![Carlottaandfossildisplay](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Carlottaandfossildisplay.jpg)
Carlotta Joaquina Maury (January 6, 1874 – January 3, 1938) was a
geologist
A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid, liquid, and gaseous matter that constitutes Earth and other terrestrial planets, as well as the processes that shape them. Geologists usually study geology, earth science, or geophysics, althou ...
,
stratigrapher,
paleontologist
Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...
, and was one of the first women to work as a professional
scientist
A scientist is a person who conducts Scientific method, scientific research to advance knowledge in an Branches of science, area of the natural sciences.
In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, ...
in the
oil and gas industry
The petroleum industry, also known as the oil industry or the oil patch, includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transportation (often by oil tankers and pipelines), and marketing of petroleum products. The largest ...
. She worked as a
palaeontologist
Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...
within an oil company; she was a petroleum geologist at
Royal Dutch Shell
Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New Yo ...
.
Maury focused on
Tertiary
Tertiary ( ) is a widely used but obsolete term for the geologic period from 66 million to 2.6 million years ago.
The period began with the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, at the start ...
mollusks
Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is esti ...
.
Maury initially taught in universities after attending
Cornell
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
University finishing with a PhD in 1902, although she had trouble achieving a full-time position. However, she really wanted to pursue paleontological expeditions. Even though she went on to later be successful, there were still elements of difficulty in her early career, in some ways due to her gender. In the early 1900s there were hardly any women with a career in science. Maury was one of those few women that pursued the sciences.
Early life
Carlotta Joaquina Maury was born on January 6, 1874 in
Hastings-on-Hudson, New York
Hastings-on-Hudson is a village in Westchester County located in the southwestern part of the town of Greenburgh in the state of New York, United States. It is located on the eastern bank of the Hudson River, approximately north of midtown Manha ...
.
Maury's father was the Reverend Mytton Maury, a direct descendant of the Reverend
James Maury
James Maury (1717–1769) was a prominent Virginia educator and Anglican cleric during the American Colonial period and the progenitor of the prominent Maury political family. The Reverend James Maury was a figure in the notable lawsuit that ...
and one of the sons of
Sarah Mytton Maury
Sarah Mytton Maury (1 November 1801 – 21 September 1849) was an English author, born in Liverpool to Bridget Tobin and William Hughes.
Sarah had a sister named Elizabeth Hughes who lived in the United States. Sarah graduated from school in Live ...
. Maury's mother was Virginia Draper, a daughter of Antonia Coetana de Paiva Pereira Gardner and Dr.
John William Draper
John William Draper (May 5, 1811 – January 4, 1882) was an English-born American scientist, philosopher, physician, chemist, historian and photographer. He is credited with producing the first clear photograph of a female face (1839–40) and ...
.
Early in Maury’s life, her mother and father gave her a love for nature by exposing her to the wonders of the natural world.
Her Grandfather, Daniel Gardner was the Emperor of Brazil's physician.
As a Maury, she was the sixth generation of her family to live in the United States along with her siblings.
Her sister,
Antonia Maury
Antonia Caetana de Paiva Pereira Maury (March 21, 1866 – January 8, 1952) was an American astronomer who was the first to detect and calculate the orbit of a spectroscopic binary. She published an important early catalog of stellar spectra us ...
became an astronomer, and worked as a scientist and a mathematician in Harvard Observatory.
Maury’s other sister, Sarah Mytton Maury passed away in her early childhood. Lastly, John William Draper was her brother who went on to be an established surgeon in New York.
Maury was also the granddaughter of
John William Draper
John William Draper (May 5, 1811 – January 4, 1882) was an English-born American scientist, philosopher, physician, chemist, historian and photographer. He is credited with producing the first clear photograph of a female face (1839–40) and ...
and a niece of
Henry Draper
Henry Draper (March 7, 1837 – November 20, 1882) was an American doctor and amateur astronomer. He is best known today as a pioneer of astrophotography.
Life and work
Henry Draper's father, John William Draper, was an accomplished doctor, ch ...
, both pioneering astronomers who privately funded the Harvard Observatory.
Education
From 1891 to 1894, Maury attended
Radcliffe College
Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...
.
One of the founding members of Radcliffe College and the first president, Elizabeth Agassiz, played a key role in Maury’s education.
Maury received the Schulyer Fellowship and the
Sarah Berliner Research Fellowship while attending
Cornell
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
University.
Maury later attended
Jardin des Plantes in Paris from 1899 to 1900 and
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
. After spending a year at
Sorbonne
Sorbonne may refer to:
* Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities.
*the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970)
*one of its components or linked institution, ...
for post-graduate studies, in 1902, Maury completed her PhD in paleontology at
Cornell
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
University.
Griffen Harris was Maury’s mentor throughout her palaeontology education career.
Career
Upon completion of her degree, Maury started teaching at Erasmus High School in
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
, New York in 1900. She went on to become a paleontologist assistant at Columbia University in 1904 and a lecturer in geology at Columbia College and
Barnard College
Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...
until 1912.
Maury returned to the field and joined a team led by
G. D. Harris, her former Cornell advisor. The team’s objective was to investigate oil-rich areas off the coasts of
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...
and
Louisiana
Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...
in the
Gulf of Mexico
The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...
. The information provided was the first significant geological information about the oil-producing area it is today. Maury’s specific contribution to the team’s research efforts was assembling data based on paleontologist findings in order to create a structure map of a large region. The team’s analysis has only needed minor adjustments since being published in 1910.
[Creese, M. R. (2007). ull Fossil hunters, a cave explorer and a rock analyst; notes on someearly women contributors to geology. In C. V. Burek & B. Higgs (eds.), ''The role of women in the history of geology,'' (vol. 281, pp. 39-49). London, UK: Geological Society of London.]
In 1910, she started working for the
Royal Dutch Shell
Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New Yo ...
as a consulting geologist and stratigrapher - she became the first female to be hired as a consultant,
and then for General Asphalt Co. as part of a team to explore areas of Old
Eocene
The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene' ...
beds in
Trinidad
Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...
and
Venezuela
Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...
. Her findings of
fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
s and
fauna
Fauna is all of the animal life present in a particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is ''flora'', and for fungi, it is '' funga''. Flora, fauna, funga and other forms of life are collectively referred to as '' biota''. Zoo ...
were the first of their kind in the
Caribbean
The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...
and
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...
. From 1910-1911 Maury had the opportunity to be a part of Arthur Clifford Veatch’s geological expedition to Venezuela as a paleontologist during that time.
After teaching at
Huguenot College
The Huguenot College in Wellington, South Africa, is a private institute focused on training social and church service workers.
Historical overview
The Huguenot College has its origins in three educational institutions which previously existed ...
in
Wellington
Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...
,
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
, she returned to the Caribbean in 1916 as a leader of the "Maury Expedition" to the Dominican Republic, despite political instability in the area at the time. Her goal was to order the stratigraphic layers of the
Miocene
The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recen ...
and
Oligocene
The Oligocene ( ) is a geologic epoch of the Paleogene Period and extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present ( to ). As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that define the epoch are well identified but the ...
eras, which were composed of
sedimentary
Sedimentary rocks are types of rock (geology), rock that are formed by the accumulation or deposition of mineral or organic matter, organic particles at Earth#Surface, Earth's surface, followed by cementation (geology), cementation. Sedimentati ...
rock with heavy fossil deposits. This resulted in the discovery of 400 new species. Her work formed the foundation of the present day International Dominican Republic Project, which is a research effort that aims to dissect evolutionary change in the Caribbean from the Miocene era to the present day. In 1925, Maury published "Fosseis Terciarios do Brasil com Descripção de Novas Formas Cretaceas". In this work she describes a various amount of species of mollusks from the northeaster coast of South America. Among these mollusks a majority of them were discovered to be new species.
Using her stratigraphy knowledge, she was able to find a correlation of those faunas with similar faunas around the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.
The monograph details mostly on fossils from the geological epoch of the Lower Miocene that were found in Rio Pirabas and Bragança to Belém.
In both these areas the fossils were located in beds of limestone, and the fossils were primarily internal and external shell casts within the rock.
Maury had a talent for writing among her many other skills and accomplishments, she documented her expeditions in a very professional manner.
She was known by her colleagues for her energy and efficiency as she worked against the prejudice against women scientists.
Her skills and capabilities were highly acknowledged that she became an official paleontologist with the Geological and Mineralogical Service of Brazil. While in this position, she published multiple
monograph
A monograph is a specialist work of writing (in contrast to reference works) or exhibition on a single subject or an aspect of a subject, often by a single author or artist, and usually on a scholarly subject.
In library cataloging, ''monograph ...
s and Mineralogical Service Bulletins between 1919-1937.
She was a fellow of the American Geographical Society.
Her last report before she died was published in 1937, on the Pliocene fossils of Acre, Brazil.
Most of her work after 1923 was completed inside a private lab in her apartment in Yonkers, New York. Since she was financially independent, she was able to hire other specialists on the work she wasn’t as confident in.
Death
Maury died January 3, 1938 in
Yonkers
Yonkers () is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States. Developed along the Hudson River, it is the third most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City and Buffalo. The population of Yonkers was 211,569 as enu ...
, New York.
She was buried at Cold Springs, New York on January 6 - her 64th birthday.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Maury, Carlotta
Cornell University alumni
Radcliffe College alumni
American geologists
Women earth scientists
American women scientists
1874 births
1938 deaths
Women paleontologists