Woman of the Century/Laura A. Linton

LINTON, Miss Laura A., scientist, born on a farm near Alliance, Ohio, 8th April, 1853. She is the daughter of Joseph Wildman Linton and Christiana Craven Beans. On her father's side she is descended from English Quakers, and on her mother's side from one of the old Dutch families of eastern Pennsylvania. Her girlhood, up to the age of fifteen, was passed on farms in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In 1868 her parents settled on a farm in Minnesota, and she entered the Winona Nonnal School and was graduated from that institution in 1872. Later she entered the State University in Minneapolis, from which she was graduated in the class of 1879, with the degree of B. S. After graduation she taught two years in the high school in Lake City, Minn. While engaged in that work, she accepted an offer made by one of her former instructors, Prof. S. F. Peckham, LAURA A. LINTON. to become his assistant in the preparation of the monograph on petroleum for the reports of the Tenth Census of the United States. She was engaged upon that work for two years, when she entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with a view to graduation, but abandoned her purpose, when she accepted, at the beginning of ihe senior year, the professorship of natural and physical sciences in Lombard University, in Galesburg, Ill. She held that position one year, resigning to assume charge of the physical sciences in the central high school of Minneapolis, Minn., where she has remained eight years. When an undergraduate, she completed an analysis of a new variety of Thomsonite, found on the north shore of Lake Superior; that Profs. Peckham and Hall named "Lintonite" as a reward for her successful efforts. Her many accomplishments made her an invaluable assistant on the census monograph. Accurate mechanical and free-hand drawing, with numerous translations from French and German scientific treatises, combined to that end. While in the Institute of Technology, she devoted her time chiefly to chemistry and physics. In the former she tasted the enthusiasm of the investigator with marked success in a research upon the dyeing and weighting of silks. She is a born student and investigator of nature, and within the limits of her opportunities has achieved marked success. She is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the Association for the Advancement of Women. She has been made State chairman of electricity for the World's Fair.