B. Elizabeth Horner papers

B. Elizabeth “Betty” Horner was an educator, biologist, advocate for women and science, and a professor at Smith College where she spent her entire professional life.

Horner was born on the 29th of April in 1916 in southern New Jersey to Quaker parents. Her interests were drawn to nature, medicine, and exploration from an early age. She recalled that her 1st interests in natural history arose from accompanying her father through his fruit orchards. She came to realize that explorers and scientists were mostly men, and women were homemakers—all of which conflicted with her interest in adventure, science, and nature. Horner wanted to learn about the world though, and she was determined to go to college. She worked summers as a waitress, and during the academic year she found employment through the New Deal Agency's National Youth. With money she had saved she was able to enroll in Douglass College (now part of Rutgers University).

In college, Horner was greatly influenced by her mentor, Leon Augustus Hausman, in the Zoology Department. Her interests in Australian mammals and in morphological differences were sparked by working as Dr. Hausman's assistant. In 1937 Myra Sampson, Professor of Zoology at Smith, phoned Dr. Hausman asking if he had any promising students whom she might employ as teaching fellows. He suggested Horner for an interview.

In 1938, Horner started her 70-plus-year association with Smith College. She started as a teaching assistant and completed her master's degree with Ernest Driver. She finished her master's degree in 1940 and then was promoted to the rank of Instructor. Her main role as an instructor was to teach courses in biology, but in the early years of World War II she also taught courses in Naval Communications about making and breaking codes. In this period, from 1942 to 1944, Horner was a Faculty Post Warden at the college, with responsibilities for obtaining and maintaining blackout conditions in 8 student houses in case of an air raid.

After several years of teaching at Smith, in 1944 she began graduate studies for her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She did most of her work during the summers and took only 1 full year away from Smith College, in 1945. Horner had especially wanted to do fieldwork at the University's field station, but this was not allowed because the field station had no facilities or chaperones for women. Although she was disappointed not to be able to work in the field, Horner did a behavioral study on captive animals in the laboratory, focusing on adaptations for arboreal locomotion in several species of Peromyscus. In retrospect she noted that this change had brought her “into the behavioral area at an exciting stage in its development … enabling me to introduce, later, the first biology course in animal behavior at Smith College.”

Once she had finished her doctorate and was launched in her career at Smith, Horner quickly took up fieldwork. Summers and sabbaticals were spent in Australia and the deserts of the American Southwest, especially Nevada. She used both field and laboratory work to introduce students to the excitement of research. Horner's main interest in field research was studying morphology and behavior, especially as they applied to reproduction, and her focus was on rodents and other small mammals. During her 1st sabbatical in 1954–1955, she spent a year in fieldwork in New South Wales, Australia, taking with her a former student, J. Mary Taylor. This began a long collaboration of the 2 women in studies of Australian mammals. Her publications from her field studies spanned 56 years.

Although she loved fieldwork, Horner considered herself primarily an educator. To her, field and laboratory work were valuable aspects of learning about biology. At Smith College, Horner advanced through the ranks, from Instructor on completion of her doctorate in 1948 to Full Professor in 1963. In 1970 she was named the Myra M. Sampson Professor of Biological Sciences, a chair that she held until her retirement in 1986. In her retirement she came to campus daily to perform research with student assistants, a routine that she began in 1938 and that stopped only when her health declined in 2008.

Over her career Horner also educated the public by creating museum displays for the Springfield Science Museum, most notably a traveling exhibit on women in science. She served on the Massachusetts Advisory Committee for Conservation Education, was an evaluator for the National Science Foundation–sponsored CAUSE program, and was on the advisory boards for public nature areas such as Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary in Northampton and the Quincy Bog Natural Area in New Hampshire.

Since Horner was deeply involved in science museum education, she became interested in the Harrison H Wilder’s collection of Native American bones and grave artifacts. In 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was passed, requiring museums to return Native American funerary objects and remains to the tribes. Horner was a vocal opponent of NAGPRA, and especially opposed returning materials that were part of professor Harrison H Wilder’s collection at University of Massachusetts Amherst. She believed that Native American remains should be kept in Zoology/Biology collections as a record of the history of the field. Her public statements on the topic made her a controversial figure at Smith and in the Biology field.

In 1981 Horner was invited to join the celebrated Explorers Club of New York. Until 1981 the club had admitted only men to membership, but in that year the 1st women were elected, and Horner was very proud to be 1 of the 16 women to become members of the organization.

Horner was also very active in the American Society of Mammologists (ASM), and was recognized several times by the Society for her contributions to mammalogy. In 1997 Horner became the 1st recipient of the ASM's Joseph Grinnell Award, established to honor individuals who have made outstanding and sustained contributions to education in mammalogy. At her retirement, ASM established the B. Elizabeth Horner Grants-in-Aid of Research to support undergraduate and graduate research projects. At her 90th birthday members of the ASM donated more than $16,000 in her honor to support the ASM's Latin American Student Field Research Fund.

She died on 29 April 2009 on her 93rd birthday.

Bibliography

Virginia Hayssen, Barbara H. Blake, B. Elizabeth Horner: 1916–2009, Journal of Mammalogy, Volume 92, Issue 4, 16 August 2011, Pages 905–908, https://doi.org/10.1644/11-MAMM-O-040R.1