HYMAN, LIBBIE HENRIETTA

(b. Des Monies, Iowa, 6 December 1888; d. New York City, 3 August 1969)

invertebrate zoology.

Hyman was the third of four children born to Joseph Hyman and Sabina Neumann Hyman, who were recent Jewish immigrants. As the only daughter, Libbie was expected to do much of the housework and felt her early years were “devoid of affection and consideration.” Although she received no encouragement from her family, she found pleasure in schoolwork and was always at the top of her class. Her fascination with the natural world began with a love for wildflowers, which she hunted in the woods and then meticulously categorized according to the scientific classifications in a botany text.

After graduating from high school in 1905, Hyman worked in a factory, gluing labels on cereal boxes. A chance meeting with her high school German teacher (shocked to find her prize student so occupied) led to a scholarship to the University of Chicago. In 1906 she began a course of study to major in botany, but the anti-Semitism of a laboratory assistant caused her to switch to zoology. Hyman received her B.S. degree in 1910, then continued at Chicago under the direction of Charles Manning Child, receiving her Ph.D.in 1915. she worked as Child’s assistant from 1915until 1931.Her reswarch centered on the physiology of planarian flatworms and other lower invertebrates. Although Hyman published more than forty articles during her years with Child, she never considered this work to be outstanding and did not classify herself as a “research type”.

As a graduate student Hyman supported herself by assisting in the introductory zoology courses, and she soon realized the need for good laboratory manuals. She published A Laboratory Manual for Elementary Zoology in 1919 and A Laboratory Manual for Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy in 1922. Both books were very successful and were immediately adopted for use by many colleges. Indeed, from the time of her resignation as Child’s research assistant in 1931 to her death, Hyman never held a paid position, living entirely on the royalties from her books.

With the success of these laboratory manuals, Hyman began to contemplate writing a similar book on invertebrates to stimulate the teaching of her preferred subject. She was advised by colleagues that a more advanced textbook was needed, and planned a monograph covering the invertebrate phyla. In 1931 she left Chicago and traveled through Europe, where she visited the marine station at Naples. She returned in 1933, settling in New York City to begin writing her invertebrate treatise. She lived near the American Museum of Natural History in order to use its library, and was made an honorary research associate of the museum in 1937.She maintained this affiliation for the rest of her life.

Volume 1 of The Invertebrates, Protozoa through Ctenophora, was published in 1940. In the preface Hyman states that her intent is to “furnish a reasonably complete and modern account of the morphology, physiology, embryology and biology of the invertebrates.”She goes on to say, “It is obviously impossible for any one person to have a comprehensive first-hand knowledge of the entire range of invertebrates, and consequently a work of this kind is essentially a compilation from the literature.” Yet Hyman did much more than survey the world literature;she drew almost all of the figures herself from both live and preserved specimens and was an excellent histologist. Preparing tissue section herself. She traveled extensively to collect animals and spent many summers at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. She never had any secretarial help, typing all of the volumes on an old Underwood typewriter.

Hyman spent the rest of her life attempting to complete the McGraw-Hill series on the invertebrates. Volumes 2 (Platyhelminthes and Rhyncho-coela) and 3 (Acanthocephala, Aschelminthes, and Entoprocta) were published in 1951, volume 4 (Echinoderrnata) in 1955; volume 5 (Smaller Coe-lomate Groups) in 1959: and volume 6 (Mollusca 1) in 1967.

Hyman maintained an active research career and was considered the foremost authority on the taxonomy on North American turbellarian flatworms. She was outspoken in her belief that the identification of new species based on a single (often sexually immature) specimen was inadequate. Although she began her career by emphasizing small differences and creating new species based on them, as she continued with her work, she was “disposed to think that at least many planarian species tend to show extensive geographical variation and to exist as numerous races.”and she become an ardent taxonomic “lumper.”

Hyman never married. In 1941 she bought a house in the country in order to enjoy a large garden and daily commuted to the Museum of Natural History. She moved back to New York City in 1952 when she felt the need to spend more time on her writing. She became progressively debilitated by Parkinson’s disease and was confined to a wheelchair while working on volume 6.

Hyman belonged to many scientific societies, held office in the American Society of Zoologists and the Society of Systematic Zoology, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. She edited Systematic Zoology from 1959 to 1963. Hyman was awarded the Elliot Medal of the National Academy of Sciences in 1951, the Gold Medal of the Linnean Society of London in 1960 (only the third American to receive this award), and the American Museum of Natural History’s Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement in Science in 1969, just months before she died.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Original Works. A complete bibiography of Hyman’s works, compiled by William K. Emerson, is in Nathan W. Riser and M. Patricia Morse, eds., Biology of the Turbellaria (New York, 1974), vol. VII of the Invertebrate Zoology series.

II. Secondary Literature. A more complete biography of Hyman, written by Horace W. Stunkard, is included as a memorial preface to the above volume.

Rachel D. Fink