Given the fact that George Edmonston Jr., the editor of E-clips and the Oregon Stater, will soon be retiring, he will close out his involvement with E-clips by sharing a list of the 20 historical events he considers to be the most important in school history. He'll cover one event each week.
#11 Helen Gilkey's legacy
Helen Margaret Gilkey (1886-1972) sits high anyone's short list of Oregon State's most distinguished and historic faculty.
She was twice an OSU graduate, having completed bachelor's and master's degrees at Oregon Agricultural College before enrolling at the University of California at Berkeley to study with world-renowned William Albert Setchell. She become the first woman in Cal history to earn a Ph.D. in botany. Born in the state of Washington but moving to Corvallis with her parents in 1903, she returned to OAC for life in 1918, doctorate in hand, and established a career as one of North America's most distinguished botanists. For both her generation and those to follow, she remains one of OSU's most inspiring role models, a pioneering example that the ability to perform extraordinary science knows no gender.
Joining the OAC faculty as an assistant professor and the first curator of the college's herbarium, Gilkey, according to an OSU web site, "epitomized the Pacific Northwestern botanist of the first half of the Twentieth Century. Her work with the Tuberales and other hypogeous (underground) fungi is considered classic mycological research in North America. She played an essential role in establishing Oregon State as the center for taxonomic and systematic research of hypogeous fungi and her collection is still actively used."
Promoted to full professor, she remained with the herbarium for 33 years, developing the collection from 25,000 to more than 75,000 vascular plant specimens. An accomplished botanical watercolor artist, she used her artwork to illustrate her many important publications, including Weeds of the Pacific Northwest and Livestock-Poisoning Weeds of Oregon, both of which remain historically valuable to farmers and ranchers in the region. In 1929, she began the work that would eventually lead to the publishing of her well-known Handbook of Northwestern Plants. Her Tuberales of North America was the first of the Oregon State Monographs - Studies in Botany series. Other monographs included Aquatic Plants of the Pacific Northwest and Winter Twigs. Gilkey drew the frontispiece illustration of Viola hallii for Peck's Manual of the Higher Plants of Oregon and also produced many of the illustrations found in Jepson's Manual for the Flowering Plants of California.
She was honored throughout her career and was particularly proud of being the recipient of a Citation for Outstanding Achievement from the Oregon Academy of Sciences, as well as the OSU Distinguished Service Award. She supported many liberal causes, including the NAACP, the international peace movement, and anything that would elevate interest in environmental protection. In 2004 she was posthumously inducted into the Berkeley Women's Hall of Fame.
Gilkey touched the lives of thousands of women during her 54 years at OSU, but none more so than Laura Garnjobst of the Class of 1922. Studying in England and Germany after leaving Corvallis, Garnjobst received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in the 1930s, a rare feat for any gender during that era, and became one of the nation's top scientists in zoology and physiology.
