Maria Emma Gray
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Maria Emma Gray | |
|---|---|
 Maria Emma and John Edward Gray, 1863 | |
| Born | Maria Emma Smith 1787 Greenwich Hospital, London, England |
| Died | 1876 (aged 88–89) |
| Occupation(s) | Conchologist, algologist |
| Spouse(s) |
Francis Edward Gray
(m. 1810; died 1814) |
| Children | 2 |
| Parent | Lieutenant Henry Smith |
Maria Emma Gray (1787–1876), was an English conchologist and algologist.
Gray was born in 1787 at Greenwich Hospital, where her father, Lieutenant Henry Smith, R.N., was then resident. She married in 1810 Francis Edward Gray, who died four years later, and had by him two daughters, who survived her. Both daughters, Emma Juliana Gray Smith and Sophia Elizabeth Gray Stokes, were also scientific illustrators.[1][2] In 1826 she married his second cousin, John Edward Gray. She greatly assisted her second husband in his scientific work, especially by her drawings. Between 1842 and 1874 she published privately five volumes of etchings, entitled Figures of Molluscan Animals for the use of Students, and she mounted and arranged most of the Cuming collection of shells in the British Museum.
She was also much attached to the study of algae, arranging many sets for presentation to schools throughout the country so as to encourage the pursuit of this subject. Her own collection was bequeathed to the Cambridge University Museum, and her assistance in this branch of his studies was commemorated by her husband in 1866 in the algae genus Grayemma. Similarly, he named two species of lizards in her honor: Calotes maria and Calotes emma.[3] He also the species Scapha maria-emma, now known as Cymbiola mariaemma, after Gray.[4] He went on to have a bronze medallion struck in 1863, bearing both their portraits, a copy of which is in the possession of the Linnean Society. Gray survived her husband by a year, dying on 9 December 1876.
References
- ^ "Gray, Emma J." www.uni-stuttgart.de. Database of Scientific Illustrators, University of Stuttgart. Retrieved 5 September 2018.
- ^ "Gray, Sophia E." www.uni-stuttgart.de. Database of Scientific Illustrators, University of Stuttgart. Retrieved 5 September 2018.
- ^ Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. ISBN 978-1-4214-0135-5. ("Emma Gray", p. 83; "Maria", p. 168).
- ^ Gray, John Edward (1859). "Description of Scapha maria-emma, a New Species of Volute". Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. 27: 230–231 – via Biodiversity Heritage Library.
- . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
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