Catherine McNeur

Mar 28, 2024 | scientificamerican.com | Katie Hafner |Catherine McNeur |Michelle Nijhuis

In this episode of Lost Women of Science Conversations, Michelle Nijhuis talks to historian Catherine McNeur about how she rediscovered the lives and work of Elizabeth Carrington Morris and Margaretta Hare Morris, two natural scientists who made significant contributions to botany and entomology, respectively, in the mid-19th century. Elizabeth collected rare plant species and sent them to institutions around the world.

Jan 23, 2024 | americanheritage.com | Edwin Grosvenor |Catherine McNeur |Wilbur E. Garrett |Elizabeth Becker

Editor's Note: Catherine McNeur is an associate professor of history at Portland State University and is the author of Taming Manhattan and Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science, in which portions of the following essay appear. Shifting and hoisting her skirts to make her way through the narrow rows of wheat with her net, knife, magnifying glass, and containers, the entomologist Margaretta Hare Morris was on a mission.

Nov 2, 2023 | airmail.news | Catherine McNeur

When I first came across their names, I had no idea who the botanist Elizabeth Carrington Morris and entomologist Margaretta Hare Morris were. I was in the middle of writing a book about urban trees when I stumbled upon the sisters’ captivating letters in the collections of male scientists. I might have continued researching trees if it weren’t for Margeretta’s words to a fellow entomologist in one of those letters.

Oct 31, 2023 | kirkusreviews.com | Catherine McNeur |David Grann |Robert Greene

A welcome addition to intellectual history that restores two gifted women to the scholarly record. Lively biography of two sisters who made substantial contributions to 19th-century natural history. Elizabeth and Margaretta Morris were sisters who, writes McNeur, “lived together, hiked together, and debated new scientific theories together.” They were hardly alone in their vocations and avocations.

Oct 31, 2023 | powells.com | Catherine McNeur

by Release Date: 11/30/2023  Upcoming EventIn Mischievous Creatures (Basic Books), historian Catherine McNeur uncovers the lives and work of Margaretta Hare Morris and Elizabeth Carrington Morris, sisters and scientists in early America. Margaretta, an entomologist, was famous among her peers and the public for her research on seventeen-year cicadas and other troublesome insects.