Marie Stopes

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Marie Stopes in her laboratory, 1904

Marie Carmichael Stopes (born October 15, 1880 in Edinburgh , † October 2, 1958 in Dorking , Surrey ) was a Scottish botanist , paleobotanist , author , women's rights activist ( "Suffragette" ) and pioneer in the field of family planning . Your botanical author abbreviation is " Stopes ".

education

Marie Stopes was born as the daughter of the archaeologically interested architect Henry Stopes (1852-1902). Her father came from a wealthy brewery family. Her mother, Charlotte Carmichael Stopes (1840–1929), a recognized Shakespeare expert, was the first woman to graduate from a Scottish university. She was seen as a committed campaigner for higher education for women.

Mary Stopes grew up in London and was homeschooled by her mother until she was 12. She then attended St. George School in Edinburgh and then graduated from the Collegiate School for Girls in North London. Already at University College in London, where she was one of the first women to study botany and geology (with a bachelor's degree in both subjects in 1902 after only two years of study), she was interested in the newly discovered plants from the Paleozoic . The result of the scientific engagement with this topic contributed significantly to the award of a gold medal in the context of her examination in botany.

Scientific career

Blue plaque memorial plaque for Marie Stopes of the University of Manchester

Marie Stopes left London after completing a university degree in botany, geology and geography. She went to the Botanical Institute in Munich, did her doctorate in natural sciences in 1904 and was the first woman to acquire a doctorate in botany. Her doctoral thesis focused on comparing the seed structure of cycads and seed ferns . The results of this work played a decisive role in the establishment of Pteridospermae , a new plant group of extinct ferns. In 1904 she worked at the University of Manchester as the first female member of the science faculty. There she researched fossil materials with a special formation and then went to Japan from 1907 to 1908 to deepen her research there. Working with Fujii, she managed to describe several new species from the late Mesozoic . Her research results were published by the Royal Society . In 1908 Stopes returned to the UK and resumed her position in Manchester. In 1910 Stopes published the volume Ancient Plants , in which she succeeded in making the subject of paleobotany accessible to a readership with no botanical training. That same year, Stopes was hired by the Geological Survey of Canada to re-evaluate the taxonomy and age of the Pennsylvania Lancaster Formation ('Fern Ledges') of St. John, Brunswick, which is home to world-famous fossil flora. She devoted herself to this research project for a period of 18 months. In 1913 she began teaching palaeobotany at University College London, which she retained for the next seven years. A two-volume catalog for the British Museum, Cretaceous Flora , was published by her between 1913 and 1915; her Studies in the composition of coal appeared in 1918.

It was from her that coal was divided into Vitrain (gloss coal), Clarain (semi-gloss coal), Durain (matt coal) and Fusain, which became the standard.

In 1909, Stopes was accepted into the Linnean Society of London .

Working for sex education

Cover of the book Married Love

Marie Stopes dealt with sex education and contraception throughout her life. She rejected coitus interruptus, which was often practiced at the time, as a method of contraception, as it left women aroused and unsatisfied. Stopes criticized the lack of research activities on the sexuality of women with sometimes clear words:

“ Woman is by no means capricious by nature. One could have learned more about the laws of one's being if one had only researched them. But it suited the men better, portraying women as unreasonable and dismissing their moods with a mocking shrug. And when, finally, will the sons and daughters of man investigate the tides of sexuality in women and recognize the laws according to which the woman's longing for love periodically increases and decreases? "

With the aim of educating people about sexuality, sexual needs and questions about contraception, Stopes published the magazine Birth Control News . Her activities earned her sharp protests from both the Church of England and the Catholic Church . She lost a lawsuit against a Dr. Halliday Sutherland, who called her contribution to contraceptive methods a derogatory crime and was therefore charged with defamation. With her books Married Love and Wise Parenthood , Stopes wanted to contribute to the mutual understanding of the sexes and convey knowledge about the physiological differences. These works, a taboo break at the time, were controversial and translated into 13 languages ​​with millions of editions. Your German translator was Franziska Feilbogen . In 1921 she founded one of the first birth control clinics with her husband.

Stopes was also a well-known proponent of eugenics . She advocated the sterilization of hereditary diseases .

Marie Stopes International , founded in 1976 and operating in 43 countries around the world in 2008, is named after her .

Private

She married twice and was a second marriage to Humphrey V. Roe from a family of aircraft industrialists. But she kept her maiden name for her scientific career. Marie Stopes had a son named Harry.

Works

  • Married love. Fifield and Company, London 1918; Reprinted by Ross McKibbin, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0192804324 , translated into German by Franza Feilbogen under the title The love life in marriage: A contribution to the solution of the sexual question. 5th edition rev. u. exp. by Annemarie Volz-Hirzel, Orell Fuessli, Zurich 1952.
  • Wise Parenthood . Rendell & Co., London 1918, ISBN 0659905523 .
  • Botany. The Modern Study of Plants . The People's Books, London 1910.
  • Cretaceous flora.
  • The Study of Plant Life for Young People.
  • Ancient Plants . 1910
  • A Journal from Japan
  • A letter to Working Mothers. 1919
  • Radiant Motherhood . 1920
  • Contraception: Its Theory, History, and Practice . 1923

literature

  • Renate Strohmeyer: Lexicon of the natural scientists and women of Europe. From antiquity to the 20th century . Verlag Harri Deutsch ISBN 3817115679 p. 264 f.
  • Aylmer Maude: The Authorized Life of Marie C. Stopes . London: Williams & Norgate, 1924.
  • Keith Briant: Passionate Paradox: The Life of Marie Stopes . New York: WW Norton & Co., 1962.
  • Ruth Hall: Marie Stopes: a biography . London: Virago, Ltd., 1978, ISBN 0-86068-092-4 .
  • June Rose: Marie Stopes and the Sexual Revolution . London: Faber and Faber, 1992, ISBN 0-571-16970-8 .
  • Stephanie Green: The public lives of Charlotte and Marie Stopes . Pickering & Chatto, London 2013 ISBN 978-1-84893-238-8
  • Paul Peppis: Rewriting Sex. Mina Loy , Marie Stopes, and Sexology. Zs. Modernism-Modernity, 9.4, 2002, pp. 561-579.

Web links

Commons : Marie Stopes  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

supporting documents

  1. ↑ International Plant Names Index .
  2. ↑ WG Chaloner: The palaeobotanical work of Marie Stopes In: Geological Society, London, Special Publications. 241, 2005, p. 127, doi : 10.1144 / GSL.SP.2003.207.01.10 .
  3. ^ HJ Falcon-Lang, RF Miller: Marie Stopes and the Fern Ledges of Saint John, New Brunswick in Journal of the Geological Society, 2007, 164: 945-957, doi : 10.1144 / SP281.13 .
  4. ↑ a b She remains excited and unsatisfied in DieStandard.at of October 28, 2008, accessed on May 3, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Stopes, Marie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stopes, Marie Carmichael (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British botanist and suffragette
DATE OF BIRTH October 15, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Edinburgh
DATE OF DEATH October 2, 1958
Place of death Dorking (Surrey)