Buchsbaum, Ralph, 1907-2002

Ralph Morris Buchsbaum (January 2, 1907 – February 11, 2002) was an American zoologist, invertebrate biologist, and ecologist. His book Animals Without Backbones, first published in 1938, was the first textbook in biology to be reviewed by Time and featured in Life. It has gone through several revisions and is still in print, and has been widely used as a textbook. It was still being used as of 2013. Due to his 1938 book, Buchsbaum became known as a popularizer of science. In 1952 he founded the Boxwood Press, which published his own and others' science books. He also made a series of 29 educational films on biology for the Encyclopædia Britannica, and visited Thailand, Ecuador, Ghana, and India, where he helped develop educational curricula in biology.