In our reading, you have been learning that one of the early scientific disciplines that women first gained a foothold was botany, largely because of their skills as artists. Since girls learned to draw as part of their education, they were better prepared than many men to create accurate drawings of plants. As artists, women became active participants in the categorization and creation of the taxonomy for plants.
We also find women becoming active in geology and paleontology largely through their work or hobby as fossil hunters. One of the most famous early female fossil hunters was Mary Anning, only a girl when she first made a major discovery of a complete Icthyosaur skeleton.
For this week, I want you to write a newspaper obituary for a woman from either the 18th or 19th century whose work contributed to our understanding of scientific world. As with many published obituaries, this post should tell us some about the woman you are describing (born where and when, died where and when, what was her background growing up and her education, what work did she do as an adult that is significant, and how her work contributed to the science of the time). You will be writing this obituary as if it were to be published in a newspaper at the time of her death. So your post needs to be consistent with the historical period in question. Consequently, if the woman you are writing about was working in the field of biology and died in 1850, then the obituary cannot talk about her work as contributing to our understanding of Darwinism since Charles Darwin did not publish On the Origins of Species until 1859. However, there were some ideas about evolution that were in play in 1850, so the obituary should place your person’s work in that specific context.
To complete this post, you will need to do a bit of research. You will need sources that discuss the woman you are writing about, but also sources that provide some larger historical context of the science to which she was contributing. I expect that at least one of your sources be either an essay from a professional history journal or a history monograph (that’s another name for a book that is written by a historian, contains a thesis, and focuses on a specific topic–so not a textbook, which covers lots of topics within an overarching framework). But I also expect that there be at least two sources used for this assignment. All factual information should be cited using parenthetical citations and your post must include in a bibliography.
Once you have done that, reply to at least one classmate’s posting. In your reply, I want you to remain in character as a journalist from the period. Feel free to compare the work done by the person whose obituary you wrote, but also find some additional information about the person who is described in the post to which you are replying. How would you, as another reporter, comment on the life this woman led and how her work should be remembered? That, too, will require a bit more research. You can use any appropriate source for the reply, but it should be cited as well.