The 52-Year-Old German Widow Who Sailed to a Dutch Colony in 1699 to Document Insect Metamorphosis and Produced One of the Founding Works of Modern Entomology
Maria Sibylla Merian, a 52-year-old Frankfurt-born artist and naturalist, sailed alone with her younger daughter to the Dutch colony of Suriname in June 1699. Over two years she documented the life cycles of approximately 90 South American insect species, ate the same food as her enslaved Indigenous and African informants, and produced the 1705 *Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium* — one of the founding works of modern entomology.
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