Spider Man

Yale students last week solemnly bade Godspeed to a professor, poet, zoologist, historian, philosopher and the world's foremost authority on spiders. This jack-of-all-sciences was Alexander Ivanovich ("Pete") Petrunkevitch, who after 34 indefatigable years as a Yale teacher was retiring.

"Pete's Teas," two-hour Monday-afternoon discussions of human frailty, have been a Yale institution. So was their chief attraction, white-bristled Professor Petrunkevitch. Generations of Yalemen have seen his gaunt figure trotting briskly about the campus to 13 hours of classes a day. At 68, 'Pete was just getting his second wind. No more classes--but he planned to continue his faculty-student gatherings as "Pete's Teas-Emeritus," and he announced his intention of writing a three-volume summary of what he has learned about spiders. On that subject Dr. Petrunkevitch has a great deal to say.

A fugitive from Tsarist Russia, Petrunkevitch was educated in Russia and Germany, married a U.S. girl in 1903, taught briefly at Harvard before he went to Yale. He wrote his first scientific work at about the same time that he published his first book of verse (Songs of Love and Sorrow). His first studies were of beetles and bees, concerning which he made some significant discoveries (e.g., that drones develop from unfertilized eggs). He also made revealing investigations of the digestion of cockroaches. He has written authoritatively on philosophy and the Russian Revolution, has long been president of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. But for some 40 years spiders have been his prime concern.

In his big, highceilinged, untidy laboratory at Yale's Sheffield Scientific School, Petrunkevitch has collected members of every known spider family (there are 63). He has had there at times as many as 180 live tarantulas, whose dark, hairy backs he is fond of stroking (see cut). His 30-odd works on arachnology include a description of the internal anatomy of 92 spider species, reports on spiders' circulatory systems, psychology, sex life.

Dr. Petrunkevitch regards fear of spiders as mischievous nonsense. Spiders, says he, never attack people unless hurt. He has handled hundreds of tarantulas, never been bitten. With evangelical fervor he points out that the spider is immensely useful to man; it carries no diseases, destroys many insects that do. The strong, fine strands of spider webs have been very helpful in the wartime manufacture of optical instruments and range finders. Says Pete Petrunkevitch, unmindful of Miss Muffet: "Only in civilized cities like New York and New Haven are the ladies afraid of spiders. In tropical lands the people value their presence."

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