Suzanne Batra

Suzanne Wellington Tubby Batra (born December 15, 1937) is an American entomologist best known for her work on the classification of insect societies and for coining the term eusociality.

Batra was born in New York city where her father Roger W. Tubby was a journalist and secretary to President Truman, later serving in the United Nations as US Ambassador during the Kennedy period. At a young age she was exposed to outdoor life, natural history, fishing and hunting especially after the family moved to the Adirondacks. She graduated from Saranac Lake (New York) High School in 1956 and received a BA in zoology from Swarthmore College in 1960. She married her botany professor Lekh R. Batra and continued her studies in the University of Kansas under Charles D. Michener. She received a PhD in 1964 for studies on sociobiology of sweat bees. She had a daughter (1964) and a son (1967). She joined the US Department of Agriculture in Maryland in 1967, retiring in 1999. She continues to study bees at the Smithsonian Institution.[1]