In 1901, Katharine Jeannette Bush (b. 1855, d. 1937) became the
first woman at Yale University to receive a Ph.D. in the sciences.
Nearly 46 years old at the time, she had worked as assistant to Addison E. Verrill
for over 20 years. Initially hired to help arrange and catalog
specimens that were accumulating as a result of Verrill’s involvement
with the U.S. Fish Commission, Katharine Bush eventually collaborated
with him on several important reviews of shallow and deepwater Mollusca
of the Atlantic coastal region.
Bush’s most significant
work, which also served as her dissertation, was an important monograph
on the sabellid and serpulid polychaetes collected by the Harriman
Alaska Expedition of 1899, and published in 1905. Considering the
Victorian era she lived in, it is not surprising that Bush was not a
member of the expedition; the polychaetes she studied were collected
primarily by her brother-in-law Wesley R. Coe,
a faculty member at Yale. During her 30-year career, Bush published 19
research articles and monographs, an enduring scientific achievement
matched by few women of her era.