Ernest Albert Lachner (3 April 1915, New Castle, Pennsylvania – 7 January 1996, Winchester, Virginia) was an American ichthyologist with an international reputation for his research on Indo-Pacific gobies and cardinalfishes.
[2] Beginning in 1949,[3] Lachner was employed for 34 years by the Smithsonian Institution as a curator of fishes at the National Museum of Natural History.
His goal was to build the research collection of preserved fishes that is housed in the division and used by scientists throughout the world for ichthyological studies.
[1]Lachner was the author or co-author of 85 scientific reports on ichthyology and related issues in museum curation.
The purpose of the cruise, which lasted from early November to mid-December in 1962, was "to evaluate the relative distribution and abundance of benthic organisms inhabiting the continental shelf and uppoer slope of the Arabian Sea.