Ecology Pioneer at Vassar College 91
Ecology Pioneer at Vassar College by Barbara Hughey In 1919, a young botany professor was hired on to teach at Vassar College. Edith Adelaide Roberts was born in 1881 to a New Hampshire farming family. She had earned her doctorate at the University of Chicago under Professor Henry C. Cowles, a friend and associate of Danish landscape architect Jens Jensen. Cowles and Jensen were experts in the design of natural plantings that mimicked the mid-west prairie of the Great Plains. Dr. Roberts, in coming back east to Vassar, was able to transpose and adapt that design sensibility to Dutchess County. Her dedication and encyclopedic knowledge in the art and science of plant ecology reverberates in the fields of ecology and landscape design even today—in the current atmosphere of environmental awareness.
Figure 1. Dr. Edith A. Roberts in her office at Vassar College, n.d. Photograph. Vassar College Special Collections, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY.
