User:Lquilter/drafts/Hildegarde Howard

Hildegarde Howard (April 3, 1901, Washington, D.C. -1998)

Howard's parents, a scriptwriter (father) and musician/composer (mother). Moved to LA in 1906.


 * 1920 began attending Southern Branch of the University of California (later renamed UCLA). First biology teacher, Pirie Davidson, inspired her, and helped her get a job working for paleontologist Chester Stock on the La Brea Tar Pits.

Her instructor, Miss Pirie Davidson, made the subject so interesting that Miss Howard became immersed in biology studies and was soon working as a laboratory assistant for the class. The following year Miss Davidson helped Miss Howard obtain a part time job working for paleontologist Chester Stock sorting bones from the La Brea Tar Pits at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art. In 1922 she went to U.C. Berkeley to finish her degree since UCLA was then a two-year school. There she began taking courses in the paleontology department.

Hildegarde Howard, a pioneering avian paleontologist and chief science curator emeritus of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, has died. She was 96.

Howard, internationally known for her work on bird fossils from the La Brea tar pits, died Saturday in Laguna Hills, said her goddaughter Cecelia Osborn.

She met her late husband in that basement--Henry Anson Wylde, chief of exhibitions at the museum--and married him in 1930.

Howard gradually veered away from tiger bones and to the bird bones taken out of La Brea in Hancock Park. In the 1930s she extensively studied 14,000 bones of Rancho La Brea eagles.

Awards

 * 1953 Brewster Medal (first woman to be awarded the Brewster Medal )
 * Elected President, Southern California Academy of Sciences (first woman president )
 * Honored by having Hildegarde Howard Cenozoic Hall, Southern California Academy of Sciences, named after her

In 1977, the museum honored her by naming the Hildegarde Howard Cenozoic Hall for her. Colleagues continue to praise her for her huge volume of work, including more than 100 scientific papers.

Further research

 * Joyce Harvey & Marilyn Ogilvie (2000), The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, Volume 1, pp.622 et seq