Florence Elizabeth Eves (d. 1911) was an English physiologist noted as the first woman to receive a degree in physiology. [1]
Educated at North London Collegiate School, she took classes at University College London before studying the natural science tripos at Newnham College, Cambridge in 1878. [2] She gained a class I pass in 1881, and received her BSc from the University of London that year as Cambridge was not awarding degrees to women. [3] She came highest in the class in the London examinations for botany and physiology. [4]
Eves was one of the first recipients of a Bathurst studentship to continue her research at Newnham in 1881–2, and worked as a demonstrator in chemistry at Newnham from 1881 to 1887. [5]
She studied the process of liver ferment, publishing solo and with John Newport Langley about her findings in the Journal of Physiology . [6]
She was involved with the establishment of the Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women, raising funds for it in 1881 (including a donation from Charles Darwin) [7] and collaborating with Marion Greenwood on a prospectus for its teaching when it opened in 1884. [8]
From 1887, Eves was a teacher at Manchester High School for Girls and St Leonards School, St Andrews. She was interested in social reform, and became head of the Women’s House of the Christian Socialist Union in Hoxton. [5]
She died on 11 February 1911. [2]
Newnham College is a women's constituent college of the University of Cambridge.
Queen Elizabeth College (QEC) was a college in London. It had its origins in the Ladies' Department of King's College, London, opened in 1885 but which later accepted men as well.
Marjory Stephenson was a British biochemist. In 1945, she was one of the first two women elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, the other being Kathleen Lonsdale.
Henry Newell Martin, FRS was a British physiologist and vivisection activist.
Sir James Walker FRS FRSE FCS LLD was a Scottish chemist. He worked mainly on inorganic and physical chemistry. His major contribution was in the study of chemical reaction kinetics based on a study of the reactions converting ammonium cyanate to urea which was published in 1895 along with Frederick J. Hambly (1878-1960).
Florence Margaret Durham was a British geneticist at Cambridge in the early 1900s and an advocate of the theory of Mendelian inheritance, at a time when it was still controversial. She was part of an informal school of genetics at Cambridge led by her brother-in-law William Bateson. Her work on the heredity of coat colours in mice and canaries helped to support and extend Mendel's law of heredity. It is also one of the first examples of epistasis.
Edith Rebecca Saunders FLS was a British geneticist and plant anatomist. Described by J. B. S. Haldane as the "Mother of British Plant Genetics", she played an active role in the re-discovery of Mendel's laws of heredity, the understanding of trait inheritance in plants, and was the first collaborator of the geneticist William Bateson. She also developed extensive work on flower anatomy, particularly focusing on the gynoecia, the female reproductive organs of flowers.
Ida Maclean was an English biochemist and the first woman admitted to the London Chemical Society.
Marion Bidder was an English physiologist and one of the first women to do independent research in Cambridge. For nearly a decade, she was in charge of the Balfour Laboratory in Cambridge and in 1895 she was the first woman to speak about a paper she had written at a Royal Society meeting.
Dorothea Frances Matilda Pertz FLS was a British botanist. She co-authored five papers with Francis Darwin, Charles Darwin's son. She was made a Fellow of the Linnean Society, among the first women admitted to full membership.
Joseph Reynolds Green (1848-1914) was an English botanist, physiologist and chemist whose research into plant enzymes was influential in the development of the discipline of biochemistry. He held the chair in Botany at The Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain and lectured at the University of Liverpool and Downing College, Cambridge. In 1895 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Rachel Alcock was an English physiologist and academic.
Alice Johnson was an English zoologist. She also edited the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research from 1899 to 1916.
Albert George Dew-Smith was a British physiologist, lens maker, bibliophile, and amateur photographer. He co-founded the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company, and conducted early research with physiologist Michael Foster.
Mary Jane Ward, known to her friends as "Minnie", was a Cambridge-based Irish suffragist, lecturer and writer. In spite of her lack of formal schooling, she was accepted to study at Newnham Hall, Cambridge, in 1879 becoming the first woman to pass the moral sciences tripos examination with first class honours. She lectured at the college, and remained associated with it for many years.
Anna Bateson was an English botanist, market gardener, and suffragist. After working as an assistant in botany at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she and her mother campaigned for women's suffrage, she moved to New Milton, Hampshire and set up a pioneering market gardening business.
The Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women was a laboratory attached to the University of Cambridge from 1884 to 1914. Established to expand the laboratory capacity and provide a separate space for women’s practical work, it served as an important source of academic posts and opportunities for networking and discussion for women at Cambridge until laboratories began being shared by men and women in 1914.
Helen Gertrude Klaassen was an English physicist.
Elinor Mary Beatrice Philipps was an English science educator and missionary.
The Bathurst studentship was a fund for graduates of the natural science tripos at the women's colleges at the University of Cambridge to continue their scientific research.