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Ruth Gates on ThinkTech Hawaii-by ThinkTech Hawaii-

20 Most Famous Marine Scientists

The history of marine biology may have begun as early as 1200 BC when the Phoenicians used celestial navigation to navigate ocean trips. For a long of human history, the incredible life beneath the ocean’s surface remained a remote and inaccessible environment. People were exploiting the sea’s resources without fully comprehending what was going on beneath the waves. However, thanks to many inquisitive and courageous individuals, marine science has expanded into a huge and intriguing area. The preceding centuries saw numerous inventions and scientists who enabled us to glimpse behind the veil of water and demonstrated how vulnerable our oceans are. While the genuine “list” of persons who have contributed to our shared understanding of the sea is inexhaustible, this piece honors 20 who stand out as remarkable pioneers among the masses.

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1. Rachel Carson

Rachel-Carson-by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service-

Rachel Carson is regarded as the mother of contemporary ecology and one of history’s most influential conservationists. Carson was a well-known American scientist who wrote about environmental pollution and the natural history of the sea. Silent Spring (1962), one of her most famous works in the modern environmental movement, created the drive for tighter pesticide control, especially DDT. Carson wrote about geologic discoveries from submarine technology and underwater research in her books about the sea, such as how islands formed, how currents change and merge, how temperature affects sea life, and how erosion affects not only shorelines but salinity, fish populations, and tiny microorganisms.

2. Ruth Gates

Ruth Deborah Gates was the first female President of the International Society for Reef Studies. Her study focused on coral reef ecosystems, specifically coral-algal symbiosis and corals’ ability to acclimate to future climate change conditions. Doctor Gates is most recognized for her research on coral biology and human-assisted coral evolution, sometimes known as super corals, as depicted in the Netflix documentary Chasing Coral.

3. Jacques Cousteau

Jacques-Yves Cousteau-by NASA employee-

Jacques-Yves Cousteau was a French naval officer, oceanographer, filmmaker, and novelist. He was a co-inventor of the first successful Aqua-Lung, open-circuit SCUBA system (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus). The equipment helped him create some of the first underwater documentaries. Cousteau revolutionized underwater exploration and labor when he invented the “aqualung” in 1943. His invention enabled divers to descend to depths of 100 feet and beyond.

4. Hans Hass

Hans Hass (January 23, 1919 – June 16, 2013) was an Austrian scientist and pioneer of underwater diving. He was well known for being a pioneer in popularizing coral reefs, stingrays, octopuses, and sharks. He pioneered the making of documentaries filmed underwater and led the development of a type of rebreather. He is well noted for his energon theory and his dedication to environmental protection.

5. Sylvia Earle

Sylvia Earle-by Veni Markovski-

Sylvia Alice Earle is a marine scientist, oceanographer, adventurer, author, and lecturer from the United States. Earle collected over 20,000 algal samples for her dissertation in order to categorize aquatic plants in the Gulf of Mexico. Her endeavor was a scientific marvel since she was one of the first to utilize SCUBA to capture marine species firsthand, and it remained a landmark study for decades.

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6. Eugenie Clark

Eugenie Clark was an American ichthyologist notable for her research on shark behavior as well as her study of fish in the order Tetraodontiformes. Clark conducted extensive research on the order Tetraodontiformes (Plectognathi), which includes triggerfish, pufferfish, and filefish. She discovered that the Red Sea Moses sole (Pardachirus marmoratus), a flatfish, secretes a chemical that sharks find repellent. 

7. Nancy Knowlton

Nancy Knowlton at World Oceans Day 2015-by fourandsixty-

Nancy Knowlton is a coral reef researcher. She is the former Sant Chair for Marine Science at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History and the Census of Marine Life scientific leader. To commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Census, she published Citizens of the Sea.

8. Malcolm Clarke (zoologist)

Malcolm Roy Clarke was a British marine researcher. Malcolm pioneered the use of cephalopod beaks from the stomachs of marine predators to identify prey species and estimate cephalopod eating on a worldwide scale. His scientific career began in the Antarctic as a British Government Whaling Inspector aboard the whale factory ship Southern Harvester, and his Ph.D. on whale parasites followed. Malcolm realized how much information would be gathered if the thousands of cephalopod beaks present could be identified and matched to the live biomass they represented while delving into the gastrointestinal contents of sperm whales. As a result, he embarked on what would become the defining research of his career: inventing novel sampling methods for cephalopods to bridge the vast gaps in knowledge about the living species.

9. Nicole Dubilier

Nicole Dubilier is a German marine microbiologist currently serving as a director at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology. She is a pioneer in ecological and evolutionary symbiotic interactions between sea animals and their microbial companions in low-nutrient environments. She was the one who discovered a novel type of symbiotic relationship between two types of bacteria and the marine oligochaete Olavius algarvensis.

10. Samuel Stillman Berry

Samuel-Stillman-berry-88-11259-by Unknown author-

Samuel Stillman Berry (March 16, 1887 – April 9, 1984) was an American cephalopod specialist. Berry’s most famous scientific contribution was his publications on marine zoology. The books changed the way we thought about cephalopods. They focused on the numerous species of these animals. His results prompted an additional investigation into other types of cephalopods, such as cuttlefish and octopus. It also helped us better comprehend ourselves as humans because these species existed long before we were born.

11. Henry Bryant Bigelow

Henry Bryant Bigelow was a marine biologist and oceanographer from the United States. Bigelow, as one of WHOI’s founders, was instrumental in shaping the organization’s research program into what it is today. He also made substantial contributions to the study of elasmobranchs and coelenterates and was awarded The National Academy of Sciences Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal in 1948. Throughout his career, he is credited with describing 110 new species for science and producing over 100 scientific papers.

12. Leanne Armand

Leanne Armand-by SOdiatom-

Leanne Armand was an Australian professor of marine science. She specialized in identifying diatoms in the Southern Ocean. Her knowledge of diatom distributions and ecology enabled her to contribute to our understanding of previous Southern Ocean dynamics and sea ice. Her study concentrated on the spread of diatoms, a type of single-cell tiny phytoplankton, in the Southern Ocean.

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13. Anton Frederik Bruun

Anton Frederik Bruun (14 December 1901 – 13 December 1961) was a Danish zoologist who participated in the circumnavigation with R/V “Dana” between 1928-30 and was the leader of the expedition to tropical West Africa with the yacht “Atlantide” in 1945-46, as well as the circumnavigation with R/V “Galathea” (the new name of the former navy sloop H.M.S. “Leith”) between 1950-52. Bruun is well recognized for his work on the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, where he served as president. During that period, he promoted global sea exploration to study marine life and collect specimens for museums. This effort aided in the development of his reputation as an ichthyologist and oceanographer.

14. Alister Hardy

Sir Alister Clavering Hardy was an English marine biologist who specialized in marine ecosystems ranging from zooplankton to whales. Hardy is most known for his contentious aquatic ape hypothesis, which claims that our ancestors evolved through natural selection in a watery environment. He claimed his theory explained a variety of human characteristics, such as our absence of body hair. Hardy is best renowned by marine biologists for creating the CPR, or continuous plankton recorder, which has allowed scientists to track the global distribution of plankton and see how it evolves over time.

15. George Brown Goode

George Brown Goode 1-by NOAA-

George Brown Goode was an American ichthyologist and museum administrator. Goode served for the United States Commission on Fish and Fisheries, the earliest ancestor organization of NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, from 1872 to 1888. Goode made significant contributions to fisheries science as an administrator, curator, field biologist, and taxonomist.

16. Ruth Turner

Ruth Dixon Turner (1914–April 30, 2000) was a pioneering marine biologist and malacologist in the United States. She was the world’s foremost authority on Teredinidae, also known as shipworms, a taxonomic family of wood-boring bivalve mollusks that severely damage wooden marine structures. Turner was one of the most academically accomplished female marine researchers, publishing over 200 scientific articles and a book over her long career. She was one of Harvard’s first tenured women professors in 1973. She was also the first woman to use the deep sea research submarine, Alvin. Turner and William J. Clench collaborated on much of his work. They jointly described roughly 70 new mollusc species, among other things.

17. Charles Wyville Thomson

PSM V22 D594 Charles Wyville Thompson-by Unknown author-

Sir Charles Wyville Thomson was a Scottish naturalist and marine biologist. He was the Challenger expedition’s chief scientist, and the work he did there, which revolutionized oceanography, earned him a knighthood. Thomson led the Challenger trip, a large trip to study the ocean and the animals that lived in it. The mission (1872-1876) circumnavigated the globe and traversed 68,890 nautical miles, and is regarded as the beginning of oceanographic science. He uncovered a huge range of invertebrate life forms—many previously thought extinct—to a depth of 650 fathoms during two deep-sea dredging missions north of Scotland (1868-69). He also discovered that deep-sea temperatures are not as stable as previously thought, indicating the possibility of oceanic circulation.

18. Patricia Louise Dudley

Patricia Louise (Pat) Dudley (1929-2004) was an American zoologist who specialized in copepod studies. She was an early pioneer in utilizing an electron microscope to study copepod organs and tissues, and she taught for 35 years at Barnard College, where she also served as Chair of the Biological Sciences department. She contributed to the establishment of the Patricia L. Dudley Endowment at Friday Harbor Labs, where she did research. Among her major contributions to zoology were, being the first to explore copepod organs and development using electron microscopy, conducting considerable research on the commensal connections of copepods and other animals, and photographing copepods and tunicates at various phases of development.

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19. Maude Delap

Maude Jane Delap (December 7, 1866 – July 23, 1953) was a self-taught marine biologist most renowned for being the first person to produce jellyfish in captivity. She was also involved in a comprehensive study of plankton from the Valentia Island beaches. Her greatest passion was marine biology, a discipline to which she contributed significantly despite being self-taught and having just a crude laboratory in her home. The culture and rearing of jellyfish was Delap’s most significant contribution to science. She was the first person in the world to rear jellyfish in an aquarium and publish her findings on the entire reproductive cycle. Her work is still valuable and inspiring to today’s scientists, and she was so well-regarded by the scientific community at the time that Plymouth Marine Biological Station granted her a fellowship in 1906.

20. Helen Battle

Helen Irene Battle was a pioneering Canadian ichthyologist and marine biologist. She was the first Canadian woman to receive a Ph.D. in marine biology and one of the first zoologists to conduct laboratory research. She was one of the first zoologists to actively apply laboratory research methods to marine concerns as an Assistant Professor at Western. She was also the first to use fish eggs to investigate the effects of cancer-causing chemicals on cell development. Her knowledge, hard effort, and vision helped her land numerous following leadership positions. In 1956, she was appointed Acting Head of the Zoology Department and was important in the construction of Western’s Biology & Geology Building.

Marine research is critical in our ongoing effort to understand our world and manage its resources. Marine scientists play an essential role in a variety of sectors since they conduct studies on water habitats in order to better understand ocean processes. People that are environmentally conscious typically flourish as marine scientists since they have a direct opportunity to improve the ocean’s ecosystem.