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Bertha Stoneman

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Bertha Stoneman
Alma materCornell University
Occupation(s)botanist and university professor
EmployerHuguenot College
WorksPlants and their ways in South Africa
Scientific career
Notable students

Bertha Stoneman (August 18, 1866 – April 30, 1943) was an American-born South African botanist. She was president of Huguenot College from 1921 to 1933, and founder of the South African Association of University Women.

Early life and education

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Bertha Stoneman was born on a farm near Jamestown, New York, the daughter of Byron Stoneman and Mary Jane Markaham Stoneman. Her aunt, Kate Stoneman,[1] was the first woman admitted to the New York State bar, and her uncle George Stoneman was a general in the American Civil War and later governor of California. Bertha Stoneman completed undergraduate and doctoral studies in botany at Cornell University in 1894 and 1896, respectively.[2] Her dissertation research involved anthracnoses.[3]

Career

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an illustration from Bertha Stoneman, Plants and their ways in South Africa (1915) (14773569171)

After graduate school, she accepted a position as head of the botany department at Huguenot College, a women's college in Wellington, South Africa.[4] She started Huguenot's herbarium developed its plant collection, and taught courses in psychology and logic as well as botany.[5] In 1923 she founded the South African Federation of University Women, and served as its first president. She became president of Huguenot University College in 1921,[6] and retired from that position in 1933.[7] Stoneman's textbook, Plants and their Ways in South Africa (1906),[8][9] was a widely assigned text in South African schools, for several decades. Among her notable students were Olive Coates Palgrave and Ethel Doidge.[10]

The standard author abbreviation Stoneman is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[11]

Personal life

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Stoneman died at home in South Africa in 1943, aged 76 years.[12] Her papers are archived at Cornell University.[13] There is a botany laboratory at the University of Pretoria named for Stoneman, and the South African Association of Women Graduates awards an annual fellowship in her name.[14]

References

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  1. ^ "Professor of Botany" Harrisburg Daily Independent (September 4, 1897): 7. via Newspapers.comOpen access icon
  2. ^ Bertha Stoneman, PhD 1894, Botany, Cornell University Graduate School.
  3. ^ Bertha Stoneman, "A Comparative Study of the Development of Some Anthracnoses" Botanical Gazette 26(2)(August 1898): 69-120.
  4. ^ Emmanuel D. Rudolph, "Women in Nineteenth Century American Botany; A Generally Unrecognized Constituency"[permanent dead link] American Journal of Botany 69(8)(September 1982): 1352.
  5. ^ Ruth C. Ellenwood, "Bertha Stoneman, CHI: College President" The Anchora of Delta Gamma (January 1934): 189.
  6. ^ "A South African Presidency" Cornell Alumni News 23(August 1921): 512.
  7. ^ Mary R. Creese and Thomas M. Creese, Ladies in the Laboratory III: South African, Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian Women in Science: Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Scarecrow Press 2010): 12-14. ISBN 9780810872899
  8. ^ Bertha M. Stoneman, Plants and their Ways in South Africa (Longman, Green 1915).
  9. ^ Henry C. Cowles, "A South African Textbook in Botany" Botanical Gazette 43(2)(February 1907): 139-140.
  10. ^ "Ethel Mary Doidge" JStor Global Plants.
  11. ^ International Plant Names Index.  Stoneman.
  12. ^ "Native of Chautauqua Dies in South Africa" Dunkirk Evening Observer (May 1, 1943): 4. via Newspapers.comOpen access icon
  13. ^ Guide to the Bertha Stoneman Papers, 1894-1945, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
  14. ^ South African Association of Women Graduates, National Fellowship Awards 2016.
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