The Great Female Scientists of the Victorian Era

Skull of an ichthyosaur painted with fossil sepia by Elizabeth Philpot.

Women have played  various and extensive roles in the history of geology. Unfortunately, their contribution has not been widely recognised by the public and the history of geosciences has largely been interpreted as a history of male scientists.

In the Victorian times there was the common assumption that the female brain was too fragile to cope with mathematics, or science in general. In a letter from March 1860, Thomas Henry Huxley wrote to Charles Lyell: “Five-sixths of women will stop in the doll stage of evolution, to be the stronghold of parsonism, the drag on civilisation, the degradation of every important pursuit in which they mix themselves – intrigues in politics and friponnes in science.” Lyell, one of the most famous geologist of his time, was married to Mary Horner, daughter of the geologist Leonard Horner, and one of the many female contributors to geology in the early nineteenth century in the United Kingdom. A list that also includes Mary Anning, Barbara Hastings, Etheldred Bennet, the Philpot sisters, Mary Buckland née Morland, Charlotte Murchinson, Elizabeth Cobbold, Mary Sommerville, Jane Marcet, Delvalle Lowry, and Arabella Buckley. Those women formed a framework of assistants, secretaries, collectors, field geologists, illustrators, and as popularizers of science.

Duria Antiquior famous watercolor by the geologist Henry de la Beche based on fossils found by Mary Anning. From Wikimedia Commons.

The nineteen century was the “golden age” of Geology. The Industrial Revolution ushered a period of canal digging and major quarrying operations for building stone. These activities exposed sedimentary strata and fossils. The concept of an ancient Earth became part of the public understanding and Literature influenced the pervasiveness of geological thinking. The most popular aspect of geology was the collecting of fossils and minerals and the nineteenth-century geology, often perceived as the sport of gentlemen,was in fact, “reliant on all classes”. Due to the informal character of the early British geology, women were free to take part in collecting fossils and mineral specimens, and they were allowed to attend lectures, but they were still barred from membership in scientific societies. Women interested in geology could attend the meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS). Also, the public lectures at the Royal Institution were very popular among educated women. About the BAAS meeting at York (1831), Charles Lyell wrote: “A hundred and fifty ladies, and many of rank, at the evening discussion, must also have ‘popularised’ scientific pursuits”.

William Whewell, contrary to some other colleagues, welcomed scientific women to the third meeting of the British Association in 1834. In an invitation addressed to Mary Somerville, he wrote: “I expect Mrs. Buckland and Mrs. Murchinson and several other ladies…”

Autograph letter about the discovery of plesiosaurus, by Mary Anning. From original manuscripts held at the Natural History Museum, London. © The Natural History Museum, London

Early female scientists were often born into influential families, like Grace Milne, the eldest child of Louis Falconer and sister of the eminent botanist and palaeontologist, Hugh Falconer; or Mary Lyell, the daughter of the geologist Leonard Horner. Althought Barbara Hastings (1810-1858) and Etheldred Benett (1776–1845) published their works independently, the prevailing pattern was formed by women who have worked in the field but acted as assistants to father, husband, brother, or other male geologist that were no relatives. In these cases, the publication of their findings was not part of accepted females activy, and their contribution is often completely concealed under the name of someone else. Even Lyell wrote about the iniquity of the situation in a letter to his future wife, Mary Horner: “Had our friend Mrs. Somerville been married to La Place, or some mathematician, we should never have hear of her work. She would have merged it in her husband’s, and passed it off as his.” 

Although she was not formally published, Etheldred Benett wrote several manuscripts, which are now in the collections of the Geological Society of London. She was a lady, a member of the landed gentry, and unlike Mary Anning, Etheldred Bennet was in a very confortable financial circumstances. She described the stratigraphic and geographic distribution of fossils of Wiltshire, and for more than 30 years she was frequently acknowledged in the publications of palaeontologist and geologist throughout Europe.

Portrait of Barbara Rawdon Hastings (née Yelverton), Marchioness of Hastings. From Wikimedia Commons

Barbara Rawdon (née Yelverton) Hastings (1810–1858), 20th Baroness Grey de Ruthyn and Marchioness of Hastings was known as a fossil collector and a “lady-geologist” . She is also well known for the “Hastings Collection,” consisting of several thousand fossil specimens from England and Europe. She also studied the stratigraphy of England and published her findings in “Description géologique des falaises d’Hordle, et sur la côte de Hampshire, en Angleterre” (Hastings, 1851–52) and “On the tertiary beds of Hordwell, Hampshire” (Hastings, 1853).

The Philpot sisters (Margaret, ?–1845; Mary, 1773?–1838; Elizabeth, 1780–1857) were also well know for their fossil collection and their friendship with Mary Anning. They came from educated, middle-class London, and after their parents dead, they moved to Lymes Regis and amassed an important collection of fossils. Elizabeth maintained correspondences with William Buckland, William Conybeare, Henry De la Beche, Richard Owen, James Sowery and Louis Agassiz. About Elizabeth, Agassiz wrote: “I have the pleasure to recognize publicly the service, that she rendered to palaeontology and specially to fossil ichtyology, in collecting with much ardour the fossil relicts in the Lias of Lyme Regis.”

Mary Horner Lyell (1808-1873) British geologist. Daughter of geologist Professor Leonard Horner, wife of Sir Charles Lyell.

In the other group we could find those women who worked with their husbands. The most prominent of these women were Mary (née Moreland) Buckland (1797–1857), wife of Rev. William Buckland; Mary Ann (née Woodhouse) Mantell (1795–1869), wife of Dr. Gideon Mantell; Charlotte (née Hugonin) Murchison (1789–1869) wife of Sir Roderick Murchison; and Mary Elizabeth (née Horner) Lyell (1808–1873), wife of Sir Charles Lyell (Davis, 2009).

Mary Morland (1797–1857) illustrated some of George Cuvier’s work before she became Mrs William Buckland. She made models of fossils for the Oxford museum and repaired broken fossils. She assisted her husband by taking notes of his observations and illustrating his work. After the death of her husband, she continued working on marine zoophytes.

Charlotte Murchinson (1789–1869) was a strong influence for her husband and introduced him in the world of geology. She accompanied him on excursions and spent time sketching the  landscape and outcrops and collecting Jurassic fossil specimens from the beaches.

Mary Mantell and the lithographed of an Iguanodon teeth.

Mary Mantell (1795–1869) discovered the teeth of Iguanodon, which led to her husband’s publication of an important paper announcing the discovery of a new giant reptile (Creese and Creese, 1994). She also made the illustration of Mantell’s work: “Fossils of the South Downs: or Illustrations of the Geology of Sussex”. Mary Mantell left her husband in 1839 and the children remained with their father as was customary.

Mary Lyell (1808–1873) was daughter of the geologist Leonard Horner. She read both French and German fluently and translated scientific papers for her husband and managed his correspondence. She later specialized in conchology and regularly attended meetings of the London Geological Society.

For centuries, this sketch was labelled as “Mary Anning by Henry de la Beche”, but it is in fact a sketch of William Buckland by geologist and engineer Thomas Sopwith.

Mary Anning (1799-1847), was an special case. Despite her lower social condition and the fact that she was single, Mary became the most famous woman paleontologist of her time. She found the first specimens of what would later be recognized as Ichthyosaurus, the first complete Plesiosaurus, the first pterosaur skeleton outside Germany and suggested that the “Bezoar stones” were fossilized feces. After her death, Henry de la Beche, Director of the Geological Survey and President of the Geological Society of London, wrote a very affectionate obituary published in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society on February 14, 1848, the only case of a non Fellow who received that honour.

Women were also great contributors to the popularization of geology. One such example is Mary Somerville. She has been called  “Queen of Nineteenth Century Science.”  She was also the first English geographer. Her book “Physical Geography” (1848) was the first textbook on the subject in English and her most popular work. It was published three years after the first volume of Alexander von Humboldt’s “Cosmos”. Jane Marcet’ Conversations on Chemistry, also gave a basic introduction in chemical mineralogy. Other examples include Delvalle Lowry, who published Conversations on Mineralogy in 1822, and Arabella Buckley, secretary of Charles Lyell, who wrote books about natural history.

Thanks to the pioneer work of these women, the 20th century saw the slow but firm advance of women from the periphery of science towards the center of it.

References:

BUREK, C. V. & HIGGS, B. (eds) The Role of Women in the History of Geology. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 281, 1–8. DOI: 10.1144/SP281.1.

Kölbl-Ebert, M. (2007). The geological travels of Charles Lyell, Charlotte Murchison and Roderick Impey Murchison in France and northern Italy (1828). Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 287(1), 109–117.doi:10.1144/sp287.9

Kölbl-Ebert M (2002): British Geology in the Early 19th Century – A Conglomerate with a Female Matrix.– Earth Sciences History 21(1): 3–25.

Sharpe, T. (2021). A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY: IS MARY ANNING (1799–1847) ACTUALLY WILLIAM BUCKLAND (1784–1856)?. Earth Sciences History, 40(1), 68-83.

Forgotten women of paleontology: Hildegarde Howard

Hildegard Howard with fossil bird from the Rancho La Brea.

The birth of modern science was hostile to women’s participation. The world’s major academies of science were founded in the 17th century: the Royal Society of London (1662), the Paris Académie Royale des Sciences (1666), and the Berlin Akademie der Wissenschaften (1700). Unfortunately, women were not become members of these societies for over 300 years. Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat became the first woman to be elected to the Paris Academy of Science in 1979. Although the Royal Society was less rigid in terms of memberships than the Paris Academy of Science, it was not until 1945 that the first women were admitted as fellows of the Royal Society: the X-ray crystallographer Kathleen Yardley Lonsdale (1903–1971), and biochemist and microbiologist Marjory Stephenson (1885-1948).

Despite the barriers, between 1880 and 1914, some 60 women contributed papers to Royal Society publications. Meanwhile, in the United States, geology was a marginal subject in the curricula of the early women’s colleges until an intense programme was started at Bryn Mawr College in the 1890s.

Hildegard Howard measures specimens from the Rancho La Brea Collection. Image from The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Archives.

Florence Bascom was one of the pioneers when geological education at universities became available to women. She received her PhD degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1893 by special dispensation, as women were not admitted officially until 1907; while Carlotta Joaquina Maury attended Cornell University, where she became one of the first women to receive her PhD in paleontology in 1902.

When Hildegarde Howard began attending the Southern Branch of the University of California (now known as the University of California at Los Angeles), women were still barred from scientific societies. She was born on April 3, 1901 in Washington D.C., but moved to Los Angeles at the age of 5. Her main interest was journalism, until she met her first biology instructor, Miss Pirie Davidson. In 1921, Hildegarde obtained a part-time job working for Dr. Chester Stock, sorting bones from Rancho La Brea in the basement of the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art (now known as the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County). One year later, she went to Berkeley to finish her degree.

Dr. Hildegarde Howard, in her office in 1961.Copyright Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

In 1928, she obtained her Ph.D. degree. Her dissertation, entitled “The Avifauna of Emeryville Shellmound”, became one of her most popular works, and remained as the principal reference of its kind until the appearance of the first edition of Nomina Anatomica Avium in 1979. She obtained a permanent position with the museum in 1929. Although she was a curator, she did not receive that official title until 1938. Through that decade, she wrote twenty-four papers on fossil birds in the American Southwest. She was promoted to the curator of Avian Paleontology in 1944, and she would serve in that role until 1951, when she was promoted to Chief Curator of Science, She became the first woman to receive the Brewster Medal for outstanding research in ornithology in 1953.

Hildegarde Howard officially retired in 1961, although continued research on fossil birds, publishing her last paper in 1992. During her extraordinary career, Dr. Howard described 3 families, 13 genera, 57 species, and 2 subspecies, and remains highly regarded as one of the foremost experts in her field. She died on February 28, 1998.

 

References:

Campbell Jr., Kenneth. 2000c. “In Memoriam, Hildegarde Howard 1901-1998.” The Auk, vol.117, no.3, 775-779.

 

Forgotten women of paleontology: Irene Crespin

Irene Crespin (1896-1980)

Irene Crespin was born on November 12, 1896, in Kew, Victoria, Australia. In her memories, she wrote that her interest in Palaeontology began early in her life, when she was one of the first students to attend the Mansfield High School in northeastern Victoria. The head master of for a short period was the eminent Australian geologist Charles Fenner.

In 1919, she graduated with a B.A. from the University of Melbourne. In 1927 she joined the Commonwealth Government as Assistant Palaeontologist to Frederick Chapman at the National Museum of Victoria. Chapman was an authority on Foraminifera and was president of the Royal Society of Victoria. About her time at the Museum she wrote: “In the early days, we passed through the depression era. Our salaries were reduced overnight. I was reduced to six pounds a week. They were difficult times for us all. One would walk a long distance to save a threepenny tram fare.”

Dr Irene Crespin with W. Baragwanath, Secretary of Mines for Victoria, probably visiting a Cooksonia plant site, c. 1927 (From Turner 2007)

In 1936, Crespin succeeded Chapman as Commonwealth Palaeontologist. On February 10th, she was transferred from the National Museum, Melbourne to join the Commonwealth Geological Adviser, Dr. W.G. Woolnough, in Canberra. About her new position she wrote: “Of course, being a woman, and despite the tremendous responsibility placed upon me with the transfer to Canberra, I was given a salary of about half of that which Chapman received. Later the Chairman of the Public Service Board told me that I was being put on trial.”

She becoming greatly interested in the Tertiary microfaunas, and for some time she was the only professional micropaleontologist on the Australian mainland. Her research took her all over Australia. In 1939, she received permission from the Minister of the Interior to visit Java and Sumatra to discuss the problems of Tertiary correlation in the Netherlands East Indies with Papua and New Guinea.

Crespin’s photo of her aeroplane and crew on an overseas trip to Java, Indonesia, 1939 (From Turner 2007)

Crespin was well respected internationally and was a regular participant in national and international scientific conferences. In 1953, many of her books and specimens were destroyed as a result of a fire in the Canberra offices. The same year, she received Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation medal. In 1957 she was president of the Royal Society of Canberra, and was awarded with the Clarke medal of the Royal Society of New South Wales.

During her career she published 86 papers as sole author and more 22 in collaboration with other scientists. She was made an honorary fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society, London, in 1960. She became an honorary member of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science in 1973. She died in Canberra, on January 2, 1980.

References:

Turner, S. (2007). Invincible but mostly invisible: Australian women’s contribution to geology and palaeontology. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 281(1), 165–202. doi: 10.1144/sp281.11

Crespin, Irene (1975). “Ramblings of a micropalaeontologist”. BUREAU OF MINERAL RESOURCES, GEOLOGY AND GEOPHYSICS.

 

Mary Anning, ‘the greatest fossilist the world ever knew’.

Duria Antiquior famous watercolor by the geologist Henry de la Beche based on fossils found by Mary Anning. From Wikimedia Commons.

By the 19th century, the study of the Earth became central to the economic and cultural life of Great Britain. Women were free to take part in collecting fossils and mineral specimens, and they were allowed to attend lectures but they were barred from membership in scientific societies. England was ruled by an elite, and of course, these scholarly activities only occurred within the upper echelon of British society. Notwithstanding, the most famous fossilist of the 19th century was a women of a low social station: Mary Anning.

Mary Anning was born on Lyme Regis on May 21, 1799. Her father was a carpenter and an amateur fossil collector who died when Mary was eleven. He trained Mary and her brother Joseph in how to look and clean fossils. After the death of her father, Mary and Joseph used those skills to search fossils that they sold as “curiosities”. The source of those fossils was the coastal cliffs around Lyme Regis, part of a geological formation known as the Blue Lias.

The shore of Lyme Bay where Mary Anning did most of her collecting.

Invertebrate fossils, like ammonoids or belemnites, were the most common findings. But when Mary was 12, her brother Joseph found a skull protruding from a cliff and few month later, Mary found the rest of the skeleton. They sold it for £23. Later, in 1819, the skeleton was purchased by Charles Koenig of the British Museum of London who suggested the name “Ichthyosaur” for the fossil.

In 1819 the Annings were in considerable financial difficulties. They were rescued by the generosity of Thomas James Birch (1768–1829), who arranged for the sale of his personal collection, largely purchased from the Annings, in Bullock’s Museum in London. The auction took place in May 1820, during which Georges Cuvier bought several pieces for the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle.

Mary Anning’s sketch of belemnites. From original manuscripts held at the Natural History Museum, London. © The Natural History Museum, London

On December 10, 1823, she discovered the first complete Plesiosaur skeleton at Lyme Regis in Dorset. The fossil was acquired by the Duke of Buckingham. Noticed about the discovery, George Cuvier wrote to William Conybeare suggesting that the find was a fake produced by combining fossil bones from different animals. William Buckland and Conybeare sent a letter to Cuvier including anatomical details, an engraving of the specimen and a sketch made by Mary Morland (Buckland’s wife) based on Mary Anning’s own drawings and they convinced Cuvier that this specimen was a genuine find. From that moment, Cuvier treated Mary Anning as a legitimate and respectable fossil collector and cited her name in his publications.

Autograph letter about the discovery of plesiosaurus, by Mary Anning. From original manuscripts held at the Natural History Museum, London. © The Natural History Museum, London

By the age of 27, Mary was the owner of a little shop: Anning’s Fossil Depot. Many scientist and fossil collectors from around the globe went to Mary´s shop. She was friend of Henry De la Beche, the first director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, who knew Mary since they were both children and lived in Lyme Regis. De la Beche was a great supporter of Mary’s work. She also corresponded with Charles Lyell, William Buckland and Mary Morland, Adam Sedgwick and Sir Roderick Murchison.

It’s fairly to say that Mary felt secure in the world of men, and a despite her religious beliefs, she was an early feminist. In an essay in her notebook, titled Woman!, Mary writes: “And what is a woman? Was she not made of the same flesh and blood as lordly Man? Yes, and was destined doubtless, to become his friend, his helpmate on his pilgrimage but surely not his slave…”

A) Mary Anning (1799- 1847) B) William Buckland (1784- 1856)

On December of 1828, Mary found the first pterosaur skeleton outside Germany. William Buckland made the announcement of Mary’s discovery in the Geological Society of London and named Pterodactylus macronyx in allusion to its large claws. The skull of Anning’s specimen had not been discovered, but Buckland thought that the fragment of jaw in the collection of the Philpot sisters of Lyme belonged to a pterosaur.

In 1829, Mary Anning discovered Squaloraja polyspondyle, a fish. Unfortunately, the specimen was lost in the destruction of the Bristol Museum by a German bombing raid in November, 1940.

From her correspondence is clear that Mary learned anatomy by dissecting modern organisms. In a letter to J.S. Miller of the Bristol Museum, dated 20 January 1830, she wrote: “…I have dissected a Ray since I received your letter, and I do not think it the same genus, the Vertebrae alone would constitute it a different genus being so unlike any fish vertebrae they are so closely anchylosed that they look like one bone but being dislocated at two places show that each thin line is a separate vertebrae with the ends flat…”.

An illustration of Mary Anning’s ichthyosaur skeleton appeared in William Buckland’s book Geology and Mineralogy.

Mary Anning, ‘the greatest fossilist the world ever knew’, died of breast cancer on 9 March, 1847, at the age of 47. She was buried in the cemetery of St. Michaels. In the last decade of her life, Mary received three accolades. The first was an annuity of £25, in return for her many contributions to the science of geology. The second was in 1846, when the geologists of the Geological Society of London organized a further subscription for her. The third accolade was her election, in July 1846, as the first Honorary Member of the new Dorset County Museum in Dorchester.

After her death, Henry de la Beche, Director of the Geological Survey and President of the Geological Society of London, wrote a very affectionate obituary published in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society on February 14, 1848, the only case of a non Fellow who received that honour.

Mary Anning’s Window, St. Michael’s Church. From Wikimedia Commons.

In February 1850 Mary was honoured by the unveiling of a new window in the parish church at Lyme, funded through another subscription among the Fellows of the Geological Society of London, with the following inscription: “This window is sacred to the memory of Mary Anning of this parish, who died 9 March AD 1847 and is erected by the vicar and some members of the Geological Society of London in commemoration of her usefulness in furthering the science of geology, as also of her benevolence of heart and integrity of life.”

In 1865, Charles Dickens wrote an article about Mary Anning’s life in his literary magazine “All the Year Round”, where emphasised the difficulties she had overcome: “Her history shows what humble people may do, if they have just purpose and courage enough, toward promoting the cause of science. The inscription under her memorial window commemorates “her usefulness in furthering the science of geology” (it was not a science when she began to discover, and so helped to make it one), “and also her benevolence of heart and integrity of life.” The carpenter’s daughter has won a name for herself, and has deserved to win it.”

References:

Buckland, Adelene: Novel Science : Fiction and the Invention of Nineteenth-Century Geology, University of Chicago Press, 2013.

BUREK, C. V. & HIGGS, B. (eds) The Role of Women in the History of Geology. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 281, 1–8. DOI: 10.1144/SP281.1.

Davis, Larry E. (2012) “Mary Anning: Princess of Palaeontology and Geological Lioness,”The Compass: Earth Science Journal of Sigma Gamma Epsilon: Vol. 84: Iss. 1, Article 8.

Hugh Torrens, Mary Anning (1799-1847) of Lyme; ‘The Greatest Fossilist the World Ever Knew’, The British Journal for the History of Science Vol. 28, No. 3 (Sep., 1995), pp. 257-284. Published by: Cambridge University Press.

De la Beche, H., 1848a. Obituary notices. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, v. 4: xxiv–xxv.

Dickens, C., 1865. Mary Anning, the fossil finder. All the Year Round, 13 (Feb 11): 60–63.

Forgotten women of Paleontology: Carlotta Joaquina Maury

Carlotta Joaquina Maury (January 6, 1874 – January 3, 1938)

In the 18th and 19th centuries women’s access to science was limited. Early female scientists were often born into influential families, like Grace Milne, the eldest child of Louis Falconer and sister of the eminent botanist and palaeontologist, Hugh Falconer. Unfortunately, their contribution has not been widely recognised by the public or academic researchers. Women collected fossils and mineral specimens, and were allowed to attend scientific lectures, but they were barred from membership in scientific societies. By the 1880, in the United States, geology was a marginal subject in the curricula of the early women’s colleges until an intense programme was started at Bryn Mawr College, a decade later.

Carlotta Joaquina Maury was born on January 6, 1874 in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. She was the youngest  sister of astronomer Antonia Maury, who worked at the Harvard College Observatory as one of the so-called Harvard Computers. She was also the granddaughter of John William Draper and a niece of Henry Draper, both pioneering astronomers. Maury maternal grandmother was Antonia Coetana de Paiva Pereira, member of Portuguese nobility serving at the court of Emperor Dom Pedro I of Brazil, a connection which had and important influence on her career.

Harvard Computers at work, including Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868–1921), Annie Jump Cannon (1863–1941), Williamina Fleming (1857–1911), and Antonia Maury (1866–1952).

She was educated at Radcliffe College from 1891 to 1894. Influenced by Elizabeth Agassiz, co-founder and first president of Radcliffe College, Maury attended Cornell University, where she obtained a PhD in 1902, making her one of the first women to receive her PhD in paleontology. Her mentor was Gilbert Harris, who founded the scientific journal Bulletins of American Paleontology.

Before completing her PhD, she spent a year at the Sorbonne. After teaching in several universities, she investigated microfossils in drilling samples along the Texas and Louisiana coasts and was given an official title as a paleontologist for the Louisiana Geological Survey. In 1910, Maury was recruited to be the paleontologist for oil geologist A.C. Veatch’s year-long geological expedition to Venezuela, a study funded by the General Asphalt Company of Philadelphia. Her discovery in Trinidad of Old Eocene beds with fossils faunas related to those of Alabama and the Pernambuco region of Brazil was the first finding of Old Eocene in the entire Caribbean and northern South America region.

Carlotta Maury at the Palaeontology Laboratory in Cornell. (From Arnold, 2009)

After a short break for teaching at Huguenot College in Wellington, South Africa, Maury returned to the Caribbean in 1916 as the leader of the “Maury Expedition” to the Dominican Republic, during a period of violent political upheaval on the island. The results  – type sections and descriptions of fossils, including more than 400 new species – are the foundation for the international Dominican Republic Project, a multi-disciplinary research effort that aims s to understand evolutionary change in the Caribbean from the Miocene era to the present day.

Her reputation for being extremely efficient and energetic helped her to defy the prejudice against professional women at the time. She was a consulting palaeontologist and stratigrapher to Royal Dutch Shell’s Venezuela Division for more than 20 year, and one of the official palaeontologists with the Geological and Mineralogical Service of Brazil. In 1925, she published “Fosseis Terciarios do Brazil with Descripção de Nova Cretaceas Forms” where she described numerous species of mollusks from the northeastern coast, performing the stratigraphic correlation of these faunas with similar faunas of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.

C. Maury in 1916, Dominican Republic.

Maury was fellow of the Geological Society of America, and of the American Geographical Society. During the last decade of her life, she dedicated to publishing her consulting reports. Her last report about the Pliocene fossils of Acre, Brazil, appeared in 1937, shortly before her death. The same year she was elected member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.
Carlotta Maury died January 3, 1938 in Yonkers, New York.

References:

Lois Arnold (2009), The Education and Career of Carlotta J. Maury: Part 1., Earth Sciences History 28.2 (2009): 219-244 https://doi.org/10.17704/eshi.28.2.343vu112512w8170 

M. R. S. Creese (2007), Fossil hunters, a cave explorer and a rock analyst: notes on some early women contributors to geology, Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 281, 39-49. https://doi.org/10.1144/SP281.3

Burek, C.V. and B. Higgs, eds. (2007) The Role of Women in the History of Geology (London: Geological Society).

 

Tilly Edinger vs. the nazis.

Tilly Edinger (Photo,Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA)

“Tilly” Edinger was born on November 13, 1897 in Frankfurt, Germany. She was the youngest daughter of the eminent neurologist Ludwig Edinger and Dora Goldschmidt, a leading social advocate and activist. In 1914, her father became the first Chair of Neurology in Germany, at the newly founded University of Frankfurt. He encouraged her to take science courses at the Universities of Heidelberg, Frankfurt, and Munich. Her research at Frankfurt was directed by Fritz Drevermann, director of the Senckenberg Museum. After her graduation in 1921, Edinger worked as an assistant in the Geological Institute of Frankfurt University. In 1927, she was  named Curator of Fossil Vertebrates at the Senckenberg. At that time, she had no colleagues in vertebrate paleontology in Frankfurt with the exception of Drevermann. She described the positive and negative aspects of that environment in a letter addressed to A. S. Romer: “all fossil vertebrates [at the Senckenberg Museum] are entirely at my disposition: nobody else is interested in them . . . On the other hand, this means that I am almost autodidact”. 

Among her early projects were descriptions the endocranial casts of Mesozoic marine reptiles, pterosaurs and Archaeopteryx.  In 1929,  she published Die fossilen Gehirne (Fossil Brains), the book that established Edinger’s membership in the German and international paleontological communities. This work would serve as the major scientific support for her wartime immigration to the United States.

Senckenberg Naturmuseum (Senckenberg Museum of Natural History)

After the death of German President Paul von Hindenburg on August 2, 1934, Chancellor Adolf Hitler became Führer of Germany. In the months following Hitler’s ascension to the power, the Nazis took control of all of the nation institutions. The universities were not excepted. Soon, Jewish professors were dismissed, arrested, or simply disappeared. At the time, Tilly Edinger was working  as curator of fossil vertebrates at the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History in Frankfurt, so the influence of the new rules on her professional life was slower than on many other persons of Jewish descent because the Senckenberg was a private institution, and her position there was unsalaried. She continued working at the Museum thanks to protective actions of Rudolf Richter, the invertebrate paleontologist who had succeeded Drevermann at the Senckenberg.

Although urged by friends to leave the country, she chose to stay, as did their brother, Friedrich, who later (1942) became a victim of the Holocaust. But, on the night of 9–10 November 1938, her paleontological career in Germany ended.  Nearly 100 Jews were killed and thousands were imprisoned in the infamous “Kristallnacht” (Night of the Broken Glass). Decided to leave Germany as soon as possible, she wrote to her childhood classmate Lucie Jessner, a psychiatrist who had immigrated first to Switzerland in 1933 and then to the United States in early 1938. Jessner contacted the eminent Harvard paleontologist Alfred S. Romer (1884–1973), writing: “My friend—Dr. Tilly Edinger, paleontologist in Frankfurt am Main, Germany—wants me to ask you about different matters, very important for her. She believes you might know her name by several of her papers and you might be friendly enough to give me the opportunity to speak with you”

Interior of Berlin’s Fasanenstrasse Synagogue, opened in 1912, after it was set on fire during Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938

With the positive response from Romer, Edinger applied for an American visa at the American Consulate in Stuttgart on 1 August 1938. Forced to look for another, short-term solution, she contacted Philipp Schwartz, a former pathology professor at the University of Frankfurt who had established the Notgemeinschaft Deutscher Wissenschaftler im Ausland (Emergency Association of German Scientists in Exile), a society dedicated to helping scientific refugees from Nazi Germany. Waiting for a solution, she wrote to Rudolf Richter to thank him for his supportive testimonial. She shared her conviction that “One way (England) or the other (United States), fossil vertebrates will save me”. 

Thanks to her pioneering works and the contacts she made from a previous trip to London in 1926, Edinger emigrated to England in May 1939. She started working at the British Museum of Natural History, alternately translating texts and working on her own paleoneurological projects. She described her life in London as considerably freer than in Germany: “It sounds funny, to one who was ‘at home’ not allowed to enter even an open museum, or a cinema, or a café, to apply the word ‘restrictions’ anywhere in the beautifully free life I am leading here”

Tilly Edinger and colleagues at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Sitting left to right: Tilly Edinger, Harry B. Whittington, Ruth Norton, Alfred S. Romer, Nelda Wright, and Richard van Frank. Standing left to right: Arnold D. Lewis, Ernest E.Williams, Bryan Patterson, Stanley J. Olsen, and Donald Baird. (Photo: David Roberts, from Buchholtz, 2001)

In 1940, with the support of Alfred S. Romer, she moved to Massachusetts to take a position at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. By the early 1950s, she was not only the major contributor to the field of paleoneurology but also the mentor to a younger generation that was following in her footsteps. She received several honorary doctorates for her achievements, including Wellesley College (1950), the University of Giessen (1957), and the University of Frankfurt  (1964). She was elected president of SVP in 1963. Her last book: “Paleoneurology 1804-1966. An annotated bibliography”, was completed by several of her colleagues and is considered the necessary starting point for any project in paleoneurology.

 

References:

Buchholtz, Emily A.; Seyfarth, Ernst-August (August 2001), “The Study of “Fossil Brains”: Tilly Edinger (1897–1967) and the Beginnings of Paleoneurology”, Bioscience 51 (8)

Susan Turner, Cynthia V. Burek and Richard T. J. Moody, Forgotten women in an extinct saurian (man’s) world, Geological Society, London, Special Publications 2010, v. 343, p. 111-153

 

 

Mary Anning and the Hunt of Primeval Monsters.

Autograph letter concerning the discovery of plesiosaurus, from Mary Anning (From Wikimedia Commons)

Since the End of the 17th century to the beginning of the 19th, several discoveries of dinosaur remains and other large extinct ‘saurians’, were reported for first time. It was an exciting time full of discoveries and the concept of an ancient Earth became part of the public understanding. The most popular aspect of geology was  the collecting of fossils and minerals and the nineteenth-century geology, often perceived as the sport of gentlemen, was in fact, “reliant on all classes”.

The study of the Earth became central to the economic and cultural life of the Victorian Society and Literature influenced the pervasiveness of geological thinking. The Geological Society of London was founded on 13 October 1807 at the Freemasons’ Tavern, in the Covent Garden district of London, with the stated purpose of “…making geologists acquainted with each other, of stimulating their zeal, of inducing them to adopt one nomenclature, of facilitating the communications of new facts and of ascertaining what is known in their science and what remains to be discovered”. During this time, women were free to take part in collecting fossils and mineral specimens, and they were allowed to attend lectures but they were barred from membership in scientific societies. However, it was common for male scientists to have women assistants, often their own wives and daughters.

Plesiosaurus battling Temnodontosaurus (Oligostinus), front piece the Book of the Great Sea-Dragons by Thomas Hawkins.

Mary Anning (1799-1847), was an special case. Despite her lower social condition, Mary became the most famous ‘fossilist’ of her time. She was born on Lyme Regis on May 21, 1799. Her father was a carpenter and an amateur fossil collector who died when Mary was eleven. He trained Mary and her brother Joseph in how to look and clean fossils. After the death of her father, Mary and Joseph used those skills to search fossils on the local cliffs,  that sold as “curiosities”. The source of the fossils was the coastal cliffs around Lyme Regis, one of the richest fossil locations in England and part of a geological formation known as the Blue Lias. The age of the formation corresponds to the Jurassic period. In 1811, she caught the public’s attention when she and her brother Joseph unearthed the skeleton of a ‘primeval monster’. They sold it for £23. Later, in 1819, the skeleton was purchased by Charles Koenig of the British Museum of London who suggested the name “Ichthyosaur” for the fossil.

On December 10, 1823, she discovered the first complete Plesiosaur skeleton at Lyme Regis in Dorset. The fossil was acquired by the Duke of Buckingham. Noticed about the discovery, George Cuvier wrote to William Conybeare suggesting that the find was a fake produced by combining fossil bones from different animals. William Buckland and Conybeare sent a letter to Cuvier including anatomical details, an engraving of the specimen and a sketch made by Mary Morland (Buckland’s wife) based on Mary Anning’s own drawings and they convinced Cuvier that this specimen was a genuine find. From that moment, Cuvier treated Mary Anning as a legitimate and respectable fossil collector and cited her name in his publications.

The holotype specimen of Dimorphodon macronyx found by Mary Anning in 1828 (From Wikimedia Commons)

On December of 1828, Mary found the first pterosaur skeleton outside Germany. William Buckland made the announcement of Mary’s discovery in the Geological Society of London and named Pterodactylus macronyx in allusion to its large claws. The skull of Anning’s specimen had not been discovered, but Buckland thought that the fragment of jaw in the collection of the Philpot sisters of Lyme belonged to a pterosaur.

In her later years, Mary Anning suffered some serious financial problems. She died of breast cancer on 9 March, 1847, at the age of 47. She was buried in the cemetery of St. Michaels. In the last decade of her life, Mary received  three accolades. The first was an annuity of £25, in return for her many contributions to the science of geology. The second was in 1846, when the geologists of the Geological Society of London organized a further subscription for her. The third accolade was her election, in July 1846, as the first Honorary Member of the new Dorset County Museum in Dorchester (Torrens, 1995). After her death, Henry de la Beche, Director of the Geological Survey and President of the Geological Society of London, wrote a very affectionate obituary published in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society on February 14, 1848, the only case of a non Fellow who received that honour.

References:

Davis, Larry E. (2012) “Mary Anning: Princess of Palaeontology and Geological Lioness,”The Compass: Earth Science Journal of Sigma Gamma Epsilon: Vol. 84: Iss. 1, Article 8.

Hugh Torrens, Mary Anning (1799-1847) of Lyme; ‘The Greatest Fossilist the World Ever Knew’, The British Journal for the History of Science Vol. 28, No. 3 (Sep., 1995), pp. 257-284. Published by: Cambridge University Press.

De la Beche, H., 1848a. Obituary notices. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, v. 4: xxiv–xxv.

Dickens, C., 1865. Mary Anning, the fossil finder. All the Year Round, 13 (Feb 11): 60–63.

 

Forgotten women of Paleontology: Emily Dix

 

Dr Emily Dix and her assistant Miss Elsie White.

In the 18th and 19th centuries women’s access to science was limited, and science was usually a ‘hobby’ for intelligent wealthy women. It was common for male scientists to have women assistants, often their own wives and daughters. But by the first half of the 20th century, a third of British palaeobotanists working on Carboniferous plants were women. The most notable were  Margaret Benson, Emily Dix, and Marie Stopes.

Emily Dix was born on 21 May 1904 in Penclawdd, in the beautiful area of the Gower Peninsula. At age 18, she gained the Central Welsh Board Higher Certificate in history, botany and geography, with distinctions in both history and botany. In 1925, she graduated with first class honours in Geology at the University College Swansea. After graduation, Emily continued at Swansea to research the geology of the western part of the South Wales Coalfield. Her work was supervised by Arthur E. Trueman, Professor of Geology at Swansea, and a pioneer in developing stratigraphical theory. Trueman realized that the only accurate way to use fossils for correlation was to divide the stratigraphical succession into biozones defined exclusively by the assemblages of species present, independently of the lithology in which they were found. Trueman’s main interest were  non-marine bivalves, so Emily’s early work was on the non-marine bivalves of the South Wales Coalfield.

Emily Dix during the 2nd International Carboniferous Congress in 1935 (From Burek and Cleal, 2005)

Emily initially studied all aspects of the Late Carboniferous biotas in South Wales, but soon, she realized that plant fossils also had considerable biostratigraphical potential. Although, Paul Bertrand developed macrofloral biozones for the French coalfields in 1914, Emily used stratigraphical range charts for the first time in paleobotany recognising the need to separate biostratigraphy from lithostratigraphy. In 1926 Emily was awarded an MSc based on her Gwendraeth Valley work: ‘The Palaeontology of the Lower Coal Series of Carmarthen and the Correlation of the Coal Measures in the Western Portion of the South Wales Coalfield’.  In 1929 she was elected a fellow of the Geological Society, and a year later she was appointed Lecturer in Palaeontology at Bedford College in London, a position that she held for the rest of her working life. The same year, she attended the International Botanical Congress in Cambridge where she met W. Gothan, P. Bertrand, W. J. Jongmans and A. Renier, leaders in Upper Carboniferous palaeobotany at the time. Five years later, she attended the Second International Carboniferous Congress in Heerlen (The Netherlands) and she delivered papers on Carboniferous biostratigraphy. In 1936, Emily was invited to become the only female on an 11-man discussion group of the British Association for the Advancement of Science on Coal Measures correlation. She was clearly at the international forefront of the field.

Emily Dix in the Auvergne 1936 (seated fourth from right, see white arrow). From Burek and Cleal, 2005.

At the start of the World War II, she was evacuated to Cambridge, along with the rest of Bedford College Geology Department. She lost a lot of valuable literature and other records in a London Blitz in May 1941. Fortunately, much of her collection of fossils survived.

At the end of the war, Emily suffered a mental breakdown. She was moved to a mental hospital run by the Quakers in the City of York. That was the end of her scientific career. She died in Swansea on 31 December 1972.

It was not until the late 1970s that her techniques were used again in Britain. Elsewhere in Europe, her approaches were adopted and can be seen in many of the papers presented at the International Carboniferous Congresses held at Heerlen during the 1950s and early 1960s.

References:

Burek, C. V. & Cleal, C. J. (2005) The life and work of Emily Dix (1904-1972). In: Bowden, A. J., Burek, C. V. & Wilding, R (ed.) History of palaeobotany: selected essays. Geological Society of London, Special Publication, 241, 181-196

Burek, C. V. (2005). Emily Dix, palaeobotanist – a promising career cut short. Geology Today, 21(4), 144-145

Forgotten women of Paleontology: The Newnham quartet.

Ethel Skeat (right) and Margaret Crosfield (middle) at Oswestry, 1908 (From Burek and Malpas, 2007)

Women have played  various and extensive roles in the history of geology. In the 18th and 19th centuries women’s access to science was limited, and science was usually a ‘hobby’ for intelligent wealthy women. They collected fossils and mineral specimens, and were allowed to attend scientific lectures, but they were barred from membership in scientific societies. It was common for male scientists to have women assistants, often their own wives and daughters. A good example of that was Mary Lyell (1808–1873), daughter of the geologist Leonard Horner and the wife of eminent geologist Charles Lyell. Unfortunately, their contribution has not been widely recognised by the public or academic researchers.

Newnham Hall was founded by Henry Sidgwick in 1875, and was the second Cambridge College to admit women after Girton College. The co-founder of the college was Millicent Garrett Fawcett, primarily known for her work as a suffragist. In 1879, Professor Charles Lapworth, the man who solved the great Cambro-Silurian controversy, encouraged a small group of women at Newnham College to investigate the Silurian and Ordovician rocks of North Wales. Those women were: Gertrude Elles, Ethel Shakespear (née Wood), Ethel Woods (née Skeat) and Margaret Chorley Crosfield.

Newnham began as a house for five students in Regent Street in Cambridge in 1871

Ethel Gertrude Skeat was born on 14 May, 1865, in Cambridge, England. She was the third daughter of Professor William Walter Skeat. In 1891, she went to Newnham College, Cambridge, at the same time as Gertrude Elles and Ethel Wood. In Newham, she also met  her life-long friend and collaborator, Margaret Crosfield. She completed the Natural Science Tripos certificate part 1, gaining a Class 1 at the age of 29, but without being awarded a degree. In 1893, she joined the Geologists’ Association (GA) and collaborated with her long-time friend, Margaret Crosfield, on their first paper on Welsh stratigraphy in the Carmarthen area, which was published in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society in 1896. Ethel won a Bathurst Studentship which she used to go to Munich to work with Karl Alfred von Zittel. She was the first woman to be admitted as a guest to scientific lectures at Munich University after a petition by Professor Zittel. She also collaborated with Victor Madsen on an important work on the Glacial Boulders of the Mesozoic of Denmark. In 1908, she was awarded the Murchison Fund by the Geological Society of London and became the 8^th woman to receive any kind of funding from the Geological Society . In 1911, a few months after her marriage with Henry Woods, she became a lecturer at the Cambridge Training College for Women and remained there for 2 years. She died on 26 January 1939 in Meldreth, England.

Margaret Crosfield on a Geologists’ Association field trip to Leith Hill with Professor Lapworth (From Burek and Malpas, 2007).

Margaret Chorley Crosfield was born on 7 September 1859 in Reigate, Surrey. She entered Newnham in 1879 at the age of 20 years but her studies there were interrupted by ill health. She returned to complete her studies 10 years later and with the permission of the authorities she only took geology as a subject. She joined the GA in 1892 and 17 years later she was among the first group of women to be elected Fellows of the Geological Society of London. She published three important papers. The first was on Carmarthen with Ethel Skeat that formed the basis of the geological map produced by the British Geological Survey for the area. In 1914, Margaret published with Mary Johnston a work on the Wenlock limestone of Shropshire. Later, in 1925, she published her second paper with Ethel Skeat (now Mrs. Woods) on the geology of the Silurian rocks of the Clwydian Range. She was also a great promoter of women’s suffrage and some of her field notes are written on the back of suffragette notepaper. She died October 13, 1952.

Dr Gertrude Elles (1872-1960), pioneer woman geologist (Image: Sedgwick Museum archives)

Gertrude Lilian Elles was born in Wimbledon on 8 October 1872. She attended Newnham College, Cambridge, at the age of 19 and studied under the guidance of Thomas McKenny Hughes and John Edward Marr, two of the leading geologists of the period. She travelled to Trinity College, Dublin, as one of the ‘Steamboat Women’ to receive her DSc in 1905. Elles was a field geologist, stratigrapher and palaeontologist. Her major work concerned the interpretation of graptolite zones of Lower Palaeozoic strata. Graptolites are extinct marine creatures that formed net-like colonies composed of one or more branches. In the late 1890s, she and her Newnham friend and colleague Ethel Wood began the preparation of British Graptolites (1901-1918), a monograph which was produced in parts over the next twenty years under the general editorship of  Professor Charles Lapworth. In 1919 she won the Murchison Medal and became one of the first female Fellows of the Geological Society. She had not an official university position at Cambridge until 1926 when she was appointed to a university lectureship. Ten years later, she became the first woman Reader. She died on November 18, 1960.

Ethel Wood (1871–1945).

Ethel Reader Wood was born on on 17 July 1871 at Biddenham, near Bedford. Her lifelong friendship with Gertrude Elles began in 1891 when she went up to Newnham College where she obtained a First Class degree specializing in geology. Her first work was a study of rocks in the Lake District, suggested by Professor Marr and undertaken jointly with Elles. The results were published in the Geological Magazine in 1895. A year later, she went to Birmingham University as research assistant to Charles Lapworth. Two of her own publications from this period were especially important. The first was a 1900 paper on the Ludlow formations. The second was her paper on the Tarannon series published in 1906, almost a small monograph on those beds, which made plain their stratigraphic relationship to the better-known Upper Llandovery horizon. In 1904 she won the Wollaston Fund from the Geological Society and the following year she was elected an Associate of Newnham College. She became a Fellow of the Geological Society in 1919 and the following year, shortly after the last part of the monograph came out, was awarded the Murchison Medal. Like Marie Stopes, she gained national recognition not for her geological work but for her social activities, specifically her efforts during World War I. For her public service she received an MBE in 1918 and a DBE in 1920. She died of cancer in 1946.

Thanks to the pioneer work of these women, the 20th century saw the slow but firm advance of women from the periphery of science towards the center of it.

References:

Burek, C.V., and J.A. Malpas, (2007). “Rediscovering and conserving the Lower Paleolithic ‘treasures’ of Ethel Woods (née Skeat) and Margaret Crosfield in northeast Wales.” In Cynthia V. Burek and Bettie Higgs, eds., The Role of Women in the History of Geology. London: Geological Society, Special Publications, vol. 281, pp. 203–226.

C. V. Burek (2007). The role of women in geological higher education – Bedford College, London (Catherine Raisin) and Newnham College, Cambridge, UK, Geological Society, London, Special Publications, eds Burek C. V., Higgs B. 281, pp 9–38. 

Creese, Mary R. S.; Creese, Thomas M. (2009). “British women who contributed to research in the geological sciences in the nineteenth century”. The British Journal for the History of Science. 27 (01): 23. doi:10.1017/S0007087400031654

Forgotten women of Paleontology: Erika von Hoyningen-Huene

Erika von Huene at Tübingen.

Erika Martha von Hoyningen-Huene was born in Tübingen, Germany, on September 30, 1905.  Descendant of a noble Baltic German family, Erika grew up in a deeply religious home. Her father,  Professor Dr Friedrich Freiherr (Baron) von Hoyningen, better known as Friedrich von Huene (1875–1969), was a world expert palaeontologist, whose life and research were strongly influenced by his beliefs. Von Huene wrote several books, papers and articles, spanning 65 years, but he never gained a full professorial position. Instead, he took the position of  Konservator at the University of Tübingen. As a young girl, Erika helped her father in the Institute and Museum of Geology and Palaeontology and studied under his strong influence.

She was one of only two female vertebrate palaeontologists in the pre-World War II history of Germany.  She completed her doctorate under the supervision of Prof. Dr Edwin Hennig in 1933, the same year that Hitler came to power. She later contributed with George Gaylord Simpson with her pioneering work on early mammals. But  the Nazi regime affected her life and work. During those difficult years, her father used his influence to help persecuted colleagues, such as ‘Tilly’ Edinger. However, after the events that followed the infamous “Kristallnacht” (Night of the Broken Glass), Tilly Edinger’s paleontological career in Germany ended abruptly.

Friedrich von Huene contemplating the placement of a rib on a South African dicynodont specimen (From Turner 2009)

When World War II began, Erika moved to Berlin invited by her former professor Otto H. Schindewolf, and carried out some work for him in the geological survey. After the war ended, Erika lost her job. For a time, she assisted his father and published her last paper in 1949. Her last years were devoted to managing nursing homes in Tübingen and Berlin. She died in Berlin, almost a week after her father’s death, on April 9, 1969.

During her scientific career, Erika wrote only seven papers. She suffered the consequences of the discrimination against women in Germany and finally gave up. In the year that Erika gained her doctorate, promotion for women in Germany was denied and women in higher positions were downgraded, and by the time  the war ended and men returned to their jobs, most women returned to the “safety of their homes”.

References:

Susan Turner, Cynthia V. Burek and Richard T. J. Moody, Forgotten women in an extinct saurian (man’s) world, Geological Society, London, Special Publications 2010, v. 343, p. 111-153

S. Turner, 2009, Reverent and exemplary: ‘Dinosaur man’ Friedrich von Huene (1875-1969), Geological Society London Special Publications 310(1):223-243