Elvira Wood (paleontologist)

Elvira Wood (February 11, 1865[1] – December 30, 1928) was an American paleontologist who specialized in invertebrate paleontology.

Elvira Wood
BornFebruary 11, 1865
Gouldsboro, Maine
DiedDecember 30, 1928
Waltham, Massachusetts
EducationMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Alma materColumbia University: MA (1908), PhD (1910)

Biography

She was born in Gouldsboro, Maine but grew up in Boston, Massachusetts.[1][2] She attended the State Normal School at Framingham.[3]

Because of her gender, Wood was a "special student" in the Department of Geology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology between 1893 and 1896.[2][4] She earned a master's degree (1908)[5] and a doctorate (1910)[6] from Columbia University. Her doctorate thesis was titled The Phylogeny of Certain Cerithiidae.[7] It was published by the New York Academy of Sciences.[3]

Paleontology

Museum and education work

She worked at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University in the 1890s and again during the 1910s.[4][2] While at the museum, she helped create exhibitions and cataloged fossils.[4] She would eventually donate her own fossil collection to the museum.[4]

Between 1896 and 1903, she worked as an instructor of paleontology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[4][1][2] Throughout this period, she did illustrations for and assisted many paleontologists, such as John Mason Clarke, the State Paleontologist of New York.[8]

In 1907, she began work as an instructor in paleontology at Barnard College, where she would earn several degrees.[2] In 1909, as her master's thesis, she edited and published Gerard Troost's unpublished monograph on the crinoids of Tennessee (1850).[9] Her work was cited well into the 1970s.[10] She became Curator in Columbia's Geology Department in 1909.[2]

In 1917, she became the Assistant Curator in Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, but after an accident in the same year, became disabled.[2] She continued to construct models for the museum and create illustrations for scholarly publication from her home in Massachusetts.[11][2][12]

United States Geological Survey

In 1903, Wood became the assistant to Charles D. Walcott, Director of the United States Geological Survey (USGS).[2] She worked for the USGS until 1907.[2]

Memberships

She gave a paper at the first meeting of the first annual meeting of the Paleontological Society.[13] She was a member of the Boston Society of Natural History and the National Geographic Society.[2]

Influence and impact

In 1898, Amadeus William Grabau named horn coral fossil Hadrophyllum woodi in her honor.[14] Charles D. Walcott named the Middle Cambrian fossils Aluda woodi and Coscinocyathus elvira in her honor.[15][16]

Publications
  • Wood, Elvira. Marcellus Limestones of Lancaster, Erie Co., N.Y. Paleontologic Papers 2, New York State Museum, December 1901.
  • Wood, Elvira. A new Crinoid from the Hamilton of Charlestown, Indiana, American Journal of Science, Vol. XII, October 1901, pp. 1–14. Pl. V.
  • Wood, Elvira. On New and Old Middle Devonic Crinoids, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Washington D.C., August 6, 1904, pp. 56–84, Pl. XV-XVI.
  • Wood, Elvira. A Critical Summary of Troost's Unpublished Manuscript on the Crinoids of Tennessee, Smithsonian Institution United States National Museum Bulletin 64, Washington D.C., 1909, pp. 1–150, Pl. 1–15.
  • Wood, Elvira. The Phylogeny of Certain Cerithidae, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIV, New York, May 1910, pp. 1–92, Pl. I-IX.
  • Wood, Elvira. The Use of Crinoid Arms in Studies of Phylogeny, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Volume XX, New York, 1914, pp. 1–14, Pl. I-V.
  • Wood, Elvira. The Ancestry and Descendants of Ebenezer Wood of West Gouldsborough, Maine, Springfield Printing and Binding Company, Springfield, Mass. 1930.

References
  1. Wood, Elvira (1930). The ancestry and descendants of Ebenezer Wood of West Gouldsborough, Maine. Springfield, Mass.: Springfield Printing and Binding Co. pp. no page number (before page 1). hdl:2027/wu.89062469259.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  2. "'96 [Class Notes]" (PDF). MIT Technology Review. 31 (5): 290. March 1929.
  3. Wood, Elvira (1910). "The phylogeny of certain Cerithiidæ". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 20 (1): 1–92. doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.1910.tb55147.x. OCLC 3996834. S2CID 130599820.
  4. Berglund, Jennifer; Gochberg, Reed. "19th Century Women at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology with Reed Gochberg". Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. Retrieved March 20, 2021.
  5. "Columbia Joyful At Commencement Old Boys Come Back to Give a Circus as 1,140 Graduates Get Their Degrees". The New York Times. May 28, 1908. p. 8.
  6. "Columbia Records Its Greatest Year Largest Graduating Class, Millions in Gifts, and More Alumni Back for Commencement". The New York Times. June 2, 1910. p. 7.
  7. "Doctorates Conferred by American Universities". Science. 32 (816): 231–238. August 19, 1910. Bibcode:1910Sci....32..231.. doi:10.1126/science.32.816.231. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 17811246.
  8. Clarke, John Mason (1901). Paleontologic papers. New York State Museum. Bull.49. New York: Albany. pp. 130ff. hdl:2027/osu.32435077255172.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  9. Wood, Elvira (1909). A critical summary of Troost's unpublished manuscript on the crinoids of Tennessee. Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Museum; Government Printing Office. OCLC 985731050.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  10. Paul, C. R. C. (1972). "Cheirocystella antiqua" (PDF). Brigham Young University Geology Studies. 19: 45.
  11. "Edmund Otis Hovey papers: Paleontological models, 1917–1918". American Museum of Natural History. Retrieved March 20, 2021.
  12. Raymond, Percy Edward (1920). The Appendages, Anatomy, and Relationships of Trilobites. Vol. VII. Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. p. 9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  13. Cleland, Herdman F. (January 1, 1910). "Proceedings of the Preliminary Meeting of the Paleontological Society, held at Baltimore, Maryland, December 30, 1908, and also Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting, held at Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 29, 1909". GSA Bulletin. 21 (1): 69–86. Bibcode:1910GSAB...21...69C. doi:10.1130/GSAB-21-69. ISSN 0016-7606.
  14. Grabau, Amadeus W. (1898–1899). Geology and palaeontology of Eighteen Mile Creek and the Lake shore sections of Erie County, New York.A handbook for the use of students and amateurs. Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences ;v. 6. Buffalo, NY: Buffalo Society of Natural History. pp. 128–129. hdl:2027/hvd.32044107346728.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  15. Pamphlets on Biology: Kofoid collection. Vol. 2331. New York. 1906. p. 7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  16. Walcott, Charles Doolittle (1913). Research in China in three volumes and atlas. The Carnegie Institution. pp. 60–61, 228. OCLC 496255202. 'The specific name is given in recognition of the excellent and thorough preparatory work that was done by Miss Elvira Wood in the preliminary study of the Cambrian fossils from China and her work upon the Devonian crinoids, [page 228]{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
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