Igerna Brünhilda Johnson Sollas (1877–1965), also known as Hilda Sollas, was a British zoologist, palaeontologist and geologist, and lecturer at

Newnham College, Cambridge Newnham College is a women's Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sid ...

. She was one of the first women to be taught geology at the University of Cambridge. She had wide interests, studying marine organisms, genetics, and palaeontology, and collaborated with Cambridge geneticist

William Bateson William Bateson (8 August 1861 – 8 February 1926) was an English biologist who was the first person to use the term genetics to describe the study of heredity, and the chief populariser of the ideas of Gregor Mendel following their rediscove ...

. An alumna of

Alexandra College Alexandra College ( ir, Coláiste Alexandra) is a fee-charging boarding and day school for girls located in Milltown, Dublin, Ireland. The school operates under a Church of Ireland ethos. History The school was founded in 1866 and takes its ...

, Dublin, she was recognized as a role model for women in higher education in Ireland and England.

Early life and education

Igerna Sollas was born on 16 March 1877 in

Dawlish Dawlish is an English seaside resort town and civil parish in Teignbridge on the south coast of Devon, from the county town of Exeter and from the larger resort of Torquay. Its 2011 population of 11,312 was estimated at 13,355 in 2019. It is t ...

Devon Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is ...

, the daughter of geologist

William Johnson Sollas Prof William Johnson Sollas PGS FRS FRSE LLD (30 May 1849 – 20 October 1936) was a British geologist and anthropologist. After studying at the City of London School, the Royal College of Chemistry and the Royal School of Mines he matriculate ...

and his first wife Helen. She received an early education at Alexandra School and College in Dublin, and then attended

on a Gilchrist scholarship in 1897, where she took

first class honours The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading structure for undergraduate degrees or bachelor's degrees and integrated master's degrees in the United Kingdom. The system has been applied (sometimes with significant variati ...

in both part I and part II of the

Natural Sciences Tripos The Natural Sciences Tripos (NST) is the framework within which most of the science at the University of Cambridge is taught. The tripos includes a wide range of Natural Sciences from physics, astronomy, and geoscience, to chemistry and biology, ...

exam, completing a zoology degree in 1901. She held the position of lecturer in zoology at Newnham from 1903 to 1913, save for the period 1904 to 1906 when she was a Newnham college research fellow.

Career

Her research included a huge range of animals, both modern and fossil. These included earthworms,

sponge Sponges, the members of the phylum Porifera (; meaning 'pore bearer'), are a basal animal clade as a sister of the diploblasts. They are multicellular organisms that have bodies full of pores and channels allowing water to circulate through t ...

s and

sea squirts Ascidiacea, commonly known as the ascidians, tunicates (in part), and sea squirts (in part), is a polyphyletic class (biology), class in the subphylum Tunicate, Tunicata of sac-like marine (ocean), marine invertebrate filter feeders. Ascidians ar ...

, fish, mammal-ancestors and mammals. She is also known for methods of separating minerals for chemical analysis, and for work using serial grinding. She led research on fossils in collaboration with her father, and they were the first people to use the serial sectioning device he invented to look at the structure of a

dicynodont Dicynodontia is an extinct clade of anomodonts, an extinct type of non-mammalian therapsid. Dicynodonts were herbivorous animals with a pair of tusks, hence their name, which means 'two dog tooth'. Members of the group possessed a horny, typicall ...

skull.Sollas, Igerna B. J., and Sollas, W. J. 1914
A Study of the skull of a Dicynodon by means of serial sections
''Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society''. At Cambridge she was part of an active research group led by

, and she studied the genetics of colouration in

guinea pig The guinea pig or domestic guinea pig (''Cavia porcellus''), also known as the cavy or domestic cavy (), is a species of rodent belonging to the genus ''Cavia'' in the family Caviidae. Breeders tend to use the word ''cavy'' to describe the ani ...

s and moth wings.

Later life

Later in life she became a practitioner of

Christian Science Christian Science is a set of beliefs and practices associated with members of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Adherents are commonly known as Christian Scientists or students of Christian Science, and the church is sometimes informally know ...

and contributed articles to Christian Science journals. In moving to Christian Science she gave up her work on animal genetics and biology. She passed her research on to biologist and writer,

Naomi Mitchison Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison, Baroness Mitchison (; 1 November 1897 – 11 January 1999) was a Scottish novelist and poet. Often called a doyenne of Scottish literature, she wrote over 90 books of historical and science fiction, travel writin ...

and her brother, biologist J. B. S Haldane. Her scientific publications ceased after 1916, and she took up gardening and care of her father's house after his death in 1936.

Death and legacy

Sollas died in November 1965, aged 88. She is commemorated in the name '' Igernella'', a genus of sponges named by zoologist

Émile Topsent Émile-Eugène-Aldric Topsent (10 February 1862 – 22 September 1951) was a French zoologist known for his research of sponges. He was born in Le Havre. During his career he worked in several laboratories and institutes in western France. From ...

in 1905, and by the

echinoderm An echinoderm () is any member of the phylum Echinodermata (). The adults are recognisable by their (usually five-point) radial symmetry, and include starfish, brittle stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, and sea cucumbers, as well as the sea ...

'' Euthemon igerna''.Sollas, WJ. 1899. Fossils in the University Museum, Oxford: I. On the Silurian Echinoidea and Ophiuroidea. ''Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London'', 692-715.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sollas, Igerna 1877 births 1965 deaths 20th-century British zoologists 20th-century British women scientists British geneticists English zoologists Women geneticists Women zoologists English geologists English palaeontologists Alumni of Newnham College, Cambridge People from Dawlish People educated at Alexandra College