Alice Osborne Curwen
Alice Osborne Curwen (c. 1902 – July 21, 1983), later Alice Osborn McKeen, was an American zoologist, college professor, and clubwoman. She taught anatomy, histology, and embryology at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania and zoology at Smith College.
She was born in Philadelphia, the daughter of George Fisher Curwen, a lumber dealer, and Helen Stoddard Osborne Curwen. Curwen graduated from Smith College in 1925 and studied embryology at the Marine Biological Laboratory in 1924. She earned a PhD in biology at Yale University in 1937, with a dissertation on the telencephalon of Tupinambis nigropunctatus, a Caribbean lizard. In the 1930s, she published research on reptile brain anatomy in the Journal of Comparative Neurology.
Curwen married Edward Forster McKeen in 1940, and they lived in Winterport, Maine, where she was president of the Winterport Club. She was active in Episcopal churchwomen’s work in Maine, representing Maine at a national Episcopalian conference in 1949, and she participated in the Women’s Society of Christian Service. She also served as a delegate to the Maine Republican convention in 1966.
Her sister was Elinor Ewing Curwen. Alice and Elinor donated art to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her husband died in 1970. In 1973 antiques were stolen from her Maine home.
Alice Osborn McKeen died on July 21, 1983, in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, at about 81 years old. Though few in number, her publications are still cited in her field, and she was listed in 2005 as an illustrious early comparative neuroanatomist in a modern anatomy textbook.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 07:02 (CET).