First and Early Women Doctors of Philosophy

The number of female college students throughout the U.S. increased eightfold between 1870 and 1900, from 11,000 to 85,000. In 1892, after considering the establishment of a “woman’s annex” for college students, Yale admitted women to graduate study only.

Minutes from a March 3, 1892 Yale Corporation meeting

In the last paragraph on the page above, the Yale corporation passed a motion that “...beginning in the fall of 1892, the courses of the Graduate Department with the degree of Ph.D. shall be open to candidates without distinction of sex;...”

The art and music schools were coed when they opened, art in 1869 and music in 1894, but academic programs at Yale did not grant degrees to women. One exception was Alice Rufie Blake Jordan, LL.B. 1886, who had applied to Yale Law School using her initials instead of her first name. She was permitted to attend, but the law school added a rule excluding future female students. Seven of the twenty women who matriculated at the university in 1892 received the Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1894. Most of these women went on to teach at women’s colleges in the northeast. There were 130 higher degrees awarded to women through 1920: 120 Doctors of Philosophy, five Masters of Arts, three Masters of Science, and two Certificates in Public Health. Brief biographies of these women were compiled in an important publication by Margaret T. Corwin, Executive Secretary of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Her book, Alumnae, Graduate School, Yale University, 1894–1920, was published by Yale University in 1920.

Corwin's 1920 publication Alumnae, Graduate School, Yale University, 1884-1920 included biographies of the women who received higher degrees though 1920. This letter from Corwin to Charles Schuchert was folded inside this copy of the book.

Women students were not well received by some male students, especially by the undergraduates. Their ungentlemanly behavior persisted, as recalled by Viola Barnes, Ph.D. 1918.

Viola Florence Barnes (1919 Ph.D) in her graduation regalia.

Barnes (1885–1979), a Mount Holyoke history professor and co-founder and president of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, wrote about her Yale experiences. She recalled that women had no official residence and were barred from the club room provided “to bring about a closer fellow feeling among the male members of the [graduate] school.” Facing harassment wherever undergraduates were present, women guests in the student dining room were greeted by hammering on tables and stamping of feet. Women could be denied enrollment in mixed graduate-undergraduate courses at the discretion of the professor. “I had to sneak into class to avoid a riot,” Barnes wrote. As president of the Graduate Women’s Club, she promoted the establishment of separate dining and residential facilities.

When women were granted admission to the Graduate School in 1892, twenty-three enrolled. In 1894, seven of those women received Ph.D. degrees. On April 5, 2016, the Women’s Faculty Forum unveiled a portrait of these women by artist Brenda Zlamany. The painting, located in the nave of Sterling Memorial Library, is the first portrait of women to be publicly displayed in the library.

The degree recipients and their departments are, from left: Cornelia H.B. Rogers (Romance Languages and Literatures), Sara Bulkley Rogers (History), Margaretta Palmer (Mathematics), Mary Augusta Scott (English), Laura Johnson Wylie (English), Charlotte Fitch Roberts (Chemistry), and Elizabeth Deering Hanscom (English).

Portrait of Yale’s First Seven Women PhDs, 2015