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2 leaves, 191 pp; text figures (they are not numbered). Original cloth. The front flyleaf has been torn out. Two black stains on rear cover. Pencil notes of Wellesley college student Harriet Smith on pp. 37, 40, 53, 68, 80, 112, 113, 137, with her signature on the title page dated March 13, 1901. Very Good. First Edition. Both Wellesley College and Yale University have professorships in chemistry named in honor of Charlotte Fitch Roberts. There is also a student prize at Wellesley named in honor of Roberts: Charlotte Fitch Roberts 1880 Award for Leadership in Chemistry. Roberts graduated from Wellesley College in 1880, joined the faculty in 1881 and was a member of the faculty for 36 years until her death in 1917 at age 58. "In 1892 Charlotte Fitch Roberts, a young woman of 33 and an associate professor of chemistry at Wellesley College, was given leave from her teaching duties for graduate work at Yale University. She received her Ph.D. in 1894--the first in chemistry given to a woman by Yale. Her dissertation was a notable analytical and expository work in which she surveyed the relatively new field of 'Chemistry in Space' or 'Stereochemistry.' Published in 1896 as a 189-page monograph, The Development and Present Aspects of Stereochemistry [offered here], it formed a substantial addition to the English language literature on a subject where most of the primary publications were in German or French, and it served as an advanced textbook for a number of years" (Mary R. S. Creese & Thomas M. Creese, "Charlotte Roberts and Her Textbook on Stereochemistry", Bulletin of the History of Chemistry, Vol. 15/16, 1994, pp. 31 36. There is a .pdf online for free). In 1894, seven women were the first to receive the Ph.D. degree from Yale. Charlotte Roberts was one of the seven. Her Yale chemistry professor Frank Gooch described Roberts's book as "the clearest exposition of which we have knowledge of the principles and conditions of stereochemistry, and there is nothing in English which covers similar ground so broadly and so lucidly." "It is remarkable in this regard that well over a century ago already--indeed, not long after the emergence of the very first modern stereochemical concepts--detailed reviews of stereochemistry appeared. Particularly noteworthy in this regard is the 1896 volume authored by Charlotte Fitch Roberts, PhD (1859 1917). Roberts was a rare female PhD chemist in the late 19th century, and her treatment of stereochemistry in the book--which was based on her PhD thesis--is impressively detailed, thorough, and insightful for its time" (Joseph Gal, "Louis Pasteur, Chemical Linguist: Founding the Language of Stereochemistry", Helvetica Chimica Acta, Vol. 102, no. 8, August 2019). Nancy H. Kolodny, Jeanne A. Darlington, Helen C. Mann & Eleanor R. Webster, "125 Years in the Chemistry Department at Wellesley College: 1875-2000" (there is a .pdf online for free). Seller Inventory # 17319
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