Maria Sibylla Merian: Artist, Scientist, Adventurer

$21.95 at The Getty Museum.

Sarah B. Pomeroy and Jeyaraney Kathirithamby Science and art combine in this captivating, lushly illustrated biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717), one of the world’s first entomologists, who was also a botanist, naturalist, and celebrated artist.  In 1660, at the age of thirteen, Merian began her study of butterfly metamorphosis—years before any other scientist published an accurate description of the process. Later, she and her daughter Dorothea ventured thousands of miles from the Netherlands to…