Abstract The Geological Society of London was founded in 1807. In May 1919, the first female Fellows were elected to the Society, 112 years after its foundation. This Special Publication celebrates this centenary. A total of 18 papers have been gathered to highlight recent research, carried out by 24 authors. The publication also builds on stories introduced in a previous Special Publication of the Geological Society, The Role of Women in the History of Geology , edited by Burek and Higgs in 2007, the first book to deal solely with this topic, and in an article by Burek, ‘The first female Fellows and the status of women in the Geological Society of London’, in 2009. It fills in some of the gaps in knowledge with detail that has only recently been uncovered, leading to more in-depth analysis and reporting. The current publication includes more examples from the twentieth century, and a small number into the present century, allowing some trends to be identified. The collective work is finding connections previously undocumented and in danger of being lost forever owing to the age of the interviewees. The same work also identifies several common challenges that female geoscientists faced, which are still evident in the current investigations. By building on what went before, filling gaps in knowledge and enriching the histories, interesting nuanced insights have emerged.

Abstract The Geological Society of London has historically awarded medals and funds to early career geologists and for career achievement recognition. Mid-career and outreach awards were later added as categories. This paper will concentrate on early recipients of funds and medal winners mainly during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the nineteenth century, only two women received recognition by the Geological Society for their work through early career funds (not medals): Catherine Raisin in 1893 and Jane Donald in 1898. From 1900 to 1919, no woman received a medal but funds were collected by men on behalf of Gertrude Elles, Elizabeth Gray, Ethel Wood, Helen Drew, Ida Slater and Ethel Skeat. The first woman to collect her own Fund was Ethel Skeat in 1908. Pre-World War II, only four women received career recognition in the form of a medal. Gertrude Elles in 1919 and Ethel Shakespear in 1920 received the Murchison Medal. No further medals were awarded to women until Maria Ogilvie Gordon in 1932 and Eleanor Mary Reid in 1936. It was not until the end of the 1990s and into the twenty-first century that a significant number of women received medals. It is noted that the William Smith Medal was only received by a woman in 2019 and the Dewey Medal has yet to be received by a woman. An analysis of the different medals and funds awarded to females through the Geological Society is discussed in detail with snapshots of the women who were so recognized. As we move into the twenty-first century we see an increase in these awards to women.

Abstract In May 1919 the first female Fellows of the Geological Society were elected and from then on attended meetings at the Society. The first person on the female fellows’ list was Margaret Chorley Crosfield. She was born in 1859 and died in 1952. She lived all her life in Reigate in Surrey. After studying and then leaving Cambridge, Margaret had sought to join the Geological Society of London for many years, in order to gain recognition of her research work, but also to attend meetings and use the library. This paper will look at her history and trace her geological achievements in both stratigraphy and palaeontology, as well as her extraordinary field notebooks that she left to the Geological Survey. She worked closely with two female geological colleagues, Mary Johnston and Ethel Skeat. Margaret Crosfield epitomizes the educated, amateur, independent woman who wanted to be recognized for her work, especially fieldwork, at a time when female contributions, especially in the field sciences, were not always acknowledged or even appreciated.

Abstract In the early nineteenth century, long before the Geological Society of London opened its doors to female members, geology was a fashionable science in Britain. Numerous women collected fossils and minerals, and read or even wrote popular geology books. There was also a considerable number of female helpmates to renowned pioneers of geology, acting as secretaries, draughtswomen, curators and field geologists. Access to a full geological education via universities, public libraries or membership in scientific societies, however, was largely denied to these women, causing considerable frustration. Wherever possible, women interested in geology pressed for changes by enlisting sympathetic husbands to speak on their behalf, by forcing admission to the meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science or by supporting political women's rights movements. They were, however, not the direct pathfinders for the first female members of the Geological Society. Increasing professionalization of geology rendered the female amanuensis of previous decades obsolete and, when university education was opened to women in the late 1870s, the Geological Society saw females as unwelcome competitors. Anti-discrimination laws in the wake of World War I finally forced the conservatives at the Geological Society to admit female fellows.

Abstract The double meanings of ‘case’ in the subtitle pinpoint the dual investigations of this chapter. It first puts the case for better understanding of women's contributions to ‘serious’ geology in international, as well as national, contexts by overtly collecting British women collectors in the field who contributed to French geological knowledge. It can then unpack the pivotal importance of women's geology collections and women collectors ‘at home’ in the establishment of new global subfields of geological work in the 1840s, despite more famous names being given national and international recognition for key discoveries. Our examination of the geology case in point – the collection and its expert collector, Lady Eliza Gordon Cumming – discloses her international geological expertise but also longer transnational heritage of women's scientific collecting practice. By proposing the French term ‘cabinétière’ to name its clearer status, this chapter investigates the implications of serious retrospective relabelling for geology when a woman discoverer-collector is restored and reconnected to her world collections.

Abstract A fascination with natural history does not recognize class, as is shown through the activities of female aristocrats who, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, contributed significantly by increasing the number of collections at natural history museums. These women were not members of the Geological Society of London because, at that time, women were not even allowed to be members, but they still left their impressive legacy in museums. This paper will focus on three women who made extensive collections that are now incorporated into British museums. The first of these, the Duchess of Portland, made one of the finest collections in England and, possibly, the best collection of shells and fossils in Europe of her time, which was later acquired by the Natural History Museum, London. She was followed by the Countess of Aylesford who made one of the most important mineral collections of her time, which is now at the Natural History Museum, London. Finally, Baroness Brassey collected geological samples during her trips that were used to establish the Brassey Institute in Hastings. These three women used their own income and influence to build collections.

Abstract Women have taken on a range of roles in scientific societies since the early twentieth century. The oldest society dedicated to palaeontology, the Palaeontographical Society, was established in 1847 principally for the publication of monographs on British fossils. Since its foundation, women have been involved, initially as collectors and illustrators, then authors and latterly as elected members of council. Early contributors include well-known female scientists such as Gertrude Lilian Elles (1872–1960) and Ethel Mary Reader Wood (1871–1946), and the enigmatic ‘Miss Pike’. Although there have been female monograph authors and council members since 1901, their number has not risen significantly since the early twentieth century. The increased female presence on the Society's Council since 2009 is promising but, to date, there have been only four female vice-presidents and no female presidents in almost 175 years. Although things have undoubtedly improved since its founding, the Palaeontographical Society – like similar geosciences societies – still has some distance to travel to reach gender parity. This paper contributes to that process by recognizing the many talented women who have played formative roles in the development, and continued success, of this organization.

Abstract This chapter explores the background to the first female-authored article in the Transactions of the Geological Society (published in 1824) and outlines the controversy later caused by the article. The author, Maria Graham (1785–1842), has generally been assumed not to have been a geologist herself, and is therefore often excluded from discussions of women's early contributions to geology. This chapter demonstrates that this was not the case, and that Graham had a strong interest in geology and some competence in the discipline. It further situates Graham in a flourishing culture of early nineteenth-century ‘polite science’, and argues that the episode, when parsed correctly, demonstrates the perhaps surprising extent to which women were able to participate in contemporary geological enquiry and debate, even as they undoubtedly laboured under considerable disadvantages compared with their male counterparts.

Abstract The science of geology began to thrive during the middle of the nineteenth century, with the expansion and consolidation of geological mapping of the Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland, and the foundation of geological societies across the islands of Britain and Ireland. As the desire for geological knowledge and understanding among the general public grew, so did the provision of lectures and courses open to the public. These public lecture series proved popular with a wide cross-section of men and women of Victorian Britain and Ireland. This paper explores the provision of geological lectures by officers of the Geological Survey of Ireland through the Museum of Irish Industry in Dublin, and the women who took these courses during the 1850s and 1860s, and completed geological examinations for London's Science and Art Department in Dublin as a result of these lectures. It provides a glimpse into the scientific and, specifically, geological interests and activities of these women at a time when it was not possible for them to become members of the geological societies in the cities in which they lived.

Abstract The first female Fellows of the Geological Society of London were elected in May 1919. Brief biographies were documented by Burek in 2009 as part of the celebrations for the bicentenary of the Geological Society. While some of those women were well known (e.g. Gertrude Elles and Ethel Wood), others had seemingly been forgotten. In the decade since that publication, information has come to light about those we knew so little about. There are, however, still some details evading research. From 1919 until 1925, 33 women were elected FGS, including Isobel Ellie Knaggs (1922) and Mabel Tomlinson (1924) . Mabel Tomlinson had two careers, and is remembered both as an extraordinary teacher and a Pleistocene geologist. She was awarded the Lyell Fund in 1937 and R.H. Worth Prize in 1961, one of only 13 women to have received two awards from the Geological Society. She inspired the educational Tomlinson–Brown Trust. Isabel Knaggs was born in South Africa and died in Australia but spent all her school, university and working years in England. She made significant contributions to crystallography, working with eminent crystallography scientists while remaining a lifelong FGS. The achievements of Tomlinson and Knaggs are considerable, which makes their relative present-day obscurity rather puzzling.

Abstract Gertrude Elles gained worldwide renown for her seminal work with Ethel Wood on A Monograph of British Graptolites , which is still used today. She gained the MBE, pioneered female geological education, became the first female reader in Cambridge University and one of the first tranche of female Fellows of the Geological Society in 1919. An eccentric with a vast array of hats, PhD students and lodgers, she was a stalwart member of the Sedgwick Club and life member of the British Federation of University Women. She wrote obituaries for colleagues describing their achievements with humour and good nature. Her family describe her as ‘a fabulous woman’ with a huge range of interests including archaeology, botany and music. She related her geological and botanical knowledge in showing a nephew that plants growing along the Moine Thrust reflected change in the underlying rocks. Cambridge colleagues recall her as a ‘marvellous and well-respected figure’ who caused some amusement by her big old cluttered table from which she swept away material making room for new samples (and work for technicians). She died in 1960 in her beloved Scotland. However, her legacy survives in the classification of a group of fossils extinct for nearly 400 myr.

Abstract Hendriks was born in Birmingham, the only child of a prosperous middle-class family. Following the early death of her father she studied geology at Aberystwyth before moving to Belfast, with her widowed mother, as senior demonstrator in the Geology Department. She resigned after a year and subsequently tried unsuccessfully to obtain a permanent post as a geologist, including attempting to join what is now the British Geological Survey. Mapping first in mid-Wales and then in SW England she became an accomplished field geologist, gaining a PhD from Imperial College, London in 1932. Finding fragments of fossil wood in apparently barren sediments, she demonstrated their Devonian age and recognized the presence of thrusting which introduced Ordovician and Silurian rocks into the sequence. Moving permanently to Cornwall in 1938–39, and seeking help from specialists throughout the world, she devoted the rest of her long life to geology, without any institutional support. She received awards from the Geological Society of London and the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall. Living in isolated cottages with her Alsatian dogs, she became respected by the young researchers who flocked to SW England from 1955 onwards, as the energetic doyenne of Cornish geology

Abstract Doris Reynolds, known less commonly by her married name Doris Holmes, was an English geologist and petrologist. She is best known for her role in the Granite Controversy that started in the late 1930s and continued throughout the 1940s and 1950s, and particularly for her contribution to the concept of ‘granitization’ in the formation of granites. She was greatly influenced by Catherine Raisin, who introduced her to petrology at Bedford College for Women where Reynolds studied for her first degree. Throughout her career Reynolds worked on igneous intrusions and their associated metamorphism, with particular emphasis on the Newry Igneous Complex in Ireland. In her papers she detailed the sequences of chemical changes that led to granitization which she postulated occurred as a series of ‘fronts’. She argued that these fronts altered the sedimentary rocks through which they passed, eventually turning the sediments into granites or other igneous rocks, depending on the ions carried by the front. In 1939, she married Arthur Holmes; in 1949, she was among the first five women to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in 1960 she was awarded the Lyell Medal by the Geological Society of London for her research, her original mind and her refusal to be cowed by the Establishment.

Abstract Dorothy Rayner was one of the first women to be appointed to a tenured academic post in any English university geology department, joining the Geology Department of the University of Leeds in 1939 and serving for 38 years to her retirement in 1977. She had two very important early influences in her life. The first was her family, with its tradition through several generations of doctors, scientists, engineers, mathematicians, radical politics and social activism. The other was her earlier education, particularly her 7 years at the very influential Bedales School, the first of what were to become known in the twentieth century as ‘progressive’ schools. After gaining a First at Girton College in the Cambridge Natural Sciences Tripos, she undertook ground-breaking research on the taxonomy and neural systems of Jurassic fishes, for which she was awarded a Cambridge PhD in 1938, soon after which she was appointed Assistant Lecturer in Geology at Leeds. In addition to an always very heavy teaching load, she continued with a broad range of research, including further work on fossil vertebrates, and the stratigraphy of first the north of England and then the whole of the British Isles. She was also an outstanding Editor, and then President, of the Yorkshire Geological Society.

Abstract Violet Rosemary Strachan Hutton (‘Rosemary’) graduated from St Andrews University in 1948 and a few years thereafter embarked upon a pioneering career in geophysics, a rare and challenging choice for a single woman at that time. Her impressive research career, starting in 1954, was largely devoted to the investigation of how geophysical methods, in particular electromagnetic techniques, could reveal the structure of the Earth's continental crust and upper mantle. She spent 15 years in Africa at the universities of Ghana, Zaria and Ibadan. Working in comparative isolation, she studied the equatorial electrojet and micropulsations and produced 13 high-quality papers of which three, including her first, were published in Nature . This demonstrated a remarkable combination of resourcefulness and self-reliance. In 1969, she joined the University of Edinburgh Geophysics Department and remained at the cutting edge of her science until retirement, investigating crustal electrical conductivity structure, continental rift systems, geothermal regions, geomagnetic source fields and the closure of the Paleozoic Iapetus Ocean. She inaugurated the now highly-successful biennial series of Workshops on Electromagnetic Induction – a high point in the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy calendar. To recognize her contributions, the ‘V.R.S Hutton Symposium’ was held by the European Geophysical Society in 1992. She was elected Fellow of the Institute of Physics and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in recognition of her pioneering and outstanding contributions.

Abstract Marie Tharp worked all her life as a geoscientist, and for the most part for the recognition and benefit of her male colleagues. She was employed to assist researchers at Columbia University. Her male colleagues readily used her ingenuity and insights without giving her recognition. Marie tolerated this at first but eventually began to ask for recognition for her own work. Her most influential work was the production of physiographical maps of the ocean floor. During this work, in the 1950s, Marie was the first scientist to realize that there was a large rift running the length of the Atlantic Ocean, and she eventually demonstrated that this rift linked to the East African Rift Valley. Her male colleagues suppressed this discovery for reasons of their own, and 4 years later presented it as their own research. The work caused some key figures in the history of plate tectonics to change the direction of their research. Marie suffered in her career due to rivalries between her male colleagues. It was not until the 1990s that Marie began to be recognized nationally and internationally, and receive awards for her work.

Abstract For over 100 years, female geologists have enjoyed careers in petroleum geology. They have been successful in finding oil and gas as employees, as managers, entrepreneurs, and as innovators in oil-finding technology. In the years closely succeeding their impactful work, their contributions were ignored, forgotten or transferred to male colleagues.

Abstract Exploration for diamonds in the Soviet Union started in the 1940s; however, it was not until the beginning of 1950s that the government acknowledged a strong need for locally mined diamonds. In this paper, based on publications from Russian literature, we recount a story of two female geologists, Larisa Popugaeva and Natalia Sarsadskhih. Natalia was the head of the mineralogical laboratory who implemented a new methodology to search for mineral indicators of primary diamond deposits. Larisa was a young geologist who joined Natalia's team in 1953. The work of these women led to the discovery, in 1954, of the first diamond deposit in the country – the kimberlite pipe ‘Zarnitsa’. In 1954, Natalia was unable to go into the field and, therefore, the discovery was made by Larisa. Credit for this discovery, however, was claimed by the higher officials from the Amakinskaya expedition, one of the largest diamond exploration organizations in the country. Multiple efforts to restore justice did not succeed, with Larisa only being awarded the title of the ‘Discoverer’ in 1970 and Natalia not until 1990. This paper provides a description of Larisa's and Natalia's lives up until the discovery of Zarnitsa, and a few significant events after.