Theodore Wells Pietsch III

Theodore Wells Pietsch III is an American systematist and evolutionary biologist especially known for his studies of anglerfishes. Pietsch has described 72 species and 14 genera of fishes and published numerous scientific papers focusing on the relationships, evolutionary history, and functional morphology of teleosts, particularly deep-sea taxa. For this body of work, Pietsch was awarded the Robert H. Gibbs Jr. Memorial Award in Systematic Ichthyology by the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists in 2005. Pietsch has spent most of his career at the University of Washington in Seattle as a professor mentoring graduate students, teaching ichthyology to undergraduates, and curating the ichthyology collections of the UW Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.