Natural wonders

Decades before two University of Cincinnati alumnae became the groundbreaking women STEM researchers known around the globe for their passion for nature and conservation, they spent happy childhood days scrambling into a horse-drawn streetcar that took them from their home in Walnut Hills to the forested wilds of Rose Hill in Avondale.

There, before the turn of the 20th century, young Annette Frances and Emma Lucy Braun followed their naturalist parents on expeditions to collect leaves and flowers and examine trees. As they marveled at the beauty around them, their parents made sure they also learned the Latin names of every plant they collected. And as they explored, they developed a lifelong appreciation for the connection between trees and plants, between soil and species, and between humans and the natural world.

Those were lessons that the Woodward High School graduates took with them to the University of Cincinnati, where Annette, at age 26, became the first woman to earn a doctoral degree. The year was 1911, five years after the founding of UC’s graduate school and nine years before women in America gained the right to vote.

When Annette had first enrolled in 1902, the number of American women with doctorates in science was estimated in the dozens — and nearly all of those had graduated from all-female universities.

Lucy, younger than Annette by five years, received her UC master’s degree in geology in 1912 and her doctorate in botany in 1914. She was the second woman in science to earn the college’s highest degree and just the third woman to do so overall.

Both Brauns were standout students. They received the College of Liberal Arts’ most prestigious academic scholarships. They were also founding and guiding members of the university’s oldest academic club, the botany-focused Blue Hydra Society.

The society’s mission echoed both the lessons of the Brauns’ youth and the teachings of their faculty mentor, botany professor Harris Benedict: Only through close and reverent examination of nature can humans understand and protect its beauties and wonders.

The sisters’ research paths were complementary: Annette studied insects; Lucy pored over plants. Annette found satisfaction in collecting and identifying the tiniest of moths whose mission to pollinate the plants kept ecosystems thriving; Lucy, who coined the term plant ecology to describe her work, took special interest in the forests of Ohio and Kentucky. She developed revolutionary new theories about how mixed forests in the Midwest came to be and why they were important to protect.

After Annette left UC, she continued her research, amassing more than 30,000 microlepidoptera — or “smaller moths” — from around the world. For years, the Brauns shared a home with the country’s second largest collection of moths. Annette regularly assisted experts at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and researchers throughout Europe, Canada and Africa.

Lucy stayed at UC and helped Professor Benedict build the botany department. Thirteen years after her first appointment at UC, Lucy received tenure, a rare accomplishment for any woman in science, in 1927. When Benedict died in an accident in 1929, Lucy led the department for a year, but her heart remained in the field, in places like Ohio’s Adams County, where she regularly took students on weeklong research trips.

She longed to spend more time untangling the mysteries of forest species that glaciers had left behind and geology had helped preserve. With Annette’s support, Lucy compiled what would become her masterwork, “Deciduous Forests of Eastern North America,” in 1950. More than 60 years later, the book remains the authoritative source on the subject.