Igerna Sollas

Igerna Brünhilda Johnson Sollas (1877–1965), also known as Hilda Sollas, was a British zoologist, palaeontologist and geologist, and lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge. She was one of the first women to be taught geology at the University of Cambridge. She had wide interests, studying marine organisms, genetics, and palaeontology, and collaborated with Cambridge geneticist William Bateson. An alumna of Alexandra College, Dublin, she was recognized as a role model for women in higher education in Ireland and England.

Early life and education Igerna Sollas was born on 16 March 1877 in Dawlish, Devon, the daughter of geologist William Johnson Sollas and his first wife Helen. She received an early education at Alexandra School and College in Dublin, and then attended Newnham College, Cambridge on a Gilchrist scholarship in 1897, where she took first class honours in both part I and part II of the Natural Sciences Tripos exam, completing a zoology degree in 1901. She held the position of lecturer in zoology at Newnham from 1903 to 1913, save for the period 1904 to 1906 when she was a Newnham college research fellow. At Cambridge she was part of an active research group led by William Bateson, and she studied the genetics of colouration in guinea pigs and moth wings.

Later life Later in life she became a practitioner of Christian Science and contributed articles to Christian Science journals. In moving to Christian Science she gave up her work on animal genetics and biology. She passed her research on to biologist and writer, Naomi Mitchison and her brother, biologist J. B. S Haldane. and by the echinoderm Euthemon igerna.