eigenmann was also the first woman to become president of Indiana University's chapter of Sigma 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.

Early life and education

Rosa Smith was born on October 7, 1858, in Monmouth, Illinois, the youngest of Lucretia (Gray) and Charles Kendall Smith's nine children. Smith's parents, originally from Vermont, had moved to Illinois to begin publishing a newspaper. Charles Kendall Smith founded the Monmouth Atlas in 1846, but sold it in 1857. Seeking a warmer climate for family health reasons, the Smiths moved to California in 1876 and settled in San Diego.

Smith completed her secondary education at the Point Loma Seminary in San Diego. Smith also attended a five-week course at a business college in San Francisco, where she was one of only two women in the class. (The other was Kate Sessions, later an important San Diego horticulturalist known as the "Mother of Balboa Park.")

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.

Smith met David Starr Jordan, a noted ichthyologist from Indiana University in Bloomington, 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. At about this time, she had discovered the blind goby Othonops eos living in caves underneath the Point 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 touring Europe 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 an undergraduate degree.

Rosa Eigenmann bore most of the family responsibilities for raising their children, although she continued to collaborate on scientific research with her husband.

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 the Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum. In addition, the Smithsonian Institution had asked her to make a collection of surf perch from the San Diego area. In addition to collaborating on research with her husband, she was granted special student status at Harvard to study cryptogamic botany with William G. Farlow in 1887–88.

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 the California Academy of Sciences.

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 the Pacific 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." 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. "New California Fishes, " American Naturalist (1891) 25: 153–56

Co-authored with Carl H. Eigenmann: "Cyprinodon californiensis," The West-American Scientist (1888) 5: 3–4 "South American Nematognathi," American Naturalist (1888) 23: 647–49 "Cottus beldingi, sp. nov.," American Naturalist (1891) 25: 1132–33 "Recent additions to the ichthyological fauna of California," Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences (1891) p. 159–61 "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 "A catalogue of the fresh-water fishes of South America," Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum (1892) 14: 1–81 "New fishes from western Canada," American Naturalist (1892) 26: 961–64 "Preliminary descriptions of new fishes from the Northwest," American Naturalist (1893) 27: 151–54

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