Norman Platnick, the ‘Real Spider-Man,’ Is Dead at 68 (original) (raw)
Environment|Norman Platnick, the ‘Real Spider-Man,’ Is Dead at 68
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A renowned expert on arachnids, he traveled the world to identify unknown species. He also showed that Tobey Maguire wasn’t afraid of them.
Norman Platnick, a spider expert at The Museum of Natural History, in 2012Credit...Librado Romero/The New York Times
Published April 17, 2020Updated April 23, 2020
Norman Platnick was having no luck with millipedes.
He was 16, a senior in college (yes, he started at 12) and was interested in a fellow biology student named Nancy, who was “very interested in millipedes,” he recalled.
It was 1967, and they were taking a class on arthropods and needed specimens. But, he said: “I was a lousy millipede collector. There would be nothing in my jar but spiders.”
He examined one of the spiders “for a few hours,” he said, and was able to identify it as part of the genus Cicurina. “So I said: ‘That was kind of fun. Let me try another.’ And I just never stopped.”
Dr. Platnick would become a world authority on spiders — and the husband of Nancy Stewart Price. He died on April 8 in a hospital in Philadelphia at 68. The cause was complications from a fall in his home, said his son and only immediate survivor, William Platnick.
Dr. Platnick was curator emeritus of the division of invertebrate zoology for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which holds the world’s largest spider collection. He added 158 genera and 2,023 species to the taxonomic database, and helped expand the known world of spiders to 48,000 species.
In the press, Dr. Platnick was often referred to as the real “Spider-Man,” especially when movies featuring the comic-book webslinger had their premieres. The museum would hold publicity events to promote its “Spiders Alive!” exhibition, and invite the stars who portrayed Spider-Man’s alter ego, Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire in 2007 and Andrew Garfield in 2012).
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