During the summer, as the first female researcher at Woods Hole Marine Laboratory Corporation, a scholarly consortium operated in Massachusetts by the U.S. Fish Commission, Hyde analyzed octopus embryos, jellyfish development, and the respiration of grasshoppers, horseshoe crabs, skates, amphibians, and mammals. In 1892, as an official Woods Hole investigator, she lectured on the anatomy and embryology of
Scyphomedusae, the class of sea animals comprised of jellyfish and other gelatinous organisms.
Hyde's work in zoology impressed a colleague, Professor Goette. Her findings regarding the neurophysiology of vertebrates and invertebrates ended a longstanding scholarly dispute between Goette and a colleague named Klaus who taught in Vienna. Goette extended to Hyde an invitation to conduct further research at the University of Strassburg, France. She paid her tuition with a fellowship she received from the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, later known as the American Association of University Women.
A Challenge to Academic Gender Bias
Hyde's laboratory work was so advanced and thorough that Professor Goette offered her reports to the academic committee in lieu of a doctoral dissertation. Because the university was governed by a heavy-handed Prussian sexism, the academic staff rejected her petition to take final exams and, solely on the basis of gender, refused to grant her a doctorate in physiology.
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