Norman I. Platnick

Norman I. Platnick, born on December 30, 1951, was a distinguished American arachnologist and biological systematist, renowned for his extensive contributions to the field of spider taxonomy. At the time of his passing on April 8, 2020, he held the esteemed positions of professor emeritus at the Richard Gilder Graduate School and Peter J. Solomon Family Curator Emeritus at the invertebrate zoology department of the American Museum of Natural History.

Platnick's academic journey culminated in a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1973, after which he dedicated his career to the study of spiders, describing over one thousand eight hundred species globally. This remarkable achievement positioned him as the second most prolific spider taxonomist in history, following Eugène Simon. His expertise was further recognized through his role as the maintainer of the World Spider Catalog until 2014, a vital resource for tracking arachnological literature and species classification.

In addition to his taxonomic work, Platnick was a founding member and the fourth president of the Willi Hennig Society, contributing significantly to the field of theoretical cladistics. His influential book, coauthored with Gareth Nelson in nineteen eighty-one, titled 'Systematics and Biogeography: Cladistics and Vicariance,' remains a cornerstone in the study of evolutionary biology.

His later research focused on the goblin spiders of the Oonopidae family as part of the Planetary Biodiversity Inventory, a collaborative project aimed at cataloging and understanding the phylogeny of these unique arachnids. Platnick's legacy is honored through the naming of eight genera and over fifty species of invertebrates in his memory, a testament to his lasting impact on the field.