16 Facts About Hazel Schmoll

Hazel Marguerite Schmoll was an American botanist, and the first to conduct a systematic study of plant life in southwestern Colorado.

Hazel Schmoll was the first woman to earn a doctorate in botany from the University of Chicago.

Hazel Schmoll was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1985.

Hazel Marguerite Schmoll was born in a sod cabin in McAllaster, Kansas, on August 23,1890, to William and Amelia Schmoll.

Hazel Schmoll described her childhood in Ward as ideal and retained a lifelong connection to the town, which shrank to less than a dozen residents in the 1940s before rebounding in the 1960s.

Hazel Schmoll attended Ward School through eighth grade, followed by the State Preparatory School in Boulder.

Hazel Schmoll then went to the University of Colorado, from which she graduated in 1913 with a degree in biology.

Hazel Schmoll taught for four years at Vassar College, first in the biology department and then in the botany department.

Hazel Schmoll was the first University of Colorado graduate to be hired by Vassar.

Hazel Schmoll studied mainly with botanist and ecological pioneer Henry Chandler Cowles and received her degree in 1919.

On returning to Colorado after her master's degree, Hazel Schmoll was hired to do some work for the Colorado Historical and Natural History Society at the Colorado State Museum, at first mainly mounting and cataloguing the botanical collections of Alice Eastwood and Ellsworth Bethel.

Hazel Schmoll went on to conduct the first systematic study of plant life in the southwestern part of the state, a project that would later feed into her doctoral dissertation.

In late 1925, Hazel Schmoll traveled to Europe to visit botanical gardens and learn German.

Hazel Schmoll worked at the Field Museum of Natural History and served as a substitute professor at a local junior college.

Hazel Schmoll was appointed as a board member of the Colorado Mountain Club, where she headed the lobbying effort to pass a bill that protected the lavender Columbine, the Colorado state flower.

Hazel Schmoll died on January 31,1990, at the age of 99.