This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Women of Science : Working Women of CMNH's Botany Hall

Dorothy Pearth

This page is referenced by:

Dorothy E.L. Pearth, Associate Curator of Botany Dorothy Evelyn Long Pearth, Associate Curator of Botany Hall from 1940 to 1978, spent her childhood in Coles Summit, Pennsylvania. According to her obituary, Pearth was described as artistic, musical, and detail oriented. She attended Felix Mahoney School of Fine and Applied Arts in Washington D.C. then later received her Bachelor degree in Botany. During this period, Pearth also attended art classes at Carnegie Mellon University.

Dorothy Pearth began at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in 1940 as the assistant to Dr. Maurice Graham Netting, the director of the Natural History Museum. Shortly after, Pearth transferred to the department of Botany as Associate Curator of Botany where she remained until her retirement in 1978.

During her time at the National History Museum, Dorothy Pearth contributed several articles to the Carnegie Magazine, like “A Christmas Rose” (1958), “Carnegiea Gigantea” (1965), and “Dawn Redwood- A Living Fossil” (1970). Pearth contradicted the conventional ways women and botany were tied together, through the household chores like gardening and cooking. Pearth approached these issues in a much deeper, scientific manner in her publications. Others focused on the ways in which botany interacts with human life, with articles like “Benjamin Franklin: Money and Flowers”. Pearth's writings explain plant characteristics, origins, and life cycles in addition to how that plant relates to our life and culture. By doing so, she operated in a manner that went against the stereotype of women working in botany, forging a new path for herself and others to come.
Women Behind Botany Hall
There were hundreds of women that worked behind the scenes for Botany Hall, both museum staff and volunteers. Three women in particular, Dorothy E.L. Pearth, Hanne von Fuehrer, and Elizabeth Niedringhaus, played an important role within the museum. Through each woman’s work and experiences, I explore women’s relationship with the museum and botany. In their own way, these three women have pioneered through the challenges of working in the Natural History Museum, a typically male-dominated sphere. Their efforts in botanical scholarship and craftsmanship have helped make working in the museum more accessible to women.

As I learned more about these three women's work and their contributions to the museum, I began to notice three different overarching themes within my findings. Dorothy Pearth contradicted societal expectations on women working in the sciences. Hanne von Fuehrer faced difficulty gaining proper recognition for her efforts but did not falter. Being a working woman in the 60s and 70s allowed Elizabeth Niedringhaus to have more authority inside the museum than the two women before her. These themes make evident the ways in which feminism and growing women's rights altered society.

The next page steps out of chronology and begins with Dorothy Pearth. Though Pearth came to the museum fourteen years after Hanne von Fuehrer, the significance of a woman on the curatorial team of Botany Hall needs great attention.