Ruth Turner
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Ruth Dixon Turner (1914 – April 30, 2000) was a pioneering U.S. marine biologist and malacologist. She was the world's expert on Teredinidae or shipworms, a taxonomic family of wood-boring bivalve mollusks which severely damage wooden marine installations.
Turner held the Alexander Agassiz Professorship at Harvard University, and was a Curator of Malacology in the university's Museum of Comparative Zoology, where she also served as co-editor of the scientific journal Johnsonia. She graduated from Bridgewater State College, earned a master's degree at Cornell University and a Ph.D. at Harvard (Radcliffe College) where she specialized in shipworm research.[1][2]
Turner became one of Harvard's first tenured women professors in 1973, and was one of the most academically successful female marine researchers, publishing over 200 scientific articles and a book during her long career. She was also the first female scientist to use the deep ocean research submarine Alvin.[3] Much of Turner's work was done in co-operation with William J. Clench. Among other things they jointly described about 70 new mollusk species.[4]
Organisms named in honor of Turner include two symbiotic bacteria associated with bivalves: Teredinibacter turnerae (isolated from the shipworm Lyrodus pedicellatus),[5] and Candidatus Ruthia magnifica (from the deep-sea bivalve Calyptogena magnifica).[6]
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- 1914 births
- 2000 deaths
- American marine biologists
- American malacologists
- American women biologists
- Harvard University faculty
- Radcliffe College alumni
- Cornell University alumni
- Bridgewater State University alumni
- 20th-century American zoologists
- 20th-century American women scientists
- American women academics