Women's Work: Scientific Illustration

The Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology has a fantastic online exhibit on Women's Work: Portraits of 12 Scientific Illustrators from the 17th to the 21st Century.

There are a number of pre-20th century women made important contributions to science with their illustrations of the natural world. Their work was often undervalued, at least compared to "real" science. Take, for example, the comments of John Lindley, who was the first Professor of Botany at the University of London and Assistant Secretary to the Royal Horticultural Society:

Because of his passion for his subject and his tremendous influence, he can be credited with shaping the science of botany, but he also took the lead in a movement to divide botanical studies into gender specific categories, identifying certain practices as those acceptable for women such as collecting, painting, and tutoring of children, and reserving true research as masculine science. On April 30, 1829, in his inaugural speech as Professor of Botany, he stated “It has been very much the fashion of late years, in this country, to undervalue the importance of this science, and to consider it an amusement for ladies rather than an occupation for the serious thoughts of men,” establishing a divisive agenda that was felt long afterwards.

It's little wonder that women's contributions to science have been so often forgotten. Exhibits like this help correct that. Here are some of the women that are profiled (be sure to click the links to see the illustrations):

Sarah Drake (1803-1857), who trained as a botanical illustrator under the above-mentioned John Lindley.

Drake was extremely prolific, creating well over 1000 illustrations for the Botanical Register alone. Her career ended when the Botanical Register ceased publication in 1847.

Anna Lister (1671-?), who, along with her sister Susanna, illustrated the publications of her father, Dr. Martin Lister.

As the sisters grew, they would have had the benefit of observing the talented William Lodge engraving their father’s early publications. Some illustrations that he had completed for previous Lister publications were used again in Historiae Conchyliorum and it is likely that he engraved some of the plates from the Listers’ drawings, but after Lodge’s death in 1689, the pair replaced him as their father’s illustrators and engravers for his grand work, as well as for the articles he and others published in the Philosophical Transactions.

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717)

Merian came from the tradition of flower painting, but she was foremost a scientist: she was one of the first to study metamorphosis and one of the first to publish images of tropical plants, the first to understand and describe the relationships between animals along with their host plants. The work produced from her Surinam voyage was remarkably influential.

Elizabeth Gould (1804-1841), who worked with her husband, John Gould, on illustrating the fauna from around the world.

Elizabeth’s greatest adventure began on May 16, 1838. Leaving all but her oldest child with her mother, she and John set sail for Australia. Over the next two years, Elizabeth made hundreds of drawings from specimens for the publications Birds of Australia and A Monograph of the Macropodidæ, or Family of Kangaroos, as well as fifty illustrations for the Ornithology volume of Charles Darwin’s Zoology of the Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle. She also accompanied John into the Australian bush, giving her a thrilling, first-hand glimpse of her subjects.

Anna Maria Hussey (1805-?) was the illustrator and author of Illustrations of British Mycology.

Hussey was a strong willed woman who approached her personal researches with an enthusiasm that she did not quite feel for her role as a clergyman’s wife. She resisted when she was called upon by “every old woman in the parish” and she chafed at her husband’s reminders of her duties. She was a prolific writer, the author of published fiction, as well as the extensive text that accompanied the plates in Illustrations of British Mycology. During her most creative period, she maintained an active and candid correspondence with her mycological mentor, Reverend M. J. Berkley, which provides many details of her daily life and work.

Sarah "Sadie" Price (1849-1903) began as a watercolor teacher, who ended up collecting plants and studying the sciences.

She wrote papers and gave lectures on plants, birds, insects, fishes, shells, clouds and astronomy. Between 1893 and 1907, she penned over forty scientific papers which were published in a variety of popular and scientific journals. She organized and taught classes out of her home. Her nature studies classes were so popular that that they persisted for nearly thirty years after her death.

The exhibit also profiles contemporary scientific illustrators Sally Bensusen, Megan Bluhm, Marlene Hill Donnelly, Bee Gunn, Jessa Huebing-Reitinger, and Yevonn Wilson-Ramsey.

For more botanical illustrations by women, see the web site for the Getty Center exhibit "Maria Sibylla Merian & Daughters: Women of Art and Science"

(via BibliOdyssey)

Image: Illustration by Maria Sibylla Merian of Surinam peppers. "She was fascinated by the interaction of plants and people, taking an approach that today would be called ethnobotany"

Tags: women in science, botany, illustration, Maria Sibylla Merian, Sarah Drake, Anna Lister, Anna Maria Hussey, Sadie Price

Sophie Germain: Mathematical Genius

In 1795 a shy young man by the name of Antoine-August Le Blanc enrolled at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. Le Blanc's brilliance in a mathematics course caught the attention of the class's supervisor, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, because the student had been notorious for his poor math skills. The student eventually was forced to confess the truth to Lagrange: the real Le Blanc had dropped out and, in fact, he was really a she named Sophie Germain.

Germain was the daughter of a merchant whose interest in mathematics was inspired by the reading a history of Archimides, who, legend has it, was killed because he was so focused on studying a geometric figure he failed to hear the questioning of a Roman soldier. Equally fascinated, she taught herself basic number theory and calculus, often studying late into the night. Her parents tried to deter her from her new-found passion by taking away her candles and source of heat, but Sophie continued her studies despite those hardships. Eventually she received her parents' blessing, and her father ended up supporting her research financially.

Her outing to Lagrange turned out to be a blessing:

Lagrange was astonished and pleased to meet the young woman, and became her mentor and friend. At last Sophie Germain had a teacher who could inspire her, and with whom she could be open about her skills and ambitions.

Germain grew in confidence and she moved from solving problems in her course work to studying unexplored areas of mathematics. Most importantly, she became interested in number theory and inevitably she came to hear of Fermat's Last Theorem. She worked on the problem for several years, eventually reaching the stage where she believed she had made an important breakthrough. She needed to discuss her ideas with a fellow number theorist and decided that she would go straight to the top and consult the greatest number theorist in the world, the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss.

Unsure of how Gauss would respond to a woman, she wrote to him using the Le Blanc pseudonym, and under that name continued a regular mathematical correspondence with him. Her true identity was only revealed when she asked a friend who was a General in Napoleon's army to guarantee Gauss's safety during the French invasion of Prussia. Like Legrange, Gauss turned out to readily accept her true identity, writing:

But how to describe to you my admiration and astonishment at seeing my esteemed correspondent Monsieur Le Blanc metamorphose himself into this illustrious personage who gives such a brilliant example of what I would find it difficult to believe. A taste for the abstract sciences in general and above all the mysteries of numbers is excessively rare: one is not astonished at it: the enchanting charms of this sublime science reveal only to those who have the courage to go deeply into it. But when a person of the sex which, according to our customs and prejudices, must encounter infinitely more difficulties than men to familiarize herself with these thorny researches, succeeds nevertheless in surmounting these obstacles and penetrating the most obscure parts of them, then without doubt she must have the noblest courage, quite extraordinary talents and superior genius.

Eventually Gauss broke off his correspondence, and Germain shifted her own research from number theory to applied mathematics and physics, at which she also excelled.

The occasion was the demonstration by a visitor to Paris, one E. F. F. Chladni, of curious patterns produced on small glass plates covered with sand and played, as though the plates were violins, by using a bow. The sand moved about until it reached the nodes, and the array of patterns resulting from the "playing" of different notes caused great excitement among the Parisian polymaths. It was the first "scientific visualization" of two-dimensional harmonic motion. Napoleon authorized an extraordinary prize for the best mathematical explanation of the phenomenon, and a contest announcement was issued.

Sophie Germain's entry was the only one. While it contained mathematical flaws and was rejected, her approach was correct. All the other possible entrants in the contest were prisoners of the ruling paradigm, consideration of the underlying molecular structure theorized for materials. The mathematical methodologies appropriate to the molecular view could not cope with the problem. But Germain was not so encumbered.

With the help of other mathematicians, she reapplied and eventually won the prize. Her paper "Memoir on the Vibrations of Elastic Plates" laid the foundation of the modern theory of elasticity. The prize helped Germain meet other prominent mathematicians and gave her entrance to sessions at the Academy of Sciences and Institut de France, the only woman so honored.

Her old friend Gauss eventually convinced the University of Gottengen to award her an honorary degree, but sadly she lost her two year battle with breast cancer before she could receive it. She was only 55 at the time of her death. She never married.

Despite the awards and honors she received during her lifetime, she was not completely accepted because of her sex. HJ Mozans noted in his 1913 history Women in Science:

All things considered, she was probably the most profoundly intellectual woman that France has ever produced. And yet, strange as it may seem, when the state official came to make out her death certificate, he designated her as a rentière-annuitant [a single woman with no profession]—not as a mathématicienne. Nor is this all. When the Eiffel Tower was erected, in which the engineers were obliged to give special attention to the elasticity of the materials used, there were inscribed on this lofty structure the names of seventy-two savants. But one will not find in this list the name of that daughter of genius, whose researches contributed so much toward establishing the theory of the elasticity of metals—Sophie Germain. Was she excluded from this list for the same reason she was ineligible for membership in the French Academy—because she was a woman? If such, indeed, was the case, more is the shame for those who were responsible for such ingratitude toward one who had deserved so well of science, and who by her achievements had won an enviable place in the hall of fame.

Today there is a street named after her in Paris, and her statue stands in the courtyard of the Ecole Sophie Germain.

More information about Sophie Germain:

• NOVA: The Proof: Math's Hidden Woman
• Sophie Germain: Revolutionary Mathematician
• Biographies of Women Mathematicians: Sophie Germain
• Sophie Germain and Fermat's Last Theorem
• Science News: A Mathematical Tragedy
  

Tags: Sophie Germain, mathematics

Women in Science Link Roundup: October 19 Edition

Here are some links I've been saving in my bookmarks, which explains why some are blog posts from a year ago. Yep, way behind in my reading.

About Women Scientists

The 2008 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics was awarded to Deborah S. Jin

There is a great post on MetaFilter about the women who worked as "computers" for Edward Pickering at the Havard Collge Observatory.

Martin Griffiths wrote for LabLit about 17th century natural philosopher Margaret Cavendish: The feminism, fiction, science and philosophy of Margaret Cavendish

Hsien-Hsien Lei at Eye on DNA lists the most powerful women in biotechnology and healthcare

Wired writes that South Korean astronaut Yi Soyeon is "crazy, sexy, cool"

As a counterpoint to Newsweek's "10 hottest nerds" - who all happen to be male and mostly in the field of genomics - Jonathan Eisen listed a bunch of women in genomics who they could have included on their list.

Life in College

Samia at 49 percent writes about networking as a science undergrad

Marina at Objectify This explained how the depiction of the female reproductive system in one of her classes helped her decide to stop being a biology major:
- I Was A Teenage Feminist
- Fly Sex... and I was a Twentysomething Feminist

ScienceWoman comments on an article by Linda Sax on how men and women experience college differently

The Gender Gap

Pat at Fairer Science has the scoop on the ultimate study on the effct of gender on wages: it looked at what happens to men who changes their gender to women and women who change their gender to men. They found "women who become men (known as FTMs) do significantly better than men who become women (MTFs). MTFs in the study earned, on average, 32% less after they transitioned from male to female, even after the authors controlled for factors like education levels. FTMs earned an average of 1.5% more."

At The Intersection Sheril Kirshenbaum talks about the gender gap in response to emailer "Gabe"

Geeky Mom writes about housework and the gender gap

The Boston Globe reports on a recent study that shows the effect of culture on girls' and womens' math achievement:

The study, to be published in next month's Notices of the American Mathematical Society, identifies women of extraordinary math ability by sifting through the winners of the world's most elite math competitions. It found that small nations that nurtured female mathematicians often produced more top competitors than far larger and wealthier nations.

Lise Eliot and Susan McGee Baily had an opinion piece in USA Today about the (lack of ) gender differences in kids' brains: "Gender segregation in schools isn't the answer" (via Fairer Science)

A study from UNM looked at why many girls avoid math:

Overall, however, parent support and expectations emerged as the top support in both subjects and genders for middle- and high-school students. Also powerful for younger girls were engaging teachers and positive experiences with them.

The study confirmed that old stereotypes die slowly. Both boys and girls perceived that teachers thought boys were stronger at math and science. For boys this represented a support, while for girls it acted as a barrier.

Cognitive Daily had an excellent three part post about recent studies from the journal Psychological Science in the Publish Interest on the "science of sex differences in science and mathematics"

• Why aren't there more women in science and math? Part 1
• Why aren't there more women in science and math? Part 2
• Why aren't there more women in science and math? Part 3
  

Chris at Mixing Memory reviews a paper that looked at wstereotype threat and women in math, science and engineering

Last October Dr. Confused, who has a doctorate in aerospace engineering, had a series of guest posts on Feministe about her experiences in science, the leaky pipeline, gender roles, sexism in everyday professional lives, and being a mom.

Miscellaneous Other Posts

Life v. 3.0 hosted the September Praxis Carnival on "scientific life". The October carnival was hosted by The Other 95%.

Elle, PhD. spots more gendered science kits for kids.

Virginia Gewin writes for NatureJobs about a possible upside to the "two-body problem" of academic couples

Sylvia Ann Hewlett in the Harvard Business Publishing blog: The Glass Cliff : Are women leaders often set up to fail?

In the The Independent's Career Planning section: "Women in science and engineering: Two successful women in science give their views on how to best break the glass ceiling". The two women are Emma Sanderson, director of "value added services" at BT and Anne Miller, "one of the world's most successful female inventors"

The BDPA Foundation writes about a recent survey of Fortune 1000 STEM executives that found "women, African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields and that the result could hurt the nation as a whole." (via The Urban Scientist)

Omaha Science Examiner blogger Meg Marquardt writes about her own experience as a girl interested in science, and science communication.

A father was making a wild attempt to placate a gaggle of second grade girls. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" he asked. There was a litany of typical answers: a teacher, a mom, etc. But I stood up and proudly announced that I was going to be a scientist. The man gave me a stern look over his glasses and very firmly said, "Women ain't scientists." This was my first introduction to ignorance in science communication.

As part of the NatureJobs Podcast series:

The Source Event Part 7
Jan Bogg, Director of the Breaking Barriers Programme at the University of Liverpool, offers advice for women considering a career break, including how to stay in the loop while on maternity leave.

There's also an (old) discussion on the Naturejobs forum about the following questions:

1) Is the tendency for women to prefer people-oriented careers over science inherent or shaped by society?

2) Does anyone think “Title Nining” science is a good idea? Is it fair to punish research institutions if women just aren’t as interested in science as men are? Are there better ways of discouraging sexual discrimination, without discriminating against other successful scientists, both male and female?

Derek Low at In the Pipeline looks at a recent report in Science that followed up on the 1991 members of Yale's Molecular Biology and Biophysics PhD program. Out of 26 PhDs that year, only one of them currently has a tenured academic position.

DrugMonkey on self-perpetuating GoldOldBoys.

Green Gabbro hosted the Carnival of Feminists, and rounded up the science blog discussion about women, sexiness and the workplace.

And speaking of sexiness, Sociological Images posted a commercial featuring a woman scientist who makes a wonderful discovery - a fabulous bra!


Tags: women in science

Portraits of Women Scientists From the Smithsonian

The Smithsonian Institution has been uploading some of their extensive collection of historical photographs to Flickr. One of their sets is a collection of portraits of scientists and inventors. While most of the pictured scientists are bewhiskered men, there are a few women in the set:



Agnes Mary Clerke was born in 1842 in County Clerke, Ireland. While she did not make astronomical observations herself, she instead interpreted and summarized the results of current astronomical research. She was a member of the British Astronomical Association and made an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society. A number of her books are available through Google Books:

• A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century (first published in 1885)
• The System of The Stars (first published 1890)
  
• The Herschels and Modern Astronomy (first published 1895)
• Problems in Astrophysics (first published 1903)
• Modern Cosmogonies (first published 1905)

***

Tatiana Ehrenfest (also known as Tatyana Alexeyevna Afanasyeva and Tatjana Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa) was born in Kiev in 1876. At that time women were not allowed to enroll in the universities in Russia, instead there were special programs which allowed women to take courses in engineering, medicine, and teaching. Tatiana attended such a program in St. Petersburg. She later studied mathematics at the University of Göttingen, where she met her husband, Paul Ehrenfest. In 1912 they moved to Leiden, where Paul succeeded Hendrik Lorentz as a professor at the University of Leiden. They worked closely together and Tatiana published a number of papers on statistical mechanics, entropy and the role of chance in physical processes. She was also interested in methods of teaching mathematics - perhaps it isn't too surprising that one of the Ehrenfests' daughters, Tanja van Aardenne-Ehrenfest, also became a mathematician. A couple of Tatiana's publications:

• Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa T. "On the Use of the Notion "Probability" in Physics" Am. J. Phys. 26: 388 (1958)
  
• Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa T. "Exercises in Experimental Geometry" (originally published in German in 1931). This is a treatise on how to teach geometry to children.
  

***

Last, but certainly not least, is a portrait of Marie Sklodowska Curie, one of the most famous women in physics. She was born in Warsaw in 1867 and received a general education there. She eventually ended up at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she earned degrees in physics and mathematical sciencies - and met her husband, Physics Professor Pierre Curie. The Curies initially worked together in their research on radioactive elements, but after Pierre was killed in an accident in 1906, she continued the research on her own. She shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre and Antoine Becquerel for their "research on the radiation phenomena". Maria Curie also received the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery and characterization of radium. She died in 1934 of aplastic anaemia, likely caused by radiation exposure, missing by only a single year the award of the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to her daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie.

===

The Smithsonian definitely selected portraits of an illustrious group of scientists. There are more portraits in the collection available at “Scientific Identity: Portraits from the Dibner Library”

Tags: women scientists, Agnes Mary Clerke, Tatiana Ehrenfest-Afanaseva, Marie Curie, Smithsonian

Women in Science Link Roundup: August 2 Edition

Here's a bit of what I've been reading the past few weeks, in no particular order:

Martin @ The Lay Scientist is starting a new blog carnival tentatively titled "Carnival of Scientific Life". He wants feedback, so go check out his post. (via Coturnix)

Jake Young at Pure Pedantry looks the variance in boys and girls' math scores in the recent report by Hyde and colleagues. Janet Stemwenel @ Adventures in Ethics and Science also takes a look the latest news about girls, boys and math. There's a discussion of the topic at the NY Times Freakonomics blog (thanks Abby the hacker chick). And don't miss the Onion's "man on the street" look at the news.

NIH has a research supplement grant "to promote re-entry into biomedical and behavioral research careers"

The Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH), participating Institutes and Centers (ICs) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) announce a continuing program for administrative supplements to research grants to support individuals with high potential to re-enter an active research career after a qualifying interruption for family or other responsibilities.

Google has announced their 2008 European Anita Borg Scholars, who received a a scholarship awarded to female students studying computer science, computer engineering, infomatics or related subjects.

The Society of Women Engineers honored Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX0 with the SWE President's Award.

SWE selected Congresswoman Johnson as its first-ever recipient for her efforts to implement the recommendations of the 2006 National Academies report, “Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering,” and promote gender equity in academic science and engineering.

At Crooked Timber Eszter relates an anecdote about a woman professor who wanted the chair of her department to sign off on two students entering her lab. The chair responded that he wasn't sure he could sign off because "how do I know you are not going to meet a man and run off and be with him?" Some people (men?) in the comments are defending the chair because, you know, some women do get married and quit their careers, doncha know.

eduwonkette writes about Gender and Stereotype Threat in Math and Science

GrrlScientists looks at Women, Science, and Publishing Revisited

At Simostronomy Mike Simonsen writes about 19th century astronomer Maria Mitchell.

PhysioProf exposes a sinister conspiracy at the heart of a major scientific society: all four Presidential Special Lecturers at this year's meeting of the Society for Neuroscience are women (Carol A. Barnes, Allison J. Doupe, Catherine G. Dulac, and Leslie C. Griffith). The conspiracy? The president of the Society is Eve Marder, who is (you guessed it!) a woman.

And on a more serious note, PhysioProf also writes about Gender Inequity in Science: Why Legal Remidies are Grossly Inadequate. Be sure to read the discussion in the comments.

Mike Brotherton points to a pretty depressing essay by Phillip Greenspun about why there are fewer women in science than men. His thesis is that there are fewer women in science because women find better jobs.

Having been both a student and teacher at MIT, my personal explanation for men going into science is the following:

1. young men strive to achieve high status among their peer group
2. men tend to lack perspective and are unable to step back and ask the question "is this peer group worth impressing?"

Reading his essay makes me wonder why anyone would ever consider going into science at all.

Drug Monkey posts about the women of MDMA Research.

Dr. Medusa has done a little poking into the statistics about the salaries of women in the US. A woman professor who earns $50,000 per year puts her in the top 13% of income for women in the US, while a $75,000 salary puts a woman in the top 5%.

So assuming the US census bureau knows that they are doing in their Current Population Survey, women science professors are another odd minority: we’re in the top 3-13% of earnings by US women. We work, and we’re wealthy.

FemaleScienceProfessor has some funny answers to the stupid and sexist questions commonly asked of Female Science Professors.

Finally, if you are interested in stories with a heavy dose of science, check out the works of Andrea Barrett. Says commenter Isabel at Feministe:

Andrea Barrett, who is doubly awesome cuz she’s a female fiction writer who writes a lot about science (her undergrad degree was in bio). Check out Ship’s Fever(National Book Award winner, FWIW) for 9 of the cleanest, most elegantly-crafted short stories about naturalists, biologists, and chemists you will ever read.

Tags: women in science

Science and 19th Century American Women

Astronomer Maria Mitchell was born in 1818 into a Quaker family living on the island of Nantucket. Her Quaker family believed in equal education of the sexes, and her father, a school principal, taught her astronomy. She pursued her interest in science, becoming a professor of astronomy at Vassar College in 1865. Her honors included becoming the first woman member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Reneé Bergland's recent biography, Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer Among the American Romantics, takes a look at her life and the attitudes towards women doing science in the 19th century. In an essay for the Beacon Broadside Bergland wrote:

The great surprise for me was that Mitchell faced relatively little bias. In her time, girls were thought of as naturally scientific—and science itself was considered a feminine pastime. The shocks of history can be hard to parse. On one hand, it’s exciting to realize that there was a time (not that long ago) when a girl like the young Maria Mitchell grew up believing that there was nothing preventing her from achieving scientific greatness. On the other hand, it’s a bit discouraging to realize that when I was born in New York City in the late twentieth century, the odds were worse for girls in astronomy than they had been when Mitchell was born on Nantucket more than a hundred and fifty years before.

Not having read Bergland's book, I don't completely follow how the odds for girls interested in pursuing astronomy were so much better 150 years ago. Would an average girl growing up in New York City in the mid-1800s have really have had the same opportunities as Mitchell to pursue science? Probably not, at least according to The Science Education of American Girls: A Historical Perspective, which Bergland links to in her article. While mid-19th century girls seminaries did include chemistry, physics and other science in their curricula, those seminaries were not open to all girls:

In actuality , the opportunity to study the sciences was largely confined to females from wealthy families. Relatively few American girls had either the leisure or financial means to study the sciences during the antebellum era. Some of the textbooks published during the antebellum period reveal the assumptions of contemporaries about the social status of females who engaged in scientific investigation. For example, Ricard G. Parker's Juvenile Philosophy, a popular elementary text, conveys scientific principles through the medium of a mother's conversation with her daughter. The elite status of this pair is implied in their surroundings and apparatus. One illustration depicts the two of them in a well-appointed drawing room, using a gold coin to perform a science experiment [. . .]"

So as long as a girl was from a well-off family, she would be given an education in the sciences, which was seen as naturally feminine subject matter. That is indeed a change from 20th century attitudes that girls are inherently incapable of understanding chemistry and physics. However, it's not clear to me that the education of girls in science necessarily gave them more opportunities to be scientists. Could most women really go beyond pursuing science as an amateur hobby and expect to have a career? And could a woman who wanted to marry and have children pursue her scientific interests?

As for Mitchell, she strove to improve the status of women in the sciences.

Throughout her career, Mitchell stressed the importance of women being hired for professional jobs, paid fairly, and encouraged rather than discouraged. Regarding the proportion of women faculty, she once asked, “Do you know of any case in which a boy’s college has offered a professorship to a woman? Until you do, it is absurd to say that the highest learning is within the reach of women.” Regarding pay, one of Mitchell’s students, Anna Brackett commented, “The indignant protest” with which she “called for an equal salary, was not a personal affair. She flamed out on behalf of all women, and of abstract justice.” As for efforts to encourage women, the New York Times reported in 1881, “The question of equality of the sexes is one that does not naturally disturb such a woman. She merely says if women are regarded as equals, in mental capacity, they should have equal advantages, and if considered inferior, they should be given better chances.” Her words hold true today, too. Women need better chances because, as Mitchell put it, “Science needs women.”

It's an interesting topic, and I think I'll have to find a copy of Bergland's book to learn more.

(via Green Gabbro, who also has some links about women and geology)
More books about Maria Mitchell.
Tags: women in science, astronomy, Maria Mitchell

Vote for the "most celebrated female scientist of all time"

L'Oréal's For Women in Science Program is sponsoring a new UK website where you can vote for the most influential woman scientist. The candidates span more than a thousand years* and a wide range of scientific specialties:

• Mary Anning (1799-1847), paleontologist and "the greatest fossilist the world ever knew"
  
• Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923), mathematician, electrical engineer and suffragette
  
• Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943- ), astrophysicist who discovered the first radio pulsars
  
• Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910), first woman to graduate from medical school
• Linda Buck (1947-), biologist who helped figure out how the human olfactory (smell) system works
• Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941), astronomer who studied the spectra of the stars
  
• Rachel Carson (1907-1964), biologist who campaigned for the environment
  
• Gerty Cori (1896-1957), biochemist who studied energy metabolism in the human body
  
• Marie Curie (1867-1934), physicist and chemist who studied radioactivity
  
• Ann Dowling, professor of mechanical engineering who works on "boys stuff - aeroplanes, submarines and oil exploration"
• Gertrude Elion (1918-1999), innovative pharmacologist who produced new drugs for leukemia, malaria, and herpes
  
• Dian Fossey (1932-1985), expert of the great apes in Rwanda, who was murdered because by poachers
  
• Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958), X-ray crystallographer whose work was important in determining the structure of DNA
• Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917), pioneering physician and campaigner for women's rights
• Sophie Germain (1776-1831), mathematician who was forced to take on the identity of a man
  
• Maria Goeppert Mayer (1906-1977), physicist who studied the structure of the atomic nucleus
  
• Jane Goodall (1934- ), expert on chimpanzee behavior and advocate for wildlife conservation
  
• Alice Hamilton (1969-1970), doctor and social reformer who founded the science of occupational medicine
• Caroline Herschel (1750-1848), astronomer who discovered comets and stars, first woman (along with Mary Somerville) awarded membership in the Royal Society
• Grace Hopper (1906-1992), pioneer computer scientist and Rear Admiral in the US Navy
  
• Dorothy Hodgkin (1910-1994), one of the main founders of protein crystallography
  
• Hypatia of Alexandria (370-415), mathematician and astronomer who was killed by a mob, who "felt threatened by her scholarship and scientific knowledge"
  
• Irene Joliot-Curie (1897-1956), daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie who discovered artificially created radioactivity
  
• Hedy Lamarr (1913-2000), actress and inventor of "frequency hopping" method that is used in modern communication technology
  
• Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909 - ), biologist who first isolated nerve grown factor
• Kathleen Lonsdale (1903-1971), crystallographer and first woman elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
• Ada, Countess Lovelace (1915-1852), founder of scientific computing
• Barbara McClintock (1902-1992), geneticist who discovered "jumping genes"
  
• Anne McLaren (1927-2007), geneticist who "paved the way for development of in vitro fertilisation"
• Lise Meitner (1878-1968), physicist who described nuclear fission
• Maria Mitchell (1818-1889), pioneering astronomer
  
• Christiane Nusslein Volhard (1942 - ), developmental biologist and Director of the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Biology
• Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), nurse and noted statistician, who was the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society
  
• Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (1900-1979), astronomer who showed the sun is mainly composed of hydrogen
  
• Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), respected mycologist and children's book author
  
• Emily Roebling (1844-1903), "silent engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge"
  
• Nancy Rothwell (1957- ), neuroscientist who studies brain injury
  
• Mary Somerville (1780-1872), "the first popular science writer"
  
• Rosalyn Yalow (1921-), "medical physicist" who "won a Nobel prize for her work developing the radioimmunoassay technique"
  

I think it's hard to compare the Nobel Prize winners (Buck, Cori, Curie, Elion, Goeppert Mayer, Hodgkin, Joliet-Curie, Levi-Montalcini, McClintock, Nusslein Volhard, Yalow), to the 19th and 20th century women who were social activists as well as scientists. You can make your choice at www.womeninscience.co.uk**

* But mostly from the 19th and 20th centuries.

** I can't actually get the "Vote Now" button to work. Maybe the site doesn't like Macs? or maybe you have to be in the UK? I don't know.

(via The Telegraph)
Image: "Miss Mary Anning, the celebrated geologist of Lyme Regis"
Tags: women in science

Women Astronomers: Reaching For the Stars - An Interview with Mabel Armstrong

Women Astronomers: Reaching for the Stars is a recently released young adult book that looks at female astronomers from Hypatia to Wendy Freedman. It's the first book in a planned series on "Discovering Women in Science". Author Mabel Armstrong personally experienced the difficulty of being a woman with an interest in pursuing a career in science. From her biography:

Ignoring teachers and counselors who discouraged her interest in science, Mabel majored in chemistry in college where she was often the only girl in a 200-student lecture room. When interviewed by a major petroleum company after graduation, she was told, “Women are not allowed in the laboratories, they work in the library doing patent searches.? An international food products company said, “You have just the training we’re looking for, but we know women marry and leave. So we don’t hire women.”

She ended up teaching chemistry for 25 years.

Ms. Armstrong kindly agreed to answer some questions about Women Astronomers and her personal experiences in chemistry.

What made you decide to start a series of books on women scientists?

MA: Despite my struggles with people and the system, I love the science. It is such a rewarding career, I wanted more women to consider opting for the sciences. In a book series, I wanted to show readers - particularly middle-school girls - that women have been doing history from pre-history on. They have just fallen off the radar screen. I thought if I could show readers how exciting and satisfying science careers can be, and that the women profiled all loved what they did and are doing, that readers would think, "Gee, I could do that, too."

• Are there any women scientists in who inspired you when you were a young woman becoming interested in science?

MA: With the exception of Marie Curie, I didn't know the names of any women scientists. I think if I had known that history was full of women who studied science, often on their own, I might have made some different decisions.

• It says in your biography that despite people who discouraged you, you studied chemistry in college where you were often the only woman in the classroom. Did you ever consider majoring in biology instead, since there are usually a higher percentage of women in bioscience courses than physical science courses?

MA: I enjoyed the chemistry much more than the life sciences. I realize now that may have been because my high school chemistry teacher was much more inspiring than the life sciences one. But it may also be that chemistry seemed more ordered and predictable than biology. I wasn't squeamish about dissections. I just liked chemistry better. I also realize, just now, that the smartest kids took chemistry. Hmmmmm. Maybe that attracted me. You may not want to say that.

[I'm pretty sure the smartest kids at my school studied chemistry and biology, but I may be a wee bit biased.]

• Your biography also mentions that you had difficulty finding a job in industry after graduating, because companies were reluctant to hire a woman. Do you mind sharing when you graduated? Did the negative attitudes towards women in industry influence your decision to go into teaching?

MA: I went into teaching because I got married and ended up moving to Oregon. I got married because that's what women did in the 60s. There were no jobs for chemists, male or female, in Eugene, Oregon in the 60s.

• How did your teaching experience influence the way Reaching for the Stars was written?

MA: My teaching experience caused me to write the book. When I began teaching, women in my classes were denied admission to veterinary schools. A few years later, they were only denied admission to 'large-animal veterinary' programs. Finally, they were accepted to all programs. Many science professional schools followed that same path - not admitting women until the mid to late 70s. That means there are few women in senior teaching levels.
I found that my students often internalized their rejection. They 'just weren't good enough.' I want to show them that the women are out there, they just haven't made it through the pipeline yet. And that wanting to do science doesn't make you weird, or unfeminine.

• Your target audience is high school students. Is there a reason why you selected that age group, instead of younger girls or college students?

MA: I'm actually hopeful that my main reader will be a 12-year old girl. That would be early enough for her to make the necessary decisions about keeping on with her math and science classes so she's well prepared by the time she graduates high school.

• Your background is in chemistry, so I'm interested in why you chose to write your first book about astronomers instead of chemists. Do you have a special interest in astronomy, or was this a marketing decision?

MA: I think one of the errors western science made during the Renaissance was the rigid separation of the sciences. All sorts of discoveries are now pushing them closer to each other. But that produces problems for me in trying to figure out how to package each book in the series I want to do. So, astronomy seemed a logical start, both alphabetically, and because it is pretty cleanly defined. And it lets me avoid the packaging issue. Turns out, it was an inspired choice because it is so wonderfully graphic - and lots of the graphics are available from NASA. I also think it is one of the more exciting sciences right now, and the media are give good coverage to discoveries. I think the TV science fiction series also spur interest in astronomy.

• WomenAstronomers.com is a companion site to the book that has information both about women in astronomy and astronomy in general. What made you decide to have a companion web site? Is the target audience also high school students?

MA: The web site, WomenAstronomers.com was actually conceived of as primarily a marketing tool. People seem to want more information about authors these days. And it gives me a chance to make available things like press information.

I also wanted to be able to update information on the young women astronomers I've highlighted as Rising Stars in the book, as well as providing information about ways to get involved with amateur astronomy groups around the world.

Finally, I hoped some of the site might actually function as a resource for science teachers. Haven't gotten that part worked out very well yet.

• What is the next book that is planned in the "Discovering Women in Science" series?

MA: The next book, which I'm currently working on, is on chemists.

• Your biography also mentions you enjoy science fiction. Me too! Were (or are) there any particular science fiction authors or books that inspired or excited you?

MA: One of my favorite writers is (was?) John Brunner. I love his extrapolations and his political bent, which matches mine. I like Sherri Tepper and Ursula Le Guin. I'm not much on fantasy, but I do like Judith Tarr. Hmmm do we see a pattern here? To finish the pattern, have you seen Suzette Haden Elgin's Native Tongue and The Judas Rose?

[Yes, definitely a pattern there. I haven't read any of Elgin's novels, but Native Tongue is on my much-too-long "want to read" list.]

Thanks to Mabel for an interesting interview!

For more information, check out The Woman Astronomer.

Tags: women in science, Women Astronomers, Mabel Armstrong

The Hidden Giants: 4000 Years of Women in Science

Science is a traditional role for women. For over 4,000 years of written history women have participated in this great human adventure. Science an technology are neither new nor difficult for women any more than they are for men. The stories of many of our scientists do not form part of our instruction in science from kindergarten through college. Missing from out textbooks and data are the fundamental contributions of scientists, both male and female, but especially female. Female creativity and genius fill our technical past. The stories of these women not only provide role models for future scientists, but also they strengthen and broaden our ability to deal with the present.
- Preface to The Hidden Giants

Dr. Sethanne Howard has let me know about her book, The Hidden Giants, which is based on her excellent web site, 4000 Years of Women in Science.

Dr. Howard knows firsthand what it's like to be a female scientist. In 1965 she became the first woman to receive a physics degree from the University of California at Davis, and went on to receive a PhD in astrophysics from Georgia State University. She recently retired as Chief of the Nautical Almanac Office at the US Naval Observatory. You can listen to a brief interview with Howard on the January 2nd, 2007 episode of The Current on CBC Radio (Part 3, starting at about 16:00).

The Hidden Giants is available through Amazon.com and Lulu.com, which also has a downloadable e-book version. A preview of the text is available on Google books.

Tags: Sethanne Howard, The Hidden Giants, women in science, women's history

Reaching for the Stars

On this first day of 2008, I'm reflecting a bit, so forgive my rambling. While there seem to be more and more programs to encourage girls who are interested in the sciences in engineering, old attitudes about the aptitude (or more accurately, inaptitude) of women in technical fields seem to be a long time in dying.

Exhibit A: Desmond Morris has written a follow-up book of sorts to his 40-year old bestseller, The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal. The new book, The Naked Man: A study of the male body, is a "celebration of the human male"*. As the Guardian reviewer Michael Hanlon puts it:

Try to name history's top ten women artists, scientists, composers, dictators, heroines or explorers. You can probably trawl your mind and come up with a few examples - especially in those categories involving humane work.

I can think of Marie Curie, Rosamund "DNA" Franklin and the astronomer Jill Tarter (who runs an alien-detection institute and discovered dwarf stars). We've had Boudicca (vanquisher of the Romans) and Margaret Thatcher (who gave the Argentines an equally bloody nose). Also, arguably, our three greatest monarchs have been queens, not kings.

But, by and large, the inescapable conclusion is that the history of humanity is the history of man, not of woman.

For every great woman there have been 100 - even 1,000 - great men in the same field.

[snip]

If war and sport hunting had become the only two ways in which the male brain could respond to the emasculation brought about by the farming era, then we would truly have been in trouble. But, happily, there is another side to the male brain.

That is its creativity combined with curiosity. The ability to concentrate and cooperate towards a long-term goal, an ability forged in the primeval chase, could be put to good use.

The result was the fascinating development of human society: buildings and roads, technology and art, music and literature, the whole of science and industry.

These are all, Morris argues, great fruits of the human male brain.

He says: "The human male has had the most impact on the planet than any other life form. Women are responsible and men are more playful and it is this playfulness that is our species' greatest achievement."

It's not clear from the review whether it was the practical, incurious, and stick-in-the-mud human female who invented the "emasculating" technology of farming, which would suggest that that important development in human civilization apparently doesn't count as a significant achievement. I'll probably never find out, since I can't imagine getting through the first chapter without hurling the book across the room. (Echidne has a longer discussion of Morris' thesis)

As the review points out, Morris has missed an obvious point:

As for Morris's thesis about the superiority of the male, it is undoubtedly true that most of the great technical and artistic advances achieved by humanity have been made by men.

But this may not be because women are less creative than men. There are other reasons. Today, it is hard to understand what it must have been like in the world of even a century ago, a world where women could not vote, where they found it almost impossible to go to university, own property independently of their husbands or, even in most classes, to learn to read and write.

As a result, it is perhaps not surprising that the majority of the world's great artists, scientists and so on have been men.

Morris's thesis can only truly be tested in about 300 years' time, when a proper assessment of human history can be made based on three centuries of sexual equality.

I'd argue that Hanlon didn't go far enough, since books like The Naked Man make it clear that we're still working towards the point where men and women are considered to be intellectual equals.

What really bothers me is that information about women who were discouraged from pursuing science - or who did pursue scientific research, but seem to be little known by the general public - is readily available. It also seems clear to me that many women who have pursued scientific research had unique family circumstances that helped make them exceptions in the male world of science. For example, the November/December issue of American Scientist has a brief article about Caroline Herschel, sister of astronomer William Herschel (discoverer of Uranus).

With few career options open to women of her time, her desperate wish was to achieve sufficient education to become a governess teaching music and literature. Her father was sympathetic to the idea, but her mother dismissed it. As a result, her father's death in 1767 condemned Caroline to be little more than a teenage drudge in the family kitchen. When William invited her to join his musical world in Bath she leapt at the opportunity.

As William Herschel developed an interest in astronomy and endeavored to build his own large telescope, Caroline joined him in his studies. While William gained fame (and the position of Astronomer Royal) from his discovery of the new planet, Caroline pursued her own astronomical observations.

Caroline Herschel now faced a choice: whether to continue her career as a singer or to “serve” her brother as his scientific assistant. She chose the latter and was appointed by the court as a qualified assistant with a salary of 50 pounds per year – the first salary that a woman had ever received for scientific work.

Now Caroline began her own astronomical research, specializing in the search for comets. Between 1786 and 1797 she discovered eight of them. Whole nights through she worked with her brother observing the heavens, noting the positions of the stars as he called them to her from the other end of the giant telescope that they had built themselves. She evaluated the nocturnal notations and recalculated them, wrote treatises for Philosophical Transactions, discovered fourteen nebulae, calculated hundreds more, and began a catalogue for star clusters and nebular patches. In addition she compiled a supplemental catalogue to Flamsteeds Atlas which included 561 stars, as well as a comprehensive index to it. For this work she was paid the highest tribute by Gauss and Encke, among others.

In 1828 she received the Gold Medal from Royal Astronomical Society, the last woman to be so honored until Vera Rubin received the prize in 1996. She was made an honorary member of the society in 1835. While Herschel was recognized for her discoveries, there were likely many more women over the centuries who have had an interest in the stars, but no wealthy brother with similar interests to give them the opportunity to pursue astronomical research**.

The bright side is the growing recognition that women and men have similar ability and interest in science, math and engineering. Hopefully, more women will find the doors open to them, whether their dream is studying the stars, digging in the dirt or building machines.

Happy 2008!

* Morris has also published The Naked Woman: A Study of the Female Body, in which "each chapter, which correlates to body parts as subtle as the brow and as expected as the breasts, examines how each characteristic has been shaped by social authority." So apparently women = body parts, while men = playful hunters and innovators.

** If you are interested in this topic, and in the London area, mark your calendar for May 13th. On that day Dr. Mary Bruck of the University of Edinburgh will be giving a free public lecture at the Royal Astronomical Society on "The fascination of the heavens: women in astronomy in Britain in an age before equality"

Tags: Desmond Morris, The Naked Man, Caroline Herschel, women in science

Victorian Woman Doctors

The Wellcome Trust has put it's database of medical images - historical and contemporary - online. There is a lot of cool imagery that is as much art as science. Not surprisingly since it's a medicine-related database, there aren't many images of scientists or engineers. However, there are many images of physicians, including a couple from the Victorian era that joke about "lady doctors".

Education of women in medicine was a new idea in the Victorian era. Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake and several other women ("The Edinburgh Seven") had been given permission to attend classes at the Edinburgh medical school in 1869. This was a controversial move:

Doctors, professors and the public had strong feelings about the women's medical education, about whether they should be allowed practical experience in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, and whether they should be eligible for degrees. The debate spilled over from the pages of The Times and The Scotsman onto the streets one November afternoon in 1870. A crowd of hundreds gathered near Surgeons' Hall where the women were to take an anatomy examination. They were heckled and had rubbish thrown at them, but Jex-Blake refused to slip away afterwards by a side door. This incident has become known as the "Surgeons' Hall Riot". Later, the Sheriff fined three "disorderly" students £1 each for "breach of the peace".[4] Jex-Blake said the young men had been encouraged by a teaching assistant, but lost when he sued her for defamation.

That was the background for this comic in Punch by Gerald Du Maurier (click for larger version) which was published in August 1870. It depicts a bunch of men - probably lower class based on their accent - willing to do anything for an attractive women, even work for her as nurses.

OUR PRETTY DOCTOR

Dr. Arabella "Well, my good friends, what can I do for you!"

Bill, "Well, Miss, it's all along o' me and my mates bein' out o' work, yer see, and wantin' to turn an honest penny hanyways we can; so 'avin' 'eard tell as you was a risin' young medical practitioner, we thought as p'raps you wouldn' t mind just a recommendin' of hus as nurses."

I'm not sure if Punch is mocking the idea of female doctors or of men who would do anything for a pretty lady (or both).

The second picture (click for larger picture) is an undated woodcut that has a old lady complaining about the gentility of female doctors. The way she complains is pretty funny though. She also is talking in dialect - Scottish maybe? - which probably has some social significance that I'm missing.

"WHEN PAIN AND ANGUISH WRING THE BROW"

The Minister. "Well, Janet, how did you like your new Doctor, Dr. Elizabeth Squills!"

Janet. "Weel, Sir, only pretty well. Ye see, Sir, Dr. Elizabeth isn't so leddylike as some of ain men Doctors!"

The Edinburgh Seven lost their battle to graduate when in 1873 the Court ruled that the University had the right to refuse the women their degrees - and noted that they should not have been admitted in the first place. Five of the seven were eventually granted medical degrees abroad, in Bern or Paris. Finally, in 1876, there was new legislation that enabled examining bodies (if they so desired) to treat candidates of both sexes equally. Jex-Blake set a practice in Edinburgh in 1878 and helped found the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women.

Margaret Todd (1859-1918) was one of the first students at the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women. She took eight years to complete the four year course, spending part of her time writing a novel, Mona Maclean, Medical Student. When the book was published in 1892 under the pseudonym Graham Travers, the magazine Punch didn't care much for the medical bits, but likes it when Mona behaves in a "womanly" manner :

"My Baronite has been reading Mona Maclean, Medical Student. (Blackwood.) "It is," he tells me, "a Novel with a purpose—no recommendation for a novel, more especially when the purpose selected is that of demonstrating the indispensability of women-doctors." Happily Graham Travers, as the author (being evidently a woman) calls herself, is lured from her fell design. There is a chapter or two of talk among the girls in the dissecting-room and the chemical laboratory, with much about the "spheno-maxillary fossa," the "dorsalis pedis," and the general whereabouts of "Scarpa's triangle." But these can be skipped, and the reader may get into the company of Mona Maclean when she is less erudite, and more womanly. When not dissecting the "plantar arch," Mona is a bright, fearless, clever girl, with a breezy manner, refreshing to all admitted to her company. The episode of her shopkeeping experience is admirably told, and affords the author abundant and varied opportunity of exercising her gift of drawing character. Mona Maclean is, apparently, a first effort at novel-writing. The workmanship improves up to the end of the third volume; and Miss Travers' next book will be better still.

The passage on the dissecting room actually sounds like a bit of fun to me.

It was the luncheon-hour, and the winter term was drawing to a close. The dissecting-room was deserted by all save a few enthusiastic students who had not yet wholly exhausted the mysteries of Meckel's ganglion, the branches of the internal iliac, or the plantar arch. For a long time a hush of profound activity had hung over the room, and the silence had been broken only by the screams of a parrot and the cry of the cats'-meat-man in the street below ; but by degrees the demoralising influence of approaching holidays had begun to make itself felt; in fact, to be quite frank, the girls were gossiping.

It was the dissector of Meckel's ganglion who began it. "If you juniors want a piece of advice," she said, laying down her forceps,—" a thing, by the way, which you never do want, till an examination is imminent, and even then you don't take it,—you may have it for nothing. Form a clear mental picture of the spheno-maxillary fossa. When you have that, the neck of anatomy is broken. Miss Warden, suppose, just to refresh all our memories, you run over the foramina opening into the spheno-maxillary fossa, and the structures passing through them."

The dissector of the plantar arch groaned. "Don't I" she entreated in assumed desperation. "With the examination so near, it makes me quite ill to be asked a question. I should not dare to go up, if Miss Clark were not going."

"I should not have thought she was much stand-by."

" Oh, but she is ! If she passes, I may hope to. I was dissecting the popliteal space the other day, and she asked me if it was Scarpa's triangle ! "

A murmur of incredulity greeted this statement.

It's not just anatomy. Mona and her friend Lucy also chit-chat about organic chemistry.

"I was at the School to-day," Mona went on.

"Were you really? It must have been horrid going back."

"It was very horrid to find the organic solutions in the chemical laboratory at such a low ebb. But I suppose they will be filled up again for the summer term."

"Oh, you know all those stupid old tests ! "

"It is precisely the part of the examination that I am most afraid of. I have not your luck—or power of divination. Why don't they ask us to find whether a hydroxyl group is present in a solution, or something of that kind ?"

"Thank heaven, they don't ! "

"I wonder what a scientific chemist would say, if he were asked to identify two organic mixtures in an hour and a half ! "

"I did it in half an hour."

"Yes, but how ? By tasting, and guessing, and adding I in KI, or perchloride of iron."

Lucy helped herself to more potato.

"I seem to have heard these sentiments before," she said.

Mona laughed. "Yes ; and you are in a fair way to hear them pretty frequently again, unless you keep out of my way for the next four months."

I guess it would never pass for chick lit, but it's refreshing to read about a female character who sounds like a real science (or medical) student.

Todd only practiced medicine for five years, focusing on novel writing. She lived with Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake, her romantic partner, and published Jex-Blake's biography in 1918, shortly before her own death.

Related: Listen to BBC4's Woman's Hour Drama, "Famous people in Hastings: Sophia Jex-Blake."

Tags: Victorian women, Sophia Jex-Blake, Margaret Todd, female doctors, Edinburgh