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Erminnie Adele Platt Smith
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Erminnie Adele Platt Smith

American anthropologist
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Quick Facts
Née:
Platt
Born:
April 26, 1836, Marcellus, N.Y., U.S.
Died:
June 9, 1886, Jersey City, N.J. (aged 50)

Erminnie Adele Platt Smith (born April 26, 1836, Marcellus, N.Y., U.S.—died June 9, 1886, Jersey City, N.J.) was an American anthropologist who was the first woman to specialize in ethnographic field work. Smith graduated from the Female Seminary of Troy, N.Y., in 1853. She married Simeon Smith, a Chicago lumber dealer and merchant, in 1855. When her sons were students in Germany, she studied at Strasbourg, Heidelberg, and Freiberg. Smith’s early work was in geology, particularly crystallography. In 1876 she founded the Aesthetic Society, an organization that attracted as many as 500 people to parlor meetings on science, literature, and ...(100 of 168 words)

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