Barbara Bedette

Barbara Audrey Bedette was born in Conneaut, Ohio, to Abraham and Margaret Bedette.{{cite web|publisher=Moose Roots|url=http://birth-records.mooseroots.com/d/b/Barbara-Bedette|title=Barbara Bedette Birth Records|accessdate=July 31, 2015}} She graduated from Bowling Green State University with a degree in geology.{{cite news|newspaper=The Washington Post|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/04/AR2006030401045.html|first=Patricia|last=Sullivan|title=Paleontologist Barbara A. Bedette; Specialized in Cenozoic Mollusks|date=March 5, 2006|accessdate=July 31, 2015}} She was a member of the Gamma Theta Upsilon honour society of geography.{{cite news|newspaper=The B-G News|publisher=Bowling Green State University|date=November 11, 1952|url=http://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2090&context=bg-news|volume=37|number=15|page=5|title=Clubs Initiate, Elect Officers|accessdate=July 31, 2015}}

Moving to Washington, DC in 1954, Bedette began to work as an assistant to paleontologists such as Harry S. Ladd and Wendell Woodring.

Bedette worked for the U.S. Geological Survey until her retirement in 1988. Her offices were in the National Museum of Natural History, where she collaborated with its scientists. She collated the Museum's vast collection and created a reference file of index cards for thousands of Cenozoic molluscs,{{cite journal|journal=Zoosystema|title=Catalog of species-group names of Recent and fossil Scaphopoda (Mollusca)|last1=Steiner|first1=G.|last2=Kabat|first2=A.R.|volume=26|number=4|year=2004|page=553|url=http://sciencepress.mnhn.fr/sites/default/files/articles/pdf/z2004n4a1.pdf}} an endeavour that proved invaluable to field researchers who could quickly ascertain if their discoveries had already been described before across the numerous journals of the discipline.

Bedette contributed to the Lexicon of Geologic Names of the United States.{{cite book|last=Keroher|first=Grace C. |title=Lexicon of Geologic Names of the United States for 1936-1960|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KssJAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA2|year=1966|publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office|page=2}} She counted the mollusc species and genera described by William Healey Dall, and calculated the percentage of species among the Pacific fauna.{{cite journal|journal=Biographical Memoirs|publisher=National Academy of Sciences|year=1958|url=http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/dall-william.pdf|first=W.P.|last=Woodring|accessdate=July 31, 2015|title=William Healey Dall 1845-1927|page=105|volume=31}}

Bedette received the Geological Survey's Scroll of Honor, and the Natural History Museum's Peer Recognition Community Award. A fossil mollusc from the Oxfordian period, Bathrotomaria bedetteae, was named posthumously in her honour.{{cite journal|journal=The Nautilus|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=esAeAQAAIAAJ&q=barbara+bedette|title= Upper Jurassic Pleurotomariidae (Gastropoda) from southwestern Madagascar|first1=M.G.|last1=Harasewych|first2=S.|last2=Kiel|year = 2007|volume=121|number=2|page=84}}

Following her retirement from the Geological Survey, Bedette continued to work at the Natural History Museum, where she compiled descriptions of over 7000 fossils and living scallops. The task was almost finished before her death.

In 1960, Bedette met Kjell Sandved who had come to the Natural History Museum to research animal behaviour. He found boxes of butterflies stored at the Museum, and saw that one of them had the letter 'F' appear naturally as a pattern on its wing. Sandved and Bedette began a photographic investigation into such alphabet patterns in the world's butterflies. They established a small business, Butterfly Alphabet, Inc.{{cite web|publisher=Butterfly Alphabet, Inc.|url=http://www.butterflyalphabet.com/story.html|title=The Story of the Butterfly Alphabet|accessdate=July 31, 2015}}{{cite book|last=Laufer|first=Peter |title=Dangerous World of Butterflies: The Startling Subculture of Criminals, Collectors, and Conservationists|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iql7BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA184|year=2010|publisher=Lyons |isbn=978-0-7627-9981-7|page=184}} The photographs Sandved took were later published in the Smithsonian Magazine in 1975,{{cite journal|journal=The Bigger Picture|publisher=Smithsonian Institution Archives|url=http://siarchives.si.edu/blog/sandved-and-his-snapshots|title=Sandved and his Snapshots|last=DesRochers|first=Samantha|date=April 4, 2013|accessdate=July 31, 2015}}

Barbara Bedette died of acute leukemia on February 23, 2006. She was interred in the Port Gibson cemetery, in Manchester, New York.{{cite web|url=http://www.newyorkroots.org/ontario/cems/manchester/portgib/PortGibcemepicsS.htm|title=Pictures of Headstones - 'S'|last=Thomas|first=Dianne|publisher=New York Roots|accessdate=July 31, 2015}}

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Category:1932 births

Category:2006 deaths

Category:American paleontologists

Category:People from Conneaut, Ohio

Category:Bowling Green State University alumni