One of my early book acquisitions when I was just starting out in biology was Field Book of Ponds and Streams by Ann Haven Morgan. Indeed, Professor Morgan's enthusiasm almost converted me to a freshwater biologist. A successful field biologist when women were rare in the field, she was a devoted student of nature from an early age. Born Anna Haven Morgan in 1882 (she changed her first name to Ann around 1912), she pursued her dream of becoming a scientist, specializing in aquatic invertebrates, and eventually found a worthy mentor in Anna Botsford Comstock at Cornell in Ithaca, New York.
Morgan grew up on a farm in Connecticut and spent much of her childhood wading in ponds and streams, at least in part to escape her siblings. She became so interested in the aquatic denizens of the farm and surrounding woods that she vowed to study zoology. She attended the Williams Memorial Institute in New London, Connecticut, but could not find sources for her studies there. Her stay at Wellesley College was not a happy one as she really hated the formality there and so she transferred to Cornell where she met Comstock (later at Mt. Holyoke she would have another excellent mentor in the person of Cornelia Clapp.) After graduating from Cornell in 1906 she took a position at Mount Holyoke, where she taught until she returned to Cornell to get her Ph.D. (awarded in 1912) under Professor James Needham, of dragonfly fame. Her work on mayflies made her an expert on constructing realistic trout lures, which also made her very popular with her fisherman friends! She also studied echinoderms and was involved with the study of hibernation in animals.
After finishing her last degree she returned to Mount Holyoke, where she became first an associate professor (1914), then a full professor (1918), and chair of the Zoology Department (1916-1947). She was heavily involved in changing the science curriculum and in promoting conservation. She worked on her research at several laboratories, notably Woods Hole and William Beebe's tropical laboratory in Kartabo, British Guiana (now Guyana). She was elected to the Entomological Society of America in 1908 (one of the first women to be so honored), and was listed in three issues of "Men" of Science. She was also very successful in obtaining grants before grantsmanship became a major function in academia.
During World War II, Morgan changed her studies and focused on the ecology of fish populations, reasoning that the natural supply of protein in fish might very well become important to the war effort. She was a stanch believer that conservation of natural habitats and thus resources were vital to human survival.
Morgan wrote three books, including Field Book of Ponds and Streams, Field Book of Animals in Winter, and Kinships of Animals and Man: A Textbook of Animal Biology, this last published in 1955. I am proud to have the first two of her books in my personal library. Ann Haven Morgan never married, but she was on her own a great field biologist, ecologist and conservationist, as well as a demanding, but much loved, teacher. In her views on conservation she predated Rachel Carson. She was truly a professional in the best sense of the term!
Internet Reference:
Ann Haven Morgan. http://www.answers.com/....
Ann Haven Morgan. http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Morgan, Ann Haven. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/...
Morgan, Ann Haven. http://h-net.msu.edu/...=
Literature Reference:
Bonta, Marcia Myers. 1991. Women in the Field: America's Pioneering Women Naturalists, Texas A. & M. University Press.