Berta Lutz in 1925

Photo credit: United States Libary of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division

Bertha Lutz was born in São Paulo, Brazil and exposed at an early age to science through her father, Adolfo Lutz (1855–1940), who was a physician, naturalist, epidemiologist and pioneer in tropical medicine. The two would often travel together through the Brazilian rainforests, inspiring Bertha to study tree frogs.

She studied natural sciences, biology and zoology at the University of Paris – Sorbonne, graduating in 1918. After returning to Brazil, she got a job at the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, and in 1919 became the head of the Museum, the first woman appointed to that position. At the Museum, she continued her study of amphibians, with a focus on poison dart frogs. Throughout her professional lifetime she studied and published on Brazilian frogs. More about her scientific work can be found here: https://scientificwomen.net/women/lutz-bertha-193 Unfortunately much of her collections held at the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro were destroyed in the fire that devastated most of the 200-year-old Museum’s collections in September 2018.

Lutz is honoured in the names of two species of Brazilian lizards: Liolaemus lutzae and Phyllopezus lutzae, as well as three species of frogs: Dendropsophus berthalutzae, Megaelosia lutzae, and Scinax berthae.

Dendropsophus berthalutzae.

Photo credit: Caraguatatuba-SP by Victor Fávaro Augusto

During her time in Paris, the English women’s movement piqued her interest. Although she did not agree with their violent approach, she found that many of the cause’s ideas were compatible with her own and, after returning to Rio de Janeiro in 1918, published a feminist manifesto in the Revista da Semana. Around the same time she formed the League for the Intellectual Emancipation of Woman. And later, in 1922, she established the leading suffrage organisation in Brazil, the Brazilian Federation for Feminine Progress. Her vision of feminism maintained that women should have equal access to educational opportunities and to professions beyond the home. Indeed, she insisted that women had important contributions to make to society.

Bertha Lutz, the scientist

Photo credit: https://scientificwomen.net/women/lutz-bertha-193

Through her work with the Brazilian Federation for Feminine Progress, she understood that, to make serious changes, she would need to approach injustices from a legal standpoint as well as to a social one. With this in mind, she attended the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, graduating in 1933 with a law degree. Now, with legal knowledge, she was able to negotiate with the President to include women’s suffrage in Brazil’s electoral code. In 1934 the Brazilian Constitution granted women the right to vote. Thus, her suffrage organisation had achieved its goal and gained women’s suffrage in her country.

Lutz also entered politics in Brazil. In 1936, she was elected to the National Congress and became one of the first female Congress women in Brazil. She remained active in women’s rights and in the sciences throughout her life. She became the head of the Botanical Sector of the National Museum, and continued to make a name for herself as an accomplished botanist in the academic community.

Due to her scientific achievements, Lutz was sent as Brazil’s delegate to the fledgling United Nations, and she was among the small group of women who waged a 3-month struggle to have “sex” included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status

Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

The San Francisco Conference where the UN Charter was signed was dominated by men. Of the 850 delegates, only four women signed the Charter, and Dr Lutz was one of those women. She was acknowledged, along with her Latin American colleague Minerva Bernardino (Dominican Republic), for the inclusion of the word “women” in the phrase “equal rights of men and women” in the preamble of the Charter.

Dr. Bertha Lutz, National Museum, President of the Confederated Association of Women of Brazil, former Congresswoman and member of the delegation from Brazil, signing the UN Charter at a ceremony held at the Veterans’ War Memorial Building, The San Francisco Conference, on 26 June 1945.

Photo credit: UN Photo Library

Let’s celebrate the achievements of women scientists!

Professor Janet Rowley

Let’s celebrate the achievements of women scientists! The American geneticist, Professor Janet Rowley’s work established that cancer is a genetic disease. She was the first scientist to identify a chromosomal translocation as the cause of leukaemia and other cancers.

In 1973 she showed that the Philadelphia chromosome is formed by a translocation between chromosomes 9 and 22. Her discovery led to the eventual identification of the fusion gene BCR-ABL and then to cancer drug imatinib’s development.

Read the UChicago News story to see how her findings were at first greeted with ‘amused tolerance’ by haematologists. https://news.uchicago.edu/story/janet-rowley-cancer-genetics-pioneer-1925-2013

Prof Rowley’s name lives on in the Rowley Prize, which is awarded each year by the iCMLf to an individual who has made an outstanding lifetime contribution to our understanding of the biology of CML. https://www.cml-foundation.org/about-us/prizes/328-about-us-prizes-overview.html