Helena Curtis (–2005)

[excerpt from The Villager online obituary]
Her first book, The Viruses, published in 1965 by Natural History Press, was followed in 1968 by The Marvelous Animals. In 1966, she was signed to a contract for a college biology textbook by Worth Publishers. The idea of a textbook written not by an academic, but by a professional science writer, in consultation with biology experts, was at that time revolutionary and greeted with skepticism. However, when Curtis's Biology was published in 1968, it received a laudatory review in Scientific American by Nobel Laureate Salvador Luria. Through five editions in English it has sold 1.3 million copies. A shorter book, Invitation to Biology, has sold 600,000 copies. Both books have enjoyed success in Spanish and Italian editions, with more than 1 million of the books sold in Italian. On the later editions of both books, she was joined by N. Sue Barnes as co-author. Curtis also co-authored Biology of Plants.

A graduate of Bryn Mawr College, Curtis came to New York to pursue a career in science writing. She held a master's degree in the subject from Columbia University, which she earned while working as a freelance writer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Subsequently, she worked as a writer for The Rockefeller Institute (now Rockefeller University) and for the New York NYU-Bellevue Medical Center.

In recognition of her contribution to biology education, Curtis was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1988, and was a longtime member of the National Association of Science Writers. She was also, for some 35 years, an active member of the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons.