We celebrate International Women’s Day 2026 with another six inspirational women in geology.
Palaeoart illustration by Alice Bolingbroke Woodward. Image courtesy of the Lapworth Museum of Geology.
Following the last two years, the Lapworth Museum of Geology is proud to once again celebrate International Women's Day with six more figures and their substantial contributions to geology. This year, we showcase five important women from history, and one who often finds herself exploring the past in our very own Archives.
Alice Bolingbroke Woodward, circa 1900. Image via public domain.
Alice was born in Chelsea, the fourth of seven children. Her father, Henry Woodward (1832–1921), was the Keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum, London. Science was always an important part of the family's lives, but while educated at home, the children were encouraged to pursue art as well. Her four sisters also became artists, while her two brothers became scientists.
Due to her work in children's literature, Alice was known as one of the most prolific illustrators of the nineteenth century. Her most famous work is likely that for The Peter Pan Picture Book by Daniel O'Connor in 1907. This was the first illustrated version of this story, and remained in print until 1982. She went on to illustrate Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. One of her final contributions was to Myths and Legends of the Australian Aboriginals, illustrated in 1930 at the age of 68.
However, Alice was also a talented scientific illustrator - a field now known as palaeoart.
By her late teenage years, Alice was illustrating for her father's lectures and his colleagues' papers. This enabled her to study at the Westminster School of Art, and eventually spend three months at the Académie Julian in Paris under Edmond Aman-Jean (1858–1936).
Between 1886 and 1890, Alice exhibited one or two pictures each year at the Royal Institute of British Artists. In 1895, she provided the skeletal and life reconstructions of the dinosaur Iguanodon for the Illustrated London News, and in 1905 and 1912, she illustrated extinct animals for the works of Henry Robert Knipe (1855–1918).
With the scientific knowledge available at the time, Alice's work was widely regarded for its accuracy and precision, and went on to appear in greater than 80 publications. Her technical illustrations largely remain archived at the Natural History Museum, London, while the Lapworth Museum Archives hold several lantern slides with her illustrations.
During the First World War, Alice tutored the artist Cicely Mary Barker (1895–1973), and following a short period with Naval Intelligence, she went to live in Bushey, where she stayed for the remainder of her life. Alice's art covered both fiction and fact, and she has doubtlessly inspired many palaeoartists ever since.
Maria Ogilvie Gordon, circa 1900. Image from the Michael Wachtler Archive.
On the 30 April 1864, in the lonely village of Monymusk, Scotland, Maria Matilda Nicol and Reverend Alexander Ogilvie welcomed their eldest daughter. Maria Matilda Ogilvie, known to some as May, was one of eight children, many of whom became successful in their own right.
At the age of nine, Maria attended the Merchant Company Schools, Ladies College, Edinburgh, where she later became the school's best academic pupil. During holidays near Balmoral Castle, she spent hours exploring the Highlands with her eldest brother, and it was perhaps this which laid the foundations of her future.
In 1890, Maria graduated from University College London with a BSc in geology, botany, and zoology. She subsequently hoped to attend the University of Berlin, though they refused to admit a woman, and she instead journeyed to Munich in 1891. Here, palaeontologist Karl von Zittel (1839–1904) allowed her to carry out research privately, but not actually within the University.
In the summer of the same year, Maria was invited to the Dolomites by Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen (1833–1905). She was impressed by the wild and isolated terrain, and Richthofen advised she become a geologist, urging she map the San Cassiano area. She did so with no supervision, thus formed conclusions through her own observations alone. Her research focused on the structure and fossils of the area at a time when stratigraphic research was in its infancy, and in 1893, the resulting article connected the various horizons and explored the development of marine life in immense detail. She later submitted this work as a thesis, attaining a DSc from the University of London - the first to be given to a woman in the United Kingdom.
Shortly thereafter, she married a physician from Aberdeen, becoming Maria Ogilvie Gordon. However, this did not hamper her career, and she would often take her family to high Alpine areas during her subsequent research.
She became affiliated with many prominent geologists, including Charles Lapworth (1842–1920), with several correspondences now preserved in the Lapworth Museum Archives.
In 1900, Maria spent several months back in Munich, passing her exams to become the first woman to obtain a PhD at Munich University. She thanked her former mentor Karl von Zittel for his help during this period by translating his work Geschichte der Geologie und Palaeontologie from German to English. In 1932, after further academic work, she was awarded the Lyell Medal by the Geological Society of London.
Following her husband's death, Maria became an active member of the Liberal Party. She was involved in several women’s action groups, including the National Women’s Citizens Association and the International Council of Women, which found her working day and night. She was influential in negotiations at the Council for the Representation of Women in the League of Nations following the First World War, and it was due to her tireless commitment that she was awarded a D.B.E. by King George V.
Maria sadly died at her home in Regent’s Park on 24 June 1939, with her ashes laid to rest in Aberdeen. She was the most prolific female geologist of her time, and her name lives on in that of the Triassic fern genus Gordonopteris and the Maria Gordon Notch cliff on the planet Mars.
Mignon Talbot, 1911. Image via public domain.
The first woman to discover an almost complete dinosaur skeleton, Mignon Talbot is known for her remarkable achievements in palaeontology.
She was born in Iowa City, and studied at Ohio State University. After graduating, she embarked on a career in education and taught physical geography in schools around Ohio. In 1903, Mignon began her PhD in geology at Yale University, finishing this in two years. She stayed in academia and began teaching at Mount Holyoke, a women’s college in Massachusetts, with her modules covering Commercial Geography, Meteorology and Physiography, Mineralogy, Palaeontology and Stratigraphy. During this time, she began to build the extensive geological collections of the department.
In 1908, Mignon became the Chair of the Geology Department, an academic position to which women of the time were rarely elected. Reflective of attitudes of the early twentieth century, Mignon felt it was not appropriate for women to participate in fieldwork, though she did take students on trips to inspect rock formations and go fossil hunting.
In 1909, she was the first woman elected to the Palaeontological Society of the United States, and following this, it was her interest in fossils that led her to notice bones in a sandstone boulder near the Mount Holyoke campus. On what should have been an ordinary walk with her sister, Mignon came to discover an almost complete dinosaur skeleton. She was the first woman ever recorded doing so, and a year later, the species was described as Podokesaurus holyokensis, having lived in what is now the eastern United States during the Early Jurassic Period.
In 1916, a fire at Mount Holyoke destroyed much of the geological collection, including the dinosaur fossil. Firefighters managed to rescue a plaster cast, which thankfully enabled other copies to be made. Remaining resilient, Mignon began to rebuild the collection in the aftermath, and by the 1920s, this had reached over 8000 items.
In 1950, Mignon passed away after a long illness. In 2021, Massachusetts elected Podokesaurus holyokensis as its state dinosaur, ensuring Mignon’s palaeontological legacy lives on.
Lady Rachel MacRobert. Image courtesy of The MacRobert Trust.
Rachel MacRobert, née Workman is best known for founding the MacRobert Trust. However, many do not know she also had a career in geology.
She was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, though raised in Dresden, Germany, and later educated in the United Kingdom at Cheltenham Ladies College. She came from a wealthy family, with her father having served as Governor of Massachusetts. Her parents traveled extensively, cycling and mountaineering, perhaps in part inspiring her interest in the natural world.
In the early 1900s, Rachel studied geology at Royal Holloway College, now known as University College London. She also studied Geology & Political Economy at the University of Edinburgh, and was the first woman to attend the Royal School of Mines from 1909 to 1912.
She published her first paper entitled Calcite as a Primary Constituent of Igneous Rocks in 1911, and throughout the decade, Rachel attended meetings at the Geological Society of London, despite women being otherwise excluded from membership.
After marrying Sir Alex MacRobert, she made it clear she would not give up her love of science, and completed postgraduate studies at the Mineralogical Institute of Oslo. She suffered from discrimination on fieldwork and at university, saying she had “created a sensation” by being present at a mining lecture. She further challenged the status quo by participating in the suffragette movement, and was even described as “charmingly volcanic”.
In 1919, Rachel was one of the first women to be elected as Fellows to the Geological Society of London. She continued to publish her work when raising her three sons, while her wealth enabled her to travel, as she did not need to depend on her own income. She spoke seven languages, these being English, French, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Norwegian, and German.
Sadly, her three sons were killed during the Second World War, prompting Rachel to donate £25,000 to fund a bomber dubbed MacRobert’s Reply. She later founded the MacRobert Trust, which still supports young people in achieving their full potential to this day.
Marguerite Thomas Williams. Image from the BBJ Group.
Born on Christmas Eve and the youngest of six children, Marguerite’s early life remains enigmatic. However, it's certain she became fascinated with the natural world.
She attended the ‘Normal School for Coloured Girls’, an institution subsequently renamed the Miner Teachers College, and now known as the University of the District of Columbia. Here, she was trained as an educator, and graduated in 1916 with exceptional grades. Due to her work, she attained a scholarship to study at Howard University in Washington D.C. while simultaneously working at an elementary school. During her BSc, which she completed in 1923, Marguerite was mentored supportively by influential biologist Ernest Everett Just (1883–1941).
Though Just’s other star pupil went on to become his assistant, Marguerite was soon selected for an assistant professorship at the Miner Teachers College, where she further served as Chair of the Division of Geography and even helped with the campus theatre group. She requested leave some years later in order to attend Columbia University, from which she graduated with an MS in geology in 1930.
She went on to marry Otis James Williams and adopt his surname, then continued teaching at Miner Teachers College for another ten years. Following this, she undertook a doctoral project at the Catholic University of America focused on the Anacostia drainage basin in Maryland, where major flooding had occurred in the early twentieth century. Successfully defended in 1942, her thesis was one of the first pieces of critical work to find that deforestation and agriculture were substantial contributors to erosion. This was truly historic, as she was the first black person to obtain a doctorate in geology in the USA.
Marguerite subsequently became a full professor at Miner Teachers College and taught evening classes at Howard University until her retirement in 1955.
While her life was devoted to the inspiration of the next generation, she proved it is possible to thrive in geoscience as a non-white academic, and her impact continues with the Marguerite T. Williams Award, established in 2020 by the AGU. This is presented to mid-career earth scientists who have made significant contributions to research and community-building, and ensures Marguerite will never be forgotten.
Catriona in the Lapworth Archives. Image by Greg Milner.
Catriona is a long-time volunteer and Volunteer Coordinator at the Lapworth Museum of Geology.
It was while taking an O Level in Geology in the 1960s that she found herself captivated by what she described as “the mystique of geology: the impossible time scales, the fascinating creatures that exist now only in fossilised forms, the puzzle of rock types, and the drama of earthquakes and volcanoes.”
She was, as Charles Lapworth put in his characteristically lyrical way, “caught with the true geologic fever that never leaves the patient but with death”. This interest led Catriona to become a volunteer at the Lapworth Museum upon her retirement in 2019.
She first worked on digitising the Archives, and this led her down a path which, in fact, related more to her former career in social work. Amongst the geological material was Lapworth’s own correspondence with his academic peers. Catriona remarked “this was not the stiff and stuffy exchanges between august Victorians that the stereotype would assume, but vivid, fresh and counterintuitive sharing of very personal experiences, particularly regarding their mental health and wellbeing. It was inspirational and very relevant to today.”
Catriona’s research has been published in GeoHistories, the journal of the History of Geology Group. As the Volunteer Coordinator, she has also had the opportunity to participate in other ways at the Museum. Catriona says, “the universal appeal of geology is represented in today’s diverse University population, and it is pleasing to see that the future is so bright in terms of those who are coming forward to volunteer at the Museum.”
Learning, Communication and Engagement Officer, Lapworth Museum of Geology
Staff profile for Anna Leppänen, Learning, Communication and Engagement Officer at the Lapworth Museum of Geology.
Assistant Curator, Lapworth Museum of Geology
Staff profile for J. D. Dixon, Assistant Curator at the Lapworth Museum of Geology.
