Invertebrates - History

The first curator of this Division was Fritz Haas, formerly of the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt, Germany. Haas (1938 - 1969) and his successor Alan Solem (1957 - 1990) built massive mollusk collections, particularly strong in unionid bivalves and terrestrial snails, reflecting their respective research interests.

Current curators Rüdiger Bieler (1990 -) and Janet Voight (1990 -) focus their research and collection-building on marine molluscan groups. The varied curatorial research interests, the collecting efforts of past and present collections managers (e.g., John Slapcinsky and Jochen Gerber), and acquisitions of private collections and "orphan collections" from other institutions have built FMNH’s invertebrate collections over the past century.