Ethel Currie

Ethel Dobbie Currie (1899-1963) was a distinguished Scottish geologist. She was a pupil of Bellahouston Academy and later graduated from University of Glasgow in 1920 during the First World War.

Professor John Walter Gregory invited her to assist with the care and arrangement of the geological collections in the Hunterian Museum after her graduation. She worked as assistant curator of the Museum until she retired in September 1962. She died on 24 March 1963.

Life and career

Ethel Dobbie Currie was born on 4 December 1899 to James Ferguson Currie and Elizabeth Laughlan Allan, in Cathcart, Glasgow, Scotland. She completed her BSc at University of Glasgow in 1920 and her PhD in 1923. She was also awarded a DSc in 1945.

Currie's primary research interest was in palaeontology. Her first publication was a joint paper with Professor Gregory on fossil sea-urchins. She led a study of Scottish Carboniferous goniatites.^[1] In 1945 she became the first woman to be awarded the Neill Prize by the Royal Society of Edinburgh; in 1949, she was one of the first women to be made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh along with Sheina Marshall.^[1] Her contributions were acknowledged by the Geological Society of London and she was awarded its Wollaston Fund.^[2][3]

Publications

Ethel Currie published three books^[4]

• Jurassic and Eocene Echinoidea from Somaliland, (Papers from the Geological department. Glasgow University) by Ethel Dobbie Currie (1927)

• Note on rocks from the Sahara collected by Captain D.R.G. Cameron, (Papers from the Geological department. Glasgow... by Ethel Dobbie Currie (1931)

• The vertebrate fossils from the glacial and associated post-glacial beds of Scotland in the Hunterian museum,... by J. W. Currie, Ethel Dobbie, Gregory (1928)

References