Ruby Green Smith | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 6, 1878  Indiana |
| Died | May 13, 1960 (aged 82) |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupation | Entomologist, educator |
| Employer | |
Ruby Green Smith (1878-1960) was an American entomologist, peace campaigner and home economics educator. She is known for having authored The Home Bureau Creed.
Smith was born as Ruby Green on January 6, 1878, on a farm near Knightstown, Indiana, the daughter of Marcella Jane (née Hayes), a former teacher, and Dr. Alpheus W. Green, a physician who practised in Knightstown. [1] [2] [3] [4] She attended Knightstown High School. [1] Her father died while she and her brother and sister were still at school. [4] She was subsequently educated at Stanford University, receiving a B.A. in 1902. [3]
Smith worked as a teacher and head of the Department of Biology and Botany at Stockton High School, Stockton, California, [5] before returning to Stanford University as a research instructor in entomology and bionomics, obtaining an M.A. from the university in 1904. [3] She studied evolution in insects there, under Vernon Kellogg, with whom she co-authored several works, including Studies of Variation in Insects (as Ruby G. Bell, 1904) and Inheritance in Silkworms (1908). [3]
She obtained a PhD from Cornell University in 1914 [3] and began a career in Cornell's Department of Home Economics' Extension Service, teaching home economics as a pathway for women to enter higher education. From being an assistant in 1919, by 1923 she was state leader of home demonstration agents and a professor. [3]
In 1919, she authored The Home Bureau Creed, of which over half a million copies were eventually printed and distributed. [3]
She also worked as assistant director of the Conservation Division of the New York State Food Commission, and with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, before her retirement in 1946. [lower-alpha 1] [2]
She subsequently wrote The People's Colleges: A History of the New York State Extension Service in Cornell University and the State, 1876–1948. [3]
Together with Glenn Herrick she edited Anna Botsford Comstock's "autobiography" of her husband John Henry Comstock and herself, published in 1953 and titled The Comstocks of Cornell: John Henry Comstock and Anna Botsford Comstock. [6] [7] [8] A 2020 edition, edited by Karen Penders St. Clair and titled The Comstocks of Cornell: The Definitive Autobiography, restored much material that had been withheld from Anna's original manuscript. [8]
In 1915, as Ruby G. Smith, Ph.D., she contributed a chapter, "Race Problems of World Contact" to the anti-war book The Overthrow of the War System, published in conjunction with the Woman's Peace Party, of which she was an active member. [9]
Her first marriage was to Howard Bell of California. [1]
On 16 August 1905, she married a second time, at Stockton, California, to Albert William Smith (1856–1942), who had been head of mechanical engineering at Stanford University from 1891 to 1904, and was then dean of Cornell's Sibley College until his retirement in October 1921. [lower-alpha 2] [5] [10] [11] [12] The couple set up home in Ithaca, New York, where Ruby's mother and sister joined them. [4] [5] Prior to the wedding, she had been living in Stockton with her two young children, Dorothy (later also a graduate of Stanford; [4] died 1938 [2] ) and Alpheus (later a graduate of Cornell [4] ), and her mother. [5] The Smiths' child, Ruth Althea, graduated from Stanford in 1924 and died in 1975. [13]
In 1937, her husband published A Springtime Odyssey on the Shores of Southern Seas, February–May 1912: Letters from Albert W. Smith to Ruby Green Smith in a limited edition of 100. [10] [14] The letters were written while he travelled in the Mediterranean to convalesce from an illness. [10]
Smith founded the Cayuga Bird Club in the fall of 1913, [15] [16] and the Ithaca Housewives' League and Farmers' Market. [3]
Smith died at Ithaca on May 13, 1960. [1] [2] Her papers are preserved at Cornell University. [17]
Cayuga Lake (,,) is the longest of central New York's glacial Finger Lakes, and is the second largest in surface area and second largest in volume. It is just under 39 miles (63 km) long. Its average width is 1.7 miles (2.8 km), and it is 3.5 mi wide (5.6 km) at its widest point, near Aurora. It is approximately 435 ft deep (133 m) at its deepest point, and has over 95 miles (153 km) of shoreline.
Cayuga Heights is a village in Tompkins County, New York, United States, and an upscale suburb of Ithaca. The population was 4,114 at the 2020 census.
The New York State College of Human Ecologyat Cornell University (HumEc) is a statutory college and one of four New York State contract colleges located on the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, New York. The College of Human Ecology is compilation of study areas such as design, design thinking, consumer science, nutrition, health economics, public policy, human development and textiles, each through the perspective of human ecology.
The New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University is a statutory college and one of the four New York State contract colleges on the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, New York. With enrollment of approximately 3,100 undergraduate and 1,000 graduate students, CALS is the third-largest college of its kind in the United States and the second-largest undergraduate college on the Cornell campus.
Anna Botsford Comstock was an acclaimed author, illustrator, and educator of natural studies. The first female professor at Cornell University, her over 900-page work, The Handbook of Nature Study (1911), is now in its 24th edition. Comstock was an American artist and wood engraver known for illustrating entomological text books with her her husband, John Henry Comstock including their first joint effort, The Manual for the Study of Insects (1885). Comstock worked with Liberty Hyde Bailey, John Walton Spencer, Alice McCloskey, Julia Rogers, and Ada Georgia as part of the department of Nature Study at Cornell University. Together they wrote nature study curricula to develop a curiosity for, and education about, the surrounding natural world. Comstock also was a proponent for conservationism by instilling a love and appreciation of the natural world around us.
John Henry Comstock was an eminent researcher in entomology and arachnology and a leading educator. His work provided the basis for classification of butterflies, moths, and scale insects.
Sage Hall was built in 1875 at Cornell University's Ithaca, New York campus. Originally designed as a residential building, it currently houses the Johnson Graduate School of Management.
The nature study movement was a popular education movement that originated in the United States and spread throughout the English-speaking world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nature study attempted to reconcile scientific investigation with spiritual, personal experiences gained from interaction with the natural world. Led by progressive educators and naturalists such as Anna Botsford Comstock, Liberty Hyde Bailey, Louis Agassiz, William Gould Vinal, and Wilbur S. Jackman, nature study changed the way science was taught in schools by emphasizing learning from tangible objects, something that was embodied by the movement's mantra: "study nature, not books". The movement popularized scientific study outside of the classroom as well, and has proven highly influential for figures involved in the modern environmental movement, such as Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson.
Vernon Lyman Kellogg was an American entomologist, evolutionary biologist, and science administrator. He established the Department of Zoology at Stanford University in 1894, and served as the first permanent secretary of the National Research Council in Washington, DC.
The Messenger Lectures are a series of talks given by scholars and public figures at Cornell University. They were funded in 1924 by a gift from Hiram Messenger of "a fund to provide a course of lectures on the Evolution of Civilization for the special purpose of raising the moral standard of our political, business, and social life", to be "delivered by the ablest non-resident lecturer or lecturers obtainable". The lecture series has been described as one of Cornell's most important of extracurricular activities.
Edith Marion Patch was an American entomologist and writer. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, she received a degree from the University of Minnesota in 1901 and originally embarked on a career as an English teacher before receiving the opportunity to organize the entomology department at the University of Maine. She became the head of the entomology department in 1904, and, despite misgivings from several male colleagues about having a female department head, she remained in this post until her retirement in 1937. Edith Patch is recognized as the first truly successful professional woman entomologist in the United States.
The Cayuga Nature Center (CNC) is an educational institution addressing nature and environmental issues. It is located on the west side of Cayuga Lake in Tompkins County, New York.
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Simon Henry Gage was a professor of anatomy, Histology, and Embryology at Cornell University and an important figure in the history of American microscopy. His book, The Microscope, appeared in seventeen editions. In 1931, a volume of the American Journal of Anatomy was dedicated to Gage on the occasion of his eightieth birthday.
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The Computing and Communications Center is a building of Cornell University, located in Ithaca, New York. It was built in 1911 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. It was designed by Green & Wicks.
Julia Warner Snow was an American botanist and was known in the scientific community for her work as a systematic phycologist.
Glenn Washington Herrick was an American professor of entomology who worked at Cornell University.
Alice Blinn was an American educator, home efficiency expert, and magazine editor. Born in Candor, New York, she attended the New York State normal school and became a teacher. After teaching briefly, in 1913, she entered Cornell University and earned a degree in Domestic Science. While in school, she founded and managed the Cornell Women's Review. After graduation in 1917, she became a food conservation demonstrator for the New York Extension Service and then returned after a year to teach and manage the publications office for the Extension Service at Cornell.
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