Background
Joan Murrell was born on June 30, 1933, in Miami, Florida, to William and Leola Murrell. Her father was a dentist.
Joan Murrell was born on June 30, 1933, in Miami, Florida, to William and Leola Murrell. Her father was a dentist.
She was also one of the first African American women scientists to contribute to the field of marine biology in the United States, and the first African American woman to receive a Doctor of Philosophy in geology. She received a Master of Science degree in guidance counseling with an emphasis on reading therapy in 1956.
She received degrees in geology, fine art, and guidance counseling. She described a new genus, Rhombopsammia, and three new species of button corals, R. niphada, R. squiresi, and Letepsammia franki. One of her favorite books was The Silent World by Jacques Cousteau.
Joan entered Fisk University in 1950.
However, the university did not offer a program in the marine sciences. Instead, she majored in fine art and received her degree in 1954.
Her minors were mathematics and psychology. Foreign graduate study, Murrell entered the University of Michigan with the intention to study commercial art, but she changed her focus.
Joan Murrell taught for two years at the University of Michigan"s Children"s Psychiatric Hospital, and then joined the faculty of Howard University in Washington, District of Columbia in 1957, where she specialized in teaching remedial English.
In the 1960s, she moved to Newton, Massachusetts. While there, for the Institute for Services to Education she designed programs for teaching English to educationally disadvantaged students. This work served as a model for the Upward Bound program of the United States Department of Education.
As that institution had no undergraduate program in marine science, she constructed an equivalent with a major in geology and a minor in zoology.
She received her Bachelor of Surgery in geology in 1973 and her Master of Surgery in 1976. Continuing work toward her doctorate, she returned to Howard as a professor of geology in 1976.
Her doctoral research concerned certain species of deep-sea button corals, a group of stony corals that are distinctive in that they do not form colonies. On receipt of her Doctor of Philosophy in 1984, she became the first African American woman to receive a doctoral degree in geology.
Now publishing as Joan Murrell Owens, she continued to classify and study button corals, working with specimens from the Smithsonian Institution that were collected by a British expedition in 1880.
Both genera are in the family Micrabaciidae. Joan Owens transferred to the biology department of Howard in 1992, and retired from full-time work in 1995. Joan Owens died on May 25, 2011.
