There has been an event update as part of the College’s response to coronavirus concerns.

The remaining two Common Hour talks have been canceled: “Cussedly Independent: Historic Women of the Wilson College Physics Dept." on March 23 and "Gertrude Hitz Burton: A Wilson College Alumna’s Modern Victorian Life" on March 30.

“Cussedly Independent:” Historic Women of the Wilson College Physics Dept. 

Also part of Women’s History Month Lecture Series Sesquicentennial Edition

This talk will illuminate how the Wilson College physics department, and the bold women who ran it, responded to changes in higher education and science over the years. It will also feature some of the amazing women associated with the department including Professor Dorothy Weeks, who mapped the spectrum of iron and promoted the education of women in physics on a national scale, and notable alumna, Pauline Morrow Austin, one of the founders of modern meteorology.

Joanna Behrman
PhD candidate, John Hopkins University

Joanna Behrman specializes in the history of science education and the history of physics. Her dissertation focuses on women in physics higher education in the period 1880-1940. She has done extensive research on Dr. Dorothy Weeks (Ph.D. MIT) professor of physics at Wilson College from 1930 – 1956.