Woman in Science / With an Introductory Chapter on Woman's Long Struggle for Things of the Mind

by J. A. Zahm

Soon she became an enthusiastic collector and was in a short time the happy possessor of a herbarium which contained many new species of plants which she had discovered during her frequent botanical excursions. From making collections for her private herbarium, she was gradually led to make collections for the schools and colleges of her native country, as well as for the museums and learned societies of various parts of Europe. Many public institutions owed to her cordial coöperation some of the choicest treasures in their herbaria, and not a few botanical writers of her day found in her an intelligent and sympathetic collaborator.

But Frau Kablick's interest in nature was not confined to plants. She was an assiduous student of paleontology as well as of botany, and the many fossil animals and plants named in her honor testify to her success in the pursuit of her favorite branches of science.

There was nothing of the conventional blue-stocking about this ardent votary of nature. Strong and healthy, neither wind nor rain interfered with her fieldwork in botany or paleontology. It was her greatest pleasure to roam through dark forests and scale high mountains in search of new species of plants and fossils. And the success which rewarded her efforts was such that the old and trained naturalists among her male friends had reason to envy her good fortune as an explorer.

But Frau Kablick never permitted her frequent excursions, or her devotion to science, to cause her to neglect the duties of her household. Fortunately, her husband was also an ardent student of nature, and while his wife was devoting her attention to botany and paleontology, he was making investigations in zoölogy and mineralogy. They spent fifty happy years together in the pursuit of science and their joint efforts contributed not a little toward the advancement of the branches of science to which they had devoted their lives with such well-directed effort and enthusiasm.

As the fruitful life of Josephine Kablick who had shed such luster on her sex in Bohemia was drawing to a close, a young woman in Germany, Amalie Dietrich by name, was preparing herself to fill the void which would be occasioned by her predecessor's death. Her first love, as a young girl, was plant life, and this was subsequently accentuated by her husband, who was not only a botanist himself but also one who belonged to a distinguished family of botanists.

A keen observer and an indefatigable collector, Frau Dietrich soon became known throughout Europe as a botanist of marked ability and daring. She was wont, unaccompanied, to climb the highest peaks of the Salzburg Alps, and spend entire weeks there seeking new species of Alpine flora. During the day she explored the deep ravines and clambered along the brambly ledges of beetling precipices, and during the night she sought shelter and repose in the humble hut of some hospitable herdsman.

Valuable, however, as was Amalie Dietrich's work in the Austrian Alps, it was but a preparation for that which some years later she was to enter upon in far-off Australia. Here she devoted twelve of the best years of her life to the cultivation of botany in the virgin soil of Queensland. Here, too, she surprised everyone by her venturesome spirit no less than by her irrepressible zeal in making collections. Heedless of danger, she plunged quite alone into the wilderness and spent days and weeks at a time with the wild aborigines.

But she secured what she went in quest of,—a large and valuable collection of plants, containing many new and interesting species. Besides these, she was able to bring back with her to Europe a large mass of zoölogical specimens as well as countless domestic utensils and implements of warfare and husbandry employed by the savages among whom she so frequently journeyed and with whose manners and customs she eventually became so familiar.

Modest and trustworthy, Frau Dietrich had a host of friends in the scientific world, and the number of plants which bear her name are not only a tribute to her worth, but a striking evidence of the extent of her activity in the pursuit of the science which became the absorbing passion of her life.[172]

Of Russian women who have become specially noted for their contributions to natural science, a very prominent place must be assigned to Sophia Pereyaslawzewa. After receiving the doctorate of science in the University of Zurich, she became director of the biological station at Sebastopol, a position she held with great éclat during twelve years. Here she made numerous important researches on manifold forms of marine life and prepared many works for the press in German and French, as well as in her native Russian. Her Monographie de Turbellaries de la Mer Noire, a large and beautifully illustrated volume published at Odessa in 1892, placed her at once among biologists of the first rank. Indeed, so meritorious was this production of the talented daughter of Holy Russia that the Congress of Naturalists in 1893 did not hesitate to recognize its exceptional value by conferring on the fair authoress a special prize.