Ruth Anna Marie Schmidt (April 22, 1916 – March 29, 2014) was an American geologist and paleontologist who was a pioneer for women scientists. She spent most of her career in Alaska, where she established a United States Geological Survey (USGS) field office and established the first Department of Geology at the Anchorage Community College, now part of the University of Alaska Anchorage. In 1964, Schmidt directed the initial assessment of the damage done to the city of Anchorage by the Great Alaska Earthquake, the largest earthquake in North American history, and the second largest earthquake ever to be recorded. She worked for the USGS in Washington, DC during the era of McCarthyism and was investigated twice for disloyalty because of her membership in the interracial Washington Cooperative Bookshop. She was cleared both times. She earned a number of awards, honors, and letters of commendation and appreciation. After her death in 2014, she was recognized as a philanthropist.
Early life and education
Schmidt was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1916. She graduated from Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High School, and then attended the Washington Square College of New York University 1932–1936, during the height of the Great Depression. She earned high marks and graduated with an AB (artium baccalaureus) in geology in 1936. Her family encouraged the Schmidt siblings to obtain degrees in higher education, and all of her siblings, including three sisters and one brother, earned college degrees in the 1920s. While in college, she was inducted into Phi Omega Pi, earned the most valuable player award for hockey from the Washington Square College of New York University Alumnae Association, and was celebrated in the school newspaper as "crazy about fossils." After college, she studied comparative anatomy, biology, and inorganic chemistry at the Hunter College of the City of New York, and trained in radiography with New York University Professor H. H. Sheldon. To earn money for graduate school, she worked as an x-ray technician at a private medical doctor's office and at Long Island Hospital. She also worked at the American Museum of Natural History, where she took x-rays of vertebrate and invertebrate specimens. Schmidt competed with 84 other candidates to win a $500 fellowship from New York City Panhellenic to conduct advanced study of the application of radiography to paleontology. She began her graduate studies in pure science at Columbia University in 1938, and finished her coursework in 1942. She was awarded her master's degree—the A.M. (Artium Magister)--in 1939. The title of her thesis was, "Miocene Ostracoda from Yorktown Formation." Beginning work on her dissertation in 1941, she completed her dissertation in 1948 and graduated with her doctorate degree in geology in 1948.
Career Schmidt was a pioneer for women in the sciences throughout her career. When WWII broke out, many male graduate students were drafted into military service. Because of the shortage of teaching and research assistants, Schmidt was recruited by Columbia University Professor A. K. Lobeck to serve as an assistant, the first female graduate student to teach all-male classes at Columbia. She taught science and military map-making. Schmidt was also interested in civil rights for ethnic minorities, and when she lived in Washington, she joined the Washington Cooperative Bookshop because of its mission of racial inclusion. Her membership in this organization, which was branded as communist by U.S. Attorney General Tom C. Clark in 1947, led to two investigations against Schmidt by the Department of Interior. She was cleared both times. Schmidt traveled widely throughout her career as a geologist. Her passports bear the stamps of two dozen countries, including Algeria, Antarctica, Argentina, Aruba, Australia, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Ecuador, the Falkland Islands, Finland, Hong Kong, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). She also traveled across the United States, and lived in several states as part of her work for the USGS. Schmidt traveled extensively throughout Alaska too, and crossed the Arctic Circle numerous times both in Alaska and elsewhere.
United States Geological Survey (USGS)
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