Breaking Barriers in Evolutionary Biology: A Pioneering Woman in Science and Her Early Theory of Plant Chemical Macroevolution.

Plant secondary chemistry is now a paradigmatic example of adaptation. However, more than 120 years ago (70 years before the oft-cited works of Fraenkel or Ehrlich and Raven ignited the field of chemical ecology), a female scientist named Helen Cecilia de Silver Abbott (1857–1904) published an article in The American Naturalist introducing the radical idea that plant chemistry should be considered in light of macroevolution. Here we revisit the groundbreaking but largely overlooked contribution of Abbott’s (1887) “Comparative Chemistry of Higher and Lower Plants.” Our goal is to spotlight Abbott’s important contribution to the field of chemical ecology and to honor her life as a pioneering woman in science.