The Lady and the Octopus
How Jeanne Villepreux-Power Invented Aquariums and Revolutionized Marine Biology
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Jeanne Villepreux-Power was never expected to be a scientist. Born in 1794 in a French village more than 100 miles from the ocean, she pursued an improbable path that brought her to the island of Sicily. There, she took up natural history and solved the two-thousand-year-old mystery of how of the argonaut octopus gets its shell.
In an era when most research focused on dead specimens, Jeanne was determined to experiment on living animals. And to keep sea creatures alive for her studies, she had to invent a contraption to hold them—the aquarium. Her remarkable life story is told by author, marine biologist, and octopus enthusiast Danna Staaf.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Staaf pays thorough tribute to Jeanne Villepreux-Power (1794–1871), credited with inventing the aquarium while researching sea life off Sicily's coast. The French native combined a keen interest in the natural world with artistic and engineering skills—and freedoms afforded by wealth—to study sea creatures, primarily the argonaut octopus. "Jeanne's overarching question: Is the argonaut a builder or a thief?" She settled the question—builder—while helping move her field forward by creating the aquarium to study aquatic animals in their natural environment. When recorded history is lacking, Staaf offers educated suppositions and provoking questions. Highly detailed, conversational chapters feature archival material, scientific drawings, and full-color photos in a handsome layout, and numerous contextualizing sidebars cover topics ranging from the ethics of animal experimentation to the metric system. Ample back matter concludes a comprehensive portrait of a trend-bucking innovator and polymath. Ages 10–up.
