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Ida H. Hyde (1857-1945)
Ida H. Hyde, c. 1891. Enlargement from a group photograph of faculty and students at the MBL. Dr. C. O. Whitman is in the foreground.
Ida H. Hyde was a trail blazer among women scientists of the 19th century. She was the first woman to matriculate for a higher degree in a German university, the first American woman to receive a Ph.D. from Heidelberg University, and the first woman to conduct research at Harvard Medical School and at the laboratories of the U.S. Fish Commission in Woods Hole. Hyde was also the first woman elected to membership in the American Physiological Society. At the University of Kansas, she established and chaired the Department of Physiology.*
For many years, Hyde maintained an active association with the MBL. Named a Member of the Corporation in 1891, she was listed as an investigator in 1892, in which year she gave a lecture on the anatomy and embryology of the Scyphomedusae. In 1894, she delivered a lecture on research techniques and in 1898 was listed as a researcher in Zoology. Her work on the embryology of the Scyphomedusae brought her international recognition in 1893, when her findings settled a controversy between Goette at Strassburg and Klaus at Vienna. Hyde accomplished some of her studies for this project with T.H. Morgan at the laboratory of the U.S. Fish Commission in Woods Hole.
To this day, Ida Hyde's work elicits inquiries from scholars and scientists.
*Tucker, Gail S., Ph.D. "Reflections on the Life of Ida Henrietta Hyde (1857-1945)." from The Creative Woman Quarterly, Spring, 1978. |
