Fonds of campaign for memorial to Björg C. Þorláksson

The fonds relates to a successful campaign to build a memorial to Björg C. Þorláksson on the campus of the University of Iceland. Björg C. Þorláksson (1874–1934) was the first Icelandic woman to receive her doctoral degree on 17 June 1926, after having started her doctoral studies at the Sorbonne in Paris at the age of 47. She left Iceland for Denmark in 1897, after being refused entrance to an Icelandic college because of her gender. She lived most of her adult life in Paris and Copenhagen, where she had better opportunities as a woman to participate in the academic community. However, she continued to publish in Icelandic and regularly visited her home country, applying unsuccessfully to teach at the University of Iceland. The campaign to raise a memorial to Björg C. Þorláksson coincided with the 75th anniversary of her doctoral defence. The memorial is topped with the metal cast of a plaster bust of Björg made in Paris in 1928 by sculptor Ásmundur Sveinsson (1893–1982), two years after completing her doctorate. The memorial was the first public monument to a named woman in Reykjavík.