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

by J. A. Zahm

This gifted biologist has since rendered distinct service in the cause of science by her explorations of the Gulf of Naples and the coasts of France. Her activity is prodigious, and the long list of books and monographs which she has published on the lower forms of marine life in the Black and Mediterranean seas shows that she has a capacity for work that is truly extraordinary.

Here is, probably, the place to make mention of a woman of encyclopædic mind, Clemence Augustine Royer, who was born in 1830 in Nantes, France. She wrote on such a variety of subjects that it is difficult to classify her. She was in no sense of the word a specialist, and she seems by temperament to have been averse to confining herself to any one branch of knowledge.

Her first work to attract particular attention was one on a topic connected with political economy. A prize had been offered for the discussion of this subject, and the little French woman acquitted herself so well that she had the honor of sharing the prize with the noted Proudhon. She has also written many works on philosophy and physics. Among these are two which attracted considerable notice at the time of their publication. In one of them she attacks the positivism of Comte; in the other she assails Laplace's hypothesis regarding the origin of the material universe.

But the work which made her famous, particularly in France, was her translation into French in 1862 of Darwin's Origin of Species. It is safe to say that this version created as much of a sensation in France as the original had caused in Great Britain and America. Her preface to the work of the English naturalist, in which she indicates the results which flow from an acceptance of the transformist theory, created a veritable storm in both religious and scientific circles.

So gratified was Madame Royer by the impression made by this preface and so pleased was she with the controversy which she had started, that she expanded her summary of the theory of evolution as therein given and published it in 1870 under the title of Origine de l'Homme et de Sociétés. This production was so revolutionary in character and so subversive of teachings long held sacred that it provoked an indignant protest from all quarters, and the author was at once ranked with such radical exponents of the new science as Voght, Büchner and Hæckel.

After the appearance of this production, she wrote numerous other works, several of them on subjects relating to natural science, especially in its connection with anthropology and prehistoric archæology. And so great was her breadth of view and so exceptional was her grasp of all subjects discussed by her that Renan declared of her, Elle est presque un homme de génie—She is almost a man of genius.

Mme. Royer was frequently spoken of as a candidate for the French Institute, but she was so well aware of the prejudices against the admission of women to membership in this learned body that she never allowed herself to consider the proposal seriously. She was certainly a brainy woman, and in her own department of intellectual effort she exhibited as much talent as did George Sand and Mme. de Staël in literature and history.

An entirely different type of woman from the radical and disputatious Mme. Royer was the charming and cultured lady, Miss Eleanor Ormerod, her contemporary, who, in her chosen department of science, won both fame and the lasting gratitude of her fellowmen.

Miss Ormerod, unlike Mme. Royer, was preëminently a specialist, and the branch of science in which she achieved distinction was entomology, or rather that branch of it known as economic entomology. From her childhood she manifested an unusual interest in all forms of insects, but particularly in those which are serviceable to mankind or are destructive to farms and gardens, orchards and forests.

Fortunately for the gratification of her peculiar bent of mind, nearly half of Miss Ormerod's life was spent in a locality which was specially favorable to the study of insects which are obnoxious to the gardener, the farmer and the forester. This was at the confluence of the Wye and the Severn, where her father owned a large landed estate, part of which was under cultivation and part wood and park land.