Adele Gerard Lewis Grant

Adele Gerard Lewis Grant (June 3, 1881 – June 19, 1969) was an American botanist, academic, and plant collector. She founded the Prytanean Women's Honor Society, the first U.S. collegiate honor society for women, and Sigma Delta Epsilon, a scientific fraternity for women graduate students which survives as the national organization Graduate Women in Science.

Early life Adele Gerard Lewis was born in Carpinteria, California in 1881. Her parents were Rebecca and Henry Lewis, a wealthy farmer and rancher in Capinteria. She had three siblings and several half-siblings from her father's previous marriages.

She attended the University of California at Berkeley, graduating with B.S. degrees in chemistry and zoology in May 1903. While at Berkeley, she founded and was the first president of the Prytanean Women's Honor Society, with faculty advisor Mary Bennett Ritter, in the fall of 1900. This was the first women's collegiate honor society in the United States.

She continued with her studies, enrolling in the Henry Shaw School of Botany at Washington University in St. Louis, earning an M.Sc. in botany.

While working on her Ph.D. in botany from Washington University in St. Louis, she returned to California. She went on plant collecting trips to Central America, Mexico, and California. She worked briefly for the California Fish and Commission, detailing the economic value of birds.

From 1916 to 1917, she was a graduate student at Stanford University. While at Standford, she was admitted to Sigma Xi science and engineering honor society, as a graduate student in botany. She also took graduate classes at the University of California and the University of Chicago.

In the summers of 1917 and 1920, she taught at the Sierra Summer School, jointly sponsored by the state of California and U.S. Forestry Department.

Career After receiving her Ph.D., Grant joined the faculty of Cornell University, starting around 1920. At Cornell in May 1921, she started and served as the first president of Sigma Delta Epsilon, a scientific women's fraternity for graduate students which survives as the national organization Graduate Women in Science. While in South Africa, she collected plants, mostly from the Scrophulariaceae family. She then took her collection to the University of California, Los Angeles where she continued her research. She was the supervisor of science for the Los Angeles County Schools from 1942 to 1952.

Personal life On August 17, 1905, Lewis married George Francis Grant of Tuolumne County, California in Carpinteria. The couple later divorced and had no children.

In March 1917, she made presentations and distributed petitions against the proposed California legislation that would allow hunters to kill beneficial birds that ate insects.

She died after a long illness in a convalescent hospital in Inglewood, California on June 19, 1969.