Women in Science: Earth Sciences

The youngest of six children born to John and Emma Bascom, both teachers and suffragists, Florence was encouraged to pursue education as far as she wanted. A year after her father became president of the University of Wisconsin 1874, the UW started admitting students, and in 1877 Florence enrolled. Although she, like the other women enrolled, weren’t allowed full access to the library and gymnasium, and weren’t allowed to attend classes that were full of male students, she continued to earn her Bachelor’s degrees in Arts and Letters (1882) and Science (1884). Three years later, she earned her Master’s degree in geology in 1887, and was taking classes at Johns Hopkins University in 1889, although she was made to sit behind a screen so that she would not “disrupt” the male students. She became the second woman to earn a Ph.D. in geology in 1893, after Mary Holmes attained hers from University of Michigan in 1888.

Bascom made history as the first female geologist employed by the United States Geological Survey, getting hired on as an assistant geologist in 1896. From the time of her appointment until 1908, she was the associate editor of the American Geologist magazine. In 1909, she was promoted to geologist, and assigned the Mid-Atlantic Piedmont region of the US, where she ended up doing a great deal of her research and published works. She became an expert in mineralology and crystallography: her papers and research on the formation of mountains & the Appalachian Range, and her re-identification of rocks once thought to be sedimentary as metamorphic rocks from lava still heavily influence geology in the 21st century.

Born on a farm in 1907, Carson’s love of nature was evident from an early age. She continued her education at the Pennsylvania College for Women at Pittsburgh, which is now Chatham College, graduating in 1929 after changing her degree from English composition to biology, then received her MA in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932.

After completing her degrees, she taught at the University of Maryland for five years. Then, in 1936, she was hired to work for the Bureau of Fisheries in Washington DC (now called the Fish & Wildlife Service), as both a writer and biologist. Her first assignment was writing radio scripts, including for her own show, “The Romance of the Seas.”

A year after joining the bureau, she submitted her first title for publication, “Undersea,” which was published by The Atlantic in 1937. After the success of her first publication, she went on to release three more books about marine life: “Under the Sea Wind” in 1941, “The Sea Around Us,” in 1951, and “The Edge of the Sea” in 1955. Writing in clear, graceful prose that lacked the usual heavy-technical dialogue, she was praised for writing about science for mainstream audiences. Her second book, “The Sea Around Us,” won awards such as the Gold Medal of the New York Zoological Society, the National Book Award, and many more. Its success allowed Rachel to retire from her job at the Bureau of Fisheries and turn to full time research.

Throughout the following years, Rachel researched, observed, and documented the use and effect of pesticides in the flora & fauna. Her meticulous research resulted in her most influential work, “Silent Spring,” in which she revealed the devastating long-term effects of widely used pesticides such as DDT. The clamor and fervor following her book’s publication in 1962 was anything but silent, as the $300 million pesticides industry found itself at the center of public outcry and government scrutiny. The Kennedy administration ordered further research, of which Rachel was both a part of and a testifying witness in front of Congress. The investigation resulted in DDT being banned, and a larger study on man’s effect on the ecology was completed by Rachel and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Two years after her most influential work’s publication, Rachel succumbed to cancer. However, the impact of her research sparked a new interest in environmental protection and preservation.