In the summer of 1873 Louis Agassiz, of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, founded a summer school on Penikese Island. 30 women were among the students during the school's two year existence. Although it was short-lived, the school became the prototype for residential summer schools, and the people who attended it became significant figures in education, particularly in science. For women summer school had particular significance since it provided them with post-baccalaureate education when formal graduate study, which was just beginning in the United States, was not open to them. Although Louis Agassiz did not think of women as equal partners in scientific research, his male students at Penikese were later willing to accept women as graduate students and as research colleagues. In part, their willingness was a result of their experience at the Anderson School. The women there changed science teaching at several women's colleges, and helped prepare younger women to become professional scientists.
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