Easter Ellen Cupp (Fig. 1) authored a book familiar to many of us, Marine Diatoms of the West Coast of North America. It was published in 1943 and is today still regularly cited. Lesser known to most of us is that Cupp was also a remarkable figure in the history of Oceanography. In 1934, she was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in Oceanography in the United States, and probably the first in the world. Perhaps most remarkably, Cupp was very likely the first oceanographer to loose her job because she was a woman. Here an introduction to the life of Easter Ellen Cupp (fig. 1), with a focus on her short but significant, and singular, career in plankton research will be provided based largely on the works by Day (1999, 2002) and Russell (2000).