The Geological Society of London was officially founded on 13 November 1807 but, as was common with most of the learned bodies of the time, women were excluded from membership and attendance at the Society’s meetings, as they were believed to lack the intellectual rigour to engage in scientific study.
The advent of women’s higher education from the 1870s onwards began to change this narrative but it would take several more decades for the first female Fellows to be elected to the Geological Society - on 21 May 1919.
This is not to say, however, that women did not participate in the science or were not recognised by their geological peers for their work. This exhibition, originally written in 2013, concentrated on the activities of four of the better known female protagonists who practised geology in the early nineteenth century. Since then, evidence of other women’s involvement in geology and its related sciences has been found within the historical collections of the Geological Society’s Library.
The exhibition has therefore been revised to highlight more of these remarkable women who were engaged with scientific practice between the 17th and the mid-19th Centuries.
Click on the links below to find out more:
CÉCILIE AGASSIZ née Braun (1809-1848) – natural history artist and first wife of Louis Agassiz (1807-1873)
MARY ANNING (1799–1847) – fossil dealer in Lyme Regis. See the online exhibition 'Mary Anning and the Geological Society'
ETHELDRED BENETT (1775-1845) – fossil collector who mostly acquired material from her home county of Wiltshire
MARY BUCKLAND née Morland (1797-1857) – palaeontologist and scientific artist
PRISCILLA SUSAN BURY née Falkner (1799-1872) – microscopist and plankton artist
MRS CAZALET OF TORQUAY (fl 1825-1827) – patron and fossil collector
LADY ELIZA MARIA GORDON CUMMING (c.1798-1842) – fossil collector and artist
MARIA EMMA GRAY (1787–1876) – conchologist and phycologist
ANNA GURNEY (1795–1857) – fossil collector in Norfolk
GULIELMA MARY HOLMES (1828-1907) & MARY HOLMES (b.1832) – palaeontological illustrators for their father George Bax Holmes (1803-1887)
SUSANNA LISTER (bap. 1670-1738) & ANNE LISTER (1671-[1695x1704]) – scientific Illustrators for their naturalist father Martin Lister (1639-1712)
CHARLOTTE MURCHISON née HUGONIN (1788-1869) – fossil collector and artist
SILURIAN SYSTEM SOCIAL CIRCLE – female social circle of Roderick and Charlotte Murchison and their illustrative contributions to the book 'The Silurian System' (1839)
MARY HONE SMITH (1784-1866) – fossil collector