Although the name Jeanne Villepreux-Power is little known now, the French naturalist was famous in her day for an invention that allowed people to study marine life more easily: the aquarium! Villepreux-Power started her scientific studies on the island of Sicily, and in 1832, she started investigating the paper nautilus. Popular opinion held that the nautilus took its shell from another organism, but in order to determine if this was true, she needed to be able to observe one closely. Villepreux-Power created the first glass aquarium so that she could observe the nautilus in controlled conditions, proving that it made its own shell. She went on to design two additional variants: a glass apparatus within a cage for studying shallow water creatures, and a cage-like aquarium that could be raised and lowered to different depths. For her groundbreaking work, Villepreux-Power became the first female member of the Catania Accademia, as well as over a dozen other scientific academies.

Source: amightygirl