Alice Carter Cook

Cook was the first woman to receive a PhD in botany from an American university.

Biography

Carter was born in New York City on April 8, 1868 to Samuel Thompson Carter and Alantha Carter (née Pratt). Her father was a clergyman in Huntington, New York.

Carter studied at Mount Holyoke Seminary before enrolling at Syracuse University for her doctorate. She graduated in 1888, receiving the first doctorate in botany for a woman from an American University.

Carter taught at Mount Holyoke for three years before attending Cornell University where she earned an M.S. in botany, in 1892. That same year, she married botanist Orator Fuller Cook. The couple later traveled on expeditions to Africa and the Canary Islands.

Cook worked with botanist Henrietta Hooker. Cook had two sons and two daughters; her son Robert Carter Cook became a geneticist and demographer.

Cook died on June 14, 1943. Her plant collections were donated to the Smithsonian Institution and the Academy of Natural Sciences.