Emma Hansen, a poor farm girl born in 1900, has exceptional scholastic ability and a deep fascination with the natural world. She fights her way through poverty, her family's indifference, and prejudices against women to attend high school and Hancock College, a small Midwestern school. Encouraged by the college's only female professor, Emma conducts her first research with dung beetles and micro-organisms. The Lady Professor is a novel about the human side of real science, historically and scientifically accurate, but readily intelligible to non-scientists. It portrays a transitional time for women in America and would particularly interest young women who are drawn to careers in science.