Those of us who love travelling to new places enjoy the sensation of adventure and the way it makes us open to learning new things, but few of us today risk our lives for such experiences. However, Maria Sibylla Merian was different. In 1699, this affluent 52-year old divorced mother of two left her affluent home in Holland and sailed to the remote (for her) Dutch colony of Suriname in South America.
Merian journeyed with a scientific goal in mind: to study the flora and fauna of Suriname, particularly its insects. Her upbringing had been unique: Maria’s father had died when she was very young, and her mother remarried an artist. Her stepfather encouraged Maria to paint, and so unlike most women, she had artistic instruction that helped cultivate her talents. However, Merian also had an insatiable curiosity about the natural world, and in her adult years became known for her entomological studies. She had written and illustrated two books on the subject before getting a grant that allowed her to travel to Suriname.
Oversea voyages to such far-off places were rare enough at the time, and virtually unheard of for women – let alone affluent single women – but Merian’s drive to explore the natural world was next-level. Once in Suriname, she set to work with her scientific illustrations.
Merian’s observations established that insects go through a series of metamorphosis — it had been thought by many that bugs had arisen from mud or non-life. She also was one of the first to emphasize ecology in her paintings, placing the spiders and butterflies of her research actually on the plants they inhabited. Her previous work on butterflies in Holland had also taken an ecological interest. Scientists of the day such as the famous Karl Linnaeus (the person who developed modern taxonomy) used and cited Merian in his own work.
Merian’s work was assisted by the Indigenous and African people who were enslaved in Suriname, who brought Maria specimens and shared knowledge of their medicinal properties.
Although Merian’s reputation fell into obscurity for a few centuries after her death, she is now given credit as “the mother of entomology”.
Source(s): _The Conversation_, “Hidden women of history: Maria Sibylla Merian, 17th-century entomologist and scientific adventurer”, Feb 20, 2019, Tanya Latty.
