This week’s geek of the week is
Jeanne Villepreux-Power! Known as the “Mother of Aquariophily,”
Villepreux-Power was a French marine biologist who was the first scientist to
use aquaria to experiment with various aquatic organisms.
Villepreux-Power was a Parisian
dressmaker, famous for creating the wedding gown worn by Princess Caroline when
she married Charles-Ferdinand de Bourbon. After her marriage to James Power in
1818, Villepreux-Power moved to Sicily, where she began studying natural
history.
She focused particularly marine life
– to that end, she created three different types of aquariums. A glass aquarium
for indoor use, a submersible aquarium for undersea observations, and a larger
cage-aquarium to observe large mollusks. She performed extensive research on
the paper nautilus Argonauta argo, a cephalopod that closely resembles an octopus. She
discovered that the “shell” of the paper nautilus is produced by the organism
itself, rather than borrowed from another animal (like the hermit crab).
Villepreux-Power was the first
female member of the Catania Accademia Gioenia, and a correspondent member of the London
Zoological Society.
When
Villepreux-Power and her husband moved from Sicily to London, all of her
scientific work was lost in a shipwreck. She stopped researching, and never
published again.
Her
ground-breaking research, early crafty skills, and love for cephalopods makes Jeanne Villepreux-Power a Very Ravenclaw Geek of the Week!
Want to learn more?
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