Theodore Wells Pietsch III

Theodore Wells Pietsch III (born March 6, 1945) is an American systematist and evolutionary biologist especially known for his studies of anglerfishes. Pietsch has described 65 species and 12 genera of fishes and published numerous scientific papers focusing on the relationships, evolutionary history, and functional morphology of teleosts, particularly deep-sea taxa. For this body of work, Pietsch was awarded the Robert H. Gibbs Jr. Memorial Award in Systematic Ichthyology by the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists in 2005. Pietsch has spent most of his career at the University of Washington in Seattle as a professor mentoring graduate students, teaching ichthyology to undergraduates, and curating the ichthyology collections of the UW Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.

Pietsch attended John Adams High School in Indiana. After a B.A. in zoology at the University of Michigan he did a M.S. and Ph.D. in biology at the University of Southern California. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University from 1973 to 1975. Pietsch worked at the University of Washington from 1978 onwards.

Pietsch has named 65 species and 12 genera of fishes, most of them lophiiform taxa, both living and extinct, including the recently described Psychedelic Frogfish, Histiophryne psychedelica. He is recognized as an expert on the evolution, ecology, and behavior of both shallow-water anglerfishes (e.g., frogfishes) and deep-sea anglerfishes of the suborder Ceratioidei. Perhaps his most intriguing work has focused on the evolution of sexual parasitism in deep-sea anglerfishes, a reproductive strategy in which a tiny dwarf male attaches and fuses to a much larger female. With his studies of the evolutionary relationships of anglerfish species, Pietsch has determined that this reproductive mode may have evolved as many as five times within deep-sea anglerfishes.

T. W. Pietsch is the author of over 200 scientific and popular articles, including a dozen books, that focus primarily on marine ichthyology, especially the biosystematics, zoogeography, reproductive biology, and behavior of deep-sea fishes. He has also published extensively on the history of science, especially the history of ichthyology. Among the latter are works on the French comparative anatomist Georges Cuvier and his 22-volume Histoire Naturelle des Poissons (1828−1849); bookdealer, publisher, and secret agent Louis Renard and his Fishes, Crayfishes, and Crabs; the unpublished manuscripts of the French explorer-naturalist Charles Plumier; and the unpublished paintings of Indo-west Pacific marine fishes and crustaceans of Isaac Johannes Lamotius. His first novel, The Curious Death of Peter Artedi: A Mystery in the History of Science, was published by Scott & Nix, New York, in December 2010. Trees of Life: A Visual History of Evolution, Johns Hopkins University Press; and an annotated, illustrated, English translation of the first of Cuvier’s five-volume Histoire des Sciences Naturelles, depuis leur Origine jusqu’a nos Jours, Publications Scientifiques du Muséum and Bibliothèque Centrale, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris, were published in 2012.

• 1985. The manuscript materials for the Histoire Naturelle des Poissons, 1828−1849: Sources for understanding the fishes described by Cuvier and Valenciennes. Arch. Nat. Hist., 12(1): 59−108.
• with D. B. Grobecker. 1987. Frogfishes of the World: Systematics, Zoogeography, and Behavioral Ecology. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, xxii + 420 pp.
• 1995. Historical Portrait of the Progress of Ichthyology, from Its Origins to Our Own Time. Edited and annotated by T. W. Pietsch, translated from the French by A. J. Simpson. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, xxiv + 366 pp., 67 figures.
• 1995. Fishes, Crayfishes, and Crabs: Louis Renard and His Natural History of the Rarest Curiosities of the Seas of the Indies. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Vol. 1, Commentary, xxii + 214 pp., 95 figures; Vol. 2, Facsimile, 224 pp., 100 color pls.
• with W. D. Anderson, Jr. 1997. Collection Building in Ichthyology and Herpetology. Amer. Soc. Ichthy. Herp., Spec. Publ., 3, xiii + 593 pp.
• with L. B. Holthuis. 2006. Les Planches inédites de Poissons et autres Animaux marins de l’Indo-Ouest Pacifique d’Isaac Johannes Lamotius [Isaac Johannes Lamotius (1646−c. 1718) and His Paintings of Indo-Pacific Fishes and Other Marine Animals]. Christian Érard (editor), Publications Scientifiques du Muséum and Bibliothèque Centrale, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, 292 pp., 93 color pls.
• 2008. A Mermaid in the Tub: A Specimen of MvB Sirenne, a New Family of Type-Faces by Alan Greene, Inspired by Engraved Letterforms in a Rare Book. Mark van Bronkhorst and E. M. Ginger, editors, MvB Fonts, Albany, California, 36 pp.
• 2009. Oceanic Anglerfishes: Extraordinary Diversity in the Deep-sea. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, xii + 557 pp.
• 2010. The Curious Death of Peter Artedi: A Mystery in the History of Science. Scott & Nix, New York, x + 224 pp.
• 2012. Trees of Life: A Visual History of Evolution. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, xi + 358 pp.
• 2012. Cuvier’s History of the Natural Sciences: Twenty-four Lessons from Antiquity to the Renaissance [the first of Georges Cuvier's five-volume Histoire des Sciences Naturelles, depuis leur Origine jusqu'a nos Jours originally published in French in 1841]. Edited and annotated by T. W. Pietsch, translated from the French by A. J. Simpson. Publications Scientifiques du Muséum and Bibliothèque Centrale, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris, 734 pp.

• Gilbert, Carter R. (1 August 1996). "Review: Historical Portrait of the Progress of Ichthyology, from Its Origins to Our Own Time by Georges Cuvier, ed. by Theodore W. Pietsch, trans. by Abby J. Simpson". Copeia (3): 752–754. doi:10.2307/1447546. JSTOR 1447546. 
• Burr, Brooks M. (18 February 1997). "Review: Fishes, Crayfishes, and Crabs: Louis Renard and His Natural History of the Rarest Curiosities of the Seas of the Indies ed. by Theodore W. Pietsch". Copeia: 241–243. doi:10.2307/1447871. JSTOR 1447871.