Susan Finnegan
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Newnham College, Cambridge (PhD)
Susan Finnegan FLS | |
|---|---|
| Born | 20 October 1903 Belfast |
| Died | 20 June 1995 (aged 91) |
| Alma mater | Queen's University Belfast (BSc) Newnham College, Cambridge (PhD) |
| Known for | Work on Acari, spiders and scorpions |
| Spouse | Walter Campbell Smith (m. 1936; died 1988) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Zoology |
| Institutions | British Museum (Natural History) |
| Thesis | Report on the Brachyura collected by the S.Y. 'St George' on the east and west coasts of Central America (PhD) (1930) |
Susan Finnegan (20 October 1903 – 20 June 1995) was a British zoologist, who specialised in the study of mites and ticks. She was the first woman appointed to a scientific post at the Natural History Museum, London, in 1927, and was the first woman to describe and name a new genus of scorpion, Apistobuthus. Two species of scorpion have been named in her honour.[1] Finnegan was required to resign her post at the Natural History Museum in 1936, in order to marry her fellow museum worker Walter Campbell Smith.[2][3]
Finnegan was born in Belfast in October 1903. She was the youngest daughter of John Maxwell Finnegan and Susanna Wilson Dobbin. One of her brothers, Robert Thompson Finnegan, died during World War 1 near Saint Quentin in March 1918.[4] Her other brother, Thomas Finnegan, was later president of Selly Oak Colleges.[5][6]
Finnegan was educated at Victoria College, Belfast, and then at Queen's University Belfast where she graduated with a BSc. She then studied at Newnham College, Cambridge as a research student, from 1925 to 1927.[7] She completed her doctoral studies in 1928, and was awarded a PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1930, with a thesis on crabs collected by the English zoologist Cyril Crossland on the St George expedition to the South Pacific in 1924.[8] She published this work in 1931.[9]
In July 1927, Finnegan was appointed assistant keeper in the department of zoology at the Natural History Museum,[10] where she was head of the arachnids section from September 1927 to July 1936. She was the first woman appointed to a post at the Natural History Museum, London.[1] In this role, she worked extensively on the Acari (mites and ticks), as well as on spiders and scorpions. She published a number of scientific papers on these topics, including the description of three new species of mites that she found on spiders, snakes and sea lions.[11][12][13][14] She gave regular public talks on spiders and scorpions on Sunday afternoons at the Natural History Museum.[15][16]
Finnegan was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1928.[17]
