Edith Marion Patch (27 July 1876 – 28 September 1954) was an American entomologist and writer. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, she completed a BSc at the University of Minnesota in 1901, treaded water in her career teaching English when she was selected as an intern in the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of Maine. Her elevation as head of the entomology department in 1904 was met by the misgivings from several male colleagues, despite not completing an MA at the University of Maine until 1910, followed by a Ph.D. at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York in 1911. She would retire from the post in 1937. Patch is recognized as the first truly successful professional woman entomologist in the United States.
During her career, she was recognized as an expert on aphids and published Food Plant Catalogue of the Aphids in 1938. She was elected president of the American Nature Study Society and in 1930 became the first female president of the Entomological Society of America. Patch's residence in Old Town, Maine, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.
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Early life
Edith Marion Patch was the youngest of six children of William Whipple Patch Jr. and Salome Jenks. After the American Civil War, the family moved to New Vinton, Iowa but returned to Worcester in 1872. Her interest in natural history became evident at an early age and she used to ramble near her home, studying its flora and fauna. The family moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1881, when she was eight and then into the countryside two years later, when she was able to resume her interests in natural history. She was sufficiently knowledgeable while still at school to write an essay on the monarch butterfly which won her a prize in a competition. She invested her $25 prize in a copy of John Henry Comstock's "Manual for the Study of Insects" with illustrations by Anna Botsford Comstock. After graduating from Minneapolis's South High School in 1896, Patch went to the University of Minnesota, graduating with a BSc in 1901. At first she was unable to find suitable employment as an entomologist and spent two years teaching English at a high school, but she got her chance when Dr. Charles D. Woods offered her an unpaid post. The job was at the University of Maine in the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station to start up an entomology department. Woods decision to appoint based on merit and not gender was vindicated when she was granted a full-time job the following year.