Discovering Dorothea

Book excerpt: This biography presents the untold life of an intrepid woman and early scientific pioneer. Dorothea Bate, paleontologist, geologist, archaeologist and ornithologist, established archeo-zoology as a serious scientific subject. She lacked any real formal education bar a childhood love affair with natural history acquired from the Carmarthenshire countryside in which she grew up. At the age of 17 (in 1895) she talked her way into a job sorting bird-skins in the Bird Room at the Natural History Museum, South Kensington and thus became the first woman to be employed there.