Richard Rathbun

When he offered it to the Buffalo Society of Natural History, they decided to appoint him curator, and this marked the beginning of Richard's scientific career.

[1] In 1880, he became curator of marine invertebrates at the United States National Museum in Washington, D.C. On October 6, 1880, he married Lena Augusta Hume in Eastport, Maine.

[3] Around 1898, Rathbun, in his position as assistant secretary to the Smithsonian Institution, received a letter from the then-unknown Wilbur Wright requesting information.

[4] Orville Wright later stated that this large package from the Smithsonian enabled him and his brother to solve a problem of balance that had caused most previous attempts at heavier-than-air flight to fail.

[1] Richard Rathbun was honored for his services to science by David Starr Jordan and Barton Warren Evermann in 1896 when they named the ronquil genus Rathbunella.

Wilbur Wright sought information on aerodynamics from Rathbun.