Alice Middleton Boring

Alice Middleton Boring (博爱理, February 22, 1883 – September 18, 1955) was an American biologist, zoologist, and herpetologist, who taught biology and did research in the United States and China.[1]

Alice Middleton Boring
Born(1883-02-22)February 22, 1883
Philadelphia
DiedSeptember 18, 1955(1955-09-18) (aged 72)
Cambridge, Massachusetts
NationalityAmerican
CitizenshipUnited States
Alma materBryn Mawr
Scientific career
FieldsBiology, zoology, herpetology
ThesisA Study of the Spermatogenesis of Twenty-two Species of the Membracidae, Jassidae, Cercopidae and Fulgoridae
Doctoral advisorNettie M. Stevens

Biography

Alice Middleton Boring was born in 1883 in Philadelphia to a family interested in science. (Her younger brother Edwin Garrigues Boring would go on to lead the laboratory at Harvard University.)[2] Boring studied at Bryn Mawr College where she received her Bachelor of Arts in 1904[3] and her Ph.D. in 1910.[4] At Bryn Mawr, she studied as an undergraduate under Thomas Hunt Morgan, and was supervised by Nettie M. Stevens for her doctoral degree.[3] She began her career as a cytologist and geneticist. From 1910 to 1918, she taught zoology at the University of Maine.

In 1918, Boring left to go to China, where she taught biology at Peking Union Medical College.[3]

From 1923 to 1950, she worked at Yenching University. During World War II, after the Attack on Pearl Harbor, she spent time in an internment camp in China,[5] but later was able to return to America. After the war, she went back to China for a few years, but spent her last years working at Smith College. She is noted for expanding knowledge of Chinese amphibians and reptiles in the West.[6]

Bibliography
  • Handbook of North China Amphibians and Reptiles (1932) with Ch'eng-chao Liu and Shu-ch’un Chou
  • Survey of Chinese Amphibia (1940) with Clifford Hillhouse Pope
  • Chinese Amphibians: Living and Fossil Forms (1945)

References
  1. Zheng, Shu (September 2015). "Alice M. Boring: a pioneer in the study of Chinese amphibians and reptiles". Protein Cell. 6 (9): 625–627. doi:10.1007/s13238-015-0165-1. PMC 4537471. PMID 25994412.
  2. Edwin Garrigues Boring, springerreference.com, retrieved 1 April 2014
  3. Ogilvie, Marilyn Bailey; Choquette, Clifford J. (1999). A Dame Full of Vim and Vigor: A Biography of Alice Middleton Boring; Biologist in China. Harwood. p. 15. ISBN 978-90-5702-575-4.
  4. Alice Middleton Boring: "A Study of the Spermatogenesis of Twenty-two Species of the Membracidae, Jassidae, Cercopidae and Fulgoridae." Noted in "Doctorates Conferred by American Institutions", (1910), Science, v. 32, no. 816, p. 238. JSTOR 1635547
  5. Ogilvie et al, p. 147-160
  6. Handbook of North China Amphibians and Reptiles (1932) Boring, Ch'eng-chao Liu and Shu-ch’un Chou

Further reading
  • Kraig Adler (1989). Contributions to the History of Herpetology, Society for the study of amphibians and reptiles : 202 p.
  • Ogilvie, Marilyn Bailey; Choquette, Clifford J. (1999). A Dame Full of Vim and Vigor: A Biography of Alice Middleton Boring; Biologist in China. Harwood. ISBN 978-90-5702-575-4.
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