Katherine Hoffman, ‘Eternal’ Florida State Figure, Dies at 105

She hoped to earn a medical degree from Duke University, but declined to attend on principle after she learned the school ordered female students to sign a pledge not to marry during their studies. Instead, she obtained a master’s in chemistry from Columbia University in 1938 and married her high school sweetheart, Harold Hoffman, who also became a chemist and was Florida’s assistant commissioner of agriculture.

Ms. Hoffman returned to the Florida State College for Women as a chemistry instructor in 1940. In 1947, the school renamed itself and went coeducational to accommodate some of the millions of veterans seeking to attend college after World War II.

Although she did not have a doctorate, Ms. Hoffman thrived in academia, gaining notice for her skills as a teacher and administrator and writing textbooks for Prentice Hall and McGraw-Hill. In 1959, she was promoted to full professor.

When Ms. Hoffman retired, in 1984, it was an occasion to discover new ways to serve her university. She gave lectures on F.S.U.’s history and helped run its sesquicentennial celebration. Following what her son described as moderate donations, the university gave Ms. Hoffman’s name to a scholarship, a lecture series and a teaching laboratory. When the lab was rededicated in 2018, Ms. Hoffman attended the ceremony.

Harold Hoffman died in 1996.

When Ms. Hoffman was 102, her plain-spoken advocacy for women gained a national audience. Outlets including Vox and People carried comments she made to I Waited 96 Years, an initiative to collect interviews with women born before the 19th Amendment who planned in 2016 to vote for a female presidential candidate for the first time.

“This election means that women can achieve anything,” Ms. Hoffman declared.

Well into her 90s, Ms. Hoffman was known to tootle around in a pink Cadillac driven by a fellow nonagenarian. While her son fished for largemouth bass in the Wakulla River, Ms. Hoffman rowed their boat. She hauled gallon jugs of water for the pine trees they had planted.