Marion Isabelle Whitney

Whitney was born and raised in Austin, Texas,^[1] the daughter of Francis Luther Whitney and Grace Pellet Whitney. Her father was a paleontology professor. She earned a bachelor's degree in geology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1930, then stayed to complete a master's degree in 1931,^[2] with a thesis titled "Fauna of the Glen Rose Formation".^[3] In 1937, she became the first woman to earn a Ph.D. from the geology department at Texas.^[4][5]

Whitney was a schoolteacher in Texas in the 1930s.^[6] She taught at Kansas State Teachers' College from 1937 to 1942, at Kilgore Junior College from 1942 to 1946,^[7] at Texas Christian University from 1946 to 1951,^[8] at Arkansas Polytechnic College from 1952, at Louisiana Tech University from 1955,^[9][10] and at Central Michigan University from 1961 to her retirement in 1981.^[2] She was head of the geology department at Arkansas Polytechnic College in the 1950s.^[8] She gained full professor status in 1971.

In addition to her academic publications, Whitney wrote a novel for young readers, Juan of Parícutin (1953), based on her travels to see the volcano Parícutin in Michoacán, Mexico.^[8] She wrote a second children's book about an opossum she raised.^[6]

• "Some Zone Marker Fossils of the Glen Rose Formation of Central Texas" (1952)^[11]
• "Some New Pelecypoda from the Glen Rose Formation of Texas" (1952)^[12]
• Juan of Parícutin (1953)^[13]
• "Echinoids of the Glen Rose Limestone of Texas" (1966, with Lewis Burnett Kellum)^[14]

Whitney died in 1998, at the age of 87, in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. There is a collection of her papers in the library at Central Michigan University.^[15]