page_title: Helen Belyea
section_title: Early life and education
hierarchical_section_title: Helen Belyea / Early life and education
context_page_description: Helen Reynolds Belyea, OC FRSC, was a Canadian geologist best known for her research, in Western Canada, of the Devonian System, a geologic period of the Paleozoic era.
context_section_description: Belyea was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, to a family with French Huguenot origins.
  Belyea received both her Bachelor's and master's degrees in Geology from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia; she earned a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Her doctoral thesis was titled "The Geology of Musquach Area, New Brunswick." Before she devoted herself to geology, Belyea worked as a high school teacher and served as a lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Navy.
caption: Northwestern University is where Belyea earned her PhD from in 1939