1942 — Two signed membership documents formally accepting English geographer Monica Mary Cole into two scientific societies for the learned, the Royal Geographical Society and the Geologists' Association, respectively. 8vo. Two separate printed documents, three leafs combined, each document completed, signed and dated by the respective society's secretary. Leafs measure approximately 20,5 x 26 cm. Creasing to one document, otherwise in very good condition. Monica Mary Cole (1922-1994) was an English geographer, lecturer, and author, an intellectual woman and polyglot, whose legacy has been described by her colleagues as "a leader in her chosen field of academic research" who "scaled the heights of a profession that, even today, finds too few women as the incumbents of chairs." She left the Royal Geographical Society £10,000 for it to establish a research travel grant for young female physical geographists. The Archives of the Royal Holloway, University of London holds a collection of papers relating to Cole. They include her personal papers and objects connected to her career as a geographer between 1967 and 1970. During her distinguished career she produced pioneering works in the fields of biogeography and geobotany, remote sensing and terrain analysis, and mineral exploration. Her research spanned Central and Southern Africa, Brazil, Venezuela, Australia, China and Finland. Cole was not the archetypal quiet and contemplative academic. She was a larger-than-life character, and people loved to be around her. She was elected as a Fellow in the Royal geographical Society on 22 June 1942. The following year, on 6 December 1943, she also became an elected member of the Geologists' Association of London. The present documents are her official membership declaration papers from each of these societies. In 1947, Miss Cole was appointed geography lecturer under Bill Talbot at the University of Cape Town. She conducted a detailed land utilisation survey on the soils and crop yield affected by climate anomalies in Elgin, Western Cape, which was called "one of the most thorough and useful land utilization surveys carried out anywhere in South Africa" by Stanley Jackson, in The Geographical Journal.
