| 1 | Name: | Dr. Ruth Patrick | |
| Institution: | Academy of Natural Sciences | ||
| Year Elected: | 1974 | ||
| Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1907 | ||
| Death Date: | September 23, 2013 | ||
Ruth Patrick was a world-renowned scientist who had studied the waterways of South Carolina for more than fifty years. Born in Topeka, Kansas, she learned to share her father's love for nature and microscopic plant life. From there she moved to South Carolina and in 1929 earned a bachelor's degree from Coker College in Hartsville. In 1934, she earned a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. In the early 1950s, she was assigned by the Atomic Energy Commission to collect baseline data on the water quality and biota of the Savannah River prior to the opening of the Savannah River Plant. Dr. Patrick responded by forming a team of scientists from the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences to study the area. She was the first scientist to diagnose the health of a river or stream by plant life and animal species. Her early studies contributed significantly to the developing field of ecology and established for the first time a set of aquatic indices that could be used to describe the health of water systems and the impact of industrialization. Her work has since been modeled by ecologists worldwide. Dr. Patrick's career had been marked with many awards and accomplishments. She held the Francis Boyer Chair of Limnology at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. She received the Award of Merit from the Botanical Society of America in 1971, the Eminent Ecologist Award from the Ecological Society of America in 1972, and the Gold Medal of the Royal Zoological Society of Belgium in 1978. In 1970, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and in 1974 to the American Philosophical Society. In 1989 Dr. Patrick was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science by the University of South Carolina and in 1996 she was inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Science and Technology. She also served on the Wistar Institute's board of trustees for more than three decades and was a trustee emerita. Ruth Patrick was awarded the American Philosophical Society's Benjamin Franklin Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences in 1993. The citation read "in recognition of her study of diatoms, microscopic species of algae, which helped make her one of the world's most distinguished biologists; and developing extraordinarly useful ways of monitoring water pollution." Ruth Patrick died September 23, 2013, at age 105 in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania. | |||