An article from the New York Times Science section, Tuesday, November 12, 2013, features women in science from history.
‘Extraordinary Women in Science and Medicine’ Offers Up Little-Known Details
Florence Nightingale, a statistician? Marie Curie, driving to the front during World War I to X-ray wounded soldiers?
Yes, and yes.
Many such tantalizing and little-known details are part of an exhibition about the lives of 32 women who made major contributions in physics, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, computing and medicine, from the 17th century through the 20th. Some of the women are famous, many not. Nine won Nobel Prizes.
The exhibition celebrates their accomplishments, and makes it plain that they are all the more extraordinary given the deeply entrenched biases they had to overcome. There were parents who thought it improper or wasteful to educate girls; universities and professional societies that would not admit women; employers who either would not hire them or would not pay a fair wage. But there were also mentors and champions who opened doors and gave credit where it was due.
The exhibition was about three years in the making, the work of three scholars of science history who collect books, manuscripts and research memorabilia: Ronald K. Smeltzer, a retired electrical engineer; Paulette Rose, a dealer in rare books; and Robert J. Ruben, a professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Many of the items on display come from their personal collections, though some were borrowed from libraries and museums. Deft biographical sketches, published in the exhibition’s catalog, describe the women’s scientific work and weave it into the context of their personal lives and the times in which they lived.
One of the more irresistible chapters concerns Hertha Ayrton, born in Britain in 1854, who as a teenager dropped her given name, Phoebe, to adopt that of a goddess.
She became an electrical engineer specializing in electric arcs and lighting systems, and published a series of papers and a textbook about them. But at a meeting of the Royal Society of London in 1902, she was not allowed to present her own work; her paper had to be read to the gathering by a man. The Royal Society also declared her ineligible for membership, and did not accept a woman until 1945.
Ayrton was involved in the suffragist movement, and among the treasures in the exhibit is a copy of a 1911 census form for England and Wales that was sent to her. She mailed it back blank but for her signature and a bold, elegant scrawl: “How can I answer all these questions if I have not the intelligence to vote between two candidates for parliament? I will not supply these particulars until I have my rights as a citizen. Votes for Women.”
Another priceless document on display is a long, narrow, brown paper bag, the type scientists use to cover maize plants to prevent them from fertilizing the wrong partners. The exhibit catalog describes this bag as a “manuscript,” and indeed, it carries notes and a sketch made by the geneticist Barbara McClintock as she figured out the solution to a vexing chromosomal puzzle. Dr. McClintock won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983.
Although most people associate Florence Nightingale with nursing, she had another, wonky side. Obsessed with gathering data, she invented graphing techniques and used statistics to prove her points and push the government for health reforms. For instance, she showed that in the Crimean War in the 1850s, more British soldiers died from disease caused by poor sanitation than from war wounds.
Sophie Kowalevski, born in Russia in 1850, became a noted mathematician in spite of a father who “had a horror of learned women,” according to the catalog. As a young woman, she could study math and physics only in secret. She married a man she did not love just to get away from her father and obtain a formal education.
The marriage turned out to be a disaster. And when the couple moved to Berlin, she had trouble finding a university that would allow a woman to earn a degree. But a renowned mathematician agreed to provide tutorials, and she eventually received a doctorate and went on to fame in her field.
Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi, born in 1842 in London, grew up in New York and began publishing short stories at 17. But what she really wanted was to be a doctor.
No medical school in New York would admit women, so she went to pharmacy school instead. Her parents were not exactly supportive: Her father offered to pay her to stay home. She forged ahead despite him, and after graduating she enrolled at a women’s medical college in Pennsylvania. But she found it not rigorous enough, so she headed to Paris in hopes of studying medicine there.
At first the French would not let her in either. They finally relented, but made her enter the classroom by a separate door and sit alone near the professor. She graduated in 1871 and returned to New York, where she taught, did research and treated patients. She won a prize from Harvard in 1876 for a paper in which she provided scientific evidence disproving the widely held belief that menstruation impaired women’s mental abilities.
Harvard was less respectful to other women. Cecilia H. Payne-Gaposchkin is recognized today as a founder of modern astrophysics. But in 1923, Harvard’s physics department rejected her as a graduate student because women were not allowed to be doctoral candidates.
Fortunately she had a mentor, Harlow Shapley, the director of the Harvard College Observatory, who took her on as a student. Within two years she had published six papers and completed a doctoral thesis that a leading astronomer of the day called the most brilliant ever in the field.
But Harvard treated her shabbily. She taught graduate courses and advised Ph.D. students, but was paid a pittance and denied a real faculty position, despite Shapley’s lobbying on her behalf.
She was not made a professor until 1956, when she also became head of the astronomy department — the first chairwoman of any department at Harvard.
Extraordinary Women in Science and Medicine
