11/02/2026
🪨👩🔬Women Who Rock 👩🔬🪨
Today is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science with the purpose of the day to promote full and equal access to and participation in science for women and girls.
Here at GSNI we are proud to now have a gender balanced workforce and NI has historically been unusually progressive for women in geoscience. This quiet but powerful tradition of female participation in geology was established in NI long before it became common elsewhere.
In celebration, we are highlighting some of the female geoscientist trailblazers who are either from NI or who carried out significant research here.
✨ Mary K. Andrews (1851–1914) was an Irish geologist born in Belfast and, notable as one of the first women to be active in this area. She was active in several fields of geology but is probably best known for her work on The Early History of Magnetism and on the D***s in Antrim and Down. She was Honorary Secretary of the geological section of the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club (BNFC) after its establishment in 1893. Andrews was one of twelve women who presented papers at the women's section of the geological congress, as a part of the World's Congress Auxiliary of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, in August 1893.
Mary was an international collector and a curator of geological specimens for the BNFC, a photographer of landscapes and specimens, a researcher, concerned with conservation of geological heritage, and a good communicator. Most of her specimens are now held in the collections at National Museums Northern Ireland.
🌋 Doris Reynolds (1899–1985) was a highly influential British geologist who made significant contributions to the geology of NI and Ireland more broadly. She is best known for her work in petrology and geochemical processes, and for being one of the earliest women recognised at high levels in the geological sciences. Doris developed the theory of “granitisation” in the 1940s based on research on the Newry Igneous Complex. At the time, this revolutionised the understanding of how granite forms in the Earth’s crust. While later shown to be incorrect, it stimulated important research and debate in petrology.
She was the first woman elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1949, a significant milestone for women in geoscience and was awarded the Lyell Medal by the Geological Society of London in 1960 for her geological contributions
𖢻 Kathleen Lonsdale (1903–1971) was an Irish crystallographer whose pioneering work on crystallography and mineral structure greatly influenced our understanding of basalt and silicate mineral structures, directly relevant to the Antrim Lava Group. Her work underpins modern mineralogical interpretation of igneous rocks found across NI.
During her career she attained several firsts for female scientists, including being one of the first two women elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1945, first female professor at University College London, first woman president of the International Union of Crystallography, and first woman president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
