Lydia White Shattuck

Lydia White Shattuck (June 10, 1822 – November 2, 1889[1]) was an American botanist, naturalist, chemist, and professor at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College).[2]

Lydia White Shattuck
Born10 June 1822 
Easton 
Died2 November 1889  (aged 67)
Employer

Early life and education

Shattuck was born in 1822 to first cousins Betsey Fletcher and Timothy S. Shattuck, and she was the first of their five children to survive to maturity. After completing her schooling at fifteen, she taught at the district school for the next decade while also working with academies in Newbury, Vermont and Haverhill, New Hampshire.

At twenty-six, she matriculated at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, from which she graduated in 1851.

Career

In 1851, Shattuck became a professor of botany at her alma mater.[3] She helped guide the establishment of the Mount Holyoke College Botanic Garden in 1878, and she gathered and collected thousands of plants featured in its collection.[4]

Shattuck was notable for her correspondence with numerous leading scientists, including Asa Gray, and her membership in scientific societies, including as a member of the Woods Hole Biological Laboratory Corporation and the president of the Connecticut Valley Botanical Association. Her work helped establish connections between scientists at Mount Holyoke and the broader scientific community, and she and founder Mary Lyon are considered "the two guiding forces in science" during the first fifty years of the college's history.[5] Two of her Shattuck's students, Henrietta Hooker (class of 1873) and Cornelia Clapp (class of 1871), became respected scientists who also returned to Mount Holyoke to teach after completing their formal education.

Shattuck worked with Arnold Henri Guyot and Louis Agassiz at the Anderson School of Natural History on Penikese Island.[6] In 1873, the school's founders, Louis Agassiz and Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz, the co-founder and first president of another Seven Sisters' institution, Radcliffe College, handpicked fifty scientists, among which Shattuck was one of fifteen women selected, to attend the inaugural session. She was one of a handful of women chemists at the first meeting of the 1874 Priestly centennial, from which the American Chemical Society was born. However, she was asked to stand with the wives of the male chemists in attendance when a picture of the "founders" was taken.

She retired in 1889, one year after Mount Holyoke became a college, and was given the title of professor emeritus.

Legacy

Until her death in 1889, Shattuck actively canvassed for donations for the construction of a new chemistry and physics building at Mount Holyoke. Two buildings on campus have been named after her: the first, which housed the chemistry and physics departments, was opened in 1892 and torn down in 1954; the second was opened in 1932 and is still known as Shattuck Hall.[7]

References
  1. Memorial of Lydia W. Shattuck. Beacon Press. 1890. p. 5. Lydia White Shattuck.
  2. Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary, Volume 2 edited by Edward T. James, Janet Wilson James, Paul S. Boyer
  3. "About MHC Botanic Gardens". Mount Holyoke College. 2012-04-18. Retrieved 2021-09-15.
  4. Oakes, Elizabeth H. (2007). Encyclopedia of world scientists (Rev. ed.). New York: Facts on File. ISBN 978-1-4381-1882-6. OCLC 466364697.
  5. Shmurak, Carole B.; Handler, Bonnie S. (1992). ""Castle of Science": Mount Holyoke College and the Preparation of Women in Chemistry, 1837-1941". History of Education Quarterly. 32 (3): 315–342. doi:10.2307/368548. ISSN 0018-2680.
  6. Oakes, Elizabeth H. (2007). "Shattuck, Lydia White". Encyclopedia of World Scientists (Rev. ed.). New York: Facts on File. pp. 659–660. ISBN 978-1-4381-1882-6.
  7. "Timeline". Mount Holyoke College. 2012-06-22. Retrieved 2021-09-15.

Further reading


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