All in the Name of Spineless Science Quiz

Answer: Alexander von Humboldt

There are dozens of creatures named after Humboldt. These range from a tiny species of yeast, Pichia humboldtii, right up to the "Red Devil" Humboldt's squid, Dosidicus gigas, which can be almost six feet long and weigh 100lbs.
Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach was a German surgeon in the nineteenth century. He is remembered for his pioneering work on various facial surgeries, and he was the first surgeon to operate successfully on a childhood squint.
Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop was the German foreign minister during World War II. He was tried for war crimes at Nuremburg in 1946, and executed later that year.
William Baffin was the English navigator who explored around the Canadian coast in the early seventeenth century, searching for the fabled North West Passage. Baffin Island and Bay are named after him.

Answer: Odoardo Beccari

Acanthopelma beccarii is the tarantula species named for Beccari. Also named for him are several plants including the Bornean orchid Bulbophyllum beccarii, which is one of the largest orchids in the world.
The other three options were all Italian botanists too, and Allioni does have some species of plants named after him. He lived a century before Beccari.

Answer: William Healey Dall

Dall's extensive collection of recent and fossilised molluscs and echinoderms was bequeathed to Harvard when he died in 1927. Molluscs named for him include Dallina, Notoplax dalli, and Hanleya dalli.
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz was a Swiss doctor of medicine and botanist, who took up the study of icthyology under the tutelage of Alexander von Humboldt.
Jared Potter Kirtland was also a malacologist and naturalist, and has a species of snake and a species of warbler named after him.
Charles Melville Scammon was the captain of the ship Nightingale, on which Dall made his first expedition to explore Alaska. Scammon Bay in Alaska is named for him.

Answer: Spencer Fullerton Baird

Among other things, the Tanner crab species Chionoecetes bairdi is named after Baird.
John James Audubon was a famous ornithologist.
George Brown Goode was the author who compiled the authoritative bibliography of works pulished by Baird, and Thomas Mayo Brewer was one of Baird's co-authors on his definitive work "History of North American Birds", published first between 1875 and 1884.

Answer: Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

The honeybee named for him is called Apis mellifera lamarckii, and the Bluefire jellyfish has the scientific name Cyanea lamarckii.
Alphonse Milne-Edwards was a doctor of medicine and carcinologist.
Pierre Jean George Cabanis was a physiologist.
Auguste Ambroise Tardieu was a forensic scientist in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Answer: William Green Binney

The scientific name for the blue glass snail is Nesovitrea binneyana.
Augustus Addison Gould was the co-author of "The Terrestrial Air-Breathing Mollusks of the United States" first with Amos Binney, then with William. Volume 4 of this was published in 1859, and Volume 5 was published in 1878.
George Clapp and Leo Hertlein were both American malacologists.

Answer: Charles Thorpe Hanley

His full name was Sylvanus Charles Thorpe Hanley, and he lived from 1819-1899. Several of the specimens in his magnificent collection are the only extant examples of extinct species, and they are immensely important to scientists.
William Harper Pease was an American conchologist who voyaged to Hawaii in the 1840s. Several species were named after him, including the sea slug Philinopsis pease.
Henry Brougham Guppy was a botanist who classified many species of plants indigenous to the South Pacific, and in particular the Solomon Islands.
William Theobald Junior cowrote "Conchologia Indica: llustrations of the Land and Freshwater Shells of British India", first published in 1876, with Hanley.

Answer: Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden

The snail in question, Oreohelix haydeni, was so named in 1869. The town of Hayden, Colorado in the Yampa valley is also named after him .
William Henry Jackson was a photographer who accompanied Hayden on his geological surveys. His pictures were instrumental in bolstering Hayden's arguments to Congress in favour of establishing Yellowstone National Park.
Allan David Wilson was the expedition cartographer, and also one of the founders of the bank which would eventually become the Bank of America.
Fielding Bradford Meek was a paleontologist who accompanied Hayden on an expedition to Dakota in 1853.

Answer: Louis-Marie Aubert du Petit-Thouars

Louis-Marie Aubert du Petit-Thouars published several definitive books detailing the flora of Madagascar and the neighbouring Bourbon islands. The slate pencil urchin has the scientific name Eucidaris thouarsii, and the corals, indigenous to Antarctic waters, are called Flabellum thouarsii.
Jean-Baptiste Édouard Bornet was a French naturalist best remembered for his studies of red algae.
Louis Augustin Guillaume Bosc was a doctor of medicine, and also wrote on the subject of agronomy.
Pierre Marie Auguste Broussonet was an eighteenth century Professor of Botany at Montpellier university in France.

Answer: Joseph Banks

The scientific name of the common clubhook squid is Onychoteuthis banksii. Banks was elected to the Presidency of the Royal Society in 1778, and made a Baronet three years later. He was an advisor to King George III of England, and by 1797 was the head of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew.
The other three options were all Presidents of the Royal Society at one time or another. Other notable Presidents of the Society include Sir Isaac Newton and Humphrey Davy.