Women in Science

Ada Lovelace, Calculating and Fighting Crime

2009-07-14T22:29:00.000-07:00

It's summer, so here's some light entertainment:

In honor of Ada Lovelace Day last March, Artist Sydney Padua created a comic featuring the mostly-true-except-for-the-inaccurate-bits story of Ada Lovelace's childhood, education, and her fateful meeting with Charles Babbage which ultimately lead to their crime-fighting partnership (I mentioned the inaccurate bits, right?). It's steampunk, it's geeky, and it's got copious explanatory notes - what more does a comic need?

Check out Ada Lovelace - The Origin. Then read the continuing adventures of Lovelace and Babbage:

The real Ada Lovelace began her life-long friendship Cambridge mathematics professor Charles Babbage when she was just 17 years old. The two corresponded on mathematics, logic and other topics, and, in the process of writing a description of Babbage's proposed "Analytical Engine" created the very first computer program. Ada married William King at the age of 19, had three children, and sadly died of cancer in 1852 at the age of 37. As far as we know, she and Babbage had no crime-fighting adventures , but it's fun to consider what could have been.

(via Making Light)
Tags: Ada Lovelace, Charles Babbage, comics

Sylvia Earle: Marine Biologist and Aquanaut

2009-07-09T22:48:00.000-07:00

A few days ago the KQED public television program QUEST profiled pioneering marine biologist and explorer Sylvia Earle, which has given me the kick in the rear I needed to finish this post that's been sitting as a draft for several months.

In 1970 Sylvia Earle lead an all-female team of "Aquanauts" that lived for two weeks in an underwater habitat - Tektite II - off the Virgin Islands. The project was partially funded by NASA, which was interested in how teams would work in an isolated closed environment. Others on her team were Renata True of Tulane (now at College of the Mainland in Texas), Scripps graduate students Ann Hartline and Alina Szmant (now at University of North Carolina, Wilmington), and engineer Margaret Ann Lucas.

Their mission wasn't just focused on learning to work together as a team and studying the local flora and fauna. They were also testing newly developed diving equipment. Astronaut Scott Carpenter noted that when he visited Tektite II and wrote about it for Popular Science:

Their professional skill impressed me, and so did their self-reliance. With no male help wanted, they toted their own tanks and other heavy gear. [...] On a swim the day before, I saw the team prepare equipment for another ecology study by Ann Hartline and Alina Szmant. Peggy Lucas, the team's engineer, went along on another occasion, when all five girls were in the water at once.

That was a rare and somewhat eerie sight. Five girls clad in bright-orange wetsuits, with stark white backpacks, working on their projects in brilliant blue-green water, [...] a splash of color I'll remember [...]. An unusual part of the spectacle was the absence of bubbles.

The team was building up experience with closed-circuit, mixed-scuba - an innovation that their Tektite II mission would be the first to put to use. Instead of exhausting a diver's exhaled breath to the sea, as an open-circuit scuba does, it absorbs carbon dioxide and recovers unused oxygen, to supplement the mixture entering the inhalation bag from the tanks.

If you can overlook the patronizing tone (I hate when adult women are called "girls"), it's an interesting look at the development of new technology.

When they emerged from their habitat they were instant celebrities, and were treated to a ticker-tape parade in Chicago and invited to lunch at the Whitehouse. Not surprisingly the press focused on the novelty of women scientists. For example this Associated Press article published in the Spokane Daily Chronicle gives us the important details about the Aquanauts' average height, weight and preferred hair styles (petite with pony tails, if you must know). However, it also included this great quote:

"Sometimes people find it hard to take us seriously," says Dr. Sylvia Early[sic] Mead, 34, of Los Angeles, the team leader. But she adds, "Most of the problems are in the minds of the men."

Since 1970 Earle has never let up on her exploration of the oceans - she set several diving records, walked on the ocean floor 1250 feet below the surface, and became the first female chief scientist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. She has also lead the Sustainable Sea Expeditions, a project to research and promote the US National Marine Sanctuaries, and her work as an advocate for oceans and its denizens Time magazine named her a "hero for the planet".

She acknowledges that her devotion to her work may have strained her first marriage. However, she was able to figure out how to combine career and family, despite her frequent field trips:

It is a problem trying to combine having family and being as enthusiastic about a specialty as I have always been. I have managed it in part through ingenious rearranging of a life, I suppose. Having a laboratory set up at home. I always had a microscope -- not a big, fancy, sophisticated microscope, but something that would make it possible for me to work at home. And I have a professional library that I have accumulated all my life. The big professional libraries do provide the necessary access to a world of information, but I have managed to gather a nucleus of books at home that are like an extension of my mind. My favorite wall paper is books. I can't possibly keep everything in my brain, but if I have access to it, and know where to get it off the shelf, that's like having an extension -- a bigger brain. That's certainly true with computers now.

Earle's husband and parents helped take care of the kids while she was traveling, and her they were also occasionally taken out of school to "dive with the whales in Hawaii" or travel "to the Bahamas and dive with a friendly dolphin" (how cool is that?). Earle's children learned to love the oceans too:

Ms. Earle said her son works for California Fish and Game, catching the “bad guys who take more abalone than they should.” Her older daughter, whom she described as hating math since the 6th grade because of a discouraging teacher, now runs the company Ms. Earle started, Deep Ocean Engineering. And her younger daughter now does deep sea diving in submarines.

Watch the QUEST segment on Sylvia Earle either below or at KQED.com.

QUEST on KQED Public Media.

More about Sylvia Earle:

Sylvia Earle's TED Prize wish to protect our oceans (video) - watch this!
Read "Queen of the Deep" by Dawn Stover, Popular Science, April 1995
Read "Call of the Sea" by Roger Rosenblatt, Time, 5 Oct 1998
Academy of Achievement: Sylvia Earle Profile (with an extensive interview)
Sylvia Earle: National Geographic Explorer in Residence
American Physical Society series on Women Life Scientists for K-12 students: Sylvia Earle (pdf)
Read the QUEST producer's enthusiastic notes on Profile: Sylvia Earle.
The Deep Search Foundation Blog

Image: "During the National Geographic/Sea Stories filming, Dr. Earle explains to Emma, the uses and benefits of deploying the DeepWorkers in the Sanctuary system." (from sanctuaries.noaa.gov)
Tags: Sylvia Earle, marine biology, oceanography

Caroline Moore: 14-year old Astronomer

2009-07-08T19:09:00.000-07:00

One of the things that I find very cool about astronomy is that it is one of the few fields of science in which amateurs can make important discoveries. One such amateur astronomer is Caroline Moore, who, at age 14, was the youngest person to ever discover a supernova.

Here she is featured on the "Moment of Geek" segment of the Rachel Maddow show:

She's great to watch because she's so enthusiastic and does a good job explaining her part of the project. She hasn't decided whether to become a scientist or study medicine or sing or pursue some other career. That's the beauty of being a teenager - her whole life is in front of her.

(I also am amused that they posed her with a small pink telescope, which she explains is not what she used to make the discovery.)

Tags: women in science, astronomy, Caroline Moore

Scientiae Carnival @ My Middle Years

2009-07-07T23:40:00.001-07:00

The summer is flying by and, once again, it's time for a new Scientiae Carnival. This month's edition is at My Middle Years with many reflective posts - as you'd expect with the theme of mirrors . . .

Go read!

Tags: scientiae carnival, women in science

June Scientiae Carnival

2009-06-07T19:12:00.000-07:00

Alice and ScienceWoman at Sciencewomen has posted the June Scientiae blog carnival has a great roundup of posts from women scientists and engineers about moving forward - either in the past or how they plan to in the future. There are lots of great posts, so go read!

Read part 1 and part 2.

Tags: scientiae carnival

Eugenie Scott: Battling for Science Education

2009-06-01T23:19:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I get tired. I have a bunch of half-finished posts that all seem like variations on the same negative themes: women are falling behind, left behind, and dropping out. It's the same reports and same arguments over and over again. I just haven't been that inspired. But I realized that what I needed was something positive to write about. Fortunately, Eugenie Scott has provided me an inspiring subject.

Eugenie Scott can remember well when she first became interested in anthropology:

I must have been around nine or 10 years old when my older sister brought home a college-level textbook in anthropology. I was something of a compulsive reader even then, and I casually picked up one of my sister’s books and flipped through the pages.
In the middle of the book was a set of plates showing primitive-looking people with big brows, prow-like noses and receding chins. They were kind of like her boyfriend of the time actually, an observation that was not appreciated. But I was gobsmacked by the reconstructions of these early fossil humans – Cro-Magnons, Neanderthals, Peking Man and the like.

This is where we started. These were the great-great-great-umpty-ump-great grandfathers of us all. It was stunning to a 10-year-old. The title of the book was Anthropology. I decided then that I wanted to be an anthropologist when I grew up.

She wasn't actually taught anything about evolution in her science classes until she got to college, but she never lost interest in anthropology. After getting her bachelor and masters degrees from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee she headed to graduate school at the University of Missouri.

It was as a graduate student in physical anthropology that Scott first became aware of oxymoronically-named "creation science" in 1971. It may not have seemed significant at the time, but that started her on a path towards her current position as the Executive Director of the Oakland, California-based National Center for Science Education (NCSE), which works to keep evolution in public school science education. Over the years Scott collected creationist literature, at first as a mostly academic curiosity. It was while teaching at the University of Kentucky that she became involved in a fight to keep creationism out of the Lexington public schools. From that effort the NCSE was formed in 1981, and Scott was made Executive Director of the organization in 1987.

While she has accumulated a number of awards and honors over the years, it's not too surprising that her efforts have come under fire. As Chris Mooney has pointed out, she has has to fend off criticism from both creationists and science advocates:

As this evidence suggests, Scott is regularly under fire from the culture war combatants on both sides. Not only does NCSE have to monitor the endless permutations of the creationists, who are constantly coming up with new ploys for attacking evolution. It also has to deal with the pugilistic evolutionists who want to make this battle about the truth or falsehood of religious belief, rather than the truth or falsehood of what science discovers about the world. In this gauntlet, Scott has remained an eloquent defender of the view that people of science and people of religion can and must work together to solve conflicts—and indeed, this is the best and only way forward.

Her position seems reasonable to me, and the NCSE's efforts seem to have been effective. I'm thankful that Scott has devoted so much of her career to fighting this fight. Quality science education from elementary through high school is necessary to cultivate the upcoming generations of American scientists.

More information about Eugenie Scott:

Wikipedia: Eugenie Scott
1999: Bruce Alberts Award for Excellence in Science Education from the American Society for Cell Biology
2001-2003: President of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists
2002: Outstanding Service Award from the American Institute of Biological Sciences
2006: Anthropology in the Media Award from the American Anthropological Association
2009 Scientific American 10: Guiding Science for Humanity
Eugenie Scott has emerged as one of the most prominent advocates for keeping evolution an integral part of the curriculum in public schools in her role as head of the nonprofit National Center for Science Education (NCSE).
2009: awarded the very first Stephen J. Gould Prize bu the Society for the Study of Evolution.

Dr. Scott is a gifted communicator and public intellectual. She is a frequent guest on radio and television shows, and an eloquent spokeswoman for science. Her writings have illuminated the process of science to thousands, and her books have exposed the efforts of many groups in our society to hobble and undermine the teaching of science to our younger generation. The organization she helped create far transcends the considerable reach of her own voice, vastly amplifying her impact on public understanding.

(If you are interested in helping defend the teaching of evolution, download "Voices for Evolution" and check out the NCSE's resource page.)

Tags: women in science, Eugenie Scott, NCSE

Women and European Research Funding

2009-05-26T19:40:00.000-07:00

The European Union recently released a report about gender and research funding in Europe with interesting results. Not surprisingly, they found a lot of variation from country to country and field to field:

No very systematic patterns appear in the data obtained. No clear relation could be observed between the proportion of women in a field and their chances of success in obtaining funding. For instance, in some funding schemes and organisations women had higher success rates than men in engineering and technology or in natural sciences, the most male-dominated fields across Europe, and in others lower. Nor was any large and universal imbalance observed in favour of men. However, some cases of imbalance can be observed, with various degrees of statistical significance. In a number of cases, on the contrary, women have significantly higher success rates than men. An example is the Dutch NWO, where, because of low representation of women in research, particular attention is paid to the quality of evaluation, and where promotion of women in research is an important policy goal.

But the funding story is more complicated than just whether there is bias against women applicants in evaluating grant proposals. It turns out that women generally ask for less funding. As the report sums it up:

The gendered patterns in application behaviour are a very serious problem: women are less likely to apply for funding than men and they request smaller amounts of money.

And

Women apply or re-apply less, apply to less prestigious sources, requesting less funding, and for shorter duration.

There are a number of possible reasons for that difference: a higher fraction of women are fixed-term or part-time positions where they are ineligible to apply for many grants, women may be less integrated into scientific networks, and may have less social support. In that light, it seems particularly unfair that women who do get grant funding may find themselves burdened with non-research tasks that reduce their productivity. As the report explains:

A new finding however was that receiving funding can have deleterious effects: according to the authors, ‘women may suffer an ‘inverse Matthew Effect’ where their initial success leads to demands on their time as high profile members of an under-represented group which make it harder to sustain previous levels of research activity.’

And why does it matter? Well, for one, there is the loss of potential women colleagues who find themselves unfunded or underfunded. And the report noted that when looking at prestigious awards there is a significant difference between men and women:

Very strong gender imbalances were noted among the awardees of highly prestigious grants, positions or prizes in many countries.

So what can be done? The report's recommendations include:

Monitor and encourage research on gender equality, especially with regards to funding statistics.
Increase the number of applications from women researchers by encouraging and training women to apply for more funding and offering measures to improve work-life balance.
Improve the gender balance among the "gatekeepers of research funding"

While I think the suggestions are reasonable, I don't think it's an easy task. In particular, the application rate of women for research grants seems to be affected by a number of issues of varying complexity. I don't think there's necessarily an easy way, for example, to improve the involvement of women in informal science networks heavily dominated by men, particularly those that combine social and professional interactions. If a woman doesn't feel comfortable (or is excluded from) heading to the pub with her lab mates she may very well be missing out on advice and inside knowledge that gets bandied about in those situations. There's no way to create rules to change such social interactions, although social networks for women scientists may help. Putting measures into place now meant to improve the situation is a step in the right direction.

(via an editorial in Nature about the report )

Download the European Commission report: The Gender Challenge in Research Funding: Assessing the European national scenes (pdf)

Download the related European Commission report: Women in science and technology: Creating sustainable careers (pdf)

Tags: women in science, gender gap, grant funding

L'Oreal-UNESCO USA Fellowships Awarded

2009-05-22T23:02:00.000-07:00

The five postdoctoral researchers who were awarded 2009 L'Oreal USA Fellowships for Women in Science were honored at a special ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History on Thursday. Each of the winners will receive a $60,000 grant for scientific research and career development. The awardees:

Dr. Beena Kalisky: Kalisky is a postdoc in the lab of Kathyrn A. Moler in the Department of Applied Stanford University. According to the press release, she is "developing a new system for detection and characterization of individual nanomagnets. The instrument designed will scan over a large number of particles and individually measure their magnetic properties. This will help in the gathering of pertinent information for the exploration of the nanomagnets' possible applications."

Dr. Aster Kammrath: Kammrath is a postdoc in the lab of Frank Keutsch in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. According to the press release her research focuses on "the pathways by which molecules emitted by human activity or natural sources are involved in climate change and pollution problems. This work aims to help set appropriate emissions controls to minimize the production of carbon dioxide, other greenhouse gases and aerosol, which could help reduce respiratory problems."

Kammrath has said that it was her mother who helped her discover science:

"She instilled in me a passion for solving problems and understanding the real-world application of the scientific method," she says.

Dr. Nozomi Nishimura: Nishimura is a postdoc in the lab of Chris B. Schaffer in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University. Her research involves "testing the role that blood vessel dysfunction plays in triggering Alzheimer's disease. This research will look at how clots or bleeds in the smallest blood vessels in the brain could seed the accumulation of A-beta proteins, an indication of plaque in the brain which often occurs in Alzheimer's patients."

Dr. Tiffany Santos: Santos is a postdoc in the Electronic & Magnetic Materials & Devices division of the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. Her research involves "a class of materials called transition metal oxides, with a wide array of properties, that have numerous potential applications. This research aims to uncover new materials, which could potentially help reduce power consumption and increase the energy efficiency of information technologies, such as data storage devices and memory chips."

Dr. Erika Sudderth: Sudderth is a postdoc in the lab of David Ackerly in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California at Berkeley (the press release says Brown University, so she may have recently moved). Her research is focused on understanding "the constraints, thresholds and limits of ecological responses to precipitation, which is arguably the most important controller of ecosystem processes. This research aims to understand the mechanisms driving ecosystem responses to climate change."

(I plan to update the post as the various institutions release additional information)

For more information about the awards, see:

L'Oréal-USA For Women in Science Official Web Site (requires Flash)
L'Oréal USA For Women in Science on Facebook

Tags: women in science, L'Oreal-UNESCO Fellowships

Why Girls Don't Like Math

2009-05-14T23:12:00.000-07:00

A recent episode of Your Voice ("helping parents help their children succeed in school") on Ontario Public Television station TVO took a look at "Why Girls Don't Like Math". The program featured a discussion between Patricia Campbell of Fairer Science, Fiona Dunbar, Lecturer in Math at the University of Waterloo, chair of the university's Women in Mathematics Committee and founder of the Canadian Women in Math Association; and Grade 8 teacher Lukrica Prugo, who has taught an all-girls class for two years. Host Cheryl Johnson set out the background:

According to the experts we spoke with on Your Voice, eight out of ten future jobs will require math skills. This does not bode well for girls, since most girls leave math in the dust after high school, if not before. It's not that girls are not good at math. The most recent EQAO scores from the Education Quality Accountability Office in Ontario show that girls and boys in Grades 3 and 6 achieve at the same levels in math. However, when asked in the EQAO survey about math, far fewer girls say they like math, fewer say they find math relevant, and many more say they need help with math. So.....girls are good at math, but they think they're not.

It's an interesting discussion - well worth watching if you are interested in math education.

Watch "Why Girls Don't Like Math".

Tags: mathematics, education, girls

June Scientiae Call For Posts: Moving Forward

2009-05-12T23:00:00.000-07:00

Alice and ScienceWoman will be hosting the June Scientiae Carnival at the Sciencewomen blog. This month's theme is "Moving Forward":

How are you moving forward in life? Are you close to your degree, tenure, sabbatical, or summer holiday? Is that paper almost ready to go out the door? Is your baby almost potty trained or are you training for a marathon? What keeps you moving forward in your science, work, and life? Is it the drive to cure a disease, make the world a more sustainable piece, or discover something that no one else knows? Is it the promise of exciting data at the end of a long assay? Is it the thought of people calling you Dr.? Is it your daughter's smile when she wakes up in the morning, or the enthusiastic tail wagging of your dog? When things get tough, how do you motivate yourself to move forward?

Check out their post for some inspiring quotes to "help inspire the creative juices."

Entries are due by midnight UTC on May 30th. Follow the submission instructions here.

Tags: scientiae carnival

Happy Mother's Day!

2009-05-10T20:23:00.000-07:00

Happy Mother's Day to all you mother-scientists and mothers of scientists!

Here are some great mother-scientist-appreciation posts I've been meaning to blog:

Charles Hirshberg @ Popular Science: My Mother, the Scientist
ScienceWoman: Trailblazing teacher and role-model: an interview with a woman scientist who went before
Anna C. Page: My mother the computer programmer
jill/txt: the value of a mother who loves technology
Janet Stemwedel at Adventures in Ethics and Science: Mother's Day appreciation part 1, part 2, part 3

And happy Mother's Day to you mom!

Tags: women in science, Mother's Day,

Mother-Daughter Scientist Club

2009-05-10T11:38:00.000-07:00

The Mother and Daughter Science Club is an interesting-sounding idea:

The Mother And Daughter Science Club brings four to six pairs of mothers and [4th or 5th grade] daughters (or daughters and another significant adult female) together to do hands-on science experiments and activities, to learn about women scientists throughout history, and to be introduced to gender-related issues that can reinforce positive attitudes in the girls and their mothers about math and science.

Publisher ACI lets you download the M&DSC Facilitation Manual for free. It includes suggested activities including experiments, skits, history segments and some not-particularly exciting word puzzles. It also has some additional background information for adults who want to encourage girls in science and mathematics. Glancing through the program, the suggested activities seem pretty enjoyable, and they wouldn't require any special training on the part of the mothers, or any difficult-to-obtain equipment.

One drawback is that they don't include any biology-related projects - that's probably because most biology experiments would require either longer than a single meeting to complete, or specialized equipment, like a microscope. And to be successful I would think a club like this would need a leader who is both comfortable with the science and is a good organizer. That said, I think this could be a great way for moms and daughters to spend time together in a fun and educational way.

And it's only fair to mention that the reason why ACI gives the manual away is that they also want to sell you a copy of The Scientist Within You, a series of companion books which has biographies of women scientists, experiments and other activities.

Tags: Mother-Daughter Scientist Club, science education

Attracting Women to Rails

2009-05-07T23:50:00.000-07:00

One of the discussion panels this week at RailsConf 2009 in Las Vegas was "Women in Rails". The discussion was lead by Desi McAdam of DevChix.com and Hashrocket, Sarah Mei of LookSmart,and Lori Olson of Dragon Sharp Consulting and focused on some very basic issues:

A general question like “How do we get more women into technology?” isn’t actually useful for our community. Discussion usually devolves into nature vs. nurture, then affirmative action, and it all goes south from there.

So in this session we get down to brass tacks: how specifically can we bring more female programmers into the Rails community? How can we get them to come to RailsConf? Why aren’t they here already?
There are also some community-contributed questions here.

(In case you aren't familiar with the term, Ruby on Rails is "an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language.)

You can watch the video of the panel embedded below (or on YouTube)*.

While some of the discussion is focused specifically on the Ruby community, a lot of what they discuss is applicable to other computer-related fields. One of the topics they discuss is the need for women who are already in the field to make themselves visible. I find that to be particularly timely in light of an incident that happened at the Golden Gate Ruby Conference (GoGaRuCo) conference a couple of weeks ago in San Francisco.

One of the presenters at the conference decided that his talk needed some interesting illustrations - not a bad idea in general, but unfortunately he chose to use pornographic photos of women. You can see the slide set here (NSFW, but supposedly some of the images have been removed). Not surprisingly this was controversial, and a number of the attendees were either offended, annoyed or both. The presenter gave an "I'm sorry if you were offended" non-apology, and that, not surprisingly, sparked a huge discussion.

You can read a collection of responses by a number women in the community here and more discussion at Sarah Mei's blog, Liz Keogh's blog, and at MetaFilter (and probably lots of other places too). There's a lot of the usual I think Martin Fowler made a very good point:

The reaction of the rails leadership thus far is to deny the offense. I'll say now that I don't believe they are sexist. I believe that they didn't think the talk would give this much offense - and even that they don't think the talk should give offense.
At this point there's an important principle. I can't choose whether someone is offended by my actions. I can choose whether I care. The nub is that whatever the presenter may think, people were offended - both in the talk and those who saw the slides later. It doesn't matter whether or not you think the slides were pornographic. The question is does the presenter, and the wider community, care that women feel disturbed, uncomfortable, marginalized and a little scared.

And this, to me, is the point that often gets ignored when these controversies arise. So often the discussion it seems to get derailed into a debate on whether people "should" be offended by an incident (with the usual claims that anyone who isn't prudish should be just fine with images of sexy women or discussion of women's sexiness), rather than acknowledging that making a subset of your audience uncomfortable is a problem. What also gets lost is that images or comments don't necessarily have to be offensive in and of themselves to make some uncomfortable, particularly when they are used in a professional context. Just making the atmosphere feel like a straight boy's club is enough to make some women feel unwelcome.

And I think that has to be kept in mind in any discussion of attracting and retaining women in a male-dominated field. It's not enough to say you want women as colleagues - if women are given the implicit message that their colleagues consider them to have no purpose beyond being decorative sex objects, they will probably go elsewhere.

(the GoGaRuCo incident is via The F-Word)

* It's totally off topic, but I was surprised that the chairs the panelists were sitting in were too high for them to rest their feet on the floor. That must have been uncomfortable.
Tags: women in computer science

Rita Levi-Montalcini: Still busy after a century

2009-05-05T23:47:00.000-07:00

Times Online has an interesting article about neuroscientist Rita Levi-Montalcini, who tuned 100 on April 22. She has lead - or I should say is leading - a fascinating life.

Levi-Montalcini enrolled in medical school at the University of Turin in 1930 over her father's objections.

The initial obstacle to entering university was not Fascism, but her father. In her autobiography she writes that she and her twin sister Paola (an artist who died in 2000 and whose artworks decorate her office walls) were born to Adamo Levi, “an electrical engineer and gifted mathematician”, and Adele Montalcini, “a talented painter and an exquisite human being”.
[...snip...]
“[My father] loved us dearly and had a great respect for women, but he believed that a professional career would interfere with the duties of a wife and mother. He decided that the three of us - Anna, Paola and I - would not engage in studies which open the way to a professional career, and that we would not enroll in the University.”

She enrolled anyway, earning her degree in medicine and surgery in 1936. She wasn't sure if she wanted to pursue neurology research or focus on medicine, so she chose to enroll in further coursework to specialize in neurology and psychiatry.

Her academic career was cut short, however, when Mussolini issued his Manifesto of Race which barred Jews like Levi-Montalcini from academic and professional careers. Rather than flee the country, she decided to stay in Italy and continue her work on her own:

The two alternatives left then to us were either to emigrate to the United States, or to pursue some activity that needed neither support nor connection with the outside Aryan world where we lived. My family chose this second alternative. I then decided to build a small research unit at home and installed it in my bedroom. My inspiration was a 1934 article by Viktor Hamburger reporting on the effects of limb extirpation in chick embryos. My project had barely started when [Italian histologist] Giuseppe Levi, who had escaped from Belgium invaded by Nazis, returned to Turin and joined me, thus becoming, to my great pride, my first and only assistant.

The heavy bombing of Turin by Anglo-American air forces in 1941 made it imperative to abandon Turin and move to a country cottage where I rebuilt my mini-laboratory and resumed my experiments. In the Fall of 1943, the invasion of Italy by the German army forced us to abandon our now dangerous refuge in Piemonte and flee to Florence, where we lived underground until the end of the war.

When the British and American armed forces forced the Germans out of Florence in 1944 she was hired as a physician to minister to a war refugee camp, which housed Italians who had fled the continued fighting in the North. When the war was over, she and her family returned to Turin where she resumed her academic position at the University.

But her life was to change once again. In 1947 developmental biologist Viktor Hamburger invited Levi-Montalcini to join him in his lab at Washington University in St. Louis. She had intended to stay there for 10 months, but actually ended up remaining there for 30 years. She was hired as an Assistant Professor in 1956, and promoted to Full Professor in 1958.

While she made her home in the US she didn't neglect her Italian roots: in 1962 she established a research unit in Rome, splitting her time between there and St. Louis. And in 1969 she became the Director of the Institute of Cell Biology of the Italian National Council of Research.

It was at Washington University that Levi-Montalcini and Stanley Cohen first isolated Nerve Growth Factor from tumor cells. They received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for that work in 1986. As she told the Times:

Her discovery, she says, was the highlight of her long life. “I immediately understood the importance of this discovery, which is more important today than it was then and which went completely against the dogmas of the time. The recognition in Stockholm gave me great pleasure, but it does not compare with the moment of the discovery itself, when I realised I was opening up a whole new scenario.”

Although she officially retired in 1977, she never actually stopped working as a scientist. Five years ago she founded the European Brain Research Institute (EBRI) in Rome. That is, in fact, where she spent her 100th birthday, attending a conference on "The Brain in Health and Disease" held in her honor.

She also has been working for social change. She (with her sister Paola) also founded the Rita Levi-Montalcini Foundation, which focuses on the education of girls and young women in Africa. In 2001 she was appointed an Italian Senator-for-life, a role she actively serves which she actively serves "unless busy in academic activities around the world"

And what is her secret to such a long and active life? She gets up early in the morning, eats very little, and keeps her brain active. She also supposedly doses herself every day with nerve growth factor eye drops, which may or may not have had a positive effect. She has also seems to have been blessed with general good health.

She has lived an amazing life, and shows little sign of slowing down. We should all be so active when we hit the century mark.

More information:

Video interview with Rita Levi-Montalcini at Nobelprize.org (Nov. 2008)
Abbott A. "Neuroscience: One hundred years of Rita" Nature 458, 564-567 (2009) (subscription required)
Nobelprize.org: Rita Levi-Montalcini Autobiography
New York Times review of Levi-Montalcini's memoir In Praise of Imperfection
Italian TV special "100 anni di Rita Levi Montalcini" on YouTube (in Italian, natch)
1983: Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize
1986: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1986: Albert Lasker Award for Basic Biomedical Research
1987: National Medal of Science

Publications:

Levi-Montalcini R. "Developmental Neurobiology and the Natural History of Nerve Growth Factor" Annu Rev Neuroscience 5:341-362 (1982) (subscription require)
Rita Levi-Montalcini's Nobel Lecture "The Nerve Growth Factor: Thirty-Five Years Later" (8 Dec 1986)
Cohen S., Levi-Montalcini R. and Hamburger V. "A Nerve Growth-Stimulating Factor Isolated From Sarcomas 37 and 180" Proc Natl Acad Sci 40:1014-1018 (1954)
Cohen S and Levi-Montalcini R. "A Nerve Growth-Stimulating Factor Isolated From Snake Venom" Proc Natl Acad Sci 42(9): 571-574 (1956)
Levi-Montalcini R, Cohen S. "In Vitro and In Vivo Effects of a Nerve Growth-Stimulating Agent Isolated From Snake Venom" Proc Natl Acad Sci. 42(9): 695-699 (1956)
Cohen S and Levi-Montalcini R. "Purification and properties of a nerve growth-promoting factor isolated from mouse sarcoma 180." Cancer Res. 17(1): 15-20 (1957)

(via Mind Hacks)

Photo (top): Rita Levi-Montalcini by Jollyroger on Wikipedia (2007)
Photo (bottom): Rita Levi- Montalcini viewing slides by Herb Weitman (1964)
Tags: Rita Levi-Montalcini, neuroscience

Are you infected by The NERD?

2009-05-05T23:20:00.000-07:00

I was surfing about (doing research, I swear!) and stumbled on some disturbing information. I may be infected by The NERD! The symptoms?

Heightened interest in intellectual and academic pursuits, including but not limited to biology, chemistry, physics, geology, anthropology and even psychology
Obsessive behaviors including but not limited to collecting, memorizing, reciting and hoarding of intellectual materials
Inability to understand how others are not fascinated by their particular nerdy fetish
A lack of fashion sense, or at least a bizarre one. (e.g. this )
Pronounced interest in emotionally mature and complex materials like advanced physics or computing
Pronounced interest in emotionally immature materials like comic books and animated television
Finds puns particularly funny, for no obvious reason
Abnormal levels of attraction to other infected people, who they consider “smart” and “interesting”
Prone to creative outlets of their obsessions like shanties or themed haikus
Embraces the title of “geek,” “nerd,” or “dork” willingly - possibly a little too excitedly

Yup, looks like I've caught it.

But I am not alone. It is currently estimated that "25-50% of the world’s population is infected, with numbers continually rising." And NERD Infection site founder Christie Wilcox (who blogs at Observations of a Nerd) has reason to follow the epidemiology of the disease very closely: as this week's Science Channel Geek of the Week she is almost certainly infected herself.

And here is a personal case study from University of Illinois bioengineering instructor Joanne Manaster of Joanne Loves Science:

There is currently no treatment or cure, so all I can do is spread my NERDiness about in hope of finding solidarity with others who share my condition. Nerds rule!

Tags: NERD infection, women in science

May Scientiae: Time Capsules

2009-05-04T23:03:00.000-07:00

Katherine Haxton at Endless Possibilities 2.0 asked for life snapshots of the time-capsule variety for this month's Scientiae carnival. There were so many responses, she had to post them in two parts: Part I, Part II

Go read!

Tags: scientiae carnival

Women Scientists and Engineers on NOVA's scienceNOW

2009-04-22T18:52:00.000-07:00

PBS has just made a bunch of their programs available online, including their science news show, NOVA scienceNOW. Each episode includes a profile of a scientist or engineer doing interesting research.

The segments are short and full of human interest, with "how we met" bits from the spouse, and emphasis on hobbies. There's some science too, of course, but the overall tone is light and breezy. The take home message is science is cool and so are scientists, which isn't a bad thing at all.

The women profiled in the full online episodes are:

Cynthia Breazeal, Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences and Director of the Robotic Life Group at the MIT Media Lab.

"A daring engineer designs robots to communicate and interact the way people do.

Watch the complete episode with the segment on Breazeal. Read the program's transcript.

More information:

Cynthia Breazeal's scienceNOW page, where she answers viewer questions.
Cynthia Breazeal's Website
Cynthia Breazeal at the MIT Media Lab

Edith Widder, marine biologist and bioluminescence specialist, deep-sea explorer and founder of the Ocean Research & Conservation Association.

"Meet a marine biologist and explorer who has engineered new ways to spy on deep-sea creatures."

Watch the complete episode with the segment on Widder. Read the transcript.

More information:

Edie Widder's scienceNOW profile, where she answers questions
Edith Widder at ORCA: Ocean Research & Conservation Association

Other ScienceNOW segments are available online too, but only as Quicktime movies:

Yoky Matsuoka, neuroboticist (robotics + neuroscience) at the University of Washington.
Profile page (with video). Transcript.

Pardis Sabeti, Harvard geneticist and genomics expert.
Profile page (with video). Transcript

Bonnie Basler, Princeton biologist who studies how bacteria "talk".
Profile page (with video). Transcript.

Naomi Halas, Rice University nanotech expert.
Profile page (with video). Transcript.

Julie Schablitsky, archaeologist studying the Donner Party site and other areas important to the history of the American West.
Profile page (with video). Transcript.

Watching the videos (or reading the transcripts) of a bunch of the profiles, it's striking how much more the women profiled talked about their personal lives than the men. I don't know if that is because of the questions they were asked or not, but I was pretty surprised that Naomi Halas was asked point blank whether the reason she and her husband didn't have children because of her work. The answer: no, they wanted children, but she couldn't have them, which seems like a very personal revelation. When most the men were interviewed we don't even find out whether they have children or not, let alone whether they wanted to have kids. I realize that's likely because there is a social expectation is that "normal" women want to be mothers and are more interested in having a life outside the lab then men, but it's disappointing that the show's questions went in that direction.

Tags: scienceNOW, Cynthia Breazeal, Edith Widder

Maxine Singer: Biochemist

2009-04-15T21:54:00.000-07:00

This week's woman of the week at CR4 is biochemist Maxine Singer, and it reminded me that I've had a post about her in my draft queue for a while that deserved to see the light of day (glow of the internet?).

Maxine Singer earned her PhD from Yale just a few years after Watson and Crick published the structure of DNA. Her thesis advisor, protein chemist Joseph Fruton, advised her to focus on the then-relatively obscure field of nucleic acid biochemistry. In 1956 she joined Leon Heppel's lab at NIH as a post doc, one of the few labs at the time that was focused on nucleic acid chemistry. Singer synthesized specific RNA base sequences that were used to determine how those sequences were translated into the amino acid sequences of polypeptides. She and her colleagues were pioneers in the fledgeling field of molecular biology. Two years later NIH offered her a job with a lab of her own.

Apparently both as a graduate student at Yale and as a postdoc in Heppel's lab, Singer didn't notice that she was treated any differently because she was a woman. As she said in a 1992 interview:

It was like being a woman. It wasn't an issue where I was; I was very lucky. I was very naive. In those days, people didn't discuss the problem, and I've never heard anybody discuss it. I've been very, very fortunate in college to be in a place where it didn't matter and where most of the people who were really smart in science were women, just by dumb luck, in my class. I went to graduate school in a place that was very welcoming of women and I had no idea it was any problem. And then I went to the NIH as a postdoc and within a year and a half they offered me a job, so I never ever worried about it and I didn't think about it.
In retrospect, the first time it had ever become an issue was when I realized I was having trouble getting postdocs to work in my lab and I went to the chairman of our department and said, "You have a lot of postdocs applying; how come I never got one in my lab?" And he was very straight with me; he said, "Nobody wants to come and work with a woman." So that was the first time that I really hit it, so I never had any kind of bad experiences, or I never noticed them. I'm not really sure which, but I didn't pay any attention, I was naive about it. So I wasn't looking.

But just because Singer didn't see it then doesn't mean there wasn't a problem. As she noted in that 1992 interview - which was taken at a symposium on DNA - she seemed to be a token woman speaker:

Sure, there's a problem. I was pretty dumb not to know it. But there is a problem. Look at this symposium. Liz Blackburn is one of the moderators, that is, she's introducing people, and I'm the only woman who's speaking in the whole program. And that's crazy, because there's a lot of terrific young women who are doing marvelous science and speak very well. It's kind of crazy that I'm the only one in the Symposium. And I suspect that that's why I'm here. They must have looked at the list that they had and said, oh, we can't do this, someone will complain.

(As an aside, I know from my own experience that it can be easy not to notice bias if you are really focused on your work, and you aren't blatantly affected by it. But it's like one of those magic eye pictures where it looks like a bunch of dots, and then, suddently the 3D image jumps out at you - and that 3D image is easier to see every time you look. And sometimes I wonder how I could miss something so obvious. But I digress.)

She and her husband, attorney David Singer, also had three children. She told a Washington Post columnist in 1960 ("Motherhood 'Myth' Miffs Mother Who Works" (pdf)) that she didn't think her children would "turn out terrible" because she spent little time with them on weekdays.

"... I think my children are happy, alive, interested in the world around them, and not difficult to deal with," she said last week.
Mrs. Singer always tries to get home on time from her job at the [NIAMD] to play with the children before their bedtime. Even when she is in the middle of an experiment and is "tempted to stay late" in the laboratory, she heads for home, "taking my paper work with me to do late at night. The men around here can work much longer hours than I, but that's one of the compromises one has to make."

The last part doesn't sound much different from what many women scientists who are also mothers say today.

Singer continued her research in nucleic acids and was intensely involved in developing related policy. In she co-chaired the 1973 Gordon conference where the potential risks of recombinant DNA technology and helped organize the famous 1975 Asilomar conference that assembled guidelines for use of the technology in research.

She eventually rose to head the Laboratory of Biochemistry at the National Cancer Institute. Even though much of her time was spent on administrative duties, the research in her lab during that period made significant contributions to understanding the structure of the human genome.

Singer had begun to focus on a large family of repeated stretches of mammalian DNA called LINEs, or long interspersed nucleotide elements, that are present with very little variation in the genomes of all mammals. Focusing on LINE-1, a DNA sequence repeated and interspersed thousands of times in human chromosomal DNA, Singer concluded that it is capable of transposition, or movement and insertion into new places on chromosomal DNA. (It is, in fact, to this point the only known human transposable element.) She studied the precise mechanism whereby LINE-1 replicates and disperses copies to new locations along the genome. She also posited that the insertion of transposable genetic elements into new genomic locations can induce mutations in nearby genes, and that LINE-1 transposition played an important role in genetic diseases. Researchers later confirmed Singer's suspicion when they found that LINE-1 insertions into a gene whose protein product is required for blood clotting are associated with hemophilia.

In 1988 she became President of the Carnegie Institution, a post she held until 2002. While she was there, she established the Carnegie Academy for Science Education (CASE), which worked to increase teachers' knowledge of science and provide them tools for teaching.

Over the years she has held a number of other posts, and amassed numerous awards and honors, including:

Chair of the National Academies Committee on Science Engineering and Public Policy, where she "addressed graduate education, postdoctoral scholarship, the plight of women in science, and scientific conduct."
1975-1990 Fellow (Trustee) of the Yale Corporation
1979 Elected to the National Academy of Sciences
1985-1988 Chairman of the editorial board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
1985-1994 Board of Directors of the Whitehead Institute, in 2003 Singer became Chairman of the Whitehead's Board of Directors
1988 Distinguished Presidential Rank Award , "highest honor given to a civil servant"
1992 National Medal of Science
2007 National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal

April Scientiae Carnival @ Candid Engineer in Academia

2009-04-02T23:37:00.000-07:00

The Candid Engineer has put together an excellent scientiae carnival around the theme "overcoming challenges".

I found it moving to read so many stories about people overcoming professional obstacles, and persevering through personal issues, and even medical problems. Not every story has a fairytale ending, of course, but simply being able to move on and move forward after life throws you a curveball is a powerful ability.

Go read!

Tags: scientiae-carnival

Nubia Munoz wins Canada Gairdner Global Health Award

2009-03-31T23:12:00.000-07:00

The Gairdner Foundation is a Canadian organization that recognizes achievement in the biomedical sciences. Their 2009 awards were announced today. The Gairdner Foundation International Award, "traditionally considered a precursor to winning the Nobel Prize in Medicine", is going to three men: Shinya Yamanaka, Richard Losick, and Kazutoshi Mori. However this year's Global Health Award is going to a woman: Dr. Nubia Muñoz, Emeritus Professor of the National Cancer Institute of Columbia.

The Global Health Award "recognizes those who have made major scientific advances in any one of four areas' namely; basic science, clinical science or population or environmental health. These advances must have, or have potential to make a significant impact on health outcomes in the developing world." And Muñoz's work showing the role of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) in the etiology of cervical cancer fits those requirements nicely.

Muñoz also won the 2008 Sir Richard Doll Prize in Epidemiology. The award site gives a nice explanation of the significance of her research :

First, she conducted an international series of case-control studies using modern laboratory techniques that ended up demonstrating that HPV infection by certain genotypes of HPV is unequivocally one the strongest cancer risk factors ever found. Her subsequent work also produced precise estimates of relative risks that permitted defining the HPV genotypes that had to be targeted for prevention. Likewise, it was from this enormous and persuasive series of case-control studies and from collaborative work that she had led as part of the International Biological Study of Cervical Cancer (IBSCC) that came the realization that HPV infection was not only the unequivocal central cause of cervical cancer but it should also be viewed as a necessary one No other cancer prevention paradigms (e.g., smoking-lung cancer, HBV-liver cancer) have this distinction.
[I've removed the footnote citations, click the link above to see the references.]

Her work helped persuade pharmaceutical companies that developing a vaccine for HPV was a worthwhile project.

And the role of HPV in cervical cancer has international importance: cervical cancer is the most common cancer in women in large parts of Africa, Latin America and Asia, and the third most frequent cancer in women worldwide. In spite of its prevalence, until the recent announcement of a vaccine against the strains of HPV that cause most cervical cancers, it got little media attention. Hopefully the vaccine will be made available - and affordable - to women in the countries where most of the 250,000 or so annual deaths from cervical cancer occur.The epidemiological studies lead by Muñoz are ultimately the reason why there is that hope of that at all.

Most of the information about Muñoz is in Spanish, so I haven't found anything about her background that I could actually understand. She received her decgree as a Doctor of Medicine and Surgery from the Faculy of Medicine at the University of Valle in Cali, Columbia in 1964. She was a fellow at the National Cancer Institute at NIH for two years in the late 1960s and did post graduate work in the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins. She has been studying the epidemiology of cervical cancer for more than 30 years. I think her work pretty well speaks for itself.

More information:

Tags: Nubia Muñoz, Gairdner Global Health Award, epidemiology

Why Science is Important

2009-03-30T23:37:00.000-07:00

Alom Shaha, a science teacher at Camden School for Girls, asked scientists and educators to explain why they think science is important. He got a great range of responses, which he has compiled into a documentary. Many of the contributors seem to have moved from research to writing and teaching - I'm not sure that's indicative of anything other than the fact that educators are more likely to have both heard about the project and be comfortable with talking on video.

Some of the women in science who contributed:

Kat Arney, "ex-scientist" working as a Science Information Officer at Cancer Research UK
Robin Bell, Senior Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.
Susan Blackmore, frelance writer and Visiting Lecturer at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Blackmore is best known for her theory of memetics.
Rosie Coates, PhD student in chemistry at University College London.
Beulah Garner, natural history curator at the Horniman Museum and Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society.
Elaine Greaney, rocket scientist.
Maya Hawes: a 12-year-old student
Ann Lingard, novelist, former scientist, and founder of SciTalk - a site that helps writers connect with scientists.
Becky Parker, Head of Physics at the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys. She's a former lecturer in physics, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and has been awarded an MBE for her services to science.
Jennifer Rohn, cell biologist and founder of LabLit.com.
Rhian Salmon, PhD in Atmospheric Chemistry. She currently works as Education and Outreach Coordinator for the International Polar Year
Tara Shears, particle physicist.
Anna Smajdor, lecturer in Ethics at the University of East Anglia. She is particularly interested in the ethical aspects of science, medicine and technology.

Here's the final film (if you don't see it embedded below, click the link):

Why is Science Important? from Alom Shaha on Vimeo.

Tags: Why Science is Important, education

New Diversity in Science Carnival Posted

2009-03-26T19:18:00.000-07:00

The latest Diversity in Science Carnival has been posted at Thus Spake Zuska. This edition's theme is women in science, and she's linked to some excellent posts.

The next carnival will be hosted by DN Lee at Urban Science Adventures! on the topic "Dealing With Diversity - what have you done with it, what obstacles have you faced, what success stories do you have". The deadline is May 20, so I should have time to actually post something for it.

Tags: Diversity in Science Carnival, women in science

Visit Dr. Isis to Help a Young Woman Scientist

2009-03-26T13:07:00.000-07:00

Dr. Isis, hot science and fabulous shoe blogger extraordinaire, is putting the money where her mouth is (so to speak), and using revenue from her blog to fund an award for a budding young woman scientist. She says:

Since joining ScienceBlogs I have been in contact and discussion with the executive director of the American Physiological Society, discussing ways I might use my blog powers for good instead of solely evil. The APS has very kindly agreed to allow us (hang tight, I'm not asking for money, seriously) to fund an award at this year's Experimental Biology meeting for the undergraduate woman who submits the best abstract. Each year the APS awards seven David Bruce Awards for undergraduate research excellence and, within the structure of this program, the APS will be adding an eighth award specifically from me and my lovely readers (but I'm not asking for money. I promise). I really loved the idea of using my blog to encourage and reward a more junior scientist who had done excellent work and visiting these undergraduate poster presentations are really a highlight for me each year.

You can help fund the award by simply visiting On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess. So far the fundraising is apparently going very well, and Dr. Isis says "If you keep visiting the way you are now (or maybe one extra click more a day to help a sister out? or maybe you would tell one friend about the blog?) we're going to be able to do something much bigger than I initially anticipated we would. Much." So go and read!

If you need somewhere to start, you might want to begin with her post about Marion Diamond, then continue on from there. You won't regret it.

Tags: David Bruce Awards, women in science

Celebrating Ada Lovelace Day: Women Excelling in Technology

2009-03-24T00:20:00.000-07:00

In case you've forgotten, today - March 24 - is Ada Lovelace Day. I and over 1500 other bloggers have pledged to post about "women excelling in technology". I had a hard time deciding whether I should profile someone who works on the business end of tech, or if someone in academia would be more interesting. In the end, I took the easy way out by including one of each: Silicon Valley CEO Carol Bartz on the business side, and Georgia Tech professor Amy Bruckman on the academic side. They are from two different generations, and are involved very different aspects of the technology world. Both demonstrate that women can be - and are - successful in technology.

Technology Business: Carol Bartz

In January of this year Carol Bartz was thrust into the international limelight when she was named the new Chief Executive Officer of internet giant Yahoo! While many people outside of tech world may not have heard her name before then, she is certainly not new to the industry; from 1992-2006 she was CEO of Autodesk, the giant software company that produces AutoCAD and other design software, and she served as their Chairman of the Board until this year. Before heading up Autodesk she was CFO at Sun Microsystems. She's clearly no stranger to Silicon Valley.

But her career trajectory could have been very different. In high school she was a cheerleader and the homecoming queen - and one of only two girls taking physics and advanced math classes. She originally intended to major in math in college, but took a computer class and fell in love. She told More.com:

Well, the first time I wrote a program, I just loved it," she says, sighing at the memory. "I absolutely loved it. We had to write a program that would add up all of the license plate numbers in the state of Missouri. Ah! I remember that so clearly."

This was 1966 and she the small college she was attending didn't offer the courses she was interesting in taking. She transferred to the University of Wisconsin at Madison to major in computer science, paying her way through school working as a cocktail waitress (a detail that all the articles about her like to emphasize). Her first major job after graduation was at 3M, where she ran into a big wall: she had entered an industry where women weren't particularly welcome.

"3M was where I first realized that this corporate thing against women really existed," she says. "I was definitely singled out." In her first week, Bartz, the only woman professional in a division of 300 men, was sent to an out-of-town business meeting where everyone was assigned to share a room. When "C. Bartz" saw her room assignment, she quietly had the hotel switch her to a single room. The next morning she was met by a manager who had just, apparently, had a good look at the list. "We're going to have to let you go," he said. "You slept with somebody last night."
Bartz can laugh about it now. "They were so whacked out just because there was actually a female there," she says. "I told them I didn't sleep with anybody last night, and that I didn't know anyone there. Even so, for the next several hours, I was fired."

Bartz spent four years at 3M. But in 1976, when she requested a transfer to headquarters, "They told me to my face, 'Women don't do these jobs.' It was the first time I actually heard that," she recalls. "I'm out of here," she told them. She packed up her desk and left.

At that point Bartz could have found an industry that was more friendly to women, but she instead decided to stick it out in the high-tech business world. In retrospect, that was clearly the right choice. But even now, after decades in the industry, she is one of the few women to hold a top position. Back in 1997 she wrote:

In the country's biggest companies, there aren't many women CEOs. But more are coming up. Some are starting their own companies. It's better to be a woman in technology than in other industries, but there definitely still is a gap or a glass ceiling. It's there in a lot of subtle and some not-so-subtle ways. It starts with venture funding. It's present in the fact that there are not that many women technologists. It goes back to the fact that young girls still aren't encouraged in the math and science arena. It goes to the fact that white males are still more comfortable with white males.

And she sees the situation as largely the same today.

I wonder how many women in technology who had similar experiences to Bartz's in the early days of their careers simply decided to leave for friendlier climes. I believe that Bartz would have likely been just as successful if she had done just that. She could have been one more statistic used to show that women "chose" alternative career paths. But she persisted despite the road blocks thrown up in front of her, and has clearly demonstrated that women can be successful in the high tech business world.

More about Carol Bartz:

Forbes: In Her Own Words: Carl Bartz: No Time to Change Others (originally published Dec. 1997)
Business 2.0: The Survivor: She fought off cancer, then turned a struggling maker of design software into an industry giant. Is there anything that tough-talking Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz can't do? (Dec. 1, 2004)
More: The World According to Carol Bartz (June 2006)
(This is a very detailed profile)
Valleywag: Carol Bartz, the Woman Everyone but Yahoo Forgot (Jan. 15, 2009)
(I know it's essentially a gossip blog, but it's depressing that the second comment on a post that talks about her accomplishments and management style is noting that she recently lost weight. Why does that matter?)
The Economist: One tough Yahoo! Life has tested Carol Bartz far more than even running Yahoo! will (Jan. 15, 2009)
Business Week: Yahoo's Bartz Shows Who's Boss (Feb. 26, 2009)

Technology as an Educational Tool: Amy Bruckman

Just two years after earning her Ph.D. from the Epistemology and Learning Group at the MIT Media Lab, Amy Bruckman's work at Georgia Tech caught the eye of Technology Review, which named her a "1999 Young Innovator". In their profile of her research, they described how she was developing online communities as a tool for education.

As a graduate student, Bruckman founded an online community for new-media researchers called MediaMOO,as well as a MOO for children called MOOSE Crossing. Bruckman has undertaken "the most notable MOO research in education," says Aaron Tornberg, an educational technology researcher at the University of Cincinnati.

To make this possible, Bruckman had to design a new interface, as well as a new programming language. Once she creates virtual communities, Bruckman doffs her engineer’s cap, puts on her anthropologist hat, and studies how the online environment influences the interactions of its participants.

Online communities have blossomed (exploded?) over the past decade, and her research has followed their progress. One of her current projects is "exploring how Wikipedia actually works, conducting empirical studies of regular contributors, administrators, participants in WikiProject subgroups, and people banned from Wikipedia."

Bruckman is also helping develop new online communities, such as Science Online, which helps students learn science by writing about it, and Georgia Computes!, which aims to increase diversity in computing. She believes that such communities can be an important tool in education:

Dr. Bruckman's research applies the "constructionist" philosophy of education--learning through design and construction activities on personally meaningful projects--to the design of online communities. The Internet, she asserts, has a unique potential to make constructionist learning scalable and sustainable in real-world settings because it makes it easy to provide social support for learning and teaching. In electronic learning communities, participants can help motivate and support one-another's activities, "thereby scaffolding the project-based learning process."

I very much like the idea, mostly because I think that's how I learn best.

Bruckman's approach to technology is very different from that of Bartz, but I think that both clearly illustrate that women and technology go together quite well.

More about Amy Bruckman:

Wikipedia: Amy S. Bruckman
Center for Children & Technology: Georgia Tech University Professor, Bruckman, Wins 2002 Jan Hawkins Award
Technology Review TR100: Amy Bruckman (1999)
Wired: Bringing Society to Cyberspace (2002)

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

2009-03-21T21:37:00.000-07:00

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