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Ruth Turner

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Ruth Dixon Turner
File:Ruth Dixon Turner.jpg
Ruth Turner examining a wood sample for shipworms
Born1914
Melrose, Massachusetts
DiedApril 30, 2000
Waltham, Massachusetts
NationalityUSA
Alma materHarvard University
Scientific career
FieldsMalacology
InstitutionsMuseum of Comparative Zoology

Ruth Dixon Turner (1914 – April 30, 2000) was a pioneering U.S. marine biologist and malacologist who became 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]

References

  1. ^ "Ruth Dixon Turner, professor of biology, dies". Harvard Gazette. 2000-05-04. Retrieved 2017-10-13.
  2. ^ "Ruth D. Turner; Professor Was Expert on Shipworms". Los Angeles Times. 2000-05-10. ISSN 0458-3035. Retrieved 2017-10-13.
  3. ^ "Ruth Turner". Retrieved 2009-10-16.
  4. ^ "Bibliography of Turner's and Clench's contributions to lists of new mollusk species". Retrieved 2009-10-16.
  5. ^ Distel, Daniel L.; Morrill, Wendy; MacLaren-Toussaint, Noelle; Franks, Dianna; Waterbury, John (November 2002). "Teredinibacter turnerae gen. nov., sp. nov., a dinitrogen-fixing, cellulolytic, endosymbiotic gamma-proteobacterium isolated from the gills of wood-boring molluscs (Bivalvia: Teredinidae)". International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology. 52 (Pt 6): 2261–2269. doi:10.1099/00207713-52-6-2261. ISSN 1466-5026. PMID 12508896.
  6. ^ Roeselers, Guus; Newton, Irene L. G.; Woyke, Tanja; Auchtung, Thomas A.; Dilly, Geoffrey F.; Dutton, Rachel J.; Fisher, Meredith C.; Fontanez, Kristina M.; Lau, Evan (2010-10-31). "Complete genome sequence of Candidatus Ruthia magnifica". Standards in Genomic Sciences. 3 (2): 163. doi:10.4056/sigs.1103048. ISSN 1944-3277.