![]() When the college president threatened to shutter the department due to low enrollment in the early 1900s, Bascom’s students raised a substantial amount of money to save it. ![]() Recruited to the prestigious women’s college Bryn Mawr in 1895, she spent the rest of her career establishing - and protecting - a geology department that graduated a small but dedicated number of female geologists. ![]() However, Bascom’s biggest influence was in the classroom. Geological Survey and other professional associations. She balanced academic posts at various institutions with positions at the U.S. A dedicated researcher and professor, her work paved the way for the first generation of female geologists in America.īascom went on to become an expert on crystalline rocks in the Piedmont area of the Appalachian Mountains, and some of her surveys are still in use by geologists today. “One feels oneself in contact with something that is infinite, and one finds a joy that is beyond expression in ‘sounding the abyss of science’ and the secrets of the infinite mind.”įrom The Park Florence Bascom was the first woman to join the U.S. “The fascination of any search after truth lies not in the attainment, which at best is found to be very relative, but in the pursuit, where all the powers of the mind and character are brought into play and are absorbed in the task,” Bascom wrote. Ultimately, in 1893, she was the first woman to earn a doctorate from that institution after writing an influential dissertation on metamorphosed lava flows. Through her father’s connections, a special exception was made for Bascom, though she had to sit behind a screen in her classes to avoid “distracting” her male classmates. After a couple of years as a teacher in Rockford, Illinois, she applied to the PhD program at Johns Hopkins University, which until then did not admit female students. She became a protegée of Charles Van Hise, then an assistant professor.īascom’s next step wasn’t an easy one. (They may also have visited “a cave” around this time.) She returned to the UW for a second bachelor’s degree, this time in science, followed by a master’s in geology. Image courtesy of Smith College Special Collections.Īfter graduating, Bascom spent a year in Madison “engaged in social activities” before her father encouraged her to return to school and pick a more lasting direction for her interests.
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