Maria Louisa Pike ( – 1892) was an American naturalist. Born in England, her father was Benjamin Hadley, British Commissioner to South Africa. She was private secretary to her father for several years, and employed much of her spare time in studying and making sketches of the flora of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

. She went to

Mauritius Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label=Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It incl ...

in 1870 and became acquainted with Nicolas Pike, U.S. consul, who was engaged in collecting natural history specimens for the Louis Agassiz Museum in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

. She assisted him in the classification of over 800 species of fish, of which she made many colored sketches. They married in 1875 and moved to America, where she contributed articles and illustrations to ''

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it i ...

'', ''

American Agriculturist ''American Agriculturist'' was an agricultural publication for farm, home, and garden in the United States, published in English and German editions. Its subtitle varied over time: ''for the Farm, Garden, and Household'' (1869), ''for the Househo ...

'', and '' American Garden''. She produced color illustrations of a large collection of spiders made by her husband, and also made a nearly complete set of pen-and-ink drawings of North American snakes. She was a member of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. She died in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, on March 23, 1892.

Selected works

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References

1820s births 1892 deaths American naturalists American women illustrators Natural history illustrators 19th-century American illustrators 19th-century American women artists American science writers American women science writers 19th-century American writers 19th-century American women scientists 19th-century American biologists {{US-illustrator-stub