To Be A Modern 19th-Century Lady Marine Biologist like Jeanne Villepreux-Power

I've got a thing for 19th-century woman in science, malacologist Jeanne Villepreux-Power and it's not because she has good hair and wears a dress with a fetching mid-back bow (above, in a poster in which there is a paper nautilus over her head as if she's dreaming of it).

Observations et expériences physiques sur plusieurs animaux marins et terrestres, 1839,
by Jeanne Villepreux-Power

It's because she was pure ocean awesomeness and I'm trying to be a modern 19th-century lady marine #scicomm-er, emulating Jeanne by writing for the ocean conservancy organization Azula, and my people are Francophiles -- my parents lived in Claremont-Ferrand before I was born -- and my interests are salty and marine and always have been. I'm terrestrial only by having no other choice.

[Here's the one in which I write that coconut crabs might have eaten kittens, birds... and Amelia Earhart.]

Via Mental Floss: "Without a 19th century seamstress named Jeanne Villepreux-Power, there might be no fish tanks. Villepreux-Power, who was one of the foremost cephalopod researchers of her era, invented the modern aquarium.

The fish on the left looks like it's smiling, n'est-ce pas? in this image from Shirley Hibberd’s The Book of the Aquarium and Water Cabinet.

"She ditched embroidery for scientific pursuits, as author Helen Scales describes in her book on seashells, Spirals in Time. Villepreux-Power went on to observe tool use in octopi and discover the way Argonauta argo, the paper nautilus, secretes its own shell."