Significant LGBTQ+ earth scientists, past and present
Diversity within STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects is infamously poor; according to a report by the Science and Technology Committee of the UK House of Commons (2023), almost every STEM field is dominated by heterosexual, white, able-bodied men from middle-class backgrounds. Sadly, earth sciences — an umbrella term referring to all scientific fields studying Earth, including geology, physical geography, atmospheric sciences, ecology, etc. — are the least diverse among the STEM fields, particularly for LGBTQ+ individuals (Kanungo and Barrow, 2021).
While it is difficult to ascertain precise, quantitative statistics regarding the number of LGBTQ+ people in earth sciences, there is a substantial body of alarming literature concerning difficulties faced by these individuals and the detrimental impact that this has on representation. For example, Olcott and Downen (2020) discuss how a majority of LGBTQ+ earth scientists feel unsafe engaging in fieldwork, often considered to be a key tenet of the discipline: Clancy, et al. (2017) found that 62% of LGBTQ+ cisgender white men in earth sciences felt unsafe engaging in fieldwork with this statistic being even higher for other groups, and 34% of LGBTQ+ earth scientists refuse to engage in earth sciences altogether owing to concerns over their safety. Alarmingly, this statistic is even higher (54%) for lecturers.
Both the report of the Science and Technology Committee (2023) and Olcott and Downen (2020) find that one key issue hindering participation of underrepresented groups in any STEM subject, including earth sciences, is the absence in many instances of role models, which is a self-exacerbating issue given that it discourages many members of these groups from going on to study STEM subjects and in turn becoming role models themselves.
There are, however, numerous earth scientists past and present who could fulfil this capacity as role models for future generations, if curricula allowed. I have listed and provided brief biographies for some LGBTQ+ individuals who have made significant contributions to the geosciences below in the hope that they may be inspirational for future queer geoscientists.
Clyde Wahrhaftig
Clyde Wahrhaftig (1919–1994) was an American glacial geologist and environmentalist. He graduated with a PhD in geology from the University of Harvard in 1953, before lecturing at the University of California at Berkeley between 1960 and 1982, where he helped to pioneer the teaching of geology in the field. Moreover, between 1941 until his death in 1994, he worked for the United States National Park Service, where he researched glaciers in Alaska, where he met his longtime partner and fellow geologist Allan Cox, Yosemite and later the Californian coast.
He spent much of his career — almost 50 years — mapping and interpreting the glaciers of Yosemite, however he realised he would never complete the work in his lifetime and dedicated part of his will to ensuring his work would be completed. His research was continued after Yosemite’s first park geologist was appointed in 2006, twelve years after his death, and was finally completed in 2019.
Wahrhaftig employed his extensive knowledge of geology to campaign for increased environmental protections too. With Cox, he researched the impact of redwood logging on water supplies which led to the enacting of large-scale overhaul of California’s laws surrounding deforestation and environmental protection, and continued to campaign for sustainable forestry practises and restrictions on deforestation in California until his death. In 1975, he was appointed to serve on the California Board of Forestry, a position he accepted and used to further his campaign, which ultimately had significant implications on a national and international level. He also understood the implications of greenhouse gas emissions would have on climate change, from the 1960s onwards travelling exclusively by public transport within California and only travelling to Alaska by boat.
Despite being closeted for much of his career, he came out publicly as a gay man in 1989 during an awards acceptance speech at the Geological Society of America, suggesting he did so to “provide a role model” for other LGBTQ+ people in geosciences while acknowledging the profound influence that Cox had on his career. He worked towards making geosciences more accessible from the 1970s, leading Hispanic and Black students on field trips in the San Francisco Bay and the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. In 1971, he became the first chair of the Minority Participation in the Earth Sciences Committee where he worked with figures such as Mark Gipson, the first Black American to obtain a doctorate in earth sciences, to pioneer diversity within geology.
He died of a heart failure on 6 April 1994, seven years after Cox, having made profound impacts both on diversity within geosciences and on better understanding the geologies of Alaska and California.
I ask you to recognise that homosexuals can make as much of a contribution to science and humanity as anyone else. It is likely that some students who enter geoscience will not be closeted as Allan and I were. You will have to deal with them as they are. The other group whose attitudes I wish to affect are gay students who are likely to become geoscientists, but are afraid to because they think being gay and being a geologist are incompatible. I want my life, and Allan’s and my relationship, to tell them that this is not so. If they are lucky, as we were, their love and their careers will sustain each other.
- Dr. Clyde Wahrhaftig, acceptance speech for the Geological Society of America’s ‘Distinguished Career Award’, 1989
Elke Mackenzie
Elke Mackenzie (1911–1990) was a British lichenologist specialising in the lichen found in the Antarctic region. She graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1933 with a BSc in Botany, and worked in Germany at the University of Munich and later the University of Würzberg before her appointment as an assistant keeper at the British Museum under the lichenologist Annie Lorrain Smith in 1935. She travelled significantly throughout her career, working at various points in the Antarctic, Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom.
She is arguably most famous for her part in the secret British mission to the Antarctic during the Second World War, Operation Tabarin, which was ostensibly a demonstration of British sovereignty over the Antarctic Peninsula and the Falkland Islands though also served as a significant scientific and data-gathering expedition. She worked in the Antarctic from 1943 until 1946, during which time she accumulated a significant personal collection of lichen and discovered the marine lichen species Verrucaria Serpuloides.
Subsequently, she became a professor of the National University of Tucumán in Argentina before being hired in 1950 as a cryptogramic botanist at the National Museum of Canada, where she sold her 3,200 specimens of lichen to the Canadian Museum of Nature, and in 1953 became the director of the Farlow Herbarium of Cryptogramic Botany at the University of Harvard.
Mackenzie was diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 1971, and underwent gender-affirming surgery, before being forced to retire as the director of the Farlow Herbarium in 1972 as a consequence of her transition. She made many notable contributions to lichenology, although appeared to lose interest in her research work after her transition for unknown reasons. She joined a theatre troupe under Laurence Senelick and made few contributions to lichenology after her retirement, however was cited as ‘Miss Elke Mackenzie’ (note the absence of her doctorate) in a paper published in the Farlow Herbarium’s journal in 1976, one of her final works.
She moved to Cambridge to live with her daughter in 1980 where she took up woodworking, though her work was brought to an end in 1983 following her diagnosis with Lou Gehrig’s Disease; she died in 1990, being unable to complete her lifelong work, a monograph of the lichen genus Stereocaulon.
Despite the abrupt and unjust end to her career following her transition, she made a significant impact on the field of lichenology, identifying two genera — Lambia and Lambiella (the namesake for which is her surname before her transition, Lamb) — while Cape Lamb on Vega Island in the Antarctic is named in her honour. Unfortunately, most of her work remains attributed to her dead name.
Barbara Nash
Barbara Nash (born 1944) is an American geophysicist and mineralogist who has made several notable contributions both to geology and geophysics. She is currently a professor emerita at the University of Utah, where she tenured as a professor of geology from 1978 until her retirement in 2019, directing the department between 1980 and 1985, prior to her transition.
Across her career, much of her work has focused on the identification and description of the properties of minerals: she directed the University of Utah’s Electron Microprobe Lab from 1970 until her retirement in 2019, where she has helped to identify 75 new minerals, one of which, Nashite, discovered in 2012, is named after her. Moreover, in 2015, she was the recipient of the ‘Mineral of the Year’ award for her work in studying the properties of the mineral Ophirite, the findings of which were published in the American Mineralogist journal.
She has focused on promoting transgender rights within the geosciences throughout her career. In 2003, she was one of many transgender scientists, including figures such as Ben Barres, Lynn Conway and Christine Burns, who wrote to the National Academies to oppose their publication of the anti-transgender book The Man Who Would Be Queen by the psychologist J. Michael Bailey. Additionally, between 2015 and 2017, she was the Chair of the Geological Society of America’s Committee on Diversity in the Geosciences.
References
Clancy, K.B.H, Lee, K.M.N., Rodgers, E.M. and Richey, C. (10 July 2017) ‘Double jeapordy in astronomy and planetary science: Women of color face greater risks of gendered and racial harassment’. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. Vol. 122 (7), pp. 1610–1623. Available here. (Accessed 11 August 2023).
Kanungo, S. and Barrow, A. (14 December 2021) ‘Being LGBT in Geoscience Is like Being Invisible’. Scientific American. Available here. (Accessed 11 August 2023)
Olcott, A.N. and Downen, M.R. (28 August 2020) ‘The Challenges of Fieldwork for LGBTQ+ Geoscientists’. Eos. Available here. (Accessed 11 August 2023)
Science and Technology Committee (1 March 2023) ‘Diversity and inclusion in STEM’. House of Commons. Available here. (Accessed 11 August 2023)
Clyde Wahrhaftig biography
Geological Society of America (March 1990) ‘Newsletter of the Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division’. Geological Society of America. Vol. 30 (1), pp. 5–6. Available here. (Accessed 11 August 2023)
National Park Service (9 February 2021) ‘Dr. Clyde Wahrhaftig’. Available here. (Accessed 11 August 2023)
Unknown author (1984). Portrait of Dr. Clyde Wahrhaftig. Photograph. Published in A Streetcar to Subduction (American Geophysical Union). Available here. (Accessed 11 August 2023)
Elke Mackenzie biography
Imbler, S. (26 September 2020) ‘The Unsung Heroine of Lichenology’. JSTOR Daily. Available here. (Accessed 11 August 2023)
University of Edinburgh (24 February 2021) ‘Elke Mackenzie (1911–1990)’. Available here. (Accessed 11 August 2023)
Barbara Nash biography
James, A. (unknown date) ‘Barbara P. Nash’ Transgender Map. Available here. (Accessed 12 August 2023)
University of Utah (30 August 2006) ‘Barbara Purcell Nash’. Accessed via the Wayback Machine, available here. (Accessed 12 August 2023)
University of Utah Geology and Geophysics (1 July 2019) Facebook. Available here. (Accessed 12 August 2023)
Whitehurst, L. (17 May 2013) ‘University of Utah geologist inspires name of new mineral’. The Salt Lake Tribune. Available here. (Accessed 12 August 2023)
