Mommy of the Ants just told me about Beatrix Potter. All these years I had written her off as a merely a purveyor of cutesy animal books, but it turns out that she was actually a very skilled and respected scientific illustrator of mushrooms.
Read about her here:
http://www.eclectica.org/v9n2/mondor_potter.html In other news, still sort of screwed in the school department. *bang head on wall*