Margaret Bryan Davis
Personal Information
Born: 1931
Country of Birth: USA
Nationality: USA
Ethnicity: White
Education
Radcliffe College BA Biology 1953; Harvard University PhD Biology 1957
""Salary is set by bargaining,. . .Men can move. Everybody believes women can't. I was vulnerable to low wages because I couldn't leave the University. I was the lowest paid person in my ranking." (en.wikipedia.org); "
— Margaret Bryan Davis
Professional Life
Field of Study: Paleoecologist
Institution/Corporation: University oof Minnesota
Degrees & Memberships: Honorary Degree: Yale University (MA 1974); College of Biological Sciences of the University of Minnesota (2012); Member: Ecological Society of America; American Quaternary Association; National Academy of Sciences (1982); American Society of Limnology and Oceanography; American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991); British Ecological Society; International Association for Vegetation Science; Phi Beta Kappa
Awards & Achievements
Awards: 1993 Eminent Ecologist Award, Ecological Society of America; 1993 Nevada Medal, Desert Research Institute; 2009 National Women's History Month Honoree; 2011 William S. Cooper Award, Ecological Association of America
Achievements: Known for her work in palynology-the study of plant pollen & spores; used pollen data to study the vegetation history of the past 21,000 years; showed conclusively that temperate- and boreal-forest species migrated at different rates and in different directions while forming a changing mosaic of communities; introduced the method of studying pollen influx or pollen accumulation rates (number of pollen grains per square centimeter per year) in cores, which was an important advance for interpreting fossil pollen data in terms of changes in past vegetation and past sedimentation conditions; her work helped to develop the modern theoretical basis for predicting changes in forest composition in response to global warming;
spent her childhood and early adolescence in the greater Boston area
had to threaten the University of Michigan with a civil rights suit in order to obtain a salary consistent with the males at the University
brought quantifica tion, hypotheses-testing, modeling, and statisti cal validity into pollen analysis, and with a small group of co-workers, has built paleoecology into a leadership role in the current debates on global environmental change
on staff at the University of Michigan 1961-1973
1976-1981 was head of the Dept of Ecology & Behavioral Science at the University of Minnesota then remained as a professor emeritus until retiring in 2000