STATISTICAL STUDY OF EMINENT WOMEN 593 



A STATISTICAL STUDY OF EMINENT WOMEN 



Bl CORA SUTTON CASTLE, A.B., MX. 



COLUMBIA DNIVEESITY 



THE word eminent as used in this study covers the range of mean- 

 ing designated by the Century Dictionary which defines the term 

 as " high in rank, office, worth or public estimation ; conspicuous, 

 highly distinguished." According to the same authority, the word is 

 rarely used in a bad sense. Dr. Francis Galton, 1 who made the first 

 statistical study of distinguished men, defined his use of eminent thus : 



When I speak of an eminent man, I mean one who has achieved a position 

 that is attained by only 250 persons in each million of men, or by one person in 

 each 4,000. 



While my selection is closer, mathematically, than Galton' s, among 

 the 868 women whom I have designated as eminent, some are included 

 because of circumstances over which they had no control, such as great 

 beauty, or congenital misfortune. Many were born to their positions ; 

 to others is due but little credit for the fact that they married men 

 sufficiently eminent to accord them a place in history. Some led spec- 

 tacular lives and were notorious rather than meritorious. Many of 

 them were women of unusual intellectual ability and were eminent in 

 the ordinary connotation of the term. More or less biographical data 

 are at command concerning these 868 women, and to the extent that 

 reputation may be considered a just index of ability, they are entitled 

 to a place in a catalogue of the distinguished of earth. 



In selecting the group I have followed precisely the objective 

 method devised by Professor J. McKeen Cattell 2 in his " Statistical 

 Study of Eminent Men." My method, in detail, was as follows: 

 I went through the Lippincott Biographical Dictionary, the Americana, 

 Nouveau La Eousse, Brockhaus's Konversations-Lexikon, Meyer's Kon- 

 versations-Lexikon and the Encyclopaedia Britannica and noted the 

 name of every woman mentioned in each. I retained for my list the 

 name of every woman noted in any three out of the six encyclopedias 

 or dictionaries. My original intention was to eliminate from the lower 

 end of the group until I had 1,000, a convenient and sufficiently large 

 number with which to work. But when the twenty-three Biblical char- 

 acters were excluded, the entire number was only 868. It is a sad 

 commentary on the sex that from the dawn of history to the present 

 day less than one thousand women have accomplished anything that 



1 " Hereditary Genius," p. 10, 1869. 



2 "A Statistical Study of Eminent Men," Pop. Sci. Mo., Vol. 62, p. 359, 



1903. 



