Thekla Response — Wikipedia

Thekla resvited , of its full name Thekla Susanne Ragnhild Resvoll , is a Norwegian botanist born on May 22, 1871 à Vågå a Morte Le June 14, 1948 (at 77) in Oslo. Considered as a pioneer in the research and teaching of natural history ^{[ first ]} , she was the first woman to obtain a doctorate of botany in Norway and the third to enter the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters.

She studied higher at the University of Oslo, supplemented by a number of research trips to Europe or more distant and, once her thesis has been sustained, was recruited by her former teachers. His career remained discreet but marked by a very popular pedagogy of his students and a behavior having earned him the sympathy and the esteem of his colleagues, all the more willingly granted than his research, quite marginal at the time, did not risk In any way to compete with their own work.

Attracted by the feminist movement, Thekla Resvoll has often expressed its originality as a woman as well by her clothing and her positions, all in moderation and without aggressiveness, but with a sustained consistency, in accordance with her character to both placid and obstinate. This commitment sometimes earned her severe judgments on the part of his contemporaries who were able to consider him as “immoral” with regard to the canons in force, but on all occasions, she received the publicly assertive support of her husband, renowned hydrographer .

Among his publications, in addition to many scientific works, there are several popularization books, including a textbook.

Thekla Susanne Ragnhild Resvoll Nait Le May 22, 1871 in Vågå in Norway. She is the eldest of the two children of Hans Resvoll ( 1823 – 1908 ), bank employee then a copyist at the Ministry of Justice, and Julie Martine Deichman ( 1831 – 1902 ) ^{[ 2 ] , [ 3 ]} .

Childhood and training [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

She moved with her parents to Kristiania in 1878, but kept the memory of the floral garden that her mother cultivated in Vågå and her passion for flowers ^{[ 3 ] , [ 4 ]} . After obtaining his baccalaureate as a free candidate in 1892 ^{[ 3 ]} , she is employed as a governess at Vilhelm Andreas Wexelsen in Overhalla then in Stockholm (1892-1893) ^{[ 5 ]} .

She then entered the University of Oslo where she is influenced by Axel Gudbrand Blytt, Jovial Professor, detonating at the time, specialist in Norwegian flora, carrying theories on migration and adaptation of plants to the middle and climate ^{[ 6 ]} . She graduated in 1899 ( Candidate real ) ^{[ N 1 ]} . During her years spent in the capital, she teaches botany in a private school, Ragna Nissen’s school , where she has as a student Sigrid undset, Nobel Prize in literature in 1928 ^{[ 7 ] , [ N 2 ]} .

Family life and study trips [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

Botanists with mushrooms in Sandvika (Bærum), 24. October 1897 . From left to right: Asta Lundell (1875-1915), the conservative Ove Dahl (1862-1940), Professor Axel Gudbrand Blytt (1843-97) and Thekla Resvoll at 26 years old.

In 1895, she married Andreas Holmsen, hydrographer and engineer of the mines, whose brother, Gunnar Holmsen, geologist, married fourteen years later with Thekla’s young sister, Hanna Resvoll-Holmsen, herself a botanist. THE April 3, 1905 comes to the world their only child, a boy named dag ^{[ 8 ]} . Throughout their lives, husband and wife are interested in their respective work, Andreas in botany and Thekla in geology.

In order to obtain her doctorate in natural sciences, Thekla Resvoll left Kristiania in 1902 for Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, then moved to many other regions. She spent a year in Copenhagen with Eugen Warming, under which she conducts ecological research on the Arctic flora, decisive work in the choice of her subject of thesis on high mountain plants ^{[ 6 ]} . In 1903, she went to Munich to study with Professor Karl Goebel, botanist and specialist in plant development and the functional adaptation of some of their parts ^{[ 6 ]} . It is there that she meets the paleobotist and feminist activist Marie Stopes with whom she became friends and who definitively convinces her to devote her thesis to the Flora de Flore ^{[ 9 ]} . In 1904, she went to Zurich to study ecology with the botanist Carl Schröter, then in full writing of the first volume of his major work on the Alpine Plants The plant life of the Alps , and spends two summers in the Alps to study the development of flora there ^{[ 6 ]} . During a semester from 1923 to 1924, she had a research stay in Java during which, whether during excursions in the tropical forest or in the Buitenzorg botanical garden, she studied trees from the family of the family of Fagaceae On which she notes hibernation buds, which she interprets as a useless line, a rudiment of their temperate origin.

University career, various activities and deaths [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

She becomes assistant professor at university The University of Royal Frederick From 1902 to 1936, the year she retired. Responsible for the training of students in the use of microscopes during botany, she is also responsible for microscopy lessons for students of medicine and pharmacology, and a botanical teaching for students in pharmacology ^{[ 6 ]} ; In addition, from 1933 to the fall of 1938, she was one of the juries designated for their exams ^{[ 5 ]} . Throughout her career, she is a much appreciated teacher, both students and colleagues ^{[ 4 ]} .

In 1923, she entered the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters, the third woman in history to be admitted ^{[ 3 ]} .

Commemorative stone in the Kongsvoll botanical garden in Dovre. Registration: “In memory of Thekla Resvoll 1871-1948. ».

In 1924, she founded the Kongsvoll Fjellhage, a botanical garden, near Kongsvoll station, since inappropriate, which served her as a basis for observation to study the acclimatization, development and reproduction of plants, and where she went year After year, in all times, to observe the evolution ^{[ ten ]} .

With a calm temperament, Thekla Resvoll never tried to make a career, unlike Kristine Bonnevie who regularly had a knit to leave with her male colleagues. If the botanist knew how to be a diplomat, the fact remains that in view of her commitments, she was not of a character to be dictated by her conduct. The esteem in which she was held was undoubtedly linked to her indisputable educational qualities, but perhaps it is also appropriate to seek an explanation in the originality of her field of research, at the time considered very marginal and , therefore, making little shade to that of his colleagues. Little is known about her life after her retirement: fragile health, she leaves the university weakened and spends summers in the mountains near the botanical garden she created. A photograph dated 1940 the watch with Ellen GLEDITSCH in Kongsvoll ^{[ ten ]} .

She dies the June 14, 1948 , at the age of 77. In 1953 , a commemorative stone is inaugurated in the botanical garden in the presence of friends, colleagues and her husband ^{[ ten ]} . This stone, then moved to the new botanical garden, is due to PER HAUGEN which made it from a steatite from the commune of SEL, the sculptures having been shaped on those of a tombstone found not far from Vågå ^{[ 11 ]} .

Research [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

First woman to receive this distinction in botany, she obtained her doctorate in 1917 ^{[ N 3 ]} With a thesis entitled Plants that adapt to short and cold summers ^{[ twelfth ]} in which she studies the morphology of fifty-six species on the nival floor and their adaptation to the very short season of growth. Thekla Resvoll became interested in the strategies that mountain plants implement for their survival, their development and their reproduction in difficult environments, the theme of research enjoying today, because of climate change, much more attention than When she became interested in it ^{[ ten ]} .

In 1897, she discovered near Røros a flower called Eurybia sibirica and usually encountered in Siberia and northern America, but curiously, only prosperous in Scandinavia in this specific place ^{[ 13 ]} . This discovery, described in 1916 By the Danish professor Carl Hansen Ostenfeld in a joint publication with Thekla Resvoll, caused a sensation because the closest place where to meet other specimens is in the paanajärvi national park ^{[ 14 ] , [ N 4 ]} .

His research was based on the meticulous observation of plants, their survival in winter and their reproduction, which made it a pioneer in the knowledge of the botany of Norway and the first specialist in high mountain plants in this country ^{[ 4 ]} .

Feminist commitment [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

Thekla Resvoll took part in feminist struggles. In 1896, she participated in meetings of the association for the right to vote for women The Women’s Victory Association Before becoming its president for several years. It was also in 1896 that she became the first Norwegian to let herself be photographed in pants without wearing over the then usage skirt ^{[ ten ]} . Photography, taken with her husband, shocked whilereas, he found no inconvenience ^{[ 15 ]} . Thus, when she goes to her parents-in-law in pants devoid of the obligatory skirt, her mother-in-law leaves the room pretending to be a migraine. This does not prevent him from having cordial relationships with them, still improved after the marriage of his little sister with her brother-in-law ^{[ ten ]} . Throughout her adult life, and once again unlike use, she wore short hair, not in principle or commitment, but for purely practical reasons related to her excursions and migraines ^{[ ten ]} .

She was the first secretary of the student association Female Student Club (founded in 1902). With Kristine Bonnevie and Ellen Gleditsch, she founded in 1912 the Female Student’s Ski Club (“The student ski club”) in protest in the face of the creation of the student ski club who refused the entrance to women in this club ^{[ 16 ]} .

She popularized and promoted contraceptive means for women ^{[ 9 ]} .

Once married, she kept her young girl’s name, despite the university’s opposition ^{[ 9 ]} . Have a lasting position at university and go abroad for study trips when she enjoys her marriage of economic security, then passes for driving at the limits of morality ^{[ 15 ]} ; and what is more, to keep it after a birth, as it does in 1905, constitutes in itself a first ^{[ 17 ]} .

In 1902, she published a biology manual for high school students who was published ten times and used until 1939 ^{[ ten ]} .

Thekla Resvoll has written many popularization articles in newspapers, especially on botany in the Aftenposten From 1913 to 1923, then in The sign of the time From 1924 to 1929 ^{[ 6 ]} .

Among his works, we must distinguish popular writings from scientific writings ^{[ N 8 ]} .

Popularization works [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

• (nn) Biology for high school. Part 1, botany ^{[ N 9 ]} , Aschehoug, 1902
• (no) Winter-flora. : Our wild deciduous trees and shrubs in winter suit. , Aschehoug, 1911 , 80 p.
• (no) Norwegian mountain flowers , The Norwegian Trekking Association, 1934 , 48 p.

Scientific publications [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

• (no) ‘ Some Arctic Ranunkler’s morphology and anatomy ^{[ N 10 ]} » , New magazine for the natural sciences. , n ^O 38, 1900 , p. 347-367
• Thekla resvited, About plants that fit short and cold summer. , Kristiania, University of Oslo (doctoral thesis), 1917, 224 p. [ (no) read online ]
• (in) ‘ Rubus chamaemorus L. A morphological – biological study. » , New magazine for the science. , n ^O 67, 1925 , p. 55-129
• (of) ‘ Rubus Chamaemorus L. The geographical spread of the plant and its distribution means » , Publications of the Geobotanical Institute Rübel in Zurich , n ^O 3, 1925 , p. 224-241
• (of) Disadued deciduous buds in the ever -damp tropical forests of Java ^{[ N 11 ]} . , Jena, 1925

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Related articles [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

Swedish botanist [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

Norwegian botanists [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

external links [ modifier | Modifier and code ]