The Princess Scientist

A sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Anonymous, Bildnis der Fürstin Yekaterina Dashkova-Vorontsova (1743–1810),
(circa 1780).

During The Enlightenment, some women achieved unprecedented levels of success within the sciences. Yekaterina Dashkova was a Russian princess who enjoyed close ties to Russian empress Catherine the Great. While she did not have formal training in the sciences, she was nonetheless erudite and sophisticated, with interests that extended to subjects like natural history. As a widowed noblewoman, Dashkova travelled throughout Europe during her youth, compiling a cabinet of curiosities later donated to the Natural History Museum of Moscow University.

Her collection included the first recognized fossil fragment belonging to the extinct Elasmotherium, a giant prehistoric rhinoceros. In 1782, she was appointed to the position of director of the Russian Imperial Academy of Arts and Sciences. Proving to be a capable administrator, she resurrected the institution's reputation for academic excellence, and even instituted a series of lectures for less privileged nobility, which she herself attended.