Yale's Pioneer Women PhDs
Dear friends of women in science,
I read with interest in the Yale Alumni Magazine this fall about a project of the Women's Faculty Forum, in an article written by Liena Vayzman, Ruth Vaughn, and Laura Wexler. They briefly gave the context of the first female graduate students graduated from Yale University. In a surprising move by Yale before women had the vote, and before Harvard or Princeton opened their doors to women pursuing graduate education, Yale enrolled 20 women for graduate study in fall, 1892. Apparently these women encountered "open hostility" in taking up their graduate responsibilities. As quoted in the article, the Boston Evening Transcript said "many professors...made no secret of the fact that they did not desire the attendance of the women students at their lectures and recitations." Of the women who enrolled in 1892, seven graduated in 1894 among a total graduate student class of 21. The article said there was no memorial of them but their Women's Faculty Forum has recently collected more information about them, acquired photographs of most of them, and put together biographies of these pioneers. They plan to commission a group portrait of all seven to be hung in Sterling Memorial Library.
I want to highlight the two whose fields come into our interest group: Margaretta Palmer (1862-1924) in mathematical astronomy and Charlotte Fitch Roberts (1959-1917) in Chemistry. I find it interesting that none of the seven was graduated in biology. I don't know if no one tried or if it was not welcoming enough for someone to succeed. None of the seven married or had children. Many had attended a women's college, and often they became professors at women's colleges after completing the graduate degrees.
Margaretta Palmer had studied under Maria Mitchell at Vassar and in her dissertation she computed the orbit of the comet Mitchell had discovered. She worked at the Yale Observatory on computational astronomy after completing her graduate work.
Roberts was interested in the development of ideas in chemistry, especially in spectroscopy, and she published an important book on stereochemistry in 1896. She had been an undergraduate at Wellesley College and returned there after her graduate study, rising through the ranks to full professor of chemistry and department chair.
I am very pleased that the WFF at Yale has unearthed these details about the first women's graduate class there and made the details of their lives available to everyone. It's so easy for women's difficult breakthroughs to be lost and forgotten. Do you know about other women, maybe at your own site or where you went to school, whom we need to remember and celebrate?
cheers,
Laura
Hi SSW,
There was a dean like that at Pomona College before I got there, a woman named Phoebe Spaulding, who inspired many women and supported women in science and math. I wish I had known her. Our women's studies annual lectureship is named after her.
cheers,
Laura
Hi Kathy,
Yes, I was at Ann Lacy's retirement celebration and there was an inspiring number of women scientists there for sure. You are right, mentoring is definitely worth remembering and celebrating.
best,
Laura
Hi Laura,
As you remember, Ann Lacy at Goucher was an amazing mentor to so many of us women considering science. I think I recall seeing you at her retirement party (along with what, 90-100 women scientists she had mentored? A huge number, anyway). So mentoring is another thing we need to celebrate and recall, not just being the first female graduates, right?
KRM
Hi Laura,
I know there was a woman dean where I went as an undergraduate who was a real champion of women in math and science (I believe she was in mathematics as an undergrad herself). I'm sorry to say I don't recall her name. I'm going to look her up next time I go back there, though.
SSW
