Frances Glessner Lee

 

Happy Monday!

How was your weekend?

I worked at a women's college for many years.  In just my lifetime, women were admitted to what had been all-men's colleges in our valley.  Our one woman's college survives to this day.  The thing that I found interesting there was the statistic of women's success after attending a woman's college.  There are a lot of studies you can read on the web about this so I won't delve into that too deeply.

The college I worked at specialized in science and nursing.  The science was the biggest draw to women.  The programs were CHALLENGING to say the least.  But the graduates got some of the best jobs in their field.

More and more women are majoring in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math).  There are also more science related quilt and fabric themes.  A great article on this new trend was featured at the Smithsonian magazine and you can read it here.

At the college I where I worked we offered the first undergraduate Forensic Science degree offered in the U.S.  

And speaking of Forensic Science, do you know who promoted that field and helped to develop it as a field of science in colleges and law enforcement? 

Her name was Frances Glessner Lee.  She has been dubbed, "the Mother of Forensic Science" although she is sometimes referred to as the Grandmother of that field.  She was the heir to the family who owned Harvester International and with the money she inherited, she pursued her passion for medicine and understanding what we refer now as forensic science.

She endowed Harvard's new (and only in the country) department of what was referred to at that time as "legal medicine".

Frances also made dioramas which she called "Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death" and depicted in minute detail crime scenes of homicides.  These dioramas were created to help educate police cadets in the art of observation and 18 of them are still used today (and were also exhibited as art at one point). 

Women's achievements in the sciences and other STEM fields have historically been so overlooked that I think it is important to point out the significant women and their achievements.

You can see some of Frances' diorama here.  A biography on her life that you might find interesting is pictured below.

Have a safe and happy day!