Chrystal MacMillan
| Chrystal Macmillan | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
Jessie Chrystal Macmillan June 13, 1872 Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Died | September 21, 1937 (aged 65) Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Resting place | Corstorphine, Edinburgh |
| Education | Mathematics, natural philosophy, moral philosophy, logic |
| Alma mater | University of Edinburgh |
Jessie Chrystal Macmillan MA BSc (13 June 1872 – 21 September 1937) was a Scottish Liberal politician, barrister, feminist and pacifist, and the first female science graduate from the University of Edinburgh as well as that institution's first female honours graduate in Mathematics. She was an activist for women's right to vote, and for other women's causes. She was the first woman to plead a case before the House of Lords, and was one of the founders of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
In the first year of World War I, Macmillan spoke for the peace-seeking women of the United Kingdom at the International Congress of Women, a peace congress convened at The Hague. Afterward, she met with world leaders such as President Woodrow Wilson, whose countries were still neutral, to present the proposals formulated at The Hague. Wilson subsequently used these proposals as some of his Fourteen Points, his justification for making war to forge a lasting peace. At war's end, Macmillan served as a delegate at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919, and helped encourage the founding of the League of Nations. Macmillan tried but did not succeed in getting the League to establish nationality for women independent of the nationality of their husbands.
Macmillan was born Jessie Chrystal Macmillan on 13 June 1872 to John Macmillan, a tea merchant working for Melrose & Co in Leith, and his wife Jessie Chrystal Finlayson. The family lived at 8 Duke Street in Edinburgh. Duke Street was renamed Dublin Street in 1922 and lies in the New Town.
Chrystal was the couple's only daughter among their eight sons. After an early education in Edinburgh she boarded at St Leonards School and St Katharines School for Girls in St Andrews on the east coast of Scotland. She returned to enroll at the University of Edinburgh in October 1892. Among the first female students there, she was not the first to graduate, as others were more advanced in their studies when they entered as graduate students, and earned Master's degrees before she finished her undergraduate work. Macmillan studied science subjects including Honours Mathematics with George Chrystal, Astronomy with Ralph Copeland, and Natural Philosophy with Peter Guthrie Tait and Cargill Gilston Knott. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in April 1896, the first woman at Edinburgh to do so.
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