Patch, Edith (1876–1954)

American entomologist . Born Edith Marion Patch in 1876 in Worcester, Massachusetts; died in 1954; University of Minnesota, B.S., 1901; University of Maine, M.S., 1910; Cornell University, Ph.D., 1911; honorary degree from University of Maine, 1937; never married; no children.

Served as head of the department of entomology, University of Maine Agricultural Experiment Station(1904–37); served as head of the University of Maine Agricultural Experiment Station (1924–37); appointed president of the Entomological Society of America (1930).

A leading entomologist who had a genus and several species of insects named in her honor, Edith Patch was also the first woman to be elected president of the Entomological Society of America. Her most important research was on aphids, flying insects that attack nearly every species of plant. One of Patch's most significant findings was that the melon aphid lived in wintertime as an egg in the "live-for-ever" weed. Consequently, by removing the weed the damage caused by aphids to crops the following spring was markedly reduced.

Patch was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1876, the youngest of six children. When she was eight, she moved with her family to prairie land near Minneapolis, Minnesota, which was fertile ground for insects. As a student, Patch won a $25 prize for her essay on the monarch butterfly; she used the money to buy A Manual for the Study of Insects, written by the eminent entomologist John Henry Comstock and illustrated by Anna Botsford Comstock . Patch attended college at the University of Minnesota, majoring in English and winning prizes for some of her sonnets. Despite her talent for writing, after she received her bachelor's degree in 1901 she looked for jobs in entomology. She found none, however, for at the time there were no women entomologists and no jobs for women in the field.

Patch spent the next two years supporting herself by teaching English, until she received a letter from Charles D. Woods at the University of Maine. Seeking someone to head the entomology department he was organizing, Woods offered her the post on condition that she work for one year without pay, giving him time to assess her abilities. Patch jumped at the offer; before long, Woods granted her a salary and a teaching position in recognition of her skills while ignoring criticism from his colleagues for hiring a woman. (In response to one man's outraged protest, "A woman can't catch grasshoppers!," Woods supposedly replied, "It would take a lively grasshopper to escape Miss Patch.") In 1904, he appointed her head of the Department of Entomology at the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station.

While at the University of Maine, she also earned her M.S. in 1910. The following year, she earned a Ph.D. from Cornell University, where she had the opportunity to study under John Henry Comstock, author of her cherished book. Comstock considered her an exceptional student, and used part of her doctoral thesis in his towering achievement, Introduction to Entomology (also illustrated by Anna Botsford Comstock). After receiving her doctorate, Patch began her ongoing research on aphids, focusing on economic and ecological entomology and the life histories and ecology of migratory aphids. Now well known and in great demand, she received aphid specimens from other researchers throughout the world. While retaining her position as head of the department of entomology, in 1924 she was appointed head of the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station itself. In 1930, she was named president of the Entomological Society of America, the first woman so honored. (After her appointment, she received a congratulatory letter from one male colleague who felt that the tardiness of the recognition was due only to the fact that she was not a man.)

Edith Patch wrote extensively during her career, publishing 15 technical books, including an extensive tome about aphids, Food Plant Catalogue of the Aphids, and approximately 100 papers. She also published several popular children's books about insects and nature, most of which were written after her retirement from the University of Maine in 1937. An internationally respected scientist, who due to her tenacity and ability broke into the traditional male-dominated academic environment, she was a member of several scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Naturalists, and the American Association of Economic Entomologists. She never married or had children and in her retirement years apparently led a rather lonely life, particularly after a sister to whom she was extremely attached died. Upon her death in 1954, Patch left all of her belongings to her physician and his wife.

sources:

Bailey, Brooke. The Remarkable Lives of 100 Women Healers and Scientists. Holbrook, MA: Bob Adams, 1994.

Bailey, Martha J. American Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1994.

suggested reading:

Banta, Margaret Myers. Women in the Field: America's Pioneering Naturalists. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1991.

Herzenberg, Caroline L. Women Scientists from Antiquity to the Present. West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill Press, 1986.

Mozans, H.J. Women in Science. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991.

Ogilvie, Marilyn Bailey. Women in Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986.

Rossiter, Margaret W. Women Scientists in America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982.

collections:

Edith Patch's papers are located at the Raymond H. Folger Library at the University of Maine in Orono, Maine.

Christine Miner Miner , freelance writer, Ann Arbor, Michigan