Gender and Library of Mineralogy

Few would expect women to feature often in the literature on minerology from the 15th through the 19th centuries, the recorded history of science being what it is. Among the approximately 1500 scholars in a massive catalogue of authors of mineralogy texts from 1439 to 1919 complied by the independent scholar, Curtis P. Schuh, we count six women as primary entries and three others discussed secondarily. From the documents that Schuh left behind before his death, our database for this investigation, women wrote approximately 0.5% of the texts described. Only very unusual circumstances supported the life of a woman devoted to crystals in centuries past.