Field Museum of Natural History (Zoology) Invertebrate Collection

Building on acquisitions since the Museum’s founding in 1894 and established in 1938, the Division of Invertebrates is in charge of all invertebrate groups except insects and other non-marine arthropods. The first curator of this Division was Fritz Haas, formerly of the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt, Germany. Haas (1938 - 1969) and his successor Alan Solem (1957 - 1990) built massive mollusk collections, particularly strong in unionid bivalves and terrestrial snails, reflecting their respective research interests. Current curator Rüdiger Bieler (1990 -) and curator emerita Janet Voight (1990 -) focus their research and collection-building on marine molluscan groups. The varied curatorial research interests, collecting efforts of collections managers (e.g., John Slapcinsky, Jochen Gerber, and Sean Keogh), acquisitions of private collections, and transfer or holdings from other institutions where they were underutilized, have resulted in one of the largest collections of its kind in the U.S..