Florence Bascom

Florence Bascom an American geologist and educator (1862-1945), the first woman to receive a doctorate in geology from an American university and the first woman appointed a geologist by the United States Geological Survey. She became a leading authority on the crystalline rocks of the eastern United States and trained a generation of women geologists.

Early Life and Education

Florence Bascom was born in 1862 in Williamstown, Massachusetts, into a family of teachers and academics. Her father was president of the University of Wisconsin and later a professor of geology, and her mother had been among the first women to graduate from a college. The family moved to Wisconsin, where Florence grew up surrounded by books and scientific interests.

She entered the University of Wisconsin in 1878 and graduated in 1882 with a degree in arts, having already shown a taste for geology and field study. She continued her studies and received a master's degree in 1887, working on the minerals of the Baraboo area, and then sought further training at a time when few institutions would admit women to graduate study in science.

In 1893 she was awarded a doctorate by Johns Hopkins University, the first woman to receive a doctorate in geology from an American university. Because women were not permitted in the classrooms with male students, she attended lectures seated behind a screen. Her dissertation dealt with the petrology of a group of rocks in the Piedmont region of Maryland.

Career with the United States Geological Survey

In 1896 Bascom joined the United States Geological Survey as the first woman appointed to its professional staff, and she remained connected with it for many years. She was assigned to the study of the crystalline and metamorphic rocks of the Piedmont and the Appalachian region, work that required patient mapping and microscopic analysis across difficult terrain.

Her research clarified the structure and history of some of the oldest rocks in the eastern United States. She mapped areas of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and New Jersey, and she showed that many formations previously understood as simple were in fact complex bodies of volcanic and intrusive origin. Her careful, methodical work became a model of field geology.

She also worked on the geology of the coastal plain of New Jersey and on the granites and gneisses of the Piedmont, and she was among the first to apply the petrographic microscope to American field problems. Her surveys remain a foundation of the geological mapping of the Mid-Atlantic region, and her bulletins were long used as references.

Teaching at Bryn Mawr

In 1895 Bascom joined the faculty of Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where she founded the department of geology and taught for more than three decades. She built the department from nothing, teaching mineralogy, petrology, crystallography and field methods, and she insisted that her students learn by direct observation of rocks in the field as well as in the laboratory.

Under her direction Bryn Mawr became a centre for the training of women geologists, and many of the first women to win doctorates in geology and to obtain professional posts in the discipline studied under her. She set high standards, took her students on long summer expeditions, and helped them to find positions in universities, museums and government service.

She introduced advanced techniques of optical mineralogy and petrography into her teaching and encouraged research at a time when women were largely excluded from scientific institutions and societies. Her quiet determination and her evident competence won the respect of colleagues who had been sceptical of a woman in the field, and her students carried her methods across the country.

Scientific Contributions and Ideas

Bascom's principal contributions lay in the study of the Piedmont province, the plateau between the coastal plain and the Blue Ridge, and in the understanding of the ancient volcanic and intrusive rocks it contains. She established that much of the region was built of rocks that had been deformed, metamorphosed and intruded repeatedly, and she divided its complex history into recognisable stages.

She was among the first American geologists to appreciate the value of microscopic study of thin sections of rock, a technique developed in Europe, and she applied it rigorously to the identification of minerals and the interpretation of textures. Her petrographic work helped to place American geology on a par with European scholarship of the period.

She also wrote on the geology of the Baltimore and Washington areas and on the granite of the eastern seaboard, and she contributed to the debate over the age and origin of the Appalachian mountains. Her writings are distinguished by cautious reasoning from observed evidence and by an absence of speculation beyond what the rocks could support.

Recognition and Legacy

Bascom received many honours in a career that opened doors for others. She was the first woman to address the Geological Society of America and the first woman elected to its council, and she was made president of the Geological Society of America in 1930, the first woman to hold that office. She resigned from Bryn Mawr in 1928 but continued to work and publish.

She served as vice president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and as an associate editor of several scientific journals, and in 1931 she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Wisconsin. On her retirement the college named its geology building in her honour, and she spent her last years in Williamstown, where she died in 1945.

Her legacy lies in her scientific work and still more in her students. By proving that a woman could do first-rate geology and by building a department that trained many others, she helped to open the earth sciences to women and set an example of rigorous scholarship and professional service that influenced the discipline for decades.

See also

• Piedmont (United States)
• Petrography
• Bryn Mawr College
• United States Geological Survey