Materials are arranged in the order created during the interview process with the first file containing administrative materials created before, during, and after the interview.
Accession No. PA.2000.0027: Rita Horner, 2000 August
[identification of item], Rita Horner Oral History, SPEC.PA.56.0066, Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center Archival Program, Ohio State University
Contains audiocassettes.
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Processed by: Audrey Wimbiscus, 2020 March; Finding aid written by: Audrey Wimbiscus, Sam Devereaux, 2020 October
As of 2020, Dr. Rita Horner is a marine researcher and educator. After graduating high school, she received a bachelor’s degree in botany from the University of Wisconsin, then a master’s degree in botany from the University of Minnesota. Following her graduation, Horner began researching marine phytoplankton in the Zoology Department at the School of Oceanography in Seattle, Washington. Around 1961, she taught biology and oceanography at Yakima Valley Community College in Yakima, Washington. Horner received a Fulbright grant fellowship in 1963, and spent a year studying marine phytoplankton at the University of Oslo, Norway. She went to Point Barrow, Alaska, in the spring of 1965, with funding from the Arctic Institute of North America. During the trip, Horner collected phytoplankton samples, studied them in Washington state over the winter, then returned to Point Barrow the following year to collect more phytoplankton samples.
Horner received her doctorate in marine botany in 1969, and began teaching in Fairbanks, Alaska at the University of Alaska’s Institute of Marine Science. In 1972, Horner became the first woman to do research at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska and one of three women to do research on T-3, a drifting ice island in the Arctic Ocean. When she collected phytoplankton on the Beaufort Sea in 1973, Horner became one of the first women on a Coast Guard icebreaker. From 1974-1979, Horner worked with the Outer Continental Shelf Environment Assessment Program (OCSEAP) and was the Chief Scientist aboard the icebreakers
The Rita Horner Oral History, dated 1999-2001, contains audio recordings, administrative information, and transcripts of the interview between Dr. Horner and Brian Shoemaker of the American Polar Society conducted on August 18, 2000. This interview was a part of a series of polar oral histories sponsored by the American Polar Society and Ohio State University's Byrd Polar Research Center Archival Program, with funding from the National Science Foundation. Major topics discussed include Horner's career in polar biological research, the difficulties of being a female scientist in the 1960s and 1970s, and details of her research into ice phytoplankton.
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