Emilie Snethlage

Henriette Mathilde Maria Elisabeth Emilie Snethlage ( born April 13, 1868 in Kraatz, Brandenburg, † November 25, 1929 in Porto Velho, Brazil) was a German ornithologist.

Maria Emilie Snethlage was the daughter of the pastor Emil Snethlage in Kraatz at Gransee. She was privately educated in her father's house. 1900, she began her studies at the University of Freiburg in natural history and in 1904 she wrote her doctoral thesis entitled On the question of muscle attachment and muscle in arthropods. On the recommendation of Anton Reichenow she moved to Brazil in 1905 and became an assistant of Emil Goeldi. From 1914 to 1922 she was the director of the Museu Goeldi Paraense Emilio. Maria Emilie Snethlage is one of the most prominent ornithologists of Brazil. Between 1905 and 1929, she described several species of birds for the first time scientifically. These include the Goeldiameisenvogel ( Myrmeciza goeldii ), the Iheringameisenschlüpfer ( Myrmotherula iheringi ), the yellow stripe panties ants ( Myrmotherula sclateri ) and the Gelbbürzel Foliage tyrant ( Phyloscartes roquettei ). Along with her nephew, the ethnologist Dr. Emil Heinrich Snethlage, she explored in the 1920s, the Brazilian avifauna. In 1929 she died of a heart defect.