Six more women and their significant contributions to geology

Following annual tradition, the Lapworth Museum of Geology honours the significant contributions of six more women to geoscience. This year, we thought it important to showcase an eclectic range of stories, and so highlight three women from deep in history and three who are currently at the geological helm.

Mary Buckland (née Morland) (1797 – 1857)

Illustration in palaeontology is as important as the description of specimens. Not only is it visually appealing and accessible, but it also asks what organisms may have looked like when alive. In a time lacking smartphones or widespread photographic technology, these illustrations brought fossils to audiences unable to see the original specimens.

Mary Morland was born in Marcham in 1797. Her mother died when she was young, with her father going on to remarry. Mary spent a large part of her childhood in the household of the English physician Sir Christopher Pegge (1765 – 1822), who ignited her lifelong passion for science.

As a teenager, she exchanged letters with and produced fossil illustrations for French naturalist and zoologist Georges Cuvier (1769 – 1832). This led Mary to a career as a draughtswoman, continuing to make technical drawings for Cuvier as well as the geologist William Conybeare (1787 – 1857), a path enabling her meeting with palaeontologist William Buckland (1784 – 1856).

In 1824, William helped describe a partial lower jawbone, which became the first ever dinosaur to be formally named, Megalosaurus bucklandii. It was Mary who produced the famous illustration of this specimen, now kept at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Mary and William married in 1825 – their honeymoon being a geological tour of Europe. The couple’s great enthusiasm for science was evident from their home stacked full of scientific papers and books. They went on to have nine children, with five surviving into adulthood. Many of their children also maintained an interest in the natural sciences, including their son Frank Buckland (1826 – 1880) who could identify the vertebrae of an ichthyosaur by the age of four and became a naturalist in his own right. Mary and William’s love for fossils was written all over their home; they had ichthyosaur vertebrae acting as a candle stand and William liked to serve peculiar dishes such as crocodile.

Mary had a busy life as a Victorian mother and wife but continued to pursue her interest in palaeontology despite her husband’s disapproval of women in science. She was a successful scientific illustrator and produced detailed images for William’s books, including 'Reliquiæ diluvianæ' (1823) and 'Geology and Mineralogy' (1836). Following her marriage, Mary was not always credited for her illustrations, despite them being of great help when her husband used them as teaching aids.

Despite his feelings on women in science, William depended on Mary’s help when it came to solving intriguing geological mysteries, such as that of the cause of trace fossils on New Red Sandstone. The pair conducted experiments through the night to find the answer, and long after midnight, they concluded that it was a tortoise, based on their pet tortoise’s footprints on a paste made of moistened flour on the kitchen table.

Mary’s work also included making models and labelling specimens for the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. In addition, she was a skilled fossil conservationist, repairing broken specimens.

William Buckland died in 1856 after suffering issues with his mental health. Mary moved to St. Lenoard’s-on-Sea and studied marine bryozoa with her daughter Caroline. She died on 30 November 1857.

No longer hidden due to Victorian attitudes, Mary’s accomplishments as a scientific illustrator are now remembered and celebrated, with many of her fossil illustrations being held by the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Johanna Gabrielle Ottilie “Tilly” Edinger (1897 – 1967)

Two very different fields – geology and neurology – may not seem like they would have that much in common. However, it was the work of German-American palaeontologist Tilly Edinger that linked these fields of study.

Tilly was born in 1897 in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, the youngest of three children in a Jewish family. Her father, Ludwig Edinger (1855 – 1918), was a medical researcher and the founding director of the Frankfurt Neurological Institute. Her mother Anna Edinger née Goldschmidt (1863 – 1929) was a social activist and feminist. These roots may well have shaped Tilly’s resilient perspective for the rest of her life.

Tilly received her PhD in natural philosophy from the University of Frankfurt in 1921. Her research was on Nothosaurus (an extinct marine reptile from the Triassic) and its endocast (the natural cast of its braincase). Prior to Tilly’s research, endocasts were seen as nothing more than a “palaeontological oddity”, but she found that it was possible to study the evolution of vertebrate brains.

After finishing her doctorate, Tilly worked in unpaid positions at the University of Frankfurt and the Senckenberg Museum for the next 17 years. She eventually became the Senckenberg’s Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology, though the position was still unpaid. Tilly continued her research of fossil brains, collecting literature to put together a bibliography on the subject. She considered questions such as whether brain casts could reveal how extinct animals lived, and went on to show that pterosaurs had powerful sight.

With the Nazi Party in power from 1933, Tilly’s life became extremely difficult due to the systematic oppression of Jewish people. She managed to work at the Senckenberg Museum for the next five years because of its status as a private institution, but had to make herself invisible to avoid the threat of violence. She used a side door to enter the Museum and had to remove her name plate from the door. She applied for a United States visa in 1938, but her receipt of this was delayed due to the USA quota system which capped the number of immigrants. Furthermore, with a hearing impairment caused by otosclerosis, Tilly often had to sit near the speaker at scientific meetings. As a result of her worsening medical condition and the increased risk to Jewish people, Tilly was forced to stop attending discussions in order to avoid unwanted attention.

After Kristallnacht (9 – 10 November 1938), the Night of Broken Glass, the authorities barred Tilly from the Senckenberg Museum. She used her connections in the scientific community to flee to England in 1939, with nothing more than a few Reichsmarks in her pocket. In 1940, she received her USA visa and travelled to New York by ship, arriving in May. In 1938, Tilly had written to a colleague “One way or another, the fossil vertebrates will save me,” which proved to be true when she was able to find work with the help of the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Scholars at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ). Although she was now safe, Tilly’s position at MCZ was still unpaid, and she was only able to support herself financially by teaching at Wellesley College, working for the Geological Society of America and translating papers.

Tilly became the first female president of the Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology in 1963. Some of her final projects included studying hyperostoses (strange growths/swellings found on the bones of fossil and modern saltwater fish), which have since become known as “Tilly bones”. She also continued to compile a bibliography on fossil brains.

Tilly died in a traffic accident in 1967, so her colleagues finished preparing her bibliography and saw it published in 1975. She is regarded as the founder of palaeoneurology, having mentored many young academics in her later years. To this day, researchers at the University of Birmingham’s own Earth Sciences department study fossil brains, a field first built by Tilly Edinger.

Marie Tharp (1920 – 2006)

When being taught geology, many will have been told of Alfred Wegener (1880 – 1930) and his suggestion in 1912 that the continents were able to move. However, few will know that it was actually a woman whose monumental efforts helped prove this theory.

Marie Tharp was a geologist and oceanographer born in Michigan, USA. Her mother was a schoolteacher who retired when she married Marie’s father, a soil surveyor (a role generating maps based on soil data). Marie often accompanied him on these expeditions, and due to the widespread nature of his role, her family moved across the country approximately thirty times. Following her passion for reading, Marie received a BA in English in 1943, but due to the Second World War, more women with scientific training were needed, so Marie earned an MS in geology. She soon started at an oil company but found she was not allowed to undertake fieldwork, so returned to university for a BS in mathematics, then moved to New York State.

It was here, in 1948, that Marie started with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University (then known as the Lamont Geological Observatory). She was one of the first women employed by this institution and initially undertook drafting and computing for graduate students. She soon encountered Bruce Heezen (1924 – 1977), who had collected substantial amounts of seafloor data in need of significant organisation. Shortly thereafter, the pair started to map the seafloor and better our understanding of ocean geology. Marie’s career began at a time when women were not permitted at sea, even to collect data. Instead, they were offered roles that their male counterparts rejected, so Marie had to stay in the lab and convert the numerical bathymetric readings into profiles and maps by hand.

In 1957, Marie and Bruce published the first map of the Atlantic Ocean, which detailed many canyons and ridges previously unknown to science. Yet, five years prior, their data had revealed the presence of a rift valley running through the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Marie hypothesised that this was evidence for seafloor spreading, where magma would rise and push the ridge apart to form new crust. However, Bruce thought this would support the radical theory of continental drift, largely disregarded by the scientists of the time, and so dismissed her observation as mere ‘girl talk’ until more evidence could be found. Following their analyses of earthquake data, Marie was proved right, though she too did not believe in continental drift. Instead, they used this knowledge to advocate the expansion theory. Their pioneering cartographic effort went on to ignite the geological revolution of the 1960s, and others eventually verified the theory of plate tectonics.

Marie’s position at Lamont was abruptly terminated in 1968, and so Bruce sourced alternative funds to enable her to continue preparing maps. In 1977, they published the first complete world map of ocean floors, a resource still seen today across global universities. Twenty years later, the Library of Congress named Marie as one of the four greatest cartographers of the 20th century; she went on to be awarded the first Lamont-Doherty Heritage Award in 2001; and Columbia University even created the Marie Tharp Lamont Research Professorship in 2019.

Marie died in 2006, but her substantial contributions to earth science thankfully did not become anonymous, and she remains one of the world's most influential geoscientists.

Kirsty Edgar (1982 – present)

Kirsty has always loved the natural world, and inspired by a swath of geology-themed movies in her formative years, she decided to take a risk and pursue a career in geology.

Kirsty graduated from Royal Holloway in 2004 with a First-Class MSci in Geoscience, and it was during this time that she was introduced to the world of microfossils. In 2009, she completed a PhD in micropalaeontology and palaeoclimatology at the University of Southampton focused on reconstructing Eocene global climate change and associated low latitude marine plankton responses. Since then, her research has remained highly interdisciplinary spanning two core themes: [1] identifying the nature and drivers of biological and ecological responses to past environmental change, underpinned by a strong understanding of marine microfossil taxonomy, taphonomy and stratigraphy, and [2] utilising microfossils to reconstruct ancient high-CO₂ worlds, including the relationship between CO₂, temperature, and ice sheet behaviour.

Kirsty’s academic travels as a Research Fellow took her to the Universities of Cardiff and Bristol. In 2016, she joined the University of Birmingham as a Lecturer in Micropalaeontology, teaching modules spanning micropalaeontology, field and research skills, palaeoecology, and palaeoclimatology. Since then, she has tutored and/or supervised >100 students throughout their undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, including members of the current Lapworth Museum team.

Her micropalaeontological expertise resulted in invitations to take part in multiple ocean-going expeditions over the years, and so many months at sea. Most notably, sailing as a planktic foraminiferal biostratigrapher on Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 320 (in 2009) and Expedition 369 (in 2017) to the equatorial Pacific and Southern Oceans, respectively. She used planktic foraminifera to date sediments recovered from the seabed in real time, and contributed to understanding changing local and global climatic, environmental and oceanographic change as the Earth transitioned from the Cretaceous ‘greenhouse’ to modern ‘icehouse’ world.

Kirsty is a highly engaged member of the academic community both internally and externally. She is a member of the committee for the open-access planktic foraminiferal taxonomy database Mikrotax, Neogene Planktic Foraminiferal Working Group revising planktic foraminiferal taxonomy and stratigraphy, and the Foraminiferal representative on the Geological Society of London’s Stratigraphic Commission. In 2022, Kirsty became President of the Micropalaeontological Society, and in 2023 Chair of the Lapworth Museum of Geology Management Group, positions which she maintains to this day. In 2024, she became Professor in Micropalaeontology at the University of Birmingham.

Her current works span both marine and terrestrial systems to find out more about what the often-overlooked tiny fossils (of all kinds) can reveal about past environments and ecosystems. Current projects include using microfossils to reconstruct tetrapod turnover across the Jurassic–Cretaceous boundary, assessing the response of pelagic fish and sharks to ancient global warming, and determining how to define a species in the marine plankton.

Most recently, building off her love of palaeontology, Kirsty has worked to understand how best to record, conserve and communicate palaeontological heritage, integrating digital approaches into site management with multiple organisations. In summer 2024, she co-led a team of >100 volunteers to uncover the UK’s largest dinosaur track site that has since featured on BBC2’s Digging for Britain. This globally significant site provides a valuable snapshot into how the dinosaurs that lived in northern Oxfordshire ~166 million years ago interacted with each other and their environment.

Kerys Meredew (1997 – present)

Kerys is a final-year Doctoral Researcher investigating how volcanic systems are perturbed by catastrophic landslides.

Volcanoes globally form incredibly diverse and dynamic systems with the potential to generate devastating hazards. As urban areas rapidly expand, the number of communities exposed to volcanic risk continues to grow, and so does the need for effective hazard management. Continually improving understanding of these processes is key to successful monitoring and mitigation, and ultimately, was the driver behind Kerys pursuing volcanology.

Prior to her ongoing PhD, Kerys studied MSci Geology and Physical Geography, where she found a love for all things geology. After graduating, she went on to work as part of a widening participation organisation, aiming to help young people make more informed decisions about their future higher education and career pathways. Whilst working with local schools was incredibly rewarding, it made Kerys realise how much she missed research and working out in the field, leading to her return to academia.

Currently her research focuses on the volcano of Anak Krakatau, a relatively small but highly active volcanic island in Indonesia. In December 2018 it underwent a substantial failure of its south-western slope, reducing the island’s height by around 200 metres and surface area by approximately half its previous size. This triggered a devastating tsunami, inundating the surrounding coastlines, resulting in significant destruction and loss of life.

What makes this case particularly unique, is that most historical collapses have occurred on much larger volcanoes, formed over several thousands of years. In contrast, this failure occurred just 91 years after Anak Krakatau first emerged above sea-level. It’s this young age which has meant that the volcano’s history has been exceptionally well-preserved, both in archival documents such as reports, photos and maps, but also within the rock record. Combined, these capture the complete volcanic lifecycle, allowing researchers the rare opportunity to explore the relationship between volcano growth, eruption style and instability on a much shorter timescale. This is not only key in assessing Anak Krakatau’s future hazards but also provides an important analogue for understanding these cycles at other volcanoes globally.

Travelling the world for research has been a personal highlight for Kerys during her time as a PhD student. With the support of Indonesian collaborators, she visited Anak Krakatau in 2023 - seeing the volcano for the first time was an incredibly surreal moment, especially having studied it through a computer for two years. The team worked together to sample historic volcanic ash, whilst also conducting an updated drone survey of the island. Since then, Kerys has also been involved in several marine research expeditions, from surveying submarine volcanoes in the Sicilian Channel to investigating the marine impacts of the 2008 Chaiten eruption in Southern Chile.

Looking to the future, Kerys hopes to continue pursuing her interests in volcanic collapse and their deposits - but also hope to begin expanding her research into the submarine realm, understanding how these processes interact with the marine environment.

Gemma Baker (present)

A current PhD researcher at the University of Birmingham, Gemma always had an interest in the natural world which led her to join the University of Birmingham as an undergraduate student studying Geology and Physical Geography.

She continued at Birmingham, completing her MSci degree through a thesis studying the potential of organic biomarkers in reconstructing the diets of lemurs. Through this research, she found an interest in exploring the use of geological tools (such as biomarkers, which are typically used to reconstruct past climates, hydrological regimes and land uses) within other contexts, such as modern ecology. This led to her pursuing her PhD in Organic Geochemistry at Birmingham, expanding on the work from her master’s.

Exploring how techniques can cross disciplines to broaden the potential of different studies, her work has expanded from the sole use of organic biomarkers in dietary analysis, to the use of stable-isotope geochemistry as novel food transit tracers and indicators of plant type.

Her work has allowed her to travel a great deal, getting to experience working directly with lemurs, and to use techniques that wouldn’t otherwise have been available. Through a research visit to the Duke Lemur Center in North Carolina, USA she tested a novel technique involving enriching plant food material with a heavy stable isotope before feeding it to the lemurs. Testing of the resultant faecal matter allowed for accurate estimations of food transit time through the body in an original study. She hopes this will represent a new approach to these techniques which can be applied across the primate group and wider. A trip to Japan facilitated the analysis of these samples, and she hopes to present some of the final findings of her PhD in Madagascar this year.

When she finishes her PhD, Gemma hopes to use her scientific background for science communication and education or use skills developed during her studies within data analytics.