Olga Hartman (May 17, 1900 – January 5, 1974) was an American invertebrate zoologist and polychaetologist. She was a student of S. F. Light at the University of California, Berkeley, and later a staff researcher at the Allan Hancock Foundation and professor of biology at the University of Southern California.
Active from the 1930s to the 1970s, Hartman specialized in Polychaeta, a class of marine annelid worms, and was known for her work as a cataloger and as a polychaete systematist. She is considered one of the top three most prolific authors in her field, having described 473 polychaete species during her lifetime.
Early life
Olga Hartman was born on May 17, 1900, in Waterloo, Illinois.Fauchald, Kristian; Reish, Donald J. (1977). "Biography and bibliography of Dr. Olga Hartman". In Donald J. Reish, & Kristian Fauchald (eds.). Essays on Polychaetous Annelids: In Memory of Dr. Olga Hartman. The Allan Hancock Foundation, University of Southern California. pp. 1–23. . She attended Waterloo High School (1918), where she was the captain of the girls' athletics team, and on the editorial staff for Periscope, her high school yearbook, where she wrote about tennis. Her senior quote was a poem about having a variety of interests and skills.
After high school, Hartman did her undergraduate work at the University of Illinois College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (AB, 1926).University of Illinois. (June 14, 1926). The Fifty-fifth Commencement. p. 6. Upon graduation, she began teaching at a private school, but the school went bankrupt after several years.
University of California, Berkeley
Hartman matriculated at the University of California, Berkeley, and began her graduate work. In 1933, she attended summer classes and field trips on invertebrate zoology held by Professor S. F. Light at Moss Beach, just north of Half Moon Bay. Here, she first began studying polychaetes, working long hours with the other students, starting before sunrise in the reefs and tide pool habitat. After sunset, the students would often work until midnight indoors in the laboratory and in taxonomy classes held in Charley Nye's motel and restaurant. John L. Mohr, Hartman's colleague and Light's former pupil, notes that Hartman was one of the oldest students in the class at Moss Beach, but also the most nimble on the slippery, algae-covered rocks. While most of the students would fall and bruise themselves, Hartman was one of the few who did not. "...Olga cavorted over them like a gazelle, leaping across channels and up and down the face of boulders covered with glistening algae, always searching for polychaetes, new and old."
She completed her master's thesis on the Revision of the California species of polychaetous annelids of the family Spionidae (MA, 1933),Hartman, Olga (1933). "Revision of the California species of polychaetous annelids of the family Spionidae". M.A. University of California. . and her doctoral dissertation, under the supervision of Light, on the Polychaetous annelids of the littoral zone of California (PhD, 1936).Hartman, Olga (1936). "Polychaetous annelids of the littoral zone of California". Ph. D. University of California. . Hartman also collaborated with Light on a paper that was later published in 1937.Light, S. F.; Hartman, Olga. (1937). "A review of the genera Clausidium Kossman and Hemicyclops Boeck (Copepoda, Cyclopoida), with the description of a new species from the Northeast Pacific". University of California Publications in Zoology. 41 (14): 173–188. .
Just a few years later, S. F. Light would famously publish the Laboratory and Field Text in Invertebrate Zoology (1941), a textbook and field guide for his Berkeley students. The book would later become The Light and Smith Manual, which is still in use today. The original 1941 textbook gives special credit to only two people, Olga Hartman and Avery Grant Test. In the preface to the original edition, Light thanks Hartman for "contributing materially to this volume" and for "clarifying the classification of a group important in our fauna". Light goes on to specify the nature of Hartman's contributions, writing, "Dr. Hartman has devoted herself to that enormous, everywhere present, and extremely difficult group, the polychaeite annelids". Light then comments on how Hartman contributed to the manual "as student in the course, as teaching assistant, and as specialist". The lesson plan in the 1941 edition asks the students to refer to Hartman's thesis in the laboratory exercise dedicated to identifying Polychaeta.Light, Sol Felty (1941). Laboratory and Field Text in Invertebrate Zoology. Associated Students Store. University of California, Berkeley, Calif. .
Polychaete taxonomy and systematics
After 1936, Hartman traveled around the world collecting specimens and spent a brief period working at different research institutions. She spent several months as a research zoologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1937. Hartman received a Sarah Berliner Research Fellowship grant in 1939, allowing her to travel to study the annelid collections in Europe and the U.S. in preparation for a monograph on the subject.Hartman, Olga (September 1983). "Travels with Olga" . SCAMIT Newsletter. Southern California Association of Marine Invertebrate Taxonomists. 2 (6): 3. From June 1939 to May 1940, she visited and analyzed the collections at museums around the world, beginning with the Natural History Museum, London, followed by the Swedish Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of Natural History, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Peabody Museum of Natural History.Hartman, Olga (December 1983)[May–June 1939]. "Travels with Olga" . SCAMIT Newsletter. Southern California Association of Marine Invertebrate Taxonomists. 2 (9): 2–3.
In the summer of 1940, she worked at the U.S. Fisheries Biological Laboratory, Pivers Island, Beaufort, North Carolina, under director Herbert F. Prytherch. In her report on her work at Beaufort, The Marine Annelids of North Carolina (1945), Hartman describes 104 species of polychaetous annelids (the majority of which she collected), proposes new genera, new species, and revisions to known species, documents associations and commensalism, and includes detailed lists and notes about their habitat and range on the East Coast of the United States.Hartman, Olga. (1945). The Marine Annelids of North Carolina. Duke University Marine Station Bulletin. 2: 1–54. . Moment, Gairdner (1945). "The Marine Annelids of North Carolina by Olga Hartmann" . The Quarterly Review of Biology. University of Chicago Press. 20 (4): 388. . WoRMS Editorial Board (2023). WoRMS source details . World Register of Marine Species. Retrieved November 14, 2023. . Naturalist Harry C. Yeatman recalls that Hartman once told director Prytherch "that her work on taxonomy... of annelids was 'pure science' and had no practical value to mankind. 'There is no such thing as pure science,' [replied Prytherch].... 'Let's wait and see.' A year later... Hartmann was called upon to identify some annelids found burrowing into oyster shells and weakening them".Davis, Latham; Bratton, John (March 1978). "Pure Science: Modern Misnomer". The Sewanee News. Sewanee: The University of the South. 44 (1): 4. . . She identified the culprit, a threat to oyster beds in Milford Harbor, Connecticut, as Polydora websteri, giving it a new name and description to differentiate it from P. caeca and P. ciliata. Hartman's description and morphological illustrations helped contribute to an experiment testing whether the worms increased mortality in infected oysters.Loosanoff, V. L.; Engle, J. B. (1943). "Polydora in Oysters Suspended in the Water" . Biological Bulletin. Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole. 85 (1): 69–78.
In 1966, Hartman published a comprehensive catalog of polychaetes in the Hawaii region based partly on data from historic expeditions in the early 20th century. These records were later discussed and expanded by Dale Straughan, Peter J. Vine, and Julie H. Bailey-Brock.Bailey-Brock, July H. (1976). "Habitats of Tubicolous Polychaetes from the Hawaiian Islands and Johnston Atoll I". Pacific Science. 30 (1): 69–81. Hartman, Olga (1966). "Polychaetous Annelids of the Hawaiian Islands". Occas. Pap. Bernice P. Bishop Mus. 23 (11): 163–252.
Allan Hancock Foundation
Hartman moved to Los Angeles in 1940, and with a recommendation from Light, began working as a research associate for the Allan Hancock Foundation (AHF) at the University of Southern California (USC). She began by studying the collections of AHF expeditions of 1932–1937, with samples taken from the western coast of Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Galápagos Islands, publishing her work in volumes 7, 10, and 15 of the Allan Hancock Expeditions reports from 1939 until 1957. In the early 1950s, the AHF research vessel Velero IV switched from dredging in deeper waters, which limited collections to only larger species, to using bottom samplers to collect biological samples, giving Hartman new species of worms to analyze.
Expedition engineer Alex Campbell modified Peterson grab samplers (also known as the "Campbell grab"), allowing researchers to capture larger sample sizes. The collections taken from these expeditions in the 1950s, including the new techniques for sampling and the use of finer screens to filter samples, produced more new species than ever before to study. Hartman published her quantitative study of these collections beginning in volume 19. The results were influential for others engaged in the same research elsewhere and the sheer number of samples collected raised the status of the Polychaetes to that of a "dominant group of macroscopic benthic animals".Hartman, Olga. (1955). "Quantitative survey of the benthos of San Pedro Basin, southern California". Part I. Preliminary results. Allan Hancock Pacific Expeditions. 19 (1): 1–185. Elliott, J. M.; Tullet, P. A. (1978). "A Bibliography of Samplers for Benthic Invertebrates". Freshwater Biological Association. Occasional Publication No. 4.
American zoologist Marvalee Wake was at USC at the time and remembers that while Hartman was still a research associate, Ruth B. Weg was the only woman at USC who was a biology faculty member. "It was not a good time", Wake recalls. "There were few women on science faculties in the early 1960s".Parenti, Lynne R.; Wake, Marvalee H. (2016). "Evolution of the Role of Women in the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists". Copeia. 104 (2): 599. . Eventually, Hartman was made associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at USC in 1961. She was named university researcher of the year in 1966, an award now called the USC Associates Award for Creativity in Research and Scholarship, "the highest honors the university can bestow on its members for their distinguished achievements"."Associates Award for Creativity in Research and Scholarship: 1966 – Olga Hartman, Biological Sciences" . Research Initiatives and Infrastructure. University of Southern California. Retrieved November 12, 2023. She was the first woman to receive the award as a member of the faculty of the university. Hartman became a professor in 1967 and professor emeritus in 1969.