Key 24: The Faculty of Science 1886; 1903

The degrees of BSc and DSc were available from 1886 but a full Science course was not available until 1888. The course provided for three years of science studies, initially covering mathematics and the full science spectrum - physics, mineralogy, botany, geology, zoology, and physiology - with scope for specialising in final year. There was strong emphasis on laboratory work and the research degree of DSc was available from the very beginning. The first BSc was conferred in 1889 but most students continued to take science subjects as part of an arts degree and only nineteen students (three of them women) took out a BSc prior to 1900. The first Master of Science was conferred in 1893 and the first Doctor of Science by research thesis was conferred in 1902 to Bertram Dillon Steele. Only two years following, in 1904, Georgina Sweet became the first woman to be awarded a Doctor of Science, for her thesis on ‘Contributions to our knowledge of the anatomy of notoryctes typhlops, stirling’. The Faculty of Science was only formally constituted in 1903.