Dear Editors,
I want to commend your Editorial on 3/10/16, “Moments and milestones in the history of women at Hopkins.” Please let me clarify one paragraph, however. Several women were admitted as graduate students as early as 1877. Martha Carey Thomas attended for one year before leaving in frustration and eventually earning a PhD from the University of Zurich and then returning to the United States, where she became a founder of Bryn Mawr College.
Christine Ladd-Franklin was admitted in 1878 and completed her graduate program in 1882, but the Trustees refused to confer her degree, even though her work was described as “brilliant.” She eventually received her Hopkins PhD in 1926, at which time Sun columnist Anne Kinsolving observed, “Is Johns Hopkins University now conferring an honor upon Mrs. Christine Ladd-Franklin, or is Mrs. Christine Ladd-Franklin conferring an honor on Johns Hopkins University?”
Florence Bascom was admitted in 1892 and completed – and received – her degree in geology in 1893. She thus became the first woman to receive a Johns Hopkins degree, but not the first to earn one. A few other women were admitted in arts and sciences in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but what they all had in common was a “champion” in the faculty or administration willing to argue on their behalf and enable these women to overcome formidable obstacles. The admission of women was on a case-by-case basis until 1907, when the Trustees agreed to allow “qualified” women to take graduate studies without special permission.
— James Stimpert, Senior Reference Archivist
Special Collections at The Sheridan Libraries
