Victor Sterki

Sterki was born in Solothurn, Switzerland in 1846. He studied at the University of Bern and Munich University and earned his MD in 1878. Sterki practiced medicine for several years in Europe before emigrating to the US in 1883. Sterki settled in Ohio and set up his medical practice there. He eventually retired from the practice of medicine in 1900 and pursued the study of natural history full-time. His main malacological interests included the gastropod family Pupillidae and the bivalve family Sphaeriidae. Carnegie Museum of Natural History acquired his Pupillidae collection of almost 4000 lots. Later the museum acquired the Sphaeriidae collection, which numbered over 12,000 lots at the time of Sterki's death. In addition, the Mollusk Section's library benefited by the addition of Sterki's library. This library contained 275 bound and unbound monographs as well as 1500 reprints.

Sterki was an assistant in the Section of Invertebrates from 1909 to 1933. He passed away in 1933 at the age of 87. At the time of his death, Sterki was working on his monograph The Sphaeriidae of the World, a work that was never finished. The journal Sterkiana was named in his honor.