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Edith Nason Buckingham (September 28, 1877 – February 23, 1954) was an American zoologist, dog breeder, and chicken farmer. She was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in zoology at Radcliffe College.
Edith Nason Buckingham | |
|---|---|
 Edith Nason Buckingham, from the 1902 yearbook of Radcliffe College | |
| Born | September 28, 1877 Boston, Massachusetts |
| Died | February 23, 1954 Sudbury, Massachusetts |
| Occupation(s) | Zoologist, businesswoman, chicken farmer, dog breeder |
Buckingham was born in Boston, the daughter of Edward Marshall Buckingham and Alice Darracott Nason Buckingham. Her father and grandfather were both Harvard-trained physicians.[1] Her sister Margaret married biochemist Addison Gulick. She attended Girls Latin School and the Curtis-Peabody School. She attended Radcliffe College, graduating in 1902,[2][3] and was president of the Radcliffe Science Club.[4]
In 1910,[5] Buckingham became the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in zoology at Radcliffe,[6] with a dissertation titled "Division of Labor among Ants" (1911).[7][8] Her supervisor was Edward Laurens Mark at Harvard Zoological Laboratory.[9][10] In connection with that project, she also wrote "A Light-Weight, Portable Outfit for the Study and Transportation of Ants" (1909), published in The American Naturalist.[11]
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Buckingham worked at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research after college,[12] and taught science at high schools in Concord[13] and Abington, Massachusetts.[14] She was an active member of Phi Beta Kappa.[15][16]
From 1927, Buckingham and her partner owned and operated Featherland Farm, a chicken farm in Sudbury, Massachusetts.[17] The farm grew to a large business, including farm equipment rentals. She also bred and raised show dogs,[18][19] and was a founding member of the New England Old English Sheep Dog Club. She was a member of the Sudbury Woman's Club and the Sudbury Garden Club, and taught Sunday school at an Episcopal church.[4] She claimed that the "Grandmother's house" of Lydia Maria Child's 1844 "Over the river and through the wood" lyric was her farmhouse in Sudbury.[20]
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Buckingham lived and worked with Emily G. Fish.[4][21] Edith N. Buckingham died in 1954, at a Sudbury town meeting, aged 78 years.[22] After her death, the Framingham District Kennel Club gave a Memorial Trophy in her name.[23] Some of her correspondence is in the Gulick Family Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society.[4]
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