Her interests allowed her to bond with family members such as her nephew whom she showed evidence of mechanical weathering by plants too along Moine Thrust.
[2] According to the Wimbledon High Digital archive in 1897 Volume No.2 Issue 9, Elles visited Sweden in 1896 by "steamer boat" and ported in Gothenburg, from there she traveled to Lund, Scania.
Life in Lund differed from her experiences in England, such as meals being at 9am, 3pm and 8pm, greetings before dining, and the absence of outdoor extra-curriculars due to the cold weather.
According to the Wimbledon Jubilee Magazine digital archives, in December 1889, in issue number one, Elles was declared the head of the chemistry section in the Natural Science Circle.
During the Oxford and Cambridge board exams held at the school in July of 1890, Elles was one of the students to have scored higher certificates and a Distinction in Geology.
As you look through her life, you see the jack of all trades skills, Including her singing ability in which she performed a vocal solo to "The Sea hath its Pearls".
Gertrude Elles attended Newnham College, University of Cambridge, in 1891 to study Natural Sciences, where she resided at Clough Hall.
[2] According to the Wimbledon High School digital archive in 1893, volume no.1, issue number 5, Elles was a secretary of the Natural Sciences Society, the Clough Hall Flower and a member of the Hockey Club committee.
This led to an accumulation of women, now known as the "Steamboat Ladies", who, between the years of 1904 and 1907, travelled to Dublin to be granted their degrees ad eundem.
She was also awarded the Harkness Scholarship, open to resident members of Newnham and Girton Colleges, which was given out every three years and determined via an exam in Geology and Paleontology.
In the late 1890s, she worked with Ethel Wood on the preparation of British Graptolites, a monograph that was produced in parts over the next twenty years under the general editorship of Professor Charles Lapworth.
[2] Her work on the taxonomy and evolution of graptolites, using material from North Wales and the Skiddaw Slates of the Lake District, England, and from the Wenlock Shales of the Welsh borders, was of fundamental importance.
She routinely attended the Cambridge branch of the Federation, where she met several of her geology acquaintances, and she represented the organization at national gatherings.
With the taxonomy standardized, a detailed biozonal scheme could be established, which, in turn, enabled the global correlation of Lower Palaeozoic rocks.
She was marvellously clear and very, very fierce'"[5] .’Some of the students that she supervised and mentored at Cambridge had significant careers in geology themselves, including Dorothy Hill, Elizabeth "Betty" Ripper and Oliver Bulman.