Edna Mosher

Edna Mosher was born in July 1878 at Kempt Shore, Hants County, Nova Scotia to John Fulton and Margaret Harvie Mosher. She learned natural history from her father and grandfather, and her mother and grandmother taught her horticulture. From an early age, she expressed a desire to teach. She graduated from Provincial Normal School. Her initial attempts to attend a university were hindered by the fact she was a woman. In 1905, she began a class in gardening at Cornell University. She was then able to obtain permission to pursue a degree in science. At Cornell, she studied botany and zoology; it is where she first took entomology.^[3]

After graduating with a Bachelor's of Science in 1908,^[3][4] she obtained a fellowship in entomology at the University of Illinois.^[4] She earned her Master of Science in 1913. She was denied a fellowship for a Doctor of Philosophy because she was a woman.^[3] The Illinois Natural History Survey offered her work, which she excepted. In 1914, she was granted a fellowship that would allow her to turn her work with the Illinois Natural History Survey into a doctoral dissertation.^[3] In 1915, she was awarded a doctorate,^[4] and her thesis A Classification of the Lepidoptera based on characters of the pupae was published as a major bulletin of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History. Her doctoral advisor was Alexander D. MacGillivray [Wikidata]. Mosher's thesis, considered pioneering at the time, remains a definitive work on Lepidoptera.^[3][5][6]