{{short description|American zoologist and educator (1849–1934)}} {{Use mdy dates|date=December 2020}} {{Infobox scientist | name = Cornelia Clapp | image = Cornelia Clapp (Hearn, 1894) crop.jpg | alt = Bust-length portrait of a woman in her 40s, wearing a brocaded blouse with a high lace neck fastened with a brooch | caption = Portrait of Clapp in 1894 (C. W. Hearn, Boston) | birth_name = Cornelia Maria Clapp | birth_date = March 17, 1849 | birth_place = Montague, Massachusetts | death_date = {{death date and age|1934|12|31|1849|03|17}} | death_place = Mount Dora, Florida | education = Mount Holyoke College <br />Syracuse University <br />University of Chicago | fields = {{hlist|Zoology|marine biology|embryology|ichthyology}} | workplaces = Mount Holyoke College <br />Marine Biological Laboratory | thesis_title = The lateral line system of Batrachus tau | thesis_url = https://ia800307.us.archive.org/15/items/laterallinesyste00clap/laterallinesyste00clap.pdf | thesis_year = 1896 | academic_advisors = Charles Otis Whitman }}
'''Cornelia Maria Clapp''' (March 17, 1849 – December 31, 1934)<ref name="Reynolds2004">{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/americanwomensci00moir |url-access=registration |title=American women scientists: 23 inspiring biographies, 1900–2000 |last=Reynolds |first=Moira Davison |publisher=McFarland |pages=[https://archive.org/details/americanwomensci00moir/page/5 5]–8 |year=2004 |isbn=0786421614}}</ref> was an American educator and zoologist, specializing in marine biology. She earned the first Ph.D. in biology awarded to a woman in the United States from Syracuse University in 1889,<ref name="MHC175">{{cite web|url=https://www.mtholyoke.edu/175/gallery/cornelia-m-clapp|title=Cornelia M. Clapp|website=Mount Holyoke College|date=June 8, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220525233719/https://www.mtholyoke.edu/175/gallery/cornelia-m-clapp |archive-date=2022-05-25}}</ref><ref name="150years">{{cite web |title=150 Years Timeline |url=https://www.syracuse.edu/150years/150-years-timeline/ |website=www.syracuse.edu |publisher=Syracuse University |access-date=21 March 2021}}</ref> and she would earn a second doctoral degree from the University of Chicago in 1896.<ref name="MHC175" /> Clapp was the first female researcher employed at the Marine Biological Laboratory, as well as its only female trustee during the first half of the 20th century.<ref>Trustee listings in ''[https://hdl.handle.net/1912/29363 MBL Annual Reports]'', 1888-1950</ref> She was rated one of the top 150 zoologists in the United States in 1903, and her name was starred in the first five editions of ''American Men of Science'' (now ''American Men and Women of Science'').<ref name="Bailey1994">{{cite book|last=Bailey|first=Martha J.|title=American women in science : [prior to 1950 American women scientists] : a biographical dictionary|year=1994|publisher=ABC-Clio|location=Denver, Colo. [u.a.]|isbn=0-87436-740-9|page=[https://archive.org/details/americanwomenins00bail_0/page/60 60]|edition=[2. Aufl.].|url=https://archive.org/details/americanwomenins00bail_0/page/60}}</ref>
==Education== Clapp matriculated at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College) in 1868 and completed the equivalent of an undergraduate program in 1871.<ref name="Reynolds2004" /> (The school would not become a degree-granting college until 1888.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Rossiter |first=Margaret W. |title=Women scientists in America : struggles and strategies to 1940 |date=1982 |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |isbn=0-8018-2443-5 |location=Baltimore |oclc=8052928}}</ref>) She would continue to pursue postgraduate studies while she taught at the school, beginning in 1874, when she went with colleague Lydia Shattuck to the Anderson School of Natural History on Penikese Island, an experimental residential summer school that provided women with postbaccalaureate education when it was not a formal option for them.<ref name="Burstyn1977">{{cite journal |last1=Burstyn |first1=Joan N. |date=August 1977 |title=Early Women in Education: The Role of The Anderson School of Natural History |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/42773083 |journal=The Journal of Education |volume=159 |issue=3 |pages=50–64|doi=10.1177/002205747615900307 |jstor=42773083 |s2cid=166006609 |url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref name="PClapp">{{Cite web |last=Clapp |first=Pamela |title=Cornelia Clapp and the Earliest Years of the MBL |url=https://www.woodsholemuseum.org/oldpages/sprtsl/v2n2-Clapp.pdf |access-date=2022-11-17 |website=Woods Hole Historical Museum}}</ref><ref name="Ogilvie1990">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6k5zd07FCCsC |title=Women in science |first=Marilyn Bailey |last=Ogilvie |publisher=MIT Press |page=57 |year=1990 |isbn=026265038X}}</ref> Clapp would later call her time at Penikese "an opening of doors," where she first encountered a community of people deeply engaged with biological research and theory.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Levin |first=Miriam R. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9WlznmaCgTsC&dq=%22an+opening+of+doors%22+clapp&pg=PA70 |title=Defining Women's Scientific Enterprise: Mount Holyoke Faculty and the Rise of American Science |publisher=UPNE |year=2005 |isbn=978-1-58465-419-3 |pages=70 |language=en}}</ref>
Clapp received her first Ph.D. from Syracuse University in 1889, which she earned by examination based on her first summer of work on the toadfish at the Marine Biological Laboratory rather than by taking a leave from Mount Holyoke to conduct research at Syracuse.<ref>{{Cite book |last=University |first=Syracuse |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tTOUxG5HCMYC&dq=cornelia+clapp+syracuse+%22examination%22&pg=PA427 |title=Alumni Record and General Catalogue of Syracuse University... |year=1899 |pages=427 |language=en}}</ref> In 1891, she published a paper entitled [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmor.1050050306 "Some Points in the Development of the Toadfish (''Batrachus tau'')"] in which she described features of the embryonic development and nesting habits of the oyster toadfish now properly known as ''Opsanus tau''. This is one of the earliest known publications on segmentation of the toadfish egg.<ref name="Gudger1908">{{Cite conference |last=Gudger |first=E.W. |date=September 22, 1908 |title=Habits and Life History of the Toadfish (Opsanus Tau) |url=https://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/pdf-content/fish-bull/fb28%282%29.35.pdf |conference=Fourth International Fishery Congress |pages=1073–1109}}</ref> In 1896, she received a second Ph.D. from the University of Chicago for her dissertation on ''The lateral line system of Batrachus tau'', which was published in the ''Journal of Morphology'' in 1898.<ref>{{Cite web |date=November 1898 |title=Journal of Morphology: Volume 15, Issue 2 |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/10974687/1898/15/2 |website=}}</ref> While materials from both Syracuse and the MBL claim that her doctorates were respectively the first and second Ph.D. granted to a woman in the biological sciences,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Greenhalgh |first=Emily |date=2020-03-17 |title=Remembering Cornelia Clapp {{!}} Marine Biological Laboratory |url=https://www.mbl.edu/news/remembering-cornelia-clapp |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240319193637/https://www.mbl.edu/news/remembering-cornelia-clapp |archive-date=2024-03-19 |access-date=2024-03-19 |website=www.mbl.edu |language=en}}</ref> this is not the case; they were, however, the only two doctorates in the same subject received by the same woman in the 19th century.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Eells |first=Walter Crosby |date=1956 |title=Earned Doctorates for Women in the Nineteenth Century |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40222081 |journal=AAUP Bulletin |volume=42 |issue=4 |pages=644–651 |doi=10.2307/40222081 |jstor=40222081 |issn=0001-026X|url-access=subscription }}
Two women held doctorates in zoology before 1889: Mary Alice Bennett, from the University of Pennsylvania in 1880, and Mary Emilie Holmes, from the University of Michigan in 1888. Other women held the Ph.D. in botany, the other major natural science, before this point as well.</ref>
{{multiple image | perrow = 2 | total_width = 300 | image1 = The lateral line system of Batrachus tau (Plate XVII) (8469845783).jpg | image2 = The lateral line system of Batrachus tau (Plate XVIII) (8470939064).jpg | image3 = The lateral line system of Batrachus tau (Plate XIX) (8469846239).jpg | image4 = The lateral line system of Batrachus tau (Plate XX) (8469846405).jpg | footer = Plates from Clapp's dissertation on toadfish, as published in the ''Journal of Morphology'' | alt1 = Plate showing side, dorsal, and ventral views of a toadfish head, skull, and mandible | caption1 = | caption4 = | alt2 = Plate showing side, front, and dorsal views of toadfish embryo and larva | alt3 = Plate showing sections of dogfish and toadfish embryos | alt4 = Plate showing diagrams of toadfish organs from multiple views }}
==Career== After graduating from Mount Holyoke, Clapp spent a year as a Latin teacher at a boys' boarding school, Potter Hall, in Andalusia, Pennsylvania.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Notable women in the life sciences : a biographical dictionary|date=1996|publisher=Greenwood Press|editor1=Shearer, Benjamin F. | editor2= Shearer, Barbara S. |isbn=0313293023|location=Westport, Conn.|oclc=33361268}}</ref> She returned to Mount Holyoke in 1872, teaching mathematics and natural history before becoming the college's gymnastics instructor from 1876 to 1891.<ref name="Reynolds2004" />
Clapp incorporated knowledge gained from her postgraduate studies at the Anderson School into her teaching, in particular adopting co-founder Agassiz's dictum "Study nature, not books!"<ref name="MHC175" /> For example, she introduced an embryology course, supplanted by specimens sent by alumni living abroad, to encourage study through hands-on laboratory experience instead of through books. Additionally, along with other New England entomologists, Clapp collected insects from the White Mountains of New Hampshire in the summer of 1875, as well as from various mid-Atlantic states, including the Johns Hopkins University marine station in Beaufort, South Carolina and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., in 1877.<ref name="Reynolds2004" />
Clapp also completed brief studies on chick embryos and earthworms at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at Williams College in the early 1880s.<ref name="Reynolds2004" /><ref name="James1971">{{cite book |last=James |first=Edward T. |title=Notable American Women 1607–1950 |url=https://archive.org/details/notableamericanw02jame_0 |url-access=registration |year=1971 |publisher=The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, MA |pages=[https://archive.org/details/notableamericanw02jame_0/page/336 336–338]}}</ref> In 1888, Clapp began her affiliation with the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) during its inaugural session, where she was the first researcher to be assigned a topic of investigation - the lateral line of the toadfish.<ref name="MBLHermes">{{Cite web|title = Marine Biological Laboratory "Women of Science – Cornelia M. Clapp (1849–1934)"|url = http://hermes.mbl.edu/publications/women_clapp.html |website = hermes.mbl.edu|access-date = January 14, 2016|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160304122952/http://hermes.mbl.edu/publications/women_clapp.html|archive-date = March 4, 2016|url-status = dead}}</ref> While at the MBL, Clapp conducted laboratory research using specimens from the area<ref name="Gudger1908" /> and later became a lecturer and a trustee. In 1892, Clapp was one of the first women who joined the American Morphological Society (later the American Society of Zoologists and now the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology).<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Quinn |first=C. Edward |date=1982 |title=Ancestry and Beginnings: The Early History of the American Society of Zoologists |url=https://academic.oup.com/icb/article/22/4/735/150035 |journal=American Zoologist |volume=22 |issue=4 |pages=735–748 |doi=10.1093/icb/22.4.735 |quote=Women too joined early: Julia Platt and Cornelia Clapp in 1892[.]|doi-access=free }}</ref>alt=Photograph of Cornelia Clapp with students working in a zoology laboratory|thumb|Clapp (right) with students working in a zoology laboratory at Mount Holyoke College in 1890
When she returned to Mount Holyoke after obtaining her doctoral degrees, she helped organize the department of zoology and develop its teaching facilities.<ref name="Bailey1994" /> Although she was primarily known as an educator and authored few scientific research papers, she was ranked one of the top 150 zoologists in the U.S. by a 1903 study reported in ''American Men of Science''.<ref name="Reynolds2004" /> She was named professor of zoology at her alma mater in 1904, fifteen years after her first Ph.D. in 1889.<ref name="SUWise">{{Cite web |title=Alumna of Distinction - WiSE – Syracuse University |url=https://suwise.syr.edu/about/su-alumna-of-distinction |access-date=2022-11-20 |language=en-US}}</ref>
Clapp retired from teaching in 1916, though she would continue her research at the MBL and remain involved with the Mount Holyoke community as professor emeritus.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |title=Collection: Cornelia Clapp papers {{!}} Mount Holyoke and Hampshire College archives |url=https://aspace.fivecolleges.edu/repositories/2/resources/20 |access-date=2022-11-20 |website=aspace.fivecolleges.edu}}</ref>
Mount Holyoke awarded Clapp an honorary Sc.D. in 1921,<ref name="honorary">{{cite web |url=https://lits.mtholyoke.edu/archives-special-collections/asc-research/asc-research-guides/honorary-degree-recipients |title=Honorary degree recipients |author=<!--Not stated--> |website=Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections |access-date=2022-11-17 }}</ref> and in 1923, funding for a new biology building to be named the Cornelia Clapp Laboratory in her honor was raised.<ref name="SciNotes1924">{{Cite journal |date=1924-03-28 |title=Scientific Notes and News |url=https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.59.1526.296 |journal=Science |language=en |volume=59 |issue=1526 |pages=296–299 |doi=10.1126/science.59.1526.296 |bibcode=1924Sci....59..296. |issn=0036-8075|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref name="Albino">{{cite news |last=Albino |first=Donna |title=Cornelia Clapp Laboratory |publisher=mtholyoke.edu |url=http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~dalbino/clapp.html |access-date=October 23, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160417045223/http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~dalbino/clapp.html |archive-date=April 17, 2016}}</ref> The building was completed in 1924.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Architects of Mount Holyoke buildings {{!}} LITS |url=https://lits.mtholyoke.edu/archives-special-collections/asc-research/asc-research-guides/architects-mount-holyoke-buildings |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220929141814/https://lits.mtholyoke.edu/archives-special-collections/asc-research/asc-research-guides/architects-mount-holyoke-buildings |archive-date=2022-09-29 |access-date=2022-11-21 |website=lits.mtholyoke.edu}}</ref>
By 1926, she was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,<ref name="Bailey1994" /> as her name was included in a list of special committee members that year. The rest of the committee was composed entirely of men, including ichthyologist David Starr Jordan, entomologist Leland O. Howard, and geneticist Edmund B. Wilson.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Jordan |first1=David Starr |last2=Bailey |first2=Liberty H. |last3=Cattell |first3=J. McKeen |last4=Clapp |first4=Cornelia M. |last5=Coville |first5=F. V. |last6=Evermann |first6=Barton W. |last7=Fewkes |first7=J. Walter |last8=Garman |first8=Samuel |last9=Howard |first9=Leland O. |last10=Jennings |first10=Herbert Spencer |last11=Kellogg |first11=Vernon |last12=Merriam |first12=John C. |last13=Osborn |first13=Henry Fairfield |last14=Parker |first14=George H. |last15=Walcott |first15=Charles D. |date=1926-12-10 |title=The American Association Committee on the Agassiz Bust |url=https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.64.1667.571.b |journal=Science |language=en |volume=64 |issue=1667 |pages=571 |doi=10.1126/science.64.1667.571.b |issn=0036-8075|url-access=subscription }}</ref>
=== Marine Biological Laboratory === {{Main|Marine Biological Laboratory#History}} thumb|Trustees of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, 1934. Clapp, the only woman pictured, stands near the center of the front row.|alt=Photograph of the Marine Biological Laboratory trustees standing in front of a building Clapp was the first female investigator at the Marine Biological Laboratory, where she also served as librarian and trustee. Her affiliation with the institution ran from its opening in 1888 to her death in 1934.<ref name="MBLLegacy">{{Cite web |last=Kenney |first=Diana |date=April 4, 2022 |title=Cornelia Clapp (1849 – 1934) |url=https://www.mbl.edu/about/diversity-and-inclusion/legacy-leadership/cornelia-clapp |website=Marine Biological Laboratory}}</ref> Clapp was instrumental in establishing the fledgling Marine Biological Laboratory, and she was present at the MBL's inaugural season in 1888. She was adamant about the need for a library in Woods Hole with subscriptions to the top scientific journals, and she served as the first MBL librarian. In that role, she initiated an exchange program whereby the MBL sent out its ''Biological Bulletin'' and received other international journals in return, which over time added up to a magnificent collection.<ref name="MBLLegacy" />
Clapp was elected to the MBL Board of Trustees in 1910. While three Boston women had been appointed trustees of the MBL upon its founding (Florence M. Cushing, Susan Minns, and Anna D. Phillips), women disappeared from the board after an 1897 shake-up, when the lab's founders ceded control of the board to a national cadre of scientists. Over the next 50 years, Clapp was one of only two women (along with Ethel Brown Harvey in the 1950s) to be elected an MBL Trustee, a position she held for the rest of her life.<ref name="MBLLegacy" />
In 2021, the Marine Biological Laboratory renamed their primary lecture hall the Cornelia Clapp Auditorium.<ref name="MBLAud">{{Cite web |title=MBL.edu {{!}} MBL Completes Auditorium Renovations |url=https://www.mbl.edu/news/mbl-completes-auditorium-renovations |access-date=2022-04-04 |website=www.mbl.edu}}</ref>
==Legacy== alt=Photograph of Cornelia Clapp sitting at a desk covered with bound stacks of papers|thumb|Clapp at the Marine Biological Laboratory in 1934 Clapp was a pioneering zoology researcher and leading ichthyology scholar.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Six Syracuse Alumnae Who Transformed Their Field - Syracuse.edu |url=http://www.syracuse.edu/stories/six-alumnae-trailblazers/ |access-date=2022-11-20 |website=www.syracuse.edu |date=December 14, 2017 |language=en}}</ref> Her work on the toadfish was instrumental in correcting the idea that its egg was attached by a "sucker" to the yolk stalk, as she discovered that it was instead adhered with a disc of "transparent secretion" that could be separated from the membrane.<ref name="Gudger1908" />
She was also an influential teacher at a time when women in the United States were increasingly given the opportunity to formally study science.<ref name="Bailey1994" /> She preferred fieldwork to writing publications and dedicated much of her time to extending scientific knowledge and opportunities to women through education.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Cornelia Maria Clapp {{!}} American zoologist {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cornelia-Maria-Clapp |access-date=2022-11-20 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}</ref> For example, one of her students and assistants, Louise B. Wallace, wrote an article building upon Clapp's toadfish research<ref name="Gudger1908" /><ref>{{Cite web |date=October 1898 |title=Journal of Morphology: Volume 15, Issue 1 |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/10974687/1898/15/1}}</ref> that was published in an 1898 issue of the ''Journal of Morphology''.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Wallace |first=Louise B. |date=October 1898 |title=The germ ring in the egg of the toadfish (Batrachus tau) |url=https://ia800708.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/22/items/crossref-pre-1909-scholarly-works/10.1002%252Fjlac.19073510105.zip&file=10.1002%252Fjmor.1050150103.pdf |journal=Journal of Morphology |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=9–16|doi=10.1002/jmor.1050150103 |s2cid=84192474 }}</ref> Wallace would go on to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1908.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Albino |first=Donna |title=Louise Baird Wallace 1898 |url=https://mtholyoke.com/dalbino/women36/lwallace.html |access-date=2022-11-20 |website=mtholyoke.com}}</ref>
== Works ==
* Clapp, Cornelia M. (1891). [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmor.1050050306 "Some points in the development of the Toad-fish (Batrachus tau)"]. ''Journal of Morphology''. 5 (3): 494–501. * Clapp, Cornelia M. (1898). "The lateral line system of Batrachus tau". ''Journal of Morphology'' 15 (2): 223–264.
==References== {{reflist}}
==Further reading== * {{cite book | last1=Faulkner | first1=Nicholas | last2=Croce | first2=Nicholas | title=Top 101 Women of STEM | publisher=Britannica Educational Publishing | publication-place=Chicago, IL | date=2016 |oclc=954055414| isbn=978-1-68048-499-1}} *{{cite book|last1=Shearer|first1=Benjamin|last2=Shearer|first2=Barbara Smith|title=Notable women in the life sciences : a biographical dictionary|date=1996|publisher=Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press|isbn=0313293023|oclc=33361268}}
==External links== *[https://aspace.fivecolleges.edu/repositories/2/resources/20 Cornelia Clapp Papers (1868-1986)] from Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections *[https://web.archive.org/web/20160304122952/http://hermes.mbl.edu/publications/women_clapp.html Women of Science Cornelia M. Clapp (1849–1934)] {{Commons}}{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Clapp, Cornelia}} Category:1849 births Category:1934 deaths Category:American women zoologists Category:Mount Holyoke College alumni Category:Mount Holyoke College faculty Category:University of Chicago alumni Category:Syracuse University alumni Category:People from Montague, Massachusetts Category:19th-century American zoologists Category:19th-century American women biologists Category:20th-century American zoologists Category:20th-century American women biologists Category:19th-century American women scientists Category:American women academics Category:Graduate Women in Science members