Mansueti, Romeo, 1923-1963.

Natural scientist whose most significant accomplishments were in the fields of herpetology and ichthyology.

Mansueti was the Senior Fishery Biologist at the University of Maryland's Natural Resources Institute (later the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory) and a research professor at the University of Maryland. He also collected rare books in the natural sciences and founded and edited the journal Chesapeake Science.

Romeo Mansueti was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on May 18, 1923, and moved to Baltimore County, Maryland, at an early age. Due to his participation in World War II he did not receive his B.S. until 1948, and his M.S. in 1950, both from the University of Maryland. In 1954 Mansueti received an $8000 grant from the National Science Foundation for his research, which resulted in his doctoral dissertation on the white perch and a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University in 1957.

From 1948 to 1950 Mansueti worked as zoological assistant at the University of Maryland. In 1950 he became Senior Fishery Biologist at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory of the Maryland Department of Research and Education. In 1962 he was promoted to the position of research professor at the University of Maryland.

Mansueti served as curator at the Natural History Society of Maryland between 1939 and 1955, and as curator of its museum from 1946 to 1950. In 1950 he was a science aide at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

Mansueti also served as ichthyological editor of the scientific journal Copeia between 1959 and 1963. And beginning in 1962 and until his death, he was managing editor of the Chesapeake Science journal. In addition, Mansueti was a member of numerous scientific societies, including the Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, the British Ecological Society, and the Marine Biologists Association.

Having developed an early interest in natural sciences, Mansueti had written two books by 1946 on reptiles and amphibians in Baltimore County, and on herpetology in Calvert County. In addition to the grant received in 1954, Mansueti received a second grant of $20,000 in 1960 from the Natural Science Foundation to study the early development stages of commercially important fish. His main areas of interest were fish migration, bionomics of freshwater and estuarine fish populations, and the taxonomy and ecology of fish eggs, larvae and young.

Romeo Mansueti died in June 1963 during open-heart surgery. Posthumously, his wife Alice, a scientific illustrator, and biologist Jerry D. Hardy assembled Mansueti's remaining research notes on 600 species of fish, with support of a grant received in 1964, and published a five-volume atlas on the development of fishes of the Chesapeake Bay Region.