This biography is part of the series Pioneering women in Earth Sciences – the link will take you to the main page.
Ida Slater was born into wealth, reflected in her early education at South Hampstead High School for Girls that focused on academic achievement. At age 19 (1900) and armed with £50 scholarship gained from exceptional high school grades, she enrolled at Newnham College, University of Cambridge. Her studies included geology, and in 1903 and 1904 she gained 1st Class grades in the Natural Sciences Tripos – a Cambridge honours program (Sendino and Darrell, 2009; Sendino, Ducker, and Burek, 2018).
Newnham College was Cambridge University’s response to the demand for women’s education. The college began in humble dwellings in 1870, conveniently tucked away from the general hubbub of university life that historically was a bastion of male students and academics. With encouragement from Millicent Fawcett, a prominent suffrage campaigner, and Anne Clough, the nascent college rapidly became a popular institution for women’s higher education. A dedicated school, Newnham Hall was opened in 1875; the College still operates out of this building. A second women’s college, Girton College was established in 1869.
Although Cambridge University was persuaded in 1881 to allow women to study the university syllabuses and sit exams, it did not permit the women to graduate with actual degrees. Attempts to change the governing council minds failed on at least two occasions in 1887 and 1897; on both occasions male students (and probably a few academics) celebrated the women’s failures by rampaging through the town and physically damaging several local structures. Cambridge did not permit women to graduate with degrees until 1948.
Oxford University also established four women’s colleges before 1900: Somerville (1879), Lady Margaret, St. Hugh’s (1886), and St. Hilda (1893). A fifth group called the Society of Oxford Home-Students was established in 1889 (for women who did not live in residence). Oxford began granting women full degrees in 1920.
Newnham College at that time (1900-1901) also became the educational focus for Gertrude Elles, Margaret Crosfield, Ethel Shakespear, and Ethel Woods who, at the suggestion of Charles Lapworth, began working on Ordovician-Silurian stratigraphy and the Cambrian-Silurian problem. The group of women were known as the Newnham Quartet; all excelled at geological mapping, stratigraphy, and Early Paleozoic paleontology. The Newnham geology students must have been close knit at the time – all faced the same social and academic barriers to furthering their education. Ida Slater was an important part of this group, not only because of her interests in geology, but also because the fossils she eventually studied were from rocks of similar age and location as those of her colleagues.
The challenges surrounding the recognition of degrees was temporarily resolved by Trinity College, Dublin. Trinity began granting women degrees in 1904 – the rationale was perfectly sensible. Women passed all the requirements applied to men; women commonly excelled in these requirements. So why not grant them full degrees? Ida and many of her colleagues, including those at Oxford, were able to complete their degrees at Trinity. The group of women became known as the Steamboat ladies, reflecting their mode of travel to Ireland. At the time, Ida had earned Winkworth and Bathurst awards, and a Harkness scholarship for geology.
While resident at Newnham, Ida joined the Sedgwick Club in 1902 – a geology club founded in 1880 in memory of Adam Sedgwick. She was Honorary Secretary from mid-1903 to early 1904. The lectures and debates presented there were an important part of Ida’s geological education. From the outset, the Club was open to men and women, as stated in inaugural article #4 that explicitly included members from Newnham and Girton colleges. This is an interesting outcome given that Adam Sedgwick was generally opposed to the inclusion of women in any scientific endeavour – he vehemently opposed their inclusion in the Geological Society, and was reported to have referred to women students as “nasty forward minxes” (J.W.Clark and T. McK. Hughes, 1890, p. 409).
Ida Slater was actively involved in stratigraphic studies in Shropshire, with a focus on the Lower Paleozoic geology of Ludlow in conjunction with Gertrude Elles. They had a paper read at the Geological Society in 1906 “The highest Silurian rocks of the Ludlow District”, subsequently published in the Quarterly Journal (they could not read it themselves because the Society did not admit women as Fellows, until 1919). The address given for both authors was Dublin (Trinity College).
About this time (1905-06) Ida developed an interest in Conulariids, a relatively obscure group of animals that had been little studied in Britain, although they had more expansive recognition in Europe. Conulariids are an extinct clad that belong to the phylum Cnidaria, a group that includes jellyfish, sea anemones, and hard and soft corals. Conulariids were attached to the ancient sea floor, much like corals and sea anemones, and are preserved primarily as hard, laminated, pyramid-shaped structures. Little was known of this group in Britain, despite several collections in museums and private collections, including a substantial collection belonging to Elisabeth Gray. Slater was encouraged to study this fossil group by Henry Woods, a Cambridge paleontology lecturer. She later met Arthur Smith Woodward at the British Museum (that in 1992 became the Natural History Museum), who provided access to the Museum’s extensive Conulariid collection and suggested she compile her research in a Monograph; the Monograph was subsequently published in 1907 by the Palaeontographical Society (Slater, 1907).
Her research included travels to view European collections – she usually traveled alone, which was no less unusual than her earlier solo travels to Dublin and Trinity College. The British Museum housed more than 70 specimens that she described and illustrated in detail. According to C. Sendino, E. Ducker, and C.Burek (2018) she produced the first illustration of what was considered a typical or characteristic Conulariid (her Figure 1 shown above). She identified different taxonomic groups that earmarked the Ordovician through Carboniferous periods, that ultimately proved useful for geological mapping and refinement of Early Paleozoic time-stratigraphy. Ida’s research, completed in 1907, established her as the leading authority on the fossil group.
Ida was a talented artist who also produced illustrations for her Newnham College colleagues. Of note are the 6 plates of graptolite illustrations she produced for the Elles and Wood monograph (1911). In 1910 she applied for and was offered a position as Demonstrator in geology to help Catherine Raisin organize and teach in the department at Bedford College, London, a position she relinquished in1912 when she married William Lees. For reasons perhaps known only to the couple, matrimony curtailed all her future geological and paleontological endeavours.
References and links
J. Bochenek, 2021. The Steamboat ladies: The pioneering women who graduated from Trinity when other universities wouldn’t accept them. Trinity College.
J.W. Clark and T. McK. Hughes, 1890. The Reverend Adam Sedgwick. Volume II. The Cambridge University Press. Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Elles, G.L., and Slater, I.L. 1906. The highest Silurian rocks of the Ludlow District. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society 62, p. 195-222.
C. Sendino and J. Darrell, 2009. The collection of conulariids of The Natural History Museum of London. Geological Curator 9(1):3-20 PDF
C. Sendino, E. Ducker, and C.Burek, 2018. Ida Slater: A collection researcher in a male world at the beginning of the 20th century. Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, v. 14, no. 4. PDF.
G. Southerland. History of the College. Newnham College, University of Cambridge.
Slater, I.L. 1903. Probable origin of some types of valleys. Sedgwick Club, University of Cambridge (unpublished).
Slater, I.L. 1907. A monograph of British Conulariae. Palaeontographical Society. PDF
T. Begum. Ida Slater: A geologist ahead of her time. Natural History Museum Collection.
