Chrystal Macmillan

Chrystal Macmillan was a Scottish Liberal politician, barrister, feminist and pacifist, and the first female science graduate from the University of Edinburgh as well as that institutions first female honours graduate in Mathematics. She was an activist for womens right to vote, and for other womens causes. She was the first woman to plead a case before the House of Lords, and was one of the founders of the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom.

Macmillan was born Jessie Chrystal Macmillan onJune 1872 to Edinburgh tea merchant, John Macmillan and his wife Jessie Chrystal Finlayson. She was the couples only daughter among their eight sons. After an early education in Edinburgh she boarded at St Leonards School and St Katharines School for Girls in St Andrews on the east coast of Scotland. She returned to enroll at the University of Edinburgh in October 1892. Among the first female students there, she was not the first to graduate, as others were more advanced in their studies when they entered as graduate students, and earned Masters degrees before she finished her undergraduate work. Macmillan studied science subjects including Honours Mathematics with George Chrystal, Astronomy with Ralph Copeland, and Natural Philosophy with Peter Guthrie Tait and Cargill Gilston Knott. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in April 1896, the first woman at Edinburgh to do so.

Source: Wikipedia