Carrie Derick

Career

A brilliant student at McGill (BA, 1890; MA, 1896), she also studied at Harvard, the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the Royal College of Science in London and the University of Bonn, Germany. At the time she was attending the University of Bonn in Germany, a policy against awarding doctorates to women barred her from receiving a PhD despite conducting the research associated with receiving the degree.

She was appointed demonstrator in botany at McGill in 1891 — first woman on McGill's academic staff; in 1912, she became professor of morphological botany — the first woman in Canada to be made a full professor. Her courses introduced the teaching of genetics at McGill, a then-emerging field, and regularly tackled evolution, a still controversial topic. During her tenure at McGill, she was paid significantly less than her male colleagues, going for seven years without a pay raise and, later, only making one-third the salary of her male colleagues.

In 1911, she became the first woman to be listed in American Men of Science.

A social activist, she championed such causes as compulsory school attendance, care for disabled children, industrial and technical education, women's rights and birth control. She advocated for women to pursue careers and proposed that “domestic service” receive the status of a profession.