Charles Wyville Thomson was a Scottish naturalist, specializing in Zoology, mainly marine invertebrates. He has participated in several marine expeditions.His first expeditions took place around the northern coasts of Scotland, and their success has led to launching the famous worldwide expedition on HMS Challenger that he led together with a pioneer oceanographer, Sir John Murray. He is often called the ‘father of modern oceanography and Marine biology‘.

Suggested Reading: Fathers of Biology

His principal contributions to marine biology were:

• Charles Thomson has discovered more than 4,000 new marine species during his travels and research.
• Thomson was one of the leaders of the HMS Challenger expedition, during which he has plotted ocean currents and temperatures.
• Thomson has also made several other discoveries – he was the first to describe the mid- Atlantic ridge and Marianic Trench.
• Thomson was also the author of the earliest deep-sea biology textbooks – “The depths of the Sea

Eugenie Clark was a marine scientist and a shark specialist, sometimes known as a “Shark Lady”.She has been studying various marine species, but her main research interest was the biology of sharks. Eugenie had dived extensively in the Red Sea at the time when this area was virtually unexplored.

Later, she was also continually giving lectures, dismantling various myths about the sharks.

Her main contributions to marine biology are:

• • She has the first person to carry out artificial insemination in fish successfully.
  • She has extensively studied shark biology, dismantling various myths about them.
  • She has also researched shark behavior, proving, among other things, that sharks can be trained.
• She has discovered a new species – Red Sea Moses sole, that produces the chemical that scares sharks away.