Edith Schwartz Clements

Edith Gertrude Clements (1874–1971), also known as Edith S. Clements and Edith Schwartz Clements, was an American botanist and pioneer of botanical ecology who was the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D. by the University of Nebraska. She wrote her dissertation on "The Relation of Leaf Structure to Physical Factors" in 1904.

Schwartz began her career as a teaching fellow in German at NU (1898–1900). During this period, she met her future husband, Frederic Clements, an NU botany professor who influenced the direction of her graduate studies. At the time, the Universities of Nebraska and Minnesota (where she would later teach) were centers for the study of phytogeography—the geographic distribution of plant species—and she chose to make this her area of specialization.

In 1909, Clements was hired as an instructor in botany by the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, where Frederic had been hired two years before to head up the botany department.