Who am I?
Ethel Dobbie Currie was a geologist and museum curator. Born in Glasgow in 1899 she was educated at Bellahouston Academy. In 1920 she graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in geology, after which she was made an assistant curator of geological collections at the University’s Hunterian Museum - a position she kept until she retired in 1962.
Source: the Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women.
I am monumental because...
During her time at the Hunterian Currie catalogued thousands of geological specimens. Her primary research interest was in palaeontology - and she was an authority on echinoids from African and southern Asia. She published throughout her career - and in 1945 became the first woman to win the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Neill Prize for her paper ‘Growth stages in some Jurassic ammonites’. In 1945 she became one of the first woman Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (along with, among others, Sheina Macalister Marshall and Christina Cruikshank Miller). In 1952 she became the first woman president of the Geological Society of Glasgow. She died in 1963.
Currie’s matriculation record, 1916. Image courtesy of the University of Glasgow Story
The University of Glasgow’s Department of Geology in the 1950s. Currie, the only woman in the photograph, is on the left.