ESTER ENGLISH RICHARDS APPLIN, 1895-1972, MICROPALEONTOLOGIST: SUCCESS IN A MAN’S WORLD

Ester English Richards Applin (1895-1972) was a pioneer and leader in applied paleontology and biostratigraphy. Born in Ohio on November 24, 1895, her father, a civil engineer, moved the family to Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay where he was constructing the prison. From 1907 to 1920, Ester lived on and commuted from the island to schools in San Francisco and the University of California in Berkeley.

Richards earned a paleontology and geology graduate degree (M.A.) in 1920, the second woman to do so at Berkeley. She studied Recent and fossil turritellids from the Pacific Coast of North America with Professor Bruce Clark. In 1919, E. T. Dumble, Rio Bravo Oil Company, asked Clark to “recommend a man for a paleontology job”. Clark asked, “I don’t have a man, will a woman do?” She would indeed do and was hired to use larger fossils in oil exploration. With Alva Ellisor and Hedwig Kniker in other companies, she advocated using microscopic foraminifera instead, and she proposed it at the 1921 Geological Society of America meeting. Afterwards, a Columbia University professor lamented, “Gentlemen, here is this chit of a girl right out of college, telling us we can use foraminifera to determine the age of formation. Gentlemen, you know it can’t be done.” However, she was right‑it could indeed be done. It was the first major breakthrough in petroleum exploration. Three years later, over 300 micropaleontology jobs had been created and 31 micropaleontology courses begun at universities, the biggest applied impact ever by a Berkeley paleontology graduate.

Richards married Paul Applin, a geologist, in 1923, beginning a life with two children and shared professional interests and activities. Ester excelled in micropaleontology and stratigraphy while Paul specialized in structural geology forming a team. She held a position of Assistant Professor at the University of Texas, Austin, from 1942 to 1945. Creativity, vision, and hard work made possible a successful professional life as a micropaleontologist in a man’s world.