Cornelia Clapp

American zoologist and educator (1849–1934)

Cornelia Maria Clapp (March 17, 1849 – December 31, 1934) was an American educator and zoologist, specializing in marine biology. She earned the first Ph. D. in biology awarded to a woman in the United States from Syracuse University in 1889, and she would earn a second doctoral degree from the University of Chicago in 1896. She was rated one of the top 150 zoologists in the United States in 1903, and her name was starred in the first five editions of American Men of Science (now American Men and Women of Science).

Clapp matriculated at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College) in 1868 and completed the equivalent of an undergraduate program in 1871.) She would continue to pursue postgraduate studies while she taught at the school, beginning in 1874, when she went with colleague Lydia Shattuck to the Anderson School of Natural History on Penikese Island, an experimental residential summer school that provided women with postbaccalaureate education when it was not a formal option for them. Clapp would later call her time at Penikese "an opening of doors," where she first encountered a community of people deeply engaged with biological research and theory. Clapp received her first Ph. D. from Syracuse University in 1889, which she earned by examination based on her first summer of work on the toadfish at the Marine Biological Laboratory rather than by taking a leave from Mount Holyoke to conduct research at Syracuse. In 1891, she published a paper entitled "Some Points in the Development of the Toadfish (Batrachus tau)" in which she described features of the embryonic development and nesting habits of the oyster toadfish now properly known as Opsanus tau. This is one of the earliest known publications on segmentation of the toadfish egg. In 1896, she received a second Ph. D. from the University of Chicago for her dissertation on The lateral line system of Batrachus tau, which was published in the Journal of Morphology in 1898. While materials from both Syracuse and the MBL claim that her doctorates were respectively the first and second Ph. D. granted to a woman in the biological sciences, this is not the case; they were, however, the only two doctorates in the same subject received by the same woman in the 19th century.

Clapp was the first female investigator at the Marine Biological Laboratory, where she also served as librarian and trustee. Her affiliation with the institution ran from its opening in 1888 to her death in 1934. Clapp was instrumental in establishing the fledgling Marine Biological Laboratory, and she was present at the MBL's inaugural season in 1888. She was adamant about the need for a library in Woods Hole with subscriptions to the top scientific journals, and she served as the first MBL librarian. In that role, she initiated an exchange program whereby the MBL sent out its Biological Bulletin and received other international journals in return, which over time added up to a magnificent collection.

Clapp was a pioneering zoology researcher and leading ichthyology scholar. Her work on the toadfish was instrumental in correcting the idea that its egg was attached by a "sucker" to the yolk stalk, as she discovered that it was instead adhered with a disc of "transparent secretion" that could be separated from the membrane. For example, one of her students and assistants, Louise B. Wallace, wrote an article building upon Clapp's toadfish research that was published in an 1898 issue of the Journal of Morphology. Wallace would go on to earn a Ph. D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1908.

Clapp, Cornelia M. (1891). "Some points in the development of the Toad fish (Batrachus tau)". Journal of Morphology. 5 (3): 494–501. Clapp, Cornelia M. (1898). "The lateral line system of Batrachus tau". Journal of Morphology 15 (2): 223–264.