Adele L. Grant

Adele Gerard Lewis Grant (June 3, 1881 – June 19, 1969) was an American botanist, academic, and plant collector. She founded the Prytanean Women's Honor Society, the first U.S. collegiate honor socieety for women, and Sigma Delta Epsilon, a scientific fraternity for women graduate students which survives as the national organization Graduate Women in Science.

Adele Gerard Lewis was born in Carpinteria, California in 1881.^[1][2] Her parents were Rebecca and Henry Lewis, a wealthy farmer and rancher in Capinteria.^[3] She had three siblings and several half-siblings from her father's previous marriages.^[3][4]

She attended the University of California at Berkeley, graduating with B.S. degrees in chemistry and zoology in May 1903.^[5][6] While at Berkeley, she founded and was the first president of the Prytanean Women's Honor Society, with faculty advisor Mary Bennett Ritter, in the fall of 1900.^[7][8][9] This was the first women's collegiate honor society in the United States.^[8] Following her vision, the group raised money to start student healthcare program and a loan fund for female students.^[8][10]

She continued with her studies, enrolling in the Henry Shaw School of Botany at Washington University in St. Louis, earning an M.Sc. in botany.^[2][1] While in graduate school, she was a teaching fellow and also worked at the Missouri Botanical Garden.^[1] In March 1905, she discovered four new species in Pacific Coast flora.^[11][12]

While working on her Ph.D. in botany from Washington University in St. Louis, she returned to California.^[2][1][13] She went on plant collecting trips to Central America, Mexico, and California.^[1][14] She worked briefly for the California Fish and Commission, detailing the economic value of birds.^[15][16]

From 1916 to 1917, she was a graduate student at Stanford University.^[17][18] While at Standford, she was admitted to Sigma Xi science and engineering honor society, as a graduate student in botany.^[19] She also took graduate classes at the University of California and the University of Chicago.^[20]

In the summers of 1917 and 1920, she taught at the Sierra Summer School, jointly sponsored by the state of California and U.S. Forestry Department.^[21][22][20] In July 1918, Grant taught at the summer session of the Fresno State Normal School.^[23]

After receiving her Ph.D., Grant joined the faculty of Cornell University, starting around 1920.^[1][2][24] At Cornell in May 1921, she started and served as the first president of Sigma Delta Epsilon, a scientific women's fraternity for graduate students which survives as the national organization Graduate Women in Science.^[25][24]

From February 1926 to 1930, she was head of the department of botany at Huguenot University College in Wellington, South Africa.^[2][26] While in South Africa, she collected plants, mostly from the Scrophulariaceae family.^[1] She also went on collecting trips to Southern Rhodesia and Northern Rhodesia in 1928 and 1929, followed by Kenya and Mozambique in 1930.^[1] She woked with botanists at the Bolus Herbarium of the University of Cape Town to create an important herbarium.^[1]

She returned to the Missouri Botanical Garden in 1930, working as its acting curator.^[1][27] She then took her collection to the University of California, Los Angeles where she continued her research.^[1] She taught at the San Francisco State College and George Pepperdine College before teaching at the University of Southern California for 23 years.^[1][2][28] She was the supervisor of science for the Los Angeles County Schools from 1942 to 1952.^[2][28] She retired from teaching in 1965.^[28]

She published monographs of the genera Mimulus and Hemimeris L.^[1] The standard author abbreviation A.L.Grant is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.^[29]

• Graduate Women in Science named its Sigma Delta Epsilon Adele Lewis Grant Fellowship in her honor.^[2]
• When the Missouri Botanical Garden was recognized as the North American center for the study of African plants in 1969, her plant collection was moved there.^[1]
• Delta Kappa Gamma Internatonal created the Dr. Adele Lewis Grant Scholarship of Delta Kappa Gamma.^[30]

On August 17, 1905, Lewis married George Francis Grant of Tuolumne County, California in Carpinteria.^[31] The couple later divorced and had no children.^[32]

In March 1917, she made presentations and distributed petitions against the proposed California legislation that would allow hunters to kill beneficial birds that ate insects.^[17] She was the founder of the Alpha Pi and the Gamma Kappa (1955) chapters of Delta Kappa Gamma professional society for women educators.^[33][34]

She died after a long illness in a convalescent hospital in Inglewood, California on June 19, 1969.^[28]

• P. Goldblatt, 1976, "The African Herbarium of Adele Lewis Grant", Taxon, 25 (2/3): 375-376