Celebrating the first women Fellows
RSE Fellows, past and present, are an illustrious rollcall of leading scientists and thinkers. In common with other similar organisations with such a long-standing history, women were only able to join its ranks relatively recently. Five ground breaking women joined the Fellowship in 1949. They led the way as role models for future Fellows and were the first of many women to play a significant role in the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s history.
In 1949, the Royal Society of Edinburgh welcomed its first women Fellows – five pioneers in their fields who challenged societal barriers and reshaped contemporary expectations of what women could achieve. Their election marked a pivotal moment in the RSE’s history, abolishing the previous exclusionary nomination process, which reflected a broader shift in recognising women’s contributions to science, academia, and public life.
To honour their enduring legacy, the RSE commissioned Glasgow-based illustrator Sophy Louise to create a series of artworks that reintroduce these women to a new generation. Through illustration, we bring their stories into the present, bringing visibility to the lives, work, and impact of these women, whose legacy continues to demonstrate the importance of women in science, research, and knowledge.
Click the buttons to learn about each of their story:
Dr Charlotte Auerbach FRSE
14 May 1899 – 17 March 1994
Charlotte Auerbach was a Zoologist and Geneticist. Charlotte fled from Nazi Germany in 1933 aged 34, after being dismissed from her teaching posts for being Jewish. She moved to Edinburgh and gained her PhD in 1935; she researched the effects of mustard gas, finding that it caused often lethal mutations in fruit flies.
Dr Charlotte Auerbach was a groundbreaking Jewish-German geneticist who researched the harmful effects of radiation and chemicals on humans and other living creatures.
Born in Krefeld, Germany, into a family of scientists, Auerbach initially trained as a secondary school teacher but pursued her passion for zoology and genetics through studies at various universities, including Freiburg, Berlin, and later Edinburgh.
In 1933, after Hitler became Chancellor, and she was forced to flee Nazi Germany due to antisemitic laws that prevented her from continuing to teach. Auerbach found refuge in Scotland, where she joined the Institute of Animal Genetics at the University of Edinburgh. The institute was a lively place where refugee scientists from all over Europe were working. There, under the mentorship of Nobel laureate Hermann J Muller HonFRSE, she learnt techniques for her pioneering work on the causes of mutation. In 1942, during World War II, while collaborating with J M Robson, they discovered that exposure to mustard gas could induce mutations in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster). This finding challenged the prevailing view that only radiation caused mutations and opened the door to understanding chemical mutagenesis – an insight with profound implications for medicine, toxicology, and cancer research. The work was eventually published in leading science journal Nature in 1946, followed by detailed accounts in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Section B: Biological Sciences journal, 1946.
During the war, she lived with her mother and other refugee families on Fountainhall Road, Edinburgh. Although conditions were cramped, there were moments of joy – among them, playing the cello in a small orchestra conducted by the distinguished Austrian composer Hans Gál.
After the war, Auerbach continued her research and teaching at the University of Edinburgh, becoming a highly respected figure in genetics. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1949 and was, belatedly, appointed Professor of Genetics in 1967.
She wrote many books for various readers, including Adventures with Rosalind, a children’s fairy story that reflected her passion for teaching. From her informed position as a geneticist, she also spoke out on social and ethical issues, warning against the dangers of nuclear radiation from weapons testing and during a visit to South Africa, challenging the pseudoscientific genetic beliefs underpinning apartheid.
Dr Ethel Currie FRSE
4 December 1899 – 24 March 1963
Ethel Currie was an esteemed Scottish Geologist, who worked at the University of Glasgow as Assistant Curator of the Hunterian Museum, focusing on Palaeontology as her specialism. In 1945, Currie was the first woman to be awarded the Neill prize by the RSE and in 1952, she became the first women President of the Geological Society of Glasgow.
Dr Ethel Currie was a pioneering curator and a trailblazer for women in geology.
Born in the Cathcart area of Glasgow, she graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in geology in 1920.
After graduation, Currie joined the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow as an assistant curator under Dr William Smellie, a role she held until her retirement in 1962. During her tenure, she meticulously catalogued the geological collection, prepared exhibits, lectured, and conducted original research.
Currie’s research focused on palaeontology, especially echinoids (sea urchins), ammonoids, goniatites, and vertebrate fossils. Her PhD thesis dealt with Jurassic and Eocene echinoids from Somaliland.
Later in her career, Currie refined her method of analysing the shape and structure of ammonites, which led her to a major project: documenting Scottish Carboniferous goniatites – an extinct species of ancient marine animal that evolved approximately 400 million years ago. This began with a focused study of the fossil fauna in Skipsey’s Marine Band, but grew into a much larger undertaking. She went on to produce a comprehensive account of every known species and variety of goniatite found in Scotland. Her work was so detailed and thorough that it became a key reference for scientists studying Carboniferous rock layers.
For her work on growth stages in Jurassic ammonites, she earned the RSE’s Neill Prize, becoming the first woman to receive the medal. In 1949, she was among the first group of women elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. From 1952 until 1955, she served as the first elected woman President of the Geological Society of Glasgow.
In her later years, Currie developed a strong interest in the shape and relationships of fossil vertebrates, expanding her research beyond invertebrates. After many years of dedicated work at the Hunterian Museum, her contribution was formally recognised when she was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1960 – a long-overdue honour that reflected her commitment to enriching its collections and setting high standards in academic publishing
Dr Sheina Marshall FRSE
20 April 1896 – 7 April 1977
From the Isle of Bute, Sheina Marshall was a Scottish Marine Biologist who played a crucial role in medical research during the Second World War. She researched different ways of obtaining agar, which was required to produce vaccines, by scouring the shores for seaweed. Marshall and her colleague, Andrew Picken, identified a strand of seaweed, ‘False Irish Moss’, as the best local source of agar. Prior to the war, Britain used to import agar from Japan and Marshall was able to identify sources of agar from many British beaches thanks to this common seaweed.
Dr Sheina Marshall was a trailblazing Scottish marine biologist whose research laid the foundations for modern plankton ecology.
Marshall grew up on the Isle of Bute, where she was immersed in science. Her father, a doctor, founded the Buteshire Natural History Society and cared for the Rothesay Museum. Marshall and her sisters helped in the museum, tending to the aquarium and making collections of dried flowers. Following her father’s footsteps, she studied at the University of Glasgow, graduating in 1919 with degrees in zoology, botany, and physiology.
In 1922, the Scottish Marine Biological Association at Millport secured funding from the Development Commission, allowing it to expand its team. Marshall was appointed Assistant Naturalist in 1922, a role she would hold for the rest of her life, working alongside chemist Andrew Picken Orr with whom she had an unbroken research partnership for decades. Together, they produced influential research on plankton and the feeding mechanisms of copepods – tiny crustaceans vital to the marine food chain. She worked on copepods for over 50 years, giving us deep insights into their biology and earning her the title ‘queen of copepods’. Marshall and Orr worked closely together, publishing over 40 research papers and several scientific books together, including the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh journal, 1947 and the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh B: Biology journal, 1926.
In 1928, both Marshall and Orr joined the Great Barrier Reef Expedition, leaving Millport for the greater part of two years. Their research, specifically on the chemistry and phytoplanktonic content of coral reef waters, was crucial to the expedition’s success.
Marshall earned her doctorate from the University of Glasgow in 1934. During World War II she applied her scientific knowledge to local food production to support the war effort. She studied the feeding habits of young herring and later investigated fish farming to boost local food production. Additionally, she discovered a domestic source of agar, which had previously been imported from Japan for medical and commercial use. She helped identify suitable local seaweeds and coordinated volunteers to harvest them, securing a reliable supply of British agar.
In 1949, she was elected as one of the first women Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh – an honour that marked her as a leader in the field and a pioneer for women in science. In 1962 she was awarded a CBE for her services to marine science.
Dr Christina Cruikshank Miller FRSE
29 August 1899 – 16 July 2001
Christina Cruikshank Miller made crucial discoveries in analytical chemistry. She was the only woman amongst the first 25 Fellows of Heriot-Watt College and consistently fought for her place as a woman in a male-dominated research field. An inspiration to her fellow teachers and students, she was partially deaf and suffered blindness in one eye following an accident in her lab. Her pioneering work included producing the first sample of pure phosphorous trioxide, which proved that it was not responsible for the glow emitted from phosphorous, as had been claimed by others.
Dr Christina Cruikshank Miller was a revolutionary Scottish chemist, known for her analytical and physical chemistry achievements.
Born in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, she suffered hearing loss in early childhood due to measles and rubella. Due to this impairment, she pivoted from teaching to chemistry after a magazine article suggested industrial analytical chemistry as a career for girls.
She enrolled at the University of Edinburgh in 1917, while simultaneously attending evening classes at Heriot-Watt College. Because of the war, the three-term courses at Edinburgh were compressed into two terms, creating a very heavy workload. In 1920, she graduated with special distinction, earned a diploma in industrial chemistry the following year and gained a Vans Dunlop Scholarship, giving her the means to undertake research for a higher degree.
Under Professor James Walker, she began a PhD in 1921, having learned German during her daily train journeys between Edinburgh and her home in Kirkcaldy, which helped her to read the important scientific literature at the time. Her doctoral work focused on the study of diffusion in liquids to test the Stokes-Einstein law. Miller’s energy and persistence were renowned; she once climbed in through a window she had left open and returned to work at night, later earning a key to the department after she made sure the professor heard about her late-night visits. Her research was difficult due to poor lab conditions, as the chemistry building was still under construction. Despite these setbacks, Miller used her ingenuity to adapt. With help from Walter Murray, the department’s inventive chief technician, she learned glassblowing and was soon making the specialised equipment her work required. The research was successful; she completed her PhD in 1924, resulting in sole authorship of a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, London.
Miller’s postdoctoral research on phosphorus trioxide led to a major breakthrough: she isolated the first pure sample of the compound and disproved the previous claims of its luminescence, the emission of light by a substance, not caused by heat. This breakthrough was published twice in the RSE’s Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh journal, 1927. For this work, she received the prestigious RSE Keith Medal in 1929, an exceptional achievement for a woman under 30.
Her standing was recognised in 1949, when she was the only chemist among the first five women elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Her outstanding achievements are honoured through the Christina Miller Building at the University of Edinburgh and Christina Miller Hall at Heriot-Watt. Since 2016, the University of Edinburgh’s Christina Miller Fellowship has supported early-career researchers from under-represented backgrounds.
Dr Doris Reynolds FRSE
1 July 1899 – 10 October 1985
Doris Reynolds was a British Geologist who made considerable contributions to the field of Geology and was awarded the Lyell Medal from the Geological Society of London in 1960. During the 1940s, Reynolds developed the theory of ‘granitisation’ to try to explain the formation of granite in the Earth’s crust. Although the theory was later disproved, it led to greater research and understanding in this area.
Dr Doris Reynolds was a distinguished geologist renowned for her groundbreaking work in petrology and geochemical processes.
Born in Manchester, she studied at Bedford College for Women, the first higher education college for women, part of the University of London. She gained her degree in geology in 1920. After her first degree, she took up a teaching post at University College London. There, she was mentored by Catherine Raisin, one of the first prominent women geologists in Britain, who introduced her to the study of petrology – the study of sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks with respect to their occurrence, structure, origin, history, and mineral content
In 1931, she was accompanying students on a geological field trip to the Ardnamurchan Peninsula in Scotland, when she met Arthur Holmes, a Professor of Geology at Durham University. After the trip, she accepted a teaching position at Durham, and in 1939 they married.
Reynolds is best known for her work on the process of granitisation, a controversial theory she developed in the 1940s to explain how granite forms within the Earth’s crust. Reynolds proposed that granite could not form through the cooling of molten rock, but it was formed by fluids moving upwards through the crust, changing them into granite chemically.
Although the theory of granitisation was eventually superseded by newer models based on magmatic processes, Reynold’s work generated decades of research and debate, reshaping the study of petrology. Her intellectual independence and refusal to conform to prevailing theories earned her widespread respect.
In 1941, Arthur Holmes became Regius Professor of Geology at the University of Edinburgh, and Reynolds joined the department as an unpaid Honorary Research Fellow. She published findings in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh journal in 1944, where Reynolds fundamentally redefined the geological understanding of the Slieve Gullion complex, proposing an ancient volcanic origin with significant post-emplacement metamorphic and chemical alterations driven by gas-stream activity, rather than purely plutonic intrusion.
In 1949, she became one of the first five women to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 1960, she received the Lyell Medal from the Geological Society of London, recognising her original contributions and scientific determination.
After Holmes died in 1965, Reynolds edited and published a revised edition of his classic textbook, Principles of Physical Geology.
About the artist
Sophy Louise, an illustrator based in Glasgow, celebrates heritage and contemporary Scottish culture through her colourful art. Inspired by people’s stories and folklore, she embeds strong ties to place and history within her work, creating visual stories that capture our shared intangible cultural heritage. She has been a weekly trader at one of Scotland’s oldest markets, the Barras, for 3 years now – and stocks her work in various locations around the central belt.
