Garrod, Dorothy A. (1892–1969)

English archaeologist and educator who was the first woman in any field to become a professor at either of the great British universities. Born Dorothy Annie Elizabeth Garrod in 1892; died in 1969; daughter of Sir Alfred Baring Garrod (1819–1907), English physician and professor of therapeutics; sister of Alfred Henry Garrod (1846–1879), a zoologist, and Archibald Edward Garrod (1857–1936), Regius Professor of history of medicine at Oxford; educated in France, where she studied Paleolithic archaeology under Breuil, Begouen, and Peyrony; never married; no children.

Dorothy A. Garrod was born in 1892, the daughter of Sir Alfred Baring Garrod, an English physician and professor of therapeutics; her brothers were Alfred Henry Garrod, a zoologist, and Archibald Edward Garrod, a Regius Professor of history of medicine at Oxford. Director of studies in archaeology and anthropology at Newnham College at Cambridge, Dorothy Garrod was the first woman in any field to be appointed a professor at Cambridge (1939). Working in the area of Paleolithic archaeology, she directed field investigations in England, Kurdistan, Bulgaria, Gibraltar, and Lebanon. Her most famous excavation was Mugharet et Tabun in Palestine where evidence was unearthed to provide testimony on the evolution of Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthal man). Garrod served in the women's services in both world wars. After WWII, she used what she had learned of photographic evaluation to develop aerial photography as a finding tool for archaeology. She was the first woman to receive the Gold Medal of the Society of Antiquaries on London.