{{short description|American botanist (1864-1922)}} {{Use mdy dates|date=July 2025}} {{Infobox scientist | name = Alice Rich Northrop | image = Alice Rich Northrop with her son, John Howard Northrop.jpg | caption = Alice Rich Northrop with her son, John Howard Northrop | birth_date = {{birth date|1864|3|6}} | birth_place = New York City, US | death_date = {{death date and age|1922|5|6|1864|3|6}} | death_place = Mt. Riga, New York, US | field = Botany | alma_mater = Hunter College | known_for = Expanding educational access }}
'''Alice Rich Northrop''' (March 6, 1864 – May 6, 1922) was an American botanist.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Northrop, Alice Belle (1864-1922) |url=https://plants.jstor.org/stable/10.5555/al.ap.person.bm000006090 |website=Global Plants |publisher=JSTOR |accessdate=10 August 2018}}</ref> She was known for expanding access to nature for New York City's public school children. Northrop traveled extensively to regions of the world where women did not usually venture, including Central America, the Caribbean, and Western North America.<ref>{{cite web | title = Northrop, Alice Rich, 1864-1922. Papers, 1884-1916: A Finding Aid | url =https://id.lib.harvard.edu/ead/sch00068/catalog | accessdate = 2018-08-10}}</ref> On a trip to the Bahamas, she and her husband, John Isaiah Northrop, discovered 18 new species.<ref>{{cite web | title = ALICE RICH NORTHROP | url = http://www.womeninscience.org/story.php?storyID=100 | accessdate = 2015-03-02 | archive-date = 2015-04-02 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150402111144/http://www.womeninscience.org/story.php?storyID=100 | url-status = dead }}</ref> Her husband was killed in a laboratory accident in 1891, a week before their son was born.
Northrop became a professor of botany at Hunter College. Many of her students went on to teach in New York City public schools and reported to her that their students had very little access to nature. Northrop labored to increase education about the natural world, including installing terrariums and preserved plants in classrooms across the city.<ref>{{cite web | title = The Story of Alice Rich Northrop | url =http://www.northropcamp.org/alicerichnorthrop.html | accessdate = 2015-03-02}}</ref> One lasting legacy of Northrop's life's work is the Alice Rich Northrop Memorial Camp in the Berkshire Mountains, which was established to allow children from the city to spend two weeks at a time on the farm.<ref>{{cite web | title = ALICE RICH NORTHROP | url = http://www.womeninscience.org/story.php?storyID=100 | accessdate = 2015-03-02 | archive-date = 2015-04-02 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150402111144/http://www.womeninscience.org/story.php?storyID=100 | url-status = dead }}</ref> The first group of children came in 1923, and the camp continues to host school groups each summer.<ref>{{cite web | title = ALICE RICH NORTHROP | url = http://www.womeninscience.org/story.php?storyID=100 | accessdate = 2015-03-02 | archive-date = 2015-04-02 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150402111144/http://www.womeninscience.org/story.php?storyID=100 | url-status = dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web | title = Northrop Camp | url =http://www.northropcamp.org/ | accessdate = 2015-06-04}}</ref>
Her son, John Howard Northrop, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1946. Her papers are held at the Schlesinger Library.
==Works== {{botanist|Northr.|inline=yes}}
* ''A Naturalist in the Bahamas'' (ca. 1910, in conjunction with husband, John Isaiah Northrop) * ''Through Field and Woodland, a guide to upland flora in New England'' (1925) *Together with her husband she edited the exsiccata ''Bahama plants, collected and distributed by John I. and Alice R. Northrop''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Bahama plants, collected and distributed by John I. and Alice R. Northrop: IndExs ExsiccataID=801993728 |website=IndExs - Index of Exsiccatae |publisher=Botanische Staatssammlung München |url=https://www.botanischestaatssammlung.de/DatabaseClients/IndExs/Exsiccatae_IndExs_Details.jsp?ExsiccataID=801993728 |access-date=3 May 2024}}</ref>
==References== {{reflist}} {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Northrop, Alice}} Category:1864 births Category:1922 deaths Category:Hunter College faculty Category:American botanists Category:Hunter College alumni
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