Page 43 - 9780077418427.pdf

/Users/user-f465/Desktop
tiL12214_ch01_001-024.indd Page 20 9/1/10 9:51 PM user-f465
tiL12214_ch01_001-024.indd Page 20 9/1/10 9:51 PM user-f465 /Users/user-f465/Desktop

People Behind the Science

Florence Bascom (1862–1945)

lorence Bascom, a U.S. geologist, was an opening up all the time. Bascom was also
Fexpert in the study of rocks and miner- inspired by her teachers at Wisconsin and
als and founded the geology department Johns Hopkins, who were experts in the
at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. This new fields of metamorphism and crystal-
department was responsible for training lography. Bascom’s Ph.D. thesis was a study
the foremost women geologists of the early of rocks that had previously been thought
twentieth century. to be sediments but that she proved to be
Born in Williamstown, Massachusetts, metamorphosed lava flows.
in 1862, Bascom was the youngest of the While studying for her doctorate,
six children of suffragist and school- Bascom became a popular teacher, passing
teacher Emma Curtiss Bascom and Wil- on her enthusiasm and rigor to her stu-
liam Bascom, professor of philosophy at dents. She taught at the Hampton Institute
Williams College. Her father, a supporter for Negroes and American Indians and at
of suffrage and the education of women, Rockford College before becoming an in-
later became president of the University structor and associate professor at Ohio
of Wisconsin, to which women were ad- State University in geology from 1892
mitted in 1875. Florence Bascom enrolled to 1895. Moving to Bryn Mawr College,
there in 1877 and with other women was al- where geology was considered subordi-
lowed limited access to the facilities but was nate to the other sciences, she spent two America bulletins. In 1924, she became
denied access to classrooms filled with men. years teaching in a storeroom while build- the first woman to be elected a fellow of
In spite of this, she earned a B.A. in 1882, a ing a considerable collection of fossils, the Geographical Society and went on,
B.Sc. in 1884, and an M.S. in 1887. When rocks, and minerals. While at Bryn Mawr, in 1930, to become the first woman vice
Johns Hopkins University graduate school she took great pride in passing on her president. She was associate editor of
opened to women in 1889, Bascom was al- knowledge and training to a generation the American Geologist (1896–1905) and
lowed to enroll to study geology on the con- of women who would become successful. achieved a four-star place in the first edi-
dition that she sit behind a screen to avoid At Bryn Mawr, she rose rapidly, becoming tion of American Men and Women of Sci-
distracting the male students. With the reader (1898), associate professor (1903), ence (1906), a sign of how highly regarded
support of her advisor, George Huntington professor (1906), and finally professor she was in her field.
Williams, and her father, she managed in emeritus from 1928 until her death in Bascom was the author of over forty
1893 to become the second woman to gain a 1945 in Northampton, Massachusetts. research papers. She was an expert on the
Ph.D. in geology (the first being Mary Holmes Bascom became, in 1896, the first crystalline rocks of the Appalachian
at the University of Michigan in 1888). woman to work as a geologist on the U.S. Piedmont, and she published her research
Bascom’s interest in geology had been Geological Survey, spending her summers on Piedmont geomorphology. Geologists in
sparked by a driving tour she took with mapping formations in Pennsylvania, the Piedmont area still value her contribu-
her father and his friend Edward Orton, a Maryland, and New Jersey, and her win- tions, and she is still a powerful model for
geology professor at Ohio State. It was an ters analyzing slides. Her results were women seeking status in the field of geol-
exciting time for geologists with new areas published in Geographical Society of ogy today.

Source: © Research Machines plc 2006. All rights reserved. Helicon Publishing is a division of Research Machines.

standard units for length, mass, and time are, respectively, the meter, kilo- same ratio are said to be in direct proportion. If one variable increases
gram, and second. while the other decreases in the same ratio, the variables are in inverse
Measurement information used to describe something is called proportion. Proportionality statements are not necessarily equations. A
data. One way to extract meanings and generalizations from data is to proportionality constant can be used to make such a statement into an
use a ratio, a simplified relationship between two numbers. Density is a equation. Proportionality constants might have numerical value only,
ratio of mass to volume, or ρ = m/V. without units, or they might have both value and units.
Symbols are used to represent quantities, or measured proper- Modern science began about three hundred years ago during the
ties. Symbols are used in equations, which are shorthand statements time of Galileo and Newton. Since that time, scientific investigation
that describe a relationship where the quantities (both number values has been used to provide experimental evidence about nature. Methods
and units) are identical on both sides of the equal sign. Equations are used to conduct scientific investigations can be generalized as collecting
used to (1) describe a property, (2) define a concept, or (3) describe how observations, developing explanations, and testing explanations.
quantities change together. A hypothesis is a tentative explanation that is accepted or re-
Quantities that can have different values at different times are jected based on experimental data. Experimental data can come from
called variables. Variables that increase or decrease together in the observations or from a controlled experiment. The controlled experi-

20 CHAPTER 1 What Is Science? 1-20