Can you imagine having to sit with the door ajar in a small room next to the regular lecture hall – just because you were a young woman?  Because she wanted to study under a particular professor, Ellen Churchill Semple went to the University of Leipzig in Germany.  But when she got there, she could only listen from outside the room.

  As a serious scholar of geography, she loved to travel and she visited Europe, Asia, and Africa, writing and photographing as she went.  She was eventually elected president of the Association of American Geographers.

  In 1914, she received the Cullum Medal in recognition for her contributions to science, and in 1931, she received the Geographic Society of Chicago Medal for distinguished leadership.  Though perhaps not well-known, she remains a dean of American geographers.