Maria Elizabeth Fernald

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Maria Elizabeth Fernald
Born(1839-05-24)May 24, 1839
DiedOctober 6, 1919(1919-10-06) (aged 80)
NationalityAmerican
Other namesMaria Elizabeth Smith
SpouseCharles H. Fernald
ChildrenHenry Torsey Fernald
Scientific career
FieldsEntomology

Maria Elizabeth Smith Fernald (May 24, 1839 – October 6, 1919) was an American

spongy moth
following its introduction into North America.

Education

Maria Elizabeth Smith was born on May 24, 1839, to Ebenezer and Betsy (Torsey) Smith of Monmouth, Maine. She attended the Maine Wesleyan Seminary and Female College, graduating in the school's first class. She stayed at the school as an instructor for a time.[1]

In 1862[2] or 1863, she married entomologist Charles H. Fernald, whom she had tutored in music.[3] They had a son, Henry Torsey Fernald, in 1866, who also became an entomologist.[4] She became interested in entomology through her husband and began her education in the subject in the 1870s by collecting insects for him around Maine State College in Orono, where he was teaching at the time.[1]

Career

Fernald developed into a capable and respected entomologist, an expert on the Coccidae,

scale insects, which are highly destructive to agriculture, and it was still in use as a classic text decades after Fernald's death.[1][7]

Around 1886, the Fernalds moved from Maine to Amherst, Massachusetts, where Charles took up a professorship at

Massachusetts Agricultural Experiment Station. Three years later, the first of a devastating series of European gypsy moth plagues broke out—the first major outbreak since the insect's arrival in North America two decades earlier.[3] Fernald had taken over the entomological work at the Experiment Station in Charles's absence, and thanks to her knowledge of Lepidoptera, she was able to quickly identify the caterpillars responsible for that first infestation, providing the key to subsequent control efforts.[1][3]

Fernald died on October 6, 1919.[citation needed]

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 0-8108-3287-9
    .
  2. ^ "Charles H. Fernald Papers". Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center. W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst. RG 40/11 C. H. Fernald. Retrieved 24 March 2023.
  3. ^
    ISBN 1-55849-479-0
    .
  4. ^ "Henry Torsey Fernald Papers". Special Collections and University Archives. University of Massachusetts Amherst. RG 40/11 H. T. Fernald Fernald. Retrieved 24 March 2023.
  5. doi:10.5962/bhl.title.8533
    .
  6. ^ Tutt, James William, ed. The Entomologist's Record and Journal of Variation. Vol. 15, 1908, p. 216.
  7. ^ Alexander, C. P. "The Fernalds-Entomologists All." In National Forum, vol. 25, no. 4, p. 155. Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, 1945.
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