Florence Bascom

Florence Bascom was the first woman geologist hired by the U.S. Geological Survey, the first woman geologist to survey Mount Desert Island in Maine (in 1919), and the second woman elected to the Geological Society of America. But Bascom broke barriers well before she started her fieldwork. She earned several degrees at the University of Wisconsin before petitioning for admission to Johns Hopkins University, which had only accepted one woman before her. Although Bascom, like other female students of the time, had to sit behind a screen in the corner of the classroom to avoid distracting male students, she became the first woman to receive a doctorate from Johns Hopkins, in 1893. She is best knownfor studying the rocks of the Piedmont region of Maryland and Pennsylvania and creating a comprehensive guide to the geology of the Mid-Atlantic region.

First appeared in the Beyond Curie x Outside Magazine Collaboration