Cynthia Anne Gust Ahearn (October 17, 1952 – August 31, 2008) was an American echinodermologist and museum specialist at the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...

. She was responsible for the curation of the Smithsonian's extensive collection of

echinoderm An echinoderm () is any animal of the phylum Echinodermata (), which includes starfish, brittle stars, sea urchins, sand dollars and sea cucumbers, as well as the sessile sea lilies or "stone lilies". While bilaterally symmetrical as ...

s. An impactful individual in the field of echinodermology, Ahearn identified nearly 300,000 echinoderm specimen lots and had a nearly complete cataloged collection for the

National Museum of Natural History The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. With 4.4 ...

Echinodermata. Ahearn was also responsible for several newsletters during her career, as well as the ''Discovery Cart'', a segment on the

Discovery Channel Discovery Channel, known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery, is an American cable channel that is best known for its ongoing reality television shows and promotion of pseudoscience. It init ...

's ''Young Scientist'' program. In 2005, Ahearn was presented with the Natural History Museum's Public Outreach Award. Ahearn even had an echinoderm named after her in 2007.

Early life

Ahearn was born in

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Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

. Ahearn studied at the

Dunbarton College of the Holy Cross Dunbarton is an alternative spelling of Dumbarton, a town in Scotland. Dunbarton may also refer to: Places Canada *Dunbarton, a community of Pickering, Ontario Scotland *Dunbartonshire, a county *Dunbartonshire (UK Parliament constituency) * Dunb ...

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In 1973, Ahearn initiated her Smithsonian career, working as a museum specialist.

Career

After two decades of working at the Smithsonian, Ahearn was the editor, writer, and assembler of the ''International Echinoderm Newsletter'' from 1993 to 2003, as well as the editor of the ''Virtual Echinoderm Newsletter''. Ahearn also cataloged nearly the entire collection of

Echinodermata An echinoderm () is any animal of the phylum Echinodermata (), which includes starfish, brittle stars, sea urchins, sand dollars and sea cucumbers, as well as the sessile sea lilies or "stone lilies". While bilaterally symmetrical as larvae, ...

for the NMNH. Ahearn initiated the ''Discovery Cart'' program on the Discovery Channel and was presented with the National History Museum's Public Outreach Award. Ahearn was also known to give tours to all generations of students. She hosted international visitors to the Smithsonian Institution from many countries, and provided her taxonomic acumen to help salient scientific institutions. Among these are

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI, acronym pronounced ) is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of marine science and engineering. Established in 1930 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, it i ...

, the

National Marine Fisheries Service The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), informally known as NOAA Fisheries, is a United States federal agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that is responsible for the ste ...

, New Zealand's

National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research or NIWA (), is a Crown Research Institute of New Zealand. Established in 1992, NIWA conducts research across a broad range of disciplines in the environmental sciences. It also maintai ...

(

Wellington Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the third-largest city in New Zealand (second largest in the North Island ...

), the

California Academy of Sciences The California Academy of Sciences is a research institute and natural history museum in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, that is among the largest List of natural history museums, museums of natural history in the world, housing over ...

(in

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), the

Museum of Comparative Zoology The Museum of Comparative Zoology (formally the Agassiz Museum of Comparative Zoology and often abbreviated to MCZ) is a zoology museum located on the grounds of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is one of three natural-history r ...

, the

Museums Victoria Museums Victoria is an organisation that includes a number of museums and related bodies in Melbourne. These include Melbourne Museum, Immigration Museum, Scienceworks, IMAX Melbourne, a research institute, the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Roy ...

(in

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, Australia).

Death

Around the time of her death, Ahearn had been doing research on shallow water, deep water, and Antarctic sea cucumbers. Ahearn was survived by her husband, John Ahearn and her daughter Tracey.

Publications

Ahearn published many noteworthy works, including:

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ahearn, Cynthia 1952 births 2008 deaths American curators American women curators Smithsonian Institution people 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers