Madeleine Fritz

Madeleine Alberta Fritz (3 November 1896 – 20 August 1990) was a Canadian palaeontologist. She was a professor at the University of Toronto, where she taught vertebrate studies in the department of Geology. Fritz's writing on the fossil Bryozoa and her research on the stratigraphy of Toronto and the surrounding areas were major contributions to the geological field.[1][2]

Madeleine A. Fritz
Born(1896-11-03)3 November 1896
Saint John, New Brunswick
Died20 August 1990(1990-08-20) (aged 94)
Toronto, Ontario
Education
Scientific career
FieldsPalaeontology

As one of the pioneering researchers on the Palaeozoic fossil Bryozoa, a type of sea creatures that bond together to build joint skeletons composed of tiny chambers, Fritz later became known as "the great-grandmother of Palaeozoic Bryozoa".[3]

Fritz worked at The Royal Ontario Museum as an associate director from 1936 to 1955, and then she later became the Invertebrate Palaeontology Curator at the ROM from 1955 to 1957. In 1956, she became a palaeontology professor at University of Toronto under the Department of Geology until her official retirement in 1967. Fritz was a member of the Geological Association of Canada and the Geological Society of America. She also belonged to the Canadian Confederation of University Women and the International Federation of University Women.

Early life

Madeleine Fritz was born in Saint John, New Brunswick. The area in which she grew up sparked an early interest in her fascination to the formation of mountains.[4] Her father was a sea captain, so she spent many of her early years in and around the ocean. As a young girl she often played on the beach with marine life, which also fostered her initial interest in fossil invertebrates.[1]

Fritz studied Arts and English at McGill University in Montreal.[3] After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1919, she went on to teach at Elmwood Private Girls School in Ottawa, Canada. While living in Ottawa, she meet Alice Wilson, an assistant palaeontologist at the Geological Survey of Canada, which was based out of Ottawa. Wilson was the first woman in Canada to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (in 1942, Fritz would become the second).[3] When they met, Wilson was preparing to embark on a geological expedition to Lake Winnipeg. Since gender rules were still quite strict at the time, Wilson would not have been permitted to travel with any male colleagues. Therefore, she invited Fritz to join her on the expedition as her assistant while school was out for the summer. Fritz signed up as a "cook and canoeman," and accompanied Wilson for the six week expedition in Manitoba.[3]

After returning from her expedition with Wilson, Fritz remained a teacher at Elmwood for one more year before deciding to enroll in the geology program offered at the University of Toronto.[3]

Academic career

While attending the University of Toronto in 1920, Fritz was the only female graduate student in the geology department.[4] Despite this, Fritz mentioned that she felt accepted by those in her class and that no one ever tried to deter her from pursuing her degree in geology.[4] She completed her M.A. in 1923 and her Ph.D. in 1926, making her the first woman in Canada to have ever received a Ph.D. within the geology/palaeontology field.[4]

In 1927, Fritz was hired as an assistant at the Royal Ontario Museum of Palaeontology, which was affiliated with the University of Toronto. This position made her the only female geologist in Canada to hold an academic position in the field of geology during the interwar years.[4]

In 1935, Fritz was hired as an assistant professor in the geology department at the University of Toronto. In 1955, Fritz became the curator of the Department of Invertebrate Palaeontology of the Royal Ontario Museum of Palaeontology, the first woman to hold this position.[4] In 1956, Fritz became a full professor at the University of Toronto. It is important to note the length of time that it took for her to be promoted from assistant professor to full professor; this demonstrates lateral segregation.[5][6] Fritz officially ended her career with retirement in 1967, but she continued to research human evolution and origin of the Earth for the majority of her life.[7]

Fritz's career was a reflection of a successful female academic breakthrough in a field mainly dominated by males since it was associated with rugged work like mining and exploration.[4] She broke barriers regarding the role of women in society as having one, mainly maternal career and pursued her graduate degree instead of marrying.[4] Fritz, continued these accomplishments through participating in field work and publishing numerous research paper's while actively maintaining her administration and teaching roles.[4]

Commemoration

Madeleine Fritz's contribution to palaeontology is remembered during the "Madeleine Fritz Annual Lecture in Palaeontology" event where namely women guest speakers discuss advancements in the geological field. It is also a space for discussion about new research and findings in the field. This event is held at the royal Ontario Museum.[8]

Honours

Fritz received several honours, in 1942 she entered the Royal Society of Canada as the second woman to receive such honour within Canada. In 1967, Fritz received the Canadian Centennial Medal. In 1975, Fritz was one of 19 Canadian female scientists honoured in a display at National Museum of Natural Science.

Publications

Throughout her lifetime, Madeleine Fritz composed over sixty different research papers between 1923 and 1927.[3][4]Her main research was on the topic of Canadian faunas and fossils, specifically she made significant contributions to research of Palaeozoic Bryozoa.[3]

In 1937, Fritz authored a journal entry in the field of Palaeontology named "Multisolenia, A New Genus of Palaeozoic Corals" while in the University of Toronto. She described a new genus Multisolenia, a coral found in the Silurian of the Lake Timiskaming-district in northern Ontario. The genotype described was Multisolenia tortuosa Fritz.[9] Two years later she provided further evidence for the distinction of the new found genus.[10]

Madeleine Fritz wrote a paper on the redescription of Trepostomatous bryozoan types that came from the Upper Ordovician rocks of Toronto and its surrounding areas. In addition, she redescribed type specimens from the Bryozoan Heterotrypa from Upper Ordovician rocks that came from the Credit River Valley area in Ontario.[11] She studied the species Atactoporella, Homotrypa, and Homotrypella. These bryozoan types are situated at the Royal Ontario Museum in the Department of Invertebrate Paleontology.[12] She also redescribed a variation of the genus S. catenulata diversa as Mesotrypa catenulata diversa.[13] Additionally, she redescribed bryozoan-type samples which gathered from the marine rocks surrounding Workman’s Creek.[14]

It was during the time that Fritz studied under renowned palaeontologist William Arthur Parks that she took on a leadership role in the North American study of Ordovician Bryozoa.[15] She was very grateful to have been able to be mentored by Parks, and she demonstrated her gratitude by writing a biography of him that was published in 1971.[1][16]

Bibliography

Among the published writings of Madeleine Fritz are:

  • Fritz, Madeleine A. (1937). "Multisolenia, a New Genus of Paleozoic Corals". Journal of Paleontology. 11 (3): 231–234. JSTOR 1298501.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • —— (1939). "Two Unique Silurian Corals". Journal of Paleontology. 13 (5): 512–513. JSTOR 1298518.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • —— (1971). William Arthur Parks, Ph. D., LL. D., F.R.S., 1868-1936. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum. OCLC 202762.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)[17]
  • —— (1982). "Redescription of type specimens of species of the bryozoan genera Dekayia, Homotrypa, and Stigmatella from Upper Ordovician rocks along Workman's Creek, Ontario". Life Science Contributions. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) (132). OCLC 1052536628.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)[18]
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References
  1. Monteith, John (1993). "Memorial to Madeleine Alberta Fritz 1896-1990" (PDF). Geological Society of America Memorials. 23: 95–98.
  2. Burke, Joan. "Madeleine Alberta Fritz". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved 15 April 2016.
  3. Burke, Joan (2003). "The life and times of Madeleine Fritz". Rotunda. 36 (1): 36–43. ProQuest 199583758.
  4. Ainley, Marianne Gosztonyi (2012). Creating Complicated Lives: Women and Science at English-Canadian Universities, 1880-1980. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. ISBN 9780773540675.
  5. Ainley, Marianne (March 1995). "Women's Work in Geology: A Historical Perspective on Gender Division in Canadian Science": 140–142. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  6. Ainley, Marianne Gosztonyi (2012). Creating Complicated Lives: Women and Science at English-Canadian Universities, 1880-1980. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. ISBN 9780773540675.
  7. "Famous Canadian Women's Famous Firsts - Academics and Librarians". famouscanadianwomen.com. Archived from the original on 2019-03-27. Retrieved 2017-11-28.
  8. "Dinosaurs Under the Microscope: The Madeleine A. Fritz Annual Lecture Featuring: Mary Higby Schweitzer on January 30,2018". Toronto.com. Retrieved 2019-02-05.
  9. Fritz 1937.
  10. Fritz 1939.
  11. A., Fritz, Madeleine; Museum., Royal Ontario (1975). "Redescription of type specimens of the Bryozoan Heterotrypa from Upper Ordovician Rocks of the Credit River Valley, Ontario, Canada /". Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  12. A., Fritz, Madeleine; Museum., Royal Ontario (1977). "Redescription of type specimens of species of the Bryozoan genera Atactoporella, Homoptrypa, and Homotrypella from the Upper Ordovician Rocks of the Credit River Valley, Ontario, Canada /". Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  13. A., Fritz, Madeleine; Museum., Royal Ontario (1973). "Redescription of type specimens of bryozoan Stigmatella from the Upper Ordovician of the Toronto region, Ontario /". Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  14. Fritz 1982.
  15. Burke, Joan. "Madeleine Alberta Fritz". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2017-10-10.
  16. Fritz 1971.
  17. Fritz 1917: see also OCLC 806208215 (all editions) and copy in Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL).
  18. Fritz 1982: see also OCLC 8393146 (all editions) and copy in BHL.


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