Born: 22 July 1776, United Kingdom
Died: 11 January 1845
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
Etheldred Benett amassed an impressive collection of fossils in the early 1800s, at one point encompassing thousands of specimens. Well-known to European geologists of the time, the core of her collection was purchased by T. B. Wilson and donated to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, which seems to have put everything in storage and promptly forgotten about it. After Benett’s death in 1845, the collection was assumed lost, only “relocated” in the 1980s. The rediscovery led to renewed interest in her academic work and the value of the collection itself…
In 1836, the Imperial Natural History Society of Moscow accidentally let a woman in. With her strong reputation and unusual name (one letter off from the male Ethelred), they had assumed English geologist and palaeontologist Etheldred Benett was a man. The English, presumably being more familiar with the name, barred her from joining the Geological Society. Tsar Nicholas I awarded her a Doctorate of Civil Law, assuming she was male, at a time when women were not permitted to attend Russian universities. In response, she observed, “scientific people, in general, have a very low opinion of the abilities of my sex.”