Edith Clements

Edith Clements
Born	Edith Gertrude Schwartz 1874 Albany, New York
Died	1971 (aged 96–97)
Nationality	American
Other names	Edith S. Clements, Edith Schwartz Clements
Alma mater	University of Nebraska
Occupation	botanist, illustrator
Spouse(s)	Frederic Clements

Edith Gertrude Clements (1874–1971), also known as Edith S. Clements and Edith Schwartz Clements, was an American botanist and pioneer of botanical ecology who was the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D. by the University of Nebraska. She was married to botanist Frederic Clements, with whom she collaborated throughout her professional life. Together they founded the Alpine Laboratory, a research station at Pikes Peak, Colorado. Clements was also a botanical artist who illustrated her own books as well as joint publications with Frederic.

Both Clementses were involved with the study of phytogeography, especially those factors determining the ecology of vegetation in particular regions, and they would be praised as "the most illustrious husband-wife team since the Curies." It is impossible to entirely disentangle Clements's work from that of her more famous husband.

Edith Gertrude Schwartz was born in 1874 in Albany, New York, to George and Emma (Young) Schwartz. Her father was a pork packer from Omaha, Nebraska. She was educated at the University of Nebraska (UNL), being elected to Phi Beta Kappa and gaining her A.B. in German in 1898. She was also a member of Kappa Alpha Theta. She wrote her dissertation on "The Relation of Leaf Structure to Physical Factors" in 1904.

Schwartz began her career as a teaching fellow in German at UNL (1898–1900). During this period, she met her future husband, Frederic Clements, a UNL botany professor who influenced the direction of her graduate studies. At the time, the Universities of Nebraska and Minnesota (where she would later teach) were centers for the study of phytogeography—the geographic distribution of plant species—and she chose to make this her area of specialization. She earned her doctoral degree in botany in 1904 (with a minor in Germanic philology and geology), becoming the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D. by UNL.

Edith and Frederic married in 1899.

After gaining her Ph.D., Clements got a job as an assistant in botany at the University of Nevada (1904–07), where Frederic was teaching. To raise money, they spent several summers collecting plant specimens and assembled the Herbaria Formationum Coloradensium, a valuable collection of some 530 specimens of Colorado mountain plants carefully annotated and supplemented by 100 photographs. It was issued in 1903 in 24 sets that were sold to scientific institutions. A few years later, they assembled another collection featuring some 615 specimens of cryptogams; this set was later (1972) issued in print form by the New York Botanical Garden.

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