Canna Maria Louise Popta

Canna Maria Louise Popta (31 May 1860, Breda - 13 June 1929, Leiden) was a Dutch biologist.

Popta was one of the first women to enrol as a student at Leiden University where she studied for a degree in geology, zoology and botany, allowing her to teach in high schools. She studied for her doctorate at the University of Berne under the supervision of Eduard Fischer, her thesis was on the Hemiasci, a fungal group which was then thought to be the link between the Phycomycetes and Ascomycetes. After completing her doctorate she obtained a position at the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie in Leiden as a Lab Assistant to the curator of reptiles, amphibians and fishes. During her career at the museum she concentrated mainly on ichthyology, eventually retiring in 1928, dying the following year. She wrote over 40 scientific papers and a number of articles for encyclopedias. For example, she wrote a final compilation of the freshwater fish collected in central Borneo, describing a fish fauna of 173 species from the Kapuas and 97 species from the Mahakam. She also tried to complete and publish Bleeker's Atlas Ichthyologique des Indes Orientales néerlandaises but this was halted due to economic difficulties, the plates eventually being published in 1983 but by then the text was considered to be too out of date to be published. She seems to have had a difficult time at the museum and often appeared to be in conflict with and not highly regarded by the two directors she worked under, Jentink and E.D. van Oort, and there are some indications that she may have suffered from mental ill health. Popta never married and lived with, and cared for her sister, who was said to be disabled. Despite the supposedly difficult relationship she had with Jentink she named the cyprinid Diplocheilichthys jentinkii in his honour for making specimens available for Popta to study.

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