Anna Blackburne

Anna Blackburne (1726 – 30 December 1793) was an English naturalist.

Life

Anna Blackburne was born at Orford Hall, Orford, Warrington, Lancashire, the daughter of Jane (born Ashton) and John Blackburne. Her father was a wealthy Cheshire salt dealer, who studied natural history and had famous greenhouses admired by Thomas Pennant (1726–1798).^[1]

Inspired by her father, she devoted herself to study natural history in a more systematic way. To improve her understanding of the system developed by Carl von Linné (1707–1778), she learned Latin.

She corresponded with Carl Linnaeus and Johann Reinhold Forster (1729–1798), who encouraged her to publish her entomological observations and devote herself to the museum of Oxford Hall.^[1]

She enriched the collections by insect additions in particular thanks to specimens sent to her by Peter Simon Pallas (1741–1811). Her brother Ashton, who had gone to live in the United States of America, sent her many specimens, in particular birds, which were described by Pennant. She sent Linné specimens of birds and insects which were not described in his Systema Naturae.^[1]

She died in Warrington.

Legacy

Johan Christian Fabricius (1745–1808), a pupil of Linnaeus, dedicated the beetle Geotrupes blackburnii to her in 1781. Dendroica fusca, the Blackburnian Warbler – described by Philipp Ludwig Statius Müller (1725–1776) – is also named in her honour.

References

Attribution

Catharine M. C. Haines (2001). International women in science: a biographical dictionary to 1950. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781576070901. http://books.google.com/books?id=HftdjMNDvwIC&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=Anna+Blackburne+-rigsby&source=bl&ots=cf_vEhT3kY&sig=8SGxaUl-37gJ3_CK5ljEOPK8yiQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=e5N0T7jRLImi2gWF-Kn8Dg&ved=0CEEQ6AEwBTgU#v=onepage&q=Anna%20Blackburne%20-rigsby&f=false. 

External links

•  Bettany, George Thomas (1886). "Blackburne, Anna". In Leslie Stephen. Dictionary of National Biography. 5. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 121. 
• Wystrach, V. P. "Anna Blackburne (1726–1793) — a neglected patroness of natural history". JSBNH 8 (2): 148–168 (May 1977).
• "Ashton Blackburn and American Onithology". Ornithological Research Archive. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v092n03/p0607-p0610.html. Retrieved March 30, 2012.