Sara Yorke Stevenson
![1917 portrait by [[Leopold Seyffert]]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Sara_Yorke_Stevenson.jpg)
As a scholar, Stevenson published books and articles on Egyptology and the material culture of the ancient Near East, as well as a memoir about the reign of Maximilian I of Mexico. She was the first curator of the Egyptian Collection at the Penn Museum and played an important role in acquiring much of the collection itself. As a women's rights activist, she served as the first president of the Equal Franchise Society and the Civic Club of Philadelphia. She was the first woman to receive an honorary degree from the University of Pennsylvania, the first woman to lecture at the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, and the first female member of the Jury of Awards for Ethnology at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Provided by Wikipedia