Brain of an activist

Another preserved brain. This one belonged to Helen Hamilton Gardner, an author and leading advocate for women's suffrage and educational rights in the early 20th century. In 1920, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Gardner to the United States Civil Service Commission, making her the first woman to occupy such a high federal position.

Gardner strongly advocated the position that the female brain was not "demonstrably different from that of a man under the same conditions and with the same opportunities for development."

Her brain currently rests in the Wilder Brain Collection in Cornell University's psychology department. Cornell anatomy professor Burt Green Wilder believed that studying the anatomy of the human brain could yield great insights into psychology; his own brain was added to the collection after his death in 1925.