Answer:
Acadia had long been a destination for geologists, but Florence Bascom was the first professional female geologist to survey Mount Desert Island, publishing “The Geology of Mount Desert Island” in 1919.
The youngest of five children, Bascom was encouraged by her father (a philosphy professor) and her mother (an activist in the suffrage movement) to pursue science. She was born in Massachusetts and grew up in Wisconsin. After earning several degrees at the University of Wisconsin and selecting geology as her preferred course of study, Bascom applied to Johns Hopkins University.
The president of Johns Hopkins, Daniel C. Gilman, who was also a Northeast Harbor summer resident, opposed the co-education of women. But Bascom persisted, successfully petitioning for admission with support from her Wisconsin professors.
As was customary at the time, she was required to sit behind a screen in the corner of the classroom so as to not distract the male students. But she also finally had the chance to get outside and conduct fieldwork, studying the rocks of the Piedmont region of Maryland and Pennsylvania, work for which she became best known.
Newspapers around the region and nation carried word of Bascom’s graduation as the first woman to receive a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1893. President Gilman sent her a letter from Mount Desert, “You have won your honors, as you must have wished to win them, without any favoritism, - just as all other candidates among us have won their diplomas, by talents, patience, and exertion...”
After briefly working at Ohio State, she took a position at Bryn Mawr College, then a women’s college, and began building a program in geology. Bascom emphasized field work for her students, a practice which often brought her into conflict with Bryn Mawr president M. Carey Thomas. In a letter to Bascom, who wanted her students to get physical education credit for geology field work, Thomas demands that the women wear appropriate apparel for the outdoors.
Explanation: :)
