Esther Byrnes


Esther Fussell Byrnes was an American biologist and science teacher. She was one of the first women copepodologists—scientists who study copepods. She was a fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences, as well as the American Society of Naturalists.

Life

Byrnes was born in Overbrook, Philadelphia in 1867. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a B.A. in 1891. For the next two years she then worked in their biology department as an assistant at Vassar College. She then returned to Bryn Mawr College and obtained a master's degree in 1894, followed by a doctorate in 1898, whilst working in their biology department.
She left and went to teach in New York at the Girls High School, Brooklyn until her retirement from teaching in 1932. During this time, she was a member of the New York Science Teachers Association. This was only interrupted from 1926 to 1927, when she took a year off to tutor the princesses of the Japanese royal family.
In 1940, she became director of Mount Desert Biological Laboratory, Maine.
Her research was focused on marine biology. Her work in marine biology at Bryn Mawr focused on the study of limb regeneration in amphibians as well as studying cyclops, a freshwater species of crustacean.

Works