It’s Ada Lovelace Day, an international day of celebration of
women in STEM fields. The Geek Feminism blog made the point in
the post “How Not to Do Ada Lovelace Day” that the ideal outcome
of ALD would be to end the invisibility of women in science and
technology, and so participants should strive for more than
generic “Yay, women in science!” statements. I agree, and as
most of my mentors have been men, my contribution to the ALD
blog carnival is to profile a woman in science whose work has
been really important to my field (ecology): E. Lucy Braun. Emma
Lucy Braun was born in 1889 to rather strict and controlling
parents; much of her early education was at home, as her mother
was a teacher. She and her older sister, Annette, were fond of
the outdoors, and Lucy began pressing plants in high school.
Lucy went on to study geology and botany in college, becoming
the second woman to earn a PhD from the University of Cincinnati
in 1914 (Annette, with a PhD in Entomology, was first). Dr.
Braun ultimately become a