Depictions of 20th Century Women in Science: The Smithsonian Collection

There's an interesting post on the National Museum of American History's blog by Arthur Molella about the way women are portrayed interacting with technology and science in 20th century photographs. Molella has focused on the images in the Smithsonian's Science Service Historical Image Collection, which distributed photographs to mainstream media outlets such as newspapers and magazines. One thing he noticed was that the women rarely appeared to be actively involved in scientific pursuits:

While there are literally hundreds of photographs of white-coated male researchers making or using scientific instruments, there are almost none of women doing comparable things. Rather, women are invariably passive or admiring observers. In other words, females are shown dominated by rather than in charge of technology.

Science Service images were typical of those presented by other contemporary media, save for the occasional movie about Madame Curie. None of this means, of course, that women did not play active roles in science and technology over the last two centuries. On the contrary, at the Lemelson Center we have uncovered ample evidence of significant female contributions. But, given the skewed nature of the visual record, we have had to work very hard to find this evidence. While image isn’t everything, it counts for a lot in today’s visual culture.

But that's not the end of the story. At The Bigger Picture, the Smithsonian's photography blog, Effie Kapsalis of the Smithsonian Photography Initiative was a bit surprised by Molella's observations, so did a little digging and discovered that the :

After giving a call over to [Smithsonian Institution Archives], I found out that when the Science Service records were transferred to the Smithsonian during the 1970s (over 500 boxes!), records were distributed throughout SI depending on their relevancy to a museum’s expertise and mission. So, for example, any material dealing with the history electrical innovation and invention went to the Division of Electricity and Modern Physics at what was then named the National Museum of History and Technology (now NMAH). Other parts of the Science Service records followed, going to other NMAH curatorial divisions, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, National Museum of Natural History, National Portrait Gallery, and the Smithsonian Institution Archives. The women in the photos at the Lemelson Center indeed look more like early 20th century Vanna White’s then the women in the SIA records.

So the photos of actual women scientists were there in the initial collection. It does make me curious as to which images media outlets chose to run, but at least they had the option of choosing photos of women who weren't just admiring their reflections in the shiny equipment. (And as a side note, I think this exchange really exemplifies one of the advantages that news on the web has over news in the print media. If Molella's post had been a sidebar in a magazine, I likely wouldn't have seen the rest of the story.)

Kapsalis was familiar with the full extent of the Smithsonian's photo collection because they've been posting some amazing images of women in science on Flickr in honor of Women's History Month. Here's the collection's description:

Throughout March 2009, SIA will post groups of photographs showing women scientists and engineers at work; women trained in science and engineering who worked outside the laboratory as librarians, writers, political activists, or in other areas where their work informed or was informed by science; family research collaborators who assisted their scientist husbands and fathers; and several images for which we have little descriptive information to which we invite you to contribute!

There are images of physcist Katharine Burr Bodgett (1989-1979), botanist Mary Agnes Chase (1869-1963), herpetologist Doris Mable Cochran (1898-1968), neuroanatomist Elizabeth Caroline Crosby (1888-1983), astronomer Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941), biologist Muriel A. Case (1901-1981), geneticist Estrella Eleanor Carothers (1883-1957), biochemist Mary Van Renssalaer Buell (1893-1969), physiologist Elizabeth M. Bright (at Harvard Medical School in the 1920s), and physicist Maria Goeppert-Meyer dressed to the nines and being escorted by King Gustav Adolf of Sweden at the 1963 Nobel Prize banquet (she looks understandably a bit stunned). As the description of the set suggests, not every photo is of a scientist, there's also test pilot Jacqueline Cochran, nurse Josephine Fountain (inventor of the "Direct Suction Tracheotomy Tube"), and science journalist Marjorie MacDill Breit, among many others.

It's so nice to see that the set is not at all dominated by the most well-known women scientists, like Marie Curie. It is interesting, though, that few of the women are wearing white lab coats or other "typical" laboratory or field gear. I've seen scientists having their photos taken for publicity shots and I know the photographer often ends up making the setting quite artificial (PI in pristine lab coat holding up a sequencing gel or other film while artfully arranged reagent bottles sparkle in the background seemed to be a popular one), so it's hard to know how representative they are of what these women usually dressed when they were working. Most look like they are enjoying themselves, though, and I think that's all natural.

Here are a few I especially liked - some as much for their descriptions as the images.

Image: Wanda Margarite Kirkbride Farr (b. 1895) sitting lab with microscope

Description: Wanda Margarite Kirkbride (b. 1895) was completing graduate work in chemistry at Columbia University when she met and married Clifford Harrison Farr. When Clifford died in 1928, while they were living in St. Louis, Wanda Farr carried on with her research and eventually became Director of the Cellulose Laboratories at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research in Yonkers, New York, doing pioneering work on cellulose synthesis and plastids.

(I wonder if the spiffy hat was part of her usual lab attire. I suspect not.)

Image: Mary Blade, standing at blackboard

Description: In 1946, when this photograph was taken, Mary Blade was the only woman on the Cooper Union engineering faculty (where she initially taught drawing, mathematics and design) and one of few women on any engineering faculty in the United States. Blade was an avid and accomplished mountain climber.

Image: Cornelia Maria Clapp (1849-1934), sitting at desk

Description: Ichthyologist Cornelia Maria Clapp (1849-1934) earned both the first (Syracuse, 1889) and second (Chicago, 1896) biology doctorates awarded to women in the United States. She spent most of her career as professor of biology at Mount Holyoke College and, every summer, continued her research on fish development at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole.

Go browse the whole set. And also check out the posts at The Bigger Picture by a couple of the archivists who helped assemble the Flickr collection: Mary Markey on "Adventures in the Morgue" and Ellen Alers on "Formidable: Women in Science".

(via ScienceWoman)

Tags: women in science, photographs, Smithsonian

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

Blog Roll Update

More women blogging about science and engineering:

Engineering

(Female) Assistant Engineering Professor says:

I'm an assistant Engineering Professor starting down the tenure track road this year (2008). And I'm female. As my life is becoming exponentially hectic, I thought that my experiences might be helpful to others, and other's advice might be helpful to me.

Angineer is written by Angie in Colorado:

A female professional engineer who defines herself by the groups and activities she joins--I am a leader in the Society of Women Engineers, adult Girl Scout volunteer, and proud sorority alumna and adviser.

Physical Sciences

The Musings of a Life Long Scholar: A new blog by geologist Life Long Scholar, which is about "musing about her love of learning and the joys of life in the sciences."

One Astronomer's Noise is the blog of Nicole, "Astronomy grad student, skeptic, atheist, libertarian, and belly dancer."

Life Sciences

The Minority Scientist blog has two goals:

*Share useful information to assist minorities, including women and underrepresented peoples, in science navigate a career in scientific research.
* Explore the world of science through the eyes of a single parent pursuing a Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences.

A Neotropical Savanna is the blog of Mary Farmer:

The posts in this blog are my own experience working through the learning of plants in the area where I now live. Even though this area happens to be in Panama, the principles I use for learning these plants apply to the learning of all plants. Most interesting may be the mistakes I make! And I make plenty, believe me.

Farmer also runs the web site Learn Plants Now!

Microbiologist XX says she is "finishing my PhD in microbiolgy. This consumes most of my time. I also enjoy listening to music, reading, laughing at my cats and shopping for shoes."

S. of More Than a Permanent Student is in grad school studying ecology.

Tags: women in science, women in engineering, blogs

Ice Stories

The Exploratorium has collected a bunch of blogs under the heading "Ice Stores: Dispatches from Polar Scientists", which showcases scientists working at the poles. Not surprisingly the research is seasonal: scientists work in Antarctica during the Northern Hemisphere's winter (so summer at the South Pole), while research in the Arctic is going on now. A number of women scientists are part of the effort.

In the Arctic:

• Anne Jensen "lives and works in Barrow, Alaska. Anne’s field studies have taken her throughout much of Alaska for the past 25 years. Her research in human adaptation in the Arctic includes a long-term project at the prehistoric village site of Nuvuk, where the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas come together. Historic Nuvuk is also the site of a 1,000-year-old burial ground. Hundreds of gravesites are endangered there by erosion, which sometimes removes 50 feet of coastal frontage in a single storm."
• Amy Breen "has studied the impacts of climate change on Arctic plant communities for nearly a decade. She is a PhD candidate in the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska, and a member of a team of circumpolar scientists participating in the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX). In July 2008, she’ll begin blogging from the Toolik Field Station, her field site in the northern foothills of the Brooks Range in Alaska."
• Laura Thomas "is an archaeologist and full-time resident of Barrow, Alaska. As the Field and Lab Director for the Nuvuk Archaeology Project, Laura devotes her time to the long-term excavation of a 1,000-year-old burial ground significantly threatened by erosion. Born and raised amongst the rich geological history of Ontario, Canada, Laura has held a lifelong interest in prehistory and how past peoples adapted to their environments. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto, and describes her archaeological work in the Arctic as 'living the dream.'"
• Zoe Courville "studies snow and ice in polar regions. She received her PhD in material science from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College in 2007. She is currently employed as a research mechanical engineer at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab in Hanover, New Hampshire. She loves working in the polar ice caps and sharing her experiences with others."

In the Antarctic:

• Cassandra Brooks "is a graduate student in Marine Science at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) in California who has studied Antarctic marine resources for the last four years both at MLML and with the Antarctic Marine Living Resources Program (AMLR). Cassandra’s work focuses on life history and population structure of Antarctic toothfish. Her goal is to provide information on their age, growth, and spatial distribution in order to facilitate sustainable management of this important Antarctic species."
• Christina Riesselman "has traveled to Antarctica three times in pursuit of fossil diatoms that can unlock the secrets of past climate change. She's a Ph.D. student at Stanford University's Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences and a member of the international team of scientists working on the ANDRILL sediment coring project."
• Nadine Quintana Krupinski "studies the dynamics of ice sheets and the waterways that exist under glaciers. She's a glaciology Ph.D. student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and enjoys working on isolated glaciers in the world's polar regions."
• Maria Vernet "has been a primary investigator on thirteen research cruises off the Western Antarctic Peninsula, exploring one of the coldest marine ecosystems on earth. She's a marine biologist from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California. During winter 2008, she studied the ecology of phytoplankton and its role within the marine ecosystem at the Palmer Station Long-Term Ecological Research Network (LTER). From May 31 to June 20, 2008, Maria is on board the Nathaniel B. Palmer icebreaker in the northwest Weddell Sea, collecting plankton samples from under and around large free-floating icebergs that have broken off from the Antarctic Ice shelf."
• Kathryn Schaffer Miknaitis "dreamed of becoming an artist but fell in love with physics in graduate school. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago's Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics and pursues questions about the origin and history of the universe on the South Pole Telescope team. She arrived at the South Pole in November 2007 and blogged about her work on the telescope until she left in February 2008."

If you click on the scientists' names, you'll not only get to their blogs, but you can learn more information about the projects they are working on. It's an interesting glimpse into doing scientific research under extreme environmental conditions.

Tags: women in science, Arctic research, Antarctic research, blogs

Women in Science: The view from 1957

One of the things I love about this internet age of ours is that venerable periodicals are opening their archives to the public. The latest is the Atlantic Monthly, which includes articles from 1995 to the present, plus a sampling of other articles from earlier years. In one of those early articles, published in October 1957, economist Helen Hill Miller looked at Science: Careers For Women. She found that the opportunities for women were opening up in the traditional male fields of science:

Only yesterday, women who entered such fields as science, engineering, medicine, were looked on as square pegs trying to force themselves into round holes where they weren't wanted and didn't fit. Not many married women worked outside their homes in any occupation, and teaching and nursing were regarded as the suitable means of self-support by spinsters.
[. . .]
Now about 5 per cent of the doctors of the country are women; about 10 per cent of the chemists; out a quarter of the biologists. Some of these are the knowledgeable, careful assistants – the Marthas of the laboratory – who free top men for work on the frontiers of science, but by no means all.

I find the phrase "Martha of the laboratory" a bit cringe-worthy – it makes me think of a mousy glasses-wearing woman who works long hours to keep the lab running while pining for the love of the eccentric and clueless Scientist who is too busy making Discoveries to notice her efficient work or hidden beauty (or maybe I've seen too many bad movies). Anyway, Miller goes on to point to Nobel-prize winning biochemist Dr. Gerty Cori, as well as Helen Sawyer Hogg, president of the Astronomical Society of Canada, professor Harriet Creighton, president of the Botanical Society of America, and Dr. Hoylande Young, head of the Chicago section of the American Chemical Society. At the time the article was written, six women had been admitted to the National Academy of Sciences.

While women in 1957 were still overtly discriminated against, they still had it easier than the women who had come before them:

Much of the time and energy of women who entered the scientific professions in the nineteenth century was spent in either contriving to take barriers gracefully or crashing into them with results demolishing sometimes the woman, sometimes the barrier. Eminent women now in retirement well remember where fences were located and where they were coming down when they entered training. [. . .] To many a pioneer who came up the hard way, the lot of the science majors of the class of 1957 who are entering advanced study or employment this autumn seems a very easy one.

"Easy" being a relative term. While women in science today, half a century later, have it easier than the graduating class of 1957, some things haven't changed much at all.

Other types of restriction remain. One is the counsel that many young girls get when making up their minds about entering a profession. Interviewed in his private machine shop among boulders and birches at Belmont, Massachusetts, Dr. Vannevar Bush credited folklore with much of the reluctance of women to attempt disciplines based on logic, such as mathematics and physics. Promising youngsters, he remarked, are frequently scared off by the declaration: "Girls aren't good at math." Some girls, he believes, can be very good at it. Dean Gordon B. Carson of Ohio State's College of Engineering concurs: "There is still some social stigma and question in the high schools of the nation when girls major in the scientific-mathematics portion of the high school curriculum."

That paragraph could almost fit into an article published today. It just shows how entrenched the idea that "girls can't do math" is in our culture.

But the greatest barrier was a social one – the assumption that women will focus more time on her home life than on her career.

But the two-way stretch of a home and a job, during at least part of a married woman's life, is undeniable. To solve this highly personal problem without quitting requires finding an employing institution that can accommodate itself to maternity leave, part-time employment, sudden emergencies. It requires a family in accord with the effort. It requires finding, for at least part of the time when the children are young, another woman who can relieve the scientist of the necessity of being in two places at the same time. And it requires a certain philosophy, about scientific attainment: in today's competitive conditions, continuity of work is almost indispensable if one is to get as far as one might be able to go – as Vannevar Bush puts it, "Getting to the top on part time is doggone tough."

Note that Miller assumes a woman is needed for child care, and there is no mention of a husband that shares the responsibilities. And in this was in the midst of the post-war baby boom, with women marrying younger and planning more children than women had before the war. Miller goes on to describe how women balanced career and family life – by choosing more "flexible" specialties, by being part of a husband-wife team, or being a "lone wolf" like the brilliant, but unmarried, Barbara McClintock.

A lot has changed in the past fifty years. Certainly medical schools no longer limit women to 5% of the student body, and female astronomers can now use the telescopes at Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar. But the difficulties for women pursuing a career in science that Miller describes are mostly different in degree, not kind. Hopefully change will be faster over the next fifty years.

Related: io9 has tasty quotes about women scientists from 1950s issues of Seventeen, American Girl, and Woman's Home Companion, that praise their homemaking skills as highly as their scientific ones.

Tags:women in science, history, Atlantic Monthly

Interviews with Australian scientists

In 1993 the Australian Academy of Science started interviewing Australian scientists about "their early life, development of interest in science, mentors, research work, and other aspects of their careers." The resulting interviews are available (as transcripts) at Iinterviews with Australian scientists. Thirty-six women scientists are included, and their careers span most of the 20th century, from marine biologist Isobel Bennett (1909-2008) to biomedical scientist Sabine Piller (1970- ). The biological sciences are heavily represented, but there are also physicists, chemists, and geologists.

What I especially like about the interviews are the glimpses of growing up in Australia along with memories of studying science and working as a scientist. The interviews are ongoing, with Professor Dorothy Hill ("a career in geology and a trailblazer for women in science") scheduled to be added soon. The current list of interviews:

• Dr Yvonne Aitken (1911-2004), Agricultural scientist
• Dr Leanne Armand (1968- ), Micropalaeontologist
• Dr Isobel Bennett (1909-2008), Marine biologist
• Professor Marcela Bilek (1968- ), Physicist
• Dr Natashia Boland (1967- ), Operations researcher
• Dr Kristen Bremmell (1970- ), Chemical engineer
• Professor Julie Campbell (1946- ), Vascular biologist
• Dr Tracy Dawes-Gromadzki (1972- ), Ecologist
• Dr Liz Dennis (1943- ), Plant biologist
• Miss Margaret Dick (1918- ), Food microbiologist
• Professor Jenny Graves (1941- ), Geneticist
• Natasha Henrick (1972- ), Geophysicist
• Professor Mollie Holman (1930- ), Physiologist
• Dr Shirley Jeffrey (1930- ), Marine biologist
• Professor Priscilla Kincaid-Smith (1926- ), Nephrologist
• Dr Jean Laby (1915- ), Physicist
• Professor Elspeth McLachlan (1942- ), Physiologist
• Professor Helene Marsh (1945- ), Environmental scientist
• Professor Nancy Millis (1922- ), Microbiologist
• Professor Beryl Nashar (1923- ), Geologist
• Dr Moira O'Bryan (1966- ), Medical scientist
• Dr June Olley (1924- ), Fish technologist
• Dr Sabine Piller (1970- ), Medical research scientist
• Professor Cheryl Praeger (1948- ), Mathematician
• Professor Marilyn Renfree (1947- ), Physiologist
• Professor Pamela Rickard (1928-2002), Biochemist
• Professor Lesley Rogers (1943- ), Neurobiologist
• Professor Maria Skyllas-Kazacos (1951- ), Chemical engineer
• Professor Fiona Stanley (1946- ), Epidemiologist
• Dr Sally Stewart-Wade (1969- ), Plant pathologist
• Dr Liz Truswell (1941- ), Geologist
• Dr Gretna Weste (1917- ), Botanist
• Professor Ann Woolcock (1937-2001), Medical scientist
• Dr Patricia Woolley (1932- ), Zoologist
• Dr Jane Wright (1954- ), Entomologist
• Dr Jean Youatt (1925- ), Chemist
  

For biographical information, click the "Teachers Notes" link that accompanies each article.

Tags: women in science, Australia

Darwin and Women Studying Science at Cambridge

Afarensis points out that Charles Darwin contributed five guineas toward building "a physical and biological laboratory for women in Cambridge." According to notes in the comments, this would be about $711 in today's money.

The Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women opened at Cambridge University in 1884. According to a 1997 article by Marsha Richmond:

For thirty years, until its closure in 1914, the Balfour Laboratory served as the central conduit for biological instruction for the women of Cambridge, introducing them to the new program of experimental biology developed by the physiologist Michael Foster and the embryologist Francis Maitland Balfour. [. . .] It provided university positions for able scientists who otherwise would not have been placed, offered advanced students the opportunity to engage in independent research, and, most important, formed the locus for the scientific subculture created by women at Cambridge to compensate for their exclusion from the social community of science.

Graduates of the lab include botanist Agnes Arbor, who was denied the use of the facilities in the Cambridge Botany School when the Balfour lab closed. Arber set up a laboratory in a back room in her home using borrowed equipment. Read more about Arbor's scientific contributions.

Tags: women in science, Charles Darwin, Balfour Laboratory, Agnes Arbor

Rosalind Franklin Award Winner: Ottoline Leyser

York University biologist Ottoline Leyser has been named the 2007 Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award winner. The award goes to an individual for "an outstanding contribution to any area of natural science, engineering or technology (SET)." In addition to demonstrating achievement in science or engineering, all nominees were required to submit a "proposal for a project that would raise the profile of women in SET in their host institution and/or field of expertise," and are expected to implement at least part of that proposal if they win.

According to the York University Press*:

Professor Leyser's nomination stated that many women are deferred from pursing a career in science because they believe it is impossible to balance it with having children.

To dispel this myth, she will assemble a collection of time lines, mapping the career paths and family lives of successful women scientists who have children, illustrating the possibility of combining career and family.
[snip]
"Things are so much easier now for women than during the time that [Rosalind Franklin] was working, there is really no reason why the proportion of women pursuing research careers in science should not be 50 per cent."

She talks about her own experiences on her WISED profile:

Contrary to popular belief, you can do this job and have a life. In fact the job has very flexible hours making it relatively easy to juggle with other responsibilities. There are no rules about the exact career path to follow. People will tell you that there are, but they are wrong. For every rule you are given, there will be plenty of examples of people doing exceptionally well who have broken the “rules”.

Leyser herself "broke the rule" that you must wait until you have a permanent job to start a family.

Leyser and her lab study the role of plant hormones, such as auxin, in plant growth. She will give a public lecture on her work, and the video will be posted on the Royal Society web site .

Other Links:

• Leyser's official York University faculty page
  
• Leyser's UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology Profile
• 2005 Interview on NPR's "All Things Considered" about her research: "An Explanation for Auxin, the Plant-Growth Hormone"
• 2000 Society for Experimental Biology President's Medallist
  

*The York University Press article calls Leyser a "boffin." For some reason that makes me think of an eccentric middle-aged man wearing a pith helmet, waving a net and chasing butterflies. I guess that's not what it means.

Tags: Rosalind Franklin Award, Ottoline Leyser

Late spring cleaning: Interviews and Profiles of Woman Scientists

Here are a few interviews and biographies of women and science I've collected over the past month or so:

Aminollah Sabzevari writes about the pioneering Women in Medical Physics for the Science Creative Quarterly, including Marie Curie, Harriet Brooks, and Rosalind Franklin.

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Inkling magazine interviews Margaret Wertheim, physicist by training, science communicator by training. She is the writer and host of the PBS series Faith and Reason (see also her commentary "Numbers are Male, Said Pythagoras, and the Idea Persists" ) and, in her spare time, has crocheted a coral reef that is exhibited as part of the " 6 BILLION PERPS HELD HOSTAGE! Artists Address Global Warming" exhibit at the Warhol museum in Pittsburgh.

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Inkling magazine also has an interview with geophysicist Marcia McNutt, currently president of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). She talks about her research, her background and women in oceanography:

Have you ever felt that you were being treated differently than if you were a man in the same role?
I guess very early on when I was a graduate student I probably noticed that there were awkward moments. Especially when I’d go out on research vessels when women rarely did. But I’ve been in oceanography for so long now that many of the people at other institutions were students or shipmates with me. I don’t think they even think of me in a gender role anymore. It’s just a zero issue now. Young women starting out in oceanography don’t face any of the issues that I did. Students in many of the sciences are at least 50 percent female today. But there’s attrition going up the ranks. By the time you get to institute director there are very few women.

Read the whole interview for more.

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ScienceBlogs official blog Page 3.14 has an interview with science blogger Sandra Porter of Discovering Biology in a Digital World.

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Zuska notes the induction of engineer Eleanor Baum to the National Women's Hall of Fame and her nominator, past president of the Society for Women Engineers, Jill Tietjen.

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John Noble Wilford profiled Jane Goodall and current research on chimpanzees in the New York Times in "Chimpanzees: Almost Human, Sometimes Smarter" (registration required)

Jane Goodall, a young English woman working in Africa in the 1960s, began changing perceptions. At first, experts disputed her reports of chimps’ using tools and social behavior. The experts especially objected to her references to chimp culture. Just humans, they insisted, had “culture.”

“Jane suffered early rejection by the establishment,” Richard Wrangham, a Harvard anthropologist, said. “Now, the people who say chimpanzees don’t have emotions and culture are the ones rejected.”

Also check out his sidebar on Goodall, "With a Founding Mother in the Filed of Primatology" (TimesSelect subscription only).

Manasee Wagh writes about "Beatrix Potter, scientist" for The Scientist. (via easternblot)

What is impressive about her work is that despite Miss Potter's lack of scientific training, she was one of very few Victorians engaged in experimental observations on fungi," says Nicholas Money, professor of botany at Miami University.

"She was an exceptional botanist when women weren't allowed to be," says Linda Lear, author of Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, published in January this year. "And she had the pluck to stick to her theories, even when the professionals dismissed her."

Tags: Marie Curie, Harriet Brooks, Rosalind Franklin, Margaret Wertheim, Marcia McNutt, Eleanor Baum, Jill Tietjen, Beatrix Potter, Jane Goodall

Female Canadian Scientists

Most of my posts have focused on science and scientists who were born or work in the U.S. I'm trying to remedy that a bit, but I'm mostly limited to sites in English. Anyone who knows of good sites about female scientists that aren't in English should feel free to leave a comment or email me (my address is in the sidebar). So, in the spirit of internationalism, this post focuses on America's neighbor to the north.

Science.ca has profiles of 50 Canadian women in science. The profiles range from pathologist Maud Abbott (1869-1940), to mathematician Cathleen Synge Morawetz, to geochemist Alice Wilson (1881-1964) to molecular biologist and current President of Princeton University Shirley Tilghman. It's a database worth perusing .

Tags: women in science, Canada

Field Museum's Women in Science

The Field Natural History Museum in Chicago has interviews with thirteen women scientists in their employ, who work in fields ranging from the biological sciences to geology. They share their thoughts on both their own research and their experiences as women in science.

The site also profiles two pioneers from the museum's past, explorer Delia Akeley (1875-1970) who discovered new African animal species, and botanist Margery Carlson (1892-1985) who collected plant samples in South America and Europe and was a professor of botany at Northwestern. They both had their share of adventures.

From the Field Museum profile of Delia Akeley, on collecting an elephant specimen:

"Scarcely breathing, and with legs trembling so I could hardly stand, I waited for the elephant to move forward," she wrote in her book "All True!" "Dimly through the mist the dark shape came slowly from behind the bush, exposing a splendid pair of tusks and a great flapping ear which was my target. With nerves keyed to the point of action I fired, and the first elephant I shot at fell lifeless among the dew-wet ferns . . . He was a splendid elephant, standing ten feet ten inches tall at the shoulders and carrying 180 pounds of ivory. In his back was a great festering wound caused by a poisonous spear. The iron blade had worked its way into his flesh to his rib and he must have suffered agonies."

I'm not particularly fond of this method of "collecting" animals, but there is no doubt Akeley did her job well.

From the GWIS profile of Margery Carlson:

An energetic and adventurous woman, Dr. Carlson’s primary interaction with Field Museum was through her plant collecting program in Mexico and Central America in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Using a station wagon or truck-camper as both vehicle and motel, Margery, together with her companion Kate Staley, was able to reach remote areas in southern Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Costa Rica. Each expedition took several months and came close to or exceeded 10,000 miles of travel.

What was especially remarkable about Margery’s field trips was that both she and her companion were gray-haired ladies embarking on trips that would challenge someone half their age. The trips were not without adventures and minor mishaps. One expedition ended with the truck smashed at the bottom of a canyon but with the two women only slightly injured. Another adventure Margery loved to recount was the time she and Kate were eating lunch along the side of the road in northern Mexico, when they found themselves face-to-face with two men brandishing machetes and demanding money. Sizing up the situation quickly (these were two poor farmers and not dangerous bandits), Margery proceeded to admonish them in Spanish: "Don’t you realize you could have scared us to death? And if that had happened you could never go to heaven!", whereupon she invited them to have some lunch — which they did.

Two amazing women!

Tags: Field Museum, Delia Akeley, Margery Carlson

Four Thousand Years of Women in Science

4000 Years of Women in Science is a database of women scientists from ancient Egypt, Greece, China and India to the 20th Century. You can browse by date, name or field of study.

The biographies are very brief, but would make great jumping-off point for further research.

Illustration: Merit Ptah, Egyptian physician, ~2700 BCE (image from Wikipedia_.

Tags: history, women in science

Women Pioneers in Plant Biology

The American Society of Plant Biologists has a site dedicated to Women Pioneers in Plant Biology.

Recognizing that plant physiology was an area of study that very few women actively pursued until the 1980s, the Women on Plant Biology Committee would like to acknowledge those women who were pioneers in studying plants and how they work. Their research areas are very diverse: genetics, biochemistry, structure, as well as physiology. Their education, training, and career paths are also diverse. However, as witnessed by the biographies written by former students, fellow researchers, admirers, or good friends, each of these women has contributed to the broad field of plant physiology, and we are grateful to them.

The Their biographies span one thousand years, starting with Hildegard of Bingen, born in 1098.to current professor emeritas Lynn Margulis.

Beatrix Potter, Naturalist

Chet Raymo (Science Musings) has an interesting post about Beatrix Potter's work as a naturalist.

Potter was the first person in Britain, and one of the first in the world, to recognize that lichens were composed of two organisms, a fungus and an alga. Her microscopic study of lichens led her to the conclusion that the two organisms lived in a mutually advantageous relationship: symbiosis. The alga took care of photosynthesis for the pair, converting sunlight to useful nourishment, she believed; the fungus gave the alga a safe haven, stored water, and drew minerals necessary for photosynthesis from the anchoring rock or tree trunk.

Her work was generally ignored by the scientific establishment.

At last, through the helpful influence of her uncle, a chemist, she managed to have a scientific paper presented at a meeting of the Linnean Society of London: "On the Germination of the Spores of Agaricineae," by Helen B. Potter. Of course, she was not allowed to read it herself; only men were allowed to attend the meetings.

She eventually turned away from science, and focused on illustrated books for children. While it would be a less colorful world without Peter Rabbit, it's hard to know what was lost by excluding women like Potter from the scientific community.