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Class Notes

TRIBUTEWilliam Muchmore: He Set the Course of My Life
muchmoreDRAWN TO BIOLOGY: A member of the faculty since 1950, Muchmore (above) identified nearly 300 species of pseudoscorpions, including Bituberochernes jonensis Muchmore—which was named for him—drawn (below) by his student Wendy Beth Jackelow ’83. (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

I met William Muchmore when I took his vertebrate zoology class my junior year, not long before he retired. He was everything I had always imagined a professor to be: the glasses, the beard, the graying hair, the lab coat. He had a soft-spoken, humble demeanor, despite his great knowledge. The next year I was a lab teaching assistant for Professor Muchmore and I had the chance to get to know him better.

muchmore (Photo: Courtesy of Wendy Beth Jackelow ’83)

As much as I enjoyed his classes, I was not sure what I would do with a degree in biology. But I loved zoology, and I loved taking art classes. In both vertebrate and invertebrate zoology, I would draw the animals we studied for the lab notebooks. One day, after looking at my lab book, Professor Muchmore said to me, “Do you know there’s a career in medical and scientific illustration?” I had no idea such a thing existed, but I knew, the minute he said it, that this was what I was going to do with my life.

After I got my biology degree, I stayed in Rochester to enroll in the medical illustration program at RIT. I contacted Professor Muchmore to toss around some ideas for my master’s thesis. Unbeknownst to me, he was working on a checklist of terrestrial invertebrates of the Virgin Islands, and he needed someone to illustrate it. That became my master’s thesis. I knew I had hit the jackpot. It was exactly what I wanted to do, and he was exactly the kind of person I wanted to work with.

I went to his lab every week. He gave me access to everything—microscopes, specimens, books. I knew his specialty was pseudoscorpions, so out of curiosity one day, I asked him how many experts on pseudoscorpions there were in world. He said, “Two.” “Wow,” I said. “Are you in touch with the other one?” “No,” he replied. The other expert, it turned out, had passed away. That’s how humble he was; he wouldn’t say he was the foremost authority in the world.

Professor Muchmore sent me in the direction I was meant to go in, and for that, I will always be grateful to him.

—Wendy Beth Jackelow ’83, as told to Bob Marcotte

Muchmore, a professor emeritus of biology at Rochester, died in May at age 96. A member of the faculty since 1950, he was a specialist in systematic zoology, the study of the diversification of living forms. He discovered and named more than 290 species of pseudoscorpions during a research career spanning nearly four decades.

Jackelow graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology and is the founder and owner of Wendy Beth Jackelow Medical & Scientific Illustration. She worked for hospitals and a publishing company as a medical and scientific illustrator before going into business on her own.