Zarui Muradian-Ciamician at 80 years!

Travaux du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle “Grigore Antipa” 62 (1): 161–166 (2019) doi: 10.3897/travaux.62.e38487 ANNIVERSARY Zarui Muradian-Ciamician at 80 years! Iorgu Petrescu1 1 “Grigore Antipa” National Museum of Natural History, 1 Şos. Kiseleff, 011341 Bucharest 1, Romania Corresponding author: Iorgu Petrescu () Received 27 February 2019 | Accepted 1 June 2019 | Published 31 July 2019 Citation: Petrescu I (2019) Zarui Muradian-Ciamician at 80 years!. Travaux du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle “Grigore Antipa” 62(1): 161–166. https://doi.org/10.3897/travaux.62.e38487 Former specialist in Crustacea from „Grigore Antipa” National Museum of Natural History, Mihai Băcescu’s disciple, Zarui Muradian-Ciamician reached 80 years. She was born on January 22, 1939, in Constanţa, in an Armenian family, her parents being Harutiun and Ana Muradian. Zarui followed the primary and high school in her hometown, between 1945 and 1955. In 1958, she entered to the Sanitary Technical School from Constanţa that she graduated in 1961. In the same year, she joined the Unified Adult Hospital from Cernavodă as a medical assistant, speciality obstetrics-gynaecology, where she worked up to spring of 1964, when she moved to the similar hospital from Constanţa. Copyright Petrescu. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. 162 Petrescu Also, in 1964, she married Aureliu Constantinescu, veterinarian, from whom she will separate in 1972. Zarui Muradian will interrupt her activity for entering to the Faculty of Biology from Bucharest in 1965, faculty that she graduated in 1970 with diploma of merit. During the faculty she was interested in parasitology, working in the laboratory of Conf. Dr. Elena Chiriac. During that period, she participated to a scientific meeting on environment protection in Czechoslovakia. After graduation, she was assigned to high school, but this working position was occupied. So, she came to the „Grigore Antipa” Museum of Natural History of Bucharest on December 28, 1970, first as a guide, and from 1974, as a curator in the Department of Invertebrates. In 1975, she was accepted for doctoral degree, under Academician Mihai Băcescu’s keen and highly severe observation, doctoral degree that she didn’t succeed to get up to the moment of her departure from the museum. The time was too short… She had the chance to be firstly remarked by Mihai Băcescu and that’s why her entire activity from the museum was dedicated to the study of Cumacea. She published together with the master 13 papers where they described six genera, 28 species and three new subspecies to sciences, in scientific journals from Romania and abroad (three papers were released in France). She published alone four papers in which she described two subgenera and four new species to sciences. Her last paper appeared in 1980 when she left the museum. Her papers (alone or in collaboration) keep going to remain exemplary works, with an illustration that, for cumacean domain, are probably the best scientific drawings ever made for cumaceans. She was included in the collective who drafted the manuscript for „The Romanian Illustrated fauna”, writing the chapter on Cumacea, book which remained unpublished. Other achievement connected with the name of Zarui Muradian, that will remain over time, is the type collection (other than insects) of the „Grigore Antipa” National Museum of Natural History. With an exemplary devotion, but also with exemplary qualities of a collection curator, with tremendous power of work, she succeeded in to cataloguing the collections of Crustacea (copepods, ostracods, cumaceans, mysidaceans, tanaidaceans, isopods), and others, molluscs, worms and fishes, between 1978 and 1980. Those who followed her, had to fully admire her work. This collection benefits, due to her work, of a first orderly, impeccable register. In 1980, before leaving the museum and the country, she remarried Nubar Ciamician, to whom she left for the United States of America. She hoped to get a job as a specialist in crustaceans in a museum, but without success. She continued her vocation she had in Romania, that of a medical assistant, working up to her retiring in a hospital, as a physician. In 1992 and 1994, two papers were published, in collaboration, on virology. In 1994, in „J. F. Kennedy” Airport of Zarui Muradian-Ciamician at 80 years! 163 U. S. A. she had the chance to briefly met several former colleagues from the museum, returned from a scientific expedition in Brazil. She remained, for all who knew her, directly or indirectly, by the results of her work, an example of professionalism, of correctness, even if for realizing what she did she had to face also the envy and trivia of colleagues. But with perseverance, even stubbornness, she succeeded to overpass all of these problems and did what she did, the only things that really remain after each of us. Many unfinished projects remained after her, using many of the collections of cumaceans that she studied; she didn’t succeed to harness all of them, she couldn’t publish all the new species that she discovered. Only the labels found inside the vials with material and her notes on her workbook remained, as witnesses of that work totally out of the ordinary. The undersigned, the one who followed her in the museum after seven years in domain of Cumacea and of type collection will remain eternally grateful. References Băcescu M, Muradian Z (1972a) Cumella africana n. sp. and Makrokylindrus (Coalescuma) reyssi n. sp. (Cumacea, Crustacea), from the saharian bottom of the Atlantic. Revue Roumaine de Biologie. Série Zoologie 17, 3: 143–151. Băcescu M, Muradian Z (1972b) Nouveles espèces de Nannastacidae (Crustacés Cumacés) dans les eaux sahariennes de l’Atlantique [New species of Nannastacidae (Cumacea: Crustacea) in the Saharan waters of the Atlantic]. Revue Travaux Institut Pêches Maritime 36 (3): 255–269. [in French] Băcescu M, Muradian Z (1972c) Trois espèces nouvelles de Procampylaspis (Cumacea) des eaux de la Mauritanie (Atlantique tropical de l'est) [Three new species of Procampylaspis (Cumacea)of the waters of Mauritania (Eastern Tropical Atlantic)]. Revue Roumaine de Biologie. Série Zoologie 17(1): 3–13. [in French] Băcescu M, Muradian Z (1973) Contribution à la connaissance des Cumacés de la Mer Rouge [Contributions to the knowledge of cumaceans of the Red Sea]. Rapport de la Commission internationale de la Mer Méditerranée 22(4): 83. [in French] Băcescu M, Muradian Z (1974a) Campylaspenis, Styloptocuma, Atlantocuma, new genera of Cumacea from the deep waters of the Atlantic. Revue Roumaine de Biologie. Série Biologie Animale 19(2): 71–78. Băcescu M, Muradian Z (1974b) Floridocuma selvakumarani gen. nov., sp. nov. and Bathycumella est-africana gen. (...truncated)