{"id":777,"date":"2014-02-03T15:37:08","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T20:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nybg.org\/science-talk\/?p=777"},"modified":"2014-02-04T09:14:18","modified_gmt":"2014-02-04T14:14:18","slug":"katherine-brandegee-blazing-a-trail-for-women-in-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/02\/katherine-brandegee-blazing-a-trail-for-women-in-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Katharine Brandegee: Blazing a Trail for Women in Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amy Weiss<\/a> is a curatorial assistant in The New York Botanical Garden\u2019s William and Lynda Steere Herbarium<\/a>, where she catalogues and preserves plant specimens from around the world.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\"\"
Mary Katharine Brandegee<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Novels are full of unconventional women, from Jane Austen\u2019s spunky Elizabeth Bennet to the brilliant botanist Alma Whittaker<\/a> in Elizabeth Gilbert\u2019s recent novel The Signature of All Things<\/em>. But\u00a0Mary Katharine Layne Curran Brandegee<\/a> (1844-1920), a real-life\u00a0botanist, could certainly have taught\u00a0these fictional women a thing or two about forging your own path.<\/p>\n

Born\u00a0Mary Katharine Layne in 1844 to a Tennessee farmer, she was a young girl when\u00a0the Laynes moved west to California during the 1849 gold rush, eventually settling in Folsom, California. She married Hugh Curran, a constable, in 1866, but he\u00a0died of alcoholism in 1874. Often described as strong-willed, Mrs. Curran moved to San Francisco the following year and enrolled at the University of California\u2019s medical school. She was only the third woman to do so.<\/p>\n

At that time, botany was an essential component of medical science education, and after receiving her degree,\u00a0Curran followed the advice of an instructor and pursued botany rather than practice medicine. She became a member of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco in 1879,\u00a0continuing\u00a0her botanical training by\u00a0collecting plants\u00a0throughout California and working\u00a0in the Academy\u2019s herbarium. In 1883, Curran was appointed a curator of botany, one of the first women to hold such a position at a major museum, and in 1891 she\u00a0became the sole botanical curator.
\n
\nIn 1885, Townshend S. Brandegee (1843\u20131925), a civil engineer by trade but an avid plant collector, arrived in San Francisco and became an active member of the Academy. As Curran\u00a0wrote in a letter to her sister, she\u00a0fell \u201cinsanely in love\u201d with Brandegee, and the two were wed in 1889. For their honeymoon, they walked from San Diego to San Francisco, a distance of 500 miles, collecting plants along the way.<\/p>\n

Katharine Brandegee went on to mentor another woman, the Colorado botanist and former schoolteacher Alice Eastwood, even giving up her salary so that the Academy could hire Eastwood as a co-curator. In 1894, the Brandegees relocated to San Diego, where they set up their own herbarium and botanical garden. They returned to the Bay area shortly after the 1906 earthquake destroyed most of San Francisco and the Academy\u2019s herbarium, working\u00a0out of the herbarium at the University of California,\u00a0Berkeley, to which\u00a0they donated their personal herbarium of more than\u00a076,000 specimens. Katharine Brandegee died in Berkeley in 1920, but her contributions to science live on through her writings and collections.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This specimen from the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium neatly shows the history of the California Academy of Sciences and its ties to the New York Botanical Garden.\u00a0The specimen was collected by Katharine Brandegee. The species was later moved to the genus Camissonia<\/em> by Peter Raven, a prominent botanist who was first encouraged by Alice Eastwood, Brandegee\u2019s former student. This specimen was later used to illustrate the species in the multivolume Intermountain Flora<\/em><\/a>, published by the NYBG Press, which is\u00a0one of the major\u00a0accomplishments of\u00a0the husband-and-wife team of Botanical Garden scientists Patricia and Noel Holmgren<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Brandegee portrait courtesy of Berkeley.edu<\/a><\/em><\/span>
\nSource: Daniel, T. F. 2008. One hundred and fifty years of botany at the California Academy of Sciences (1853-2003). Proc. Calif. Acad. Sci., ser. 4, 59: 215\u2013305.<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the late 19th century, Mary Katharine Brandegee was setting the bar high for botanists to follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[25],"tags":[159,150,242,243,33,39,114],"yoast_head":"\nKatharine Brandegee: Blazing a Trail for Women in Science - Science Talk Archive<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/02\/katherine-brandegee-blazing-a-trail-for-women-in-science\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Katharine Brandegee: Blazing a Trail for Women in Science - Science Talk Archive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the late 19th century, Mary Katharine Brandegee was setting the bar high for botanists to follow.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/02\/katherine-brandegee-blazing-a-trail-for-women-in-science\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Science Talk Archive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-02-03T20:37:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-02-04T14:14:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/images\/blogs\/BrandegeeK_02_300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Amy Weiss\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/\",\"name\":\"Science Talk Archive\",\"description\":\"Exploring the science of plants, from the field to the lab\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/02\/katherine-brandegee-blazing-a-trail-for-women-in-science\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/images\/blogs\/BrandegeeK_02_300.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/images\/blogs\/BrandegeeK_02_300.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/02\/katherine-brandegee-blazing-a-trail-for-women-in-science\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/02\/katherine-brandegee-blazing-a-trail-for-women-in-science\/\",\"name\":\"Katharine Brandegee: Blazing a Trail for Women in Science - 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