As a girl, Margaret Collins loved to explore in the woods near her house in West Virginia. Born in 1922, she was the fourth of five children. Her parents had both attended college, and her father had gone on to receive a master’s degree. Her mother, who had wanted to be an archeologist, wasn’t able to complete her undergraduate degree but she taught her children the importance of education, a lesson that Margaret never forgot.

At the age of six, Margaret’s advanced intellect was already evident. She was called a child prodigy, given a library card at the West Virginia State College Library and allowed to skip two grades. When she was only fourteen years old, Margaret graduated from high school and went to college. Graduating with a degree in biology, she also earned minors in physics and German.

Margaret completed her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in the lab of Alfred E. Emerson, a termite expert. Not only was Emerson an expert, but he had the largest collection of termites in the world. Emerson was a good mentor, and shielded Margaret from some of the racism she faced. Unfortunately, like many male scientists at that time, he didn’t want a woman doing field work with him, so while he chased down interesting termites, Margaret was stuck in the laboratory. Despite this, she managed write an important paper on termites.

Zoology is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom. When she got her Ph.D., Dr. Collins became the first African American woman entomologist and the third female African American zoologist. She went to work as a professor at Howard University, but left because men and women weren’t treated equally. She later worked for Florida A&M and spent a year at the University of Minnesota before returning to Howard University. During these years, she was fighting hard for civil rights.

By this time, Dr. Margaret Collins had come to think of herself as a field biologist and loved traveling the world to study termites in their natural habitat. In 1989, she discovered a new species of termite in Florida, called the Florida damp wood termite. She died in the Cayman Islands in 1996 at the age of seventy-three, doing what she loved best: studying termites.

Scientist today still study termites, but not just because they can be destructive. Companies are attempting to duplicate termite saliva for industrial use, because it makes termite mounds so strong. Researchers are also interested in how the structure of termite mounds, which stay cool inside when it’s hot outdoors.