Becoming A Geologist: Florence Bascom and Johns Hopkins, 1888-1895

Florence Bascom (1862-1945) was a petrologist and field geologist at Bryn Mawr College who provided a basic description and interpretation of major areas of Pennsylvania and surrounding regions. This paper is the second of a two-part study that explores the question of how Bascom became a geologist. The first part dealt with Bascom's early history in Wisconsin, from the time she went to Madison at the age of 12 to her completion of a Master of Science degree in Microscopic Lithology under Roland D. Irving (1847-1888) at the University Of Wisconsin in 1887. This second part of the study begins with Bascom's experience teaching at Rockford Seminary in Illinois, where she was exposed to Mary E. Holmes (1850-1906). who had obtained a doctorate in paleontology from the University of Michigan. It then details the extension of Bascom's education from a limited laboratory-based experience to involvement in field work with George Huntington Williams (1856-1894) at Johns Hopkins University in the years 1891-1893. Johns Hopkins did not officially admit women to graduate study then. Nevertheless, on the basis of combined field and laboratory research in the Monterey district of Pennsylvania, Bascom received the first doctorate granted to a woman at the University. She was then hired as an Assistant in Geology by Edward Orton (1829-1899), at Ohio State University, a highly unusual appointment at that time. In addition to teaching, she was engaged in field and laboratory work at Ohio State until 1895, when she was hired by Martha Carey Thomas (1857-1935) at Bryn Mawr.