Women in Science and Engineering at Yale (2020 Edition)

Margaretta Palmer, Ph.D.

Photo: Vassar Encyclopedia

Detail from painting Portrait of Yale’s First Seven Women PhDs by Brenda Zlamany, 2016

Margaretta Palmer was born in 1862 in Branford, CT. She graduated from Vassar College in 1887 and was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in Astronomy at Yale (1894). She was the second woman in the world to earn a doctorate in astronomy and is one of the first seven women with Ph.D.s from Yale who are featured in the 2016 painting by Brenda Zlamany, Portrait of Yale’s First Seven Women Ph.D.s, which hangs in the nave of Sterling Memorial Library.