Profiles of 19th-Century Women in Science

Dr. Jessica C. Linker will speak on women’s scientific practice in the nineteenth century, which benefited from the proliferation of female academies, as well as the popular sentiment that women should use science in their everyday lives. This talk draws from the careers of Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps, one of the most prolific scientific authors of the century, Lucy Way Sistare Say, the first woman to become a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences, and Sarah Mapps Douglass, who taught geology to African American students in Philadelphia with the aim of bolstering abolitionist narratives.