Hannah Thompson Croasdale, the first female professor to be granted tenure at the College, died last week at the age of 93.
A marine biologist, Croasdale devoted her time at Dartmouth to both teaching and research.
Croasdale joined the staff of the Dartmouth Medical School in 1935 as a research assistant and two years later became a technical assistant in the zoology department. She became an assistant professor in 1959, was given tenure in 1964, and became a full professor in 1968.
In 1971, she retired and became a professor emeritus but continued to teach for seven years after her retirement and conducted research for another 20 years.
Croasdale specialized in phycology, the study of freshwater and marine algae. She researched this top in England, Scandinavia and Alaska, and was widely renowned as a specialist on Arctic plant life.
For more than 20 years she was actively involved with the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., where she taught a botany class each summer.
Croasdale authored hundreds of scientific papers, translated scientific Latin, and created scientific illustrations for several botany textbooks.
In 1968 she was awarded membership in the prestigious Societas pro Fauna et Flora organization for her contribution to Finnish science. She was a founding member and 21st president of the Phycological Society of America.
Besides being the first female tenured professor, Croasdale was the first female member of the Hanover Volunteer Fire Department, which she joined during WWII. Although she had to retire when she moved to Norwich, Vt., in 1963, she was honored with a lifetime membership to the department and voting privileges.
She was born in Tredyffrin Township, Chester County, Pa., in 1905, the daughter of John P. Croasdale and Mary G. Croasdale, both deceased. She is survived by cousins in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
Croasdale started her academic career at the University of Pennsylvania, from which she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1928. She also earned masters and doctoral degrees there in 1931 and 1935, and her Ph.D. thesis on the marine life at Woods Hole won a Sigma Xi prize.
For many years, Croasdale split her time between summers in Norwich and winters in Santa Rosa, Florida, where she died. In 1994, she moved to Santa Rosa permanently.
In his September 1998 inaugural address, College President James Wright recognized Croasdale as one of the faculty pioneers instrumental in shaping the College and praised her for coming -- as a woman-- to Dartmouth before coeducation.
