Lisa-ann Gershwin – Jellyfish

Lisa-Ann Gershwin is a renowned marine biologist who has made significant contributions to the study of jellyfish. She was born in Palm Springs, California, and raised in the town of Valley of Enchantment in the mountains outside Los Angeles. Gershwin received a Bachelor of Science with Honours in Marine Biology from James Cook University in 1987, and a Ph.D. from the University of Queensland in 2005.

Gershwin is recognized as a leading expert on jellyfish taxonomy, ecology, and evolution. She has discovered over 200 new species of jellyfish (mostly jellyfish, plus one dolphin) and has also described the life cycles of several species. In addition to her scientific research, Gershwin is a frequent public speaker and has written several popular books about jellyfish, including “Stung!: On Jellyfish Blooms and the Future of the Ocean” and “Jellyfish: A Natural History.”

Gershwin has received numerous awards and recognition for her work, including the 2016 Australian Academy of Science Nancy Millis Medal for Women in Science, and the 2019 Banksia Award for Science and Research. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Victoria and the Linnean Society of New South Wales. Gershwin is also an advocate for environmental conservation and has spoken out about the impacts of climate change and human activities on the ocean and its ecosystems.

She provides independent advice related to jellyfish worldwide to the media, online, and via The Jellyfish App. Lisa is on the Autism Spectrum and battles depression. She is highly functional and successful. Lisa worked as a research scientist at The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)^[1] for more than seven years and was the head of science at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston^[2]. She also spent 18 months living in Tasmania’s homeless shelter system and now owns her own home.

Gershwin was one of the co-describers of the unusual jellyfish Bazinga rieki, which is the sole member of the new family Bazingidae and partly named for the colloquialism uttered by Dr. Sheldon Cooper in the TV program The Big Bang Theory. In early 2014, a giant “snotty” jellyfish some 5 feet in diameter was discovered at a beach in Howden, south of Hobart. Studied by Gershwin currently, it is due to be described in a future paper.

Dr. Lisa-ann Gershwin is one of the world’s foremost authorities on jellyfish identification, classification, ecology, and safety. Her field research has taken her all over the planet, and she works in collaboration with universities, museums, art galleries, and other scholarly bodies including the Smithsonian Institution, Harvard University, the National Academy of Sciences, UNESCO, and the World Health Organization.