Ethel Sargant

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Ethel Sargant

Ethel Sargant

British Association. At Cambridge, she was elected an Honorary Fellow of Girton College in 1913 and also became President of the British Federation of University Women
from 1913 until 1918.

Early life

Sargant was born on 28 October 1863. She was the third daughter of barrister Henry Sargant and his wife Catherine Emma Beale. She studied at North London Collegiate School under Frances Mary Buss at a time when all girls schools were considered an "adventurous experiment" and from 1881 to 1885 at Girton College, Cambridge.[1] Her sister Mary Sargant Florence was a painter and feminist, while her brother Sir Charles Sargant was a senior judge.

Career

A list of Sargant's publications is provided in an article in the Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History.[2]

She worked with

Jodrell Laboratory in Kew Gardens, where she investigated the nucleus and the development of the male and female gametes in Lilium martagon .[2][4]

Sargant spent some years doing botanical work at home while she cared for her mother and sister.[2] To combine her caring responsibilities and academic pursuits, she ran a small laboratory in the grounds of her mother's house in Reigate, which she called "Jodrell Junior" .[2] She employed Ethel Thomas (1897–1901) and Agnes Arber (1902-3) as research assistants.[5] For the following years she specialised in seedling anatomy, giving a course of lectures on botany at the University of London in 1907.

In December 1904, Sargant was elected one of the first women to become a fellow of the Linnean Society of London, and she also became the first female on their council.[6]

After the deaths of her mother and sister, she moved to live at the Old Rectory in

British Association meeting at Birmingham
in 1913.

During World War I, she organised the register of university women qualified to do work of national importance, which was afterwards taken over by the Ministry of Labour.

Ethel Sargant died in Sidmouth on 16 January 1918.[7]

After death

She bequeathed her botanical library and bookcases to Girton College. The Ethel Sargant Studentship for research into Natural Sciences was endowed by friends in her memory in 1919.[8] Some of the reprints and monographs she collected and bound by subject are now housed in the Plant Sciences Library, University of Cambridge. An obituary was written by Agnes Arber.[1]

See also

References

  1. ^
    ISSN 1469-8137
    .
  2. ^ .
  3. .
  4. ^ a b Scott, D.H. (1918). "Miss Ethel Sargant FLS". Annals of Botany. 32 (126): i–v.
  5. ISSN 0305-7364
    .
  6. .
  7. ^ "The Late Miss Ethel Sargant". The Times. 23 January 1918. p. 17. Retrieved 20 January 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ^ Girton College Register 1869-1946, University Press, Cambridge, 1948