In Defense of Storytelling

This blog is a collection of stories about women who all too often are unrecognized. We have forgotten to include them in the history of science. And if we’ve included them at all, we’ve done so with a whisper.

Perhaps the most common response I get to this blog is – “But why do we need to tell these stories?” In other words, aren’t the stories of male scientists enough? Why can’t young men and women look up to the likes of Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein? This is an entirely valid question. And of course, men and women can idolize and emulate the lives of famous male scientists.

The real question is – what is a role model? Does a role model have to look like you or be like you in order to aspire to be like them?

The answer is both yes and no.

There are role models for all different facets of life – parenting role models, relationship role models, etc. But the one that is relevant in this discussion is an organizational or career role model.

Dr. Donald Gibson of Fairfield University in Conneticut has spent his career studying organizational role models and has contributed greatly to the literature. He defines a role model as the following:

“A cognitive construction based on the attributes of people in social roles an individual perceives to be similar to himself or herself to some extent and desires to increase perceived similarity by emulating those attributes.”

So what does that mean?

Here’s what I take from all that – a role model is someone who you believe you share something in common with and so you use that similarity as the driving force to get where they are.

In other words, it’s important to have role models that you can identify with. It’s important for women to look at the scientists that have come before them and see their gender represented.

It’s important to notice that the word “similar” is used, but not defined. So when he says “similar” he could be talking about any range of things – gender, ethnicity, experience, etc. So of course – women can identify with the stories of male scientists and men can identify with the stories of women.

But, we shouldn’t neglect the stories of women. We should tell these stories and let people decide for themselves. When a young girl asks her teachers about the scientists of generations past, she should get to hear about Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn. Kids deserve to know that the history of science was shaped by more than just men.

And perhaps this comes down to a notion that is at the very heart of feminism: telling the story of one group (women) doesn’t invalidate the story of another group (men). By defending the history of female scientists, we are not ignoring or invalidating the stories of male scientists. Rather, we enrich the history of science when we choose to be inclusive.

 

 

Mary Somerville: Scientist, Writer, Rebel

There was a time when women were taught to read but not to write. They were encouraged to absorb the ideas and thoughts of men (who could write and therefore produced all the content), but women couldn’t leave their own written legacy behind.

Then there were women like Mary Somerville, who despite all the cultural forces against her, pursued the life of an intellectual. And she succeeded.

Born in 1780 to a traditional and economically fortunate family in the UK, Mary was excluded from formal education. Instead, she was pushed towards the skills that women needed to be wives. But Mary wasn’t interested.

She relied upon herself for her education. She learned to read, write, and even began studying algebra as a young girl when she accidentally stumbled upon the mysterious symbol-based language of mathematics. This is where her love for math began.

Portrait bust of Mary Somerville at the Royal Society

She married her first husband in 1804, but he died just three years later. Suddenly, she found herself in a very unique position for a woman of her time: because she was widowed, she was financially free to pursue her studies.

She mastered the astronomy of James Ferguson and became a dedicated student of Newton’s Principia. She wrote to William Wallace, a Scottish mathematician who advised Somerville to start a small library of books about math.

In 1812, she remarried a man who was very supportive of her intellectual path. He was the only person in her life who encouraged her, as her entire family thought it was inappropriate for a woman to pursue math and science in such a dedicated manner.

Her experiments with magnetism kicked off in 1825 and a year later she published her paper entitled “The Magnetic Properties of the Violet Rays of the Solar Spectrum”. She was the second woman, after Caroline Herschel, to present her work to the Royal Society.

Her career as a scientific writer hit a high point in 1827. Lord Brougham, who worked for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, communicated to Somerville through her husband (which was the proper way to speak with her at the time). He asked her to create a rendition of Laplace’s Mecanique Celeste and Newton’s Principia that could be understood by the general public. Hesitant and unsure if she was qualified to do so, she pressed onward.

“The Mechanism of the Heavens” was her final product and it was an enormous success. A portrait bust was commissioned by the Royal Society and placed in the Great Hall to be admired for centuries to come.

But she wasn’t finished. She published four more books, crafting an admirable career as a science writer. Alongside Caroline Herschel, she became one of the first women elected to the Royal Astronomical Society.

She suffered in her final years – she was frail and had to endure as she lost every member of her family. But her mind kept her alive. She never stopped solving problems. She died at age 92, but not before writing an autobiography. In a time where women were rarely taught to write, this was her final rebellion.

Rosalind Franklin: The Story You May Have Heard

When asked to name a prominent female scientist, most people will struggle for a moment and then spew out a name like “Curie” or “Franklin”. Marie Curie and Rosalind Franklin are perhaps the two more famous women in scientific history, but some people can’t even come up with their names.

Rosalind Franklin’s story is one of blatant sexism. It is an unending controversy that asks the question that science still hasn’t completely figured out – how do we give people the credit they deserve and how do our own biases affect the professional careers of others?

Franklin always knew she wanted to be a scientist. In fact, she attended one of the only all-girls school in London that taught physics and chemistry. She was a natural from the start. She proceeded to study at Newnham College from 1938-1941. And finally, in 1945 she earned her doctorate degree in physical chemistry from Cambridge University.

And in 1951, the controversy begins.

She returns to England as a research associate in a lab at King’s College. This lab was overseen by John Randall. He had another research associate named Maurice Wilkins. Wilkins couldn’t have been more different from Rosalind. He was shy and quiet, while she was direct and bold.

He returned from his vacation to find Franklin working in the lab alongside himself, and he believed her to be a technical assistant – someone to help him with his work. In reality, she was doing her own research. It is easy to see how Wilkins would make this assumption. At the time, King’s College had separate lunch tables for men and women. It wasn’t common for women to be peers with men in the laboratory. From then on, Wilkins and Rosalind had a very competitive, muddied relationship as scientific colleagues.

From 1951 – 1953, Rosalind produced incredible images of DNA using a technique called x-ray crystallography. She made advances with the technique, refining it and creating images that were unprecedented. It seemed as though she was on the brink of discovering the structure of DNA.

It is widely believed by science historians that at this time, Wilkins showed another scientist, James Watson, one of Franklin’s x-ray crystallography images of DNA. It is not a coincidence that shortly after, in 1953 Watson and his fellow scientist Francis Crick published the first model of the structure of DNA: the double-helix.

“Photograph 51” – the famous image shown to Watson and Crick. 

Watson and Crick did not credit Franklin in any of their publications. She left King’s College shortly after and began studying viruses instead. And in 1962, Crick, Watson, and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA – this was four years after Franklin’s death.

In the modern world of science, Franklin is given some credit. When children learn about the structure of DNA in school her name is occasionally mentioned. But we too often shy away from the question of why she wasn’t given any credit at the time. Mostly because, the answer isn’t very comfortable.

Sure – in all fairness, she didn’t come up with the structure of DNA. But it is clear that her x-ray crystallography images were an enormous help to Watson and Crick. The image, now famously called “Photograph 51”, was the key piece of evidence that alerted Watson and Crick to the double-helix nature of the structure.

Franklin was not a technical assistant. She was a lead scientist, with PhD students working for her. She was a peer who was ignored because her colleagues didn’t like that she was a bold woman with the potential to change the world of science.

 

Curie & Meitner: Women of the Periodic Table

The periodic table of elements is often presented to students as the cornerstone of their introductory chemistry classes. It may initially appear to be a dull chart of discoveries. But behind each elemental name and symbol is a rich history, a story, a person, or perhaps a mythological creature.

So how do elements get their names? Well it turns out, there isn’t a simple answer to that question. Upon the discovery of a new element, the discoverer churns out some creativity and bestows upon the Interntional Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) a potential name and symbol for review. But how chemists come up with those names has ranged dramatically over the years.

Some elements get their name from Anglo-Saxon roots. The Greek word for sun, “helios”, was incorporated into the element name “helium”. Other elements like gold and iron get their symbols from their roots. The latin word for gold is “aurum”, hence the symbol Au.

Other things like characteristics of the element can be found in its name. For example, the noble gases xenon and krypton are named after the Greek words for “stranger” and “hidden” respectively.

Chemists aren’t all rationale and logic – sometimes, a little whimsy is needed. Some elements are named after mythological creatures or legend. Tantalum, atomic number 73, is named after a Greek antihero named Tantalus.

But what about the people whose names are immortalized on the periodic table? No discoverer has ever proposed their own name as a suggestion to the IUPAC. Instead, discoverers often suggest to name elements in honor of other scientists that have made monumental discoveries to their particular field. Perhaps most famously, Einstein is memorialized with einsteinium, atomic number 99. Enrico Fermi also found his way to the periodic table with fermium, atomic number 100. Interestingly, both elements were discovered in the debris of the first hydrogen bomb set off in 1952.

There are others, including mendelevium. But how about the women?

There is curium, named after the famed Curie family. But the element was named in honor of both Pierre and Marie Curie. In fact, only one woman is individually recognized on the entire periodic table and that is Lise Meitner with the element meitnerium. (Check out my blog post about the incredible Lise Meitner)

Now in all fairness, there aren’t many elements named after people in general, man or woman. And if Einstein, Mendeleev, and Fermi are to be among colleagues, it is only right that they be joined by Marie Curie and Lise Meitner. And hopefully, as discoverers move on to new elements and women are recognized more equally in the scientific community, more names of women will adorn the periodic table.