Katherine Van Winkle Palmer grew up in Oakville, Washington. She was the only female member of her high school graduating class who went to college. At the University of Washington, she became a member of the Alpha Theta chapter of Alpha Delta Pi.
She served as chapter president and was a member of the Class of 1918. According to an article in a 1920 edition of The Adelphean, she became interested in geology:
while studying with Dr. C. E. Weaver, who was a patron of the sorority. The last two quarters of her senior year, Katherine spent at the University of Oregon as an assistant in the department of geology and paleontology. She also took enough courses to enable her to graduate with her class at Washington.
Her senior thesis was on the Oligocene fossils of the Chehalis Valley in Washington. With Dr. Weaver as her advisor, she studied the fossils of this area of Washington. She reported on 24 previously undescribed species of clams and snails and presented evidence of a faunal zone of the lower Oligicene age. Her report of her discoveries, Paleontology of the Oligicene of the Chehalis Valley, Washington, was published in a University of Washington geology bulletin.
After graduation, she traveled across the country to Ithaca, New York, where she was awarded a scholarship for graduate study at Cornell University. There she met two men who were influential in her life. In 1921, she married Ephraim Laurence Palmer, who earned a Ph.D. from Cornell in 1917. The second man was Cornell professor Gilbert Harris.
In 1932, Harris and Katherine Van Winkle Palmer established the Paleontological Research Institute. From 1952 until 1978, Palmer was the Institute’s Director. They founded two publications and she was integral in the publication of 150 issues of the Bulletin of American Paleontology and 20 issues of Palaeontographica Americana. She was a life trustee of both publications. Her research resulted in more than 150 publications.
Palmer became a fellow of the Geological Society of America in 1935 and an honorary member of the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists in 1966. She was the first female to be awarded the Paleontological Society Medal for her work on Tertiary Mollusca. In 1993, the Paleontological Research Institution established the Katherine Palmer Award for amateur contributions to paleontology. These are but a few of her professional recognitions. Before her death in 1982 she published the first history of the Paleontological Research Institution.
