Curtis, Doris Malkin (1914–1991)
Curtis, Doris Malkin (1914–1991)
American geologist. Born on January 12, 1914, in Brooklyn, New York; died on May 26, 1991, in Houston, Texas; Brooklyn College, B.S., Columbia University, Ph.D.
In an age when comparatively few women made careers in the sciences, Doris Malkin Curtis rose in the field of geology to become the first woman president of the Geological Society of America, an organization of 17,000 members. She spent the majority of her career as a geologist exploring for Shell Oil Company, where she worked from 1942 to 1979. The late 1970s energy crisis made the need for oil exploration more apparent, and in 1979 Curtis opened her own consulting firm. She was a teacher at Houston's Rice University, president of the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists, and the first woman president of the American Geological Institute (a federation of societies in earth sciences founded in 1848). In 1990, Curtis took her post as president of the Geological Society of America. She died in 1991 during her term, age 77.