Carrie Derick

Derick, Carrie Matilda

Carrie Matilda Derick, natural scientist (b at Clarenceville, Qué 14 Jan 1862; d at Montréal 10 Nov 1941). A brilliant student at McGill (BA, 1890; MA, 1896), she also studied at Harvard, the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachussets, the Royal College of Science in London and the University of Bonn, Germany. She was appointed demonstrator in botany at McGill in 1891 - first woman on McGill's academic staff; in 1912 she became professor of morphological botany - the first woman in Canada to be made a full professor. Her courses introduced the teaching of genetics at McGill. A social activist, she championed such causes as compulsory school attendance, care for abnormal children, industrial and technical education, women's rights and birth control.