Beryl Nashar

She was born Beryl Scott on 9 July 1923 in Maryville, New South Wales.^[1] She grew up in the Newcastle area, the eldest of four children and attended Cardiff Public School^[2] and Newcastle Girls High School. She completed her Leaving Certificate, coming first in the state in geology.^[2] She received a scholarship to attend the University of Sydney, winning a prize each year^[3] and took her B.Sc. with Honours in 1947.^[2] Her early research looked at the geology of the Stanhope region of the Hunter Valley, near Newcastle. She would later study mineralogy, geochemistry and the formation of minerals in andesitic rocks within the eastern parts of New South Wales.^[2]

Beryl Scott worked as a staff demonstrator during her B.Sc., continuing her study toward an Honours degree. She won the University medal and a research scholarship. She took a Dip.Ed. from the University of Sydney in 1948.^[2] Although appointed to work as a teacher at Hunter Girls High School after graduation, Scott was offered a teaching position at the University of Tasmania, and she took this job whilst working toward her PhD. Her supervisor was Professor Samuel Warren Carey.^[2]

During her time at the University of Tasmania, Scott won a Rotary Fellowship, the first to be given to a woman to attend the University of Cambridge, and in 1949 studied there in the Department of Mineralogy and Petrology.^[2] Scott counted Germaine Joplin as an inspiration to her studies whilst at Cambridge. She met Ali El-Nashar, an Egyptian philosophy student who was also studying his PhD at Cambridge,^[4] and they married in 1952 after she completed her PhD at the University of Tasmania, the first woman to earn a PhD in geology from an Australian university.^[2] Following her marriage in Cairo, Egypt, Scott who was now known as Beryl Nashar, returned to Australia to give birth to their son, Tarek in 1953,^[5] while her husband remained in Spain, Lebanon and later Egypt. Ali El-Nashar was not able to find work in Australia.^[3]

An ambitious Nashar accepted a lecturing position at the Newcastle University College (then part of NSW University of Technology) in 1955,^[2][3] and was steadily promoted to senior lecturer, and associate professor. She became the foundation Professor of Geology in 1965, only the second woman to be promoted to a Professorial position at that time, after Dorothy Hill of the University of Queensland.^[6] When the college became the University of Newcastle in 1969, Nashar became the first female Dean at an Australian university.^[2]