“In all my travels I’ve never been attacked by a wild animal, lost my way or caught a disease… I don’t think there’s any place in the world where a woman can’t venture.” – Ynés Mexía
Ynés Mexía was born on May 24th, 1870 in Washington D.C. She had a turbulent youth at boarding school but grew to enjoy her time alone with science and nature. After her studies, she took over her family business. However, after her father’s death and 2 troubling marriages, Mexía moved to California to seek mental health care. She soon became a member of the early environmental movement. Impassioned by preservation efforts, at the age of 51, Mexía enrolled at UC-Berkeley to study botany. After graduating, Mexía joined a specimen collection expedition group at Stanford, but decided to pursue her own studies. She secured her own funding and collected plants in unstudied regions of the Americas alone. She collected near 150,000 specimens and discovered over 500 species over 13 years in Alaska, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, and Argentina. For her work, Mexía became a member of the Sociedad Geographica de Lima, Peru and the California Academy of Sciences.