Norman I. Platnick Scientist

Norman I. Platnick (born 1951 in Bluefield, West Virginia) is an American arachnologist. He is a Professor Emeritus of the Richard Gilder Graduate School and Peter J. Solomon Family Curator Emeritus of the invertebrate zoology department of the American Museum of Natural History. A 1973 Ph.D. recipient at Harvard University, Platnick has described thousands of species of spiders in various locales around the world, including the white-tailed spiders of the genus Lampona in Australia. Until 2014 he was also the maintainer of the World Spider Catalog, a website formerly hosted by the AMNH which tracks the arachnology literature, and attempts to maintain a comprehensive list, sorted taxonomically, of every species of spider which has been formally described. In 2007 he received the Bonnet award (see Pierre Bonnet) of the International Society of Arachnology in recognition for his work on the catalog.Platnick is recognized as a world leader in spider taxonomy. Dr. Quentin D. Wheeler stated "He is the best arachnologist of his generation, has published more monographs and nomenclatural contributions than anyone, period."