Willis John Gertsch (October 4, 1906 – December 12, 1998) was an American arachnologist.
[2] He was Curator of Arachnids at the American Museum of Natural History, and later retired to Portal, Arizona in the Chiricahua Mountains.
He was the author of hundreds of generic and specific names in a multitude of families and also the author of American Spiders, as well as editor of a later revised printing of John Henry Comstock's Spider Book.
During his tenure as Curator at the American Museum of Natural History he was the usual authority quoted when any question on spiders arose.
White before Charlotte's Web was published to inquire about a spider he observed.