Women's History Month 2013 - Day 19

Being a proud, life-long 'Bristolite' (I fear I lack the birth right or accent of a true 'Bristolian') I love my city fiercely and love turning up new local heroes. Outsiders to the city may know of Banksy, Wallace and Gromit and maybe the Wurzels, but did you know that the first ever, registered female doctor and first women to ever graduate from medical school, was also born here? That beats Justin Lee Collins and the bloke who played Darth Vader hands down.

Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910)

Not only did Elizabeth Blackwell have the good fortune to be born in Georgian Bristol, she also had the additional fortune of a very large, loving, and for the time, liberal family. Her father Samuel, a sugar refiner, believed strongly in education for his nine children, encouraging them to follow dreams and nurture talents. This meant that Elizabeth, with her promising intellect, was cultivated with governesses and tutors as well as the support of her father.

But Bristol has always been beset by social unrest, and then was no different to now, with an unstable economy and riots brewing in the streets. Samuel Blackwell decided to move his whole family to the more flourishing America when Elizabeth was 11. Here the family continued their liberal ways, becoming committed abolitionists and champions of social reform. However, Samuel died only five years later, leaving behind debts and no business to speak of after his refinery burnt down.

Being proactive, Elizabeth and her older sisters opened a school to help the family out of their financial woes. Elizabeth taught in the school and once it became established she also started taking on private pupils. The school closed in 1842 as so she began to work more on other pursuits, such as becoming involved in political campaigns, writing about women’s rights, studying the arts and working to highlight the horrors of slavery.

When Elizabeth was 24 she got the inspiration to study medicine. Her friend was dying of a gynaecological cancer, and stressed that what made her situation all the worse was being treated by a ‘rough’ male medic. She urged her intelligent friend to train to be a doctor. The ideal appealed to Elizabeth, intellectually, and also because she believed she could use her compassion to help others, especially women. She also liked the idea of having a career that would help her live independently, without having to marry. Never one to shy away from a challenge, Elizabeth went about finding ways to fulfill her new ambition, even though no woman had trained in the field before.

Her first obstacle was money. She would need to raise $3,000 in order to pay for medical school tuition. She embarked on a series of teaching jobs while all the time independently teaching herself all she could from medical books and journals. She moved to Philadelphia in search of more opportunity. Here she took private anatomy lessons and tried to apply to medical schools, but was met with rejection everywhere. Her tutors suggested trying abroad, and even disguising herself as a man to get a foot in the door!

In 1947 she was finally accepted to Geneva Medical College in upstate New York, though her entry was just a jeering social experiment on the part of the college. It was not an easy time for Elizabeth; she was treated as an oddity, and met resistance throughout her studies. She had to fight to be allowed to attend the reproductive anatomy class for the tutor thought it might warp her ‘delicate female mind’, and the male students did everything they could to make her leave. Elizabeth kept her head down and pushed on through, rejecting taunts and scorn as well as suitors and male advances, instead completing most of her studies in isolation. She made it through and graduated in 1849, the first women in the United States to ever gain a medical degree.

It wasn’t easy getting work, even voluntary, and many male doctors refused to work alongside her and so she headed back to England, and then on to Paris, where after much more discrimination for her gender, she finally got to train to be an obstetrician. Elizabeth headed back to New York, finally fulfilling her dream of having her own private practice, and then clinic.

The New York Dispensary for Poor Women and Children was opened in 1853, and then the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children in 1857. That same year, she became the first woman listed on the British Medical Register during a time when she was lecturing there.

In the late 1860s, Elizabeth also opened a medical school for women in New York – The Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary. Here Elizabeth put a focus on the importance of hygiene in the curriculum, something she had observed the importance of over her years of practice.

Elizabeth settled back in England for the remainder of her career. She set up a private practice in London and served as a lecturer at the London School of Medicine for Women. She finally retired in 1877, but continued to stay active, writing books and travelling, until a fall left her severely disabled at the age of 86. She died three years later in 1910. Her legacy was a doorway that let many women enter the medical profession as well as being an inspiration to those that did. Elizabeth, you did Bristol proud.

Women's History Month 2013 - Day 18

Now girls and boys, I hope you’re sitting comfortably, because today I am going to tell you a story… Yes, today I am going to tell you about a woman whose life read a bit like a fairytale. Sometimes referenced as ‘the Celestial Cinderella’ this woman had a lowly start in life but ended up shining amongst the stars. 

Caroline Herschel (1750-1848)

Once upon a time (1750 to be precise)… in a land far, far away (Hanover in Germany) a girl was born to a musician and his wife. As one of ten children, and a girl, Caroline Herschel didn’t get a lot of status in her family. To make matters worse when she was three she contracted smallpox, which left her scarred and blind in one eye and then when she was ten she was struck down with typhus, which stopped her growth, leaving her only 4ft 3in in height. Because Caroline had these physical differences from other girls, her parents assumed that no man would want to marry her, and instead planned to put her to work as a maid, thinking she could not amount to much more.

Not everyone in Caroline’s family was so unkind though. Caroline had an older brother called William, who was a very successful and charismatic chap. He had been a musician like their father and then served his time in the military. After his service he moved to Bath in England to pursue his interest in astronomy. On a trip back to the family home in 1772 after the death of his father, he found Caroline banished to working in the family’s kitchen. Enraged at the treatment of his beloved little sister, he decided to rescue her from her place of servitude and take her back to Bath with him, where she would be treated as an equal and not as a servant.

Back in Bath, William taught Caroline (or his dear “Lina” as he oft called her) singing, and shared with her his passion for astronomy. Caroline quickly showed great talent and aptitude for the subject and great skill at working the telescope and handling the equipment, although poor Caroline was injured once more, when she got impaled on a large hook when making observations! With time Caroline learned to record, reduce, and organise her brother’s astronomical observations. William was so impressed with his sister’s work he insisted that she start making observations on her own.

By the 1790s Caroline had discovered several comets, a few of which were named after her, becoming the first woman ever to do this. Bored with the idea of society, and not feeling fulfilled by her musical hobby, Caroline wanted to become a recognised, professional astronomer like her big brother. After much patience – and after discovering eight comets – King George III finally granted Caroline an annual salary of £50 for her work as William's assistant.

Other astronomers had been mapping the sky before William and Caroline, but their joint observations revealed many inconsistencies in other published catalogues. William realised that a proper cross-index was needed in order to properly explore the stars but didn’t want to do it himself as it would take too much time – time he would rather spend on making more observations. So he entrusted the whopping task to little Lina. The resulting Catalogue of Stars was published by the Royal Society in 1798, and included a list of more than 560 stars that William and Caroline had been the first to observe.

William died in 1822, and Caroline decided to move back to Germany, but although devastated at the loss of her brother, she did not abandon her work. Se continued alongside her nephew John Herschel, discovering and cataloguing newlt discovered nebulae. In 1835 she was one of the first women to be given honorary membership of the Royal Astronomical Society. On her 96th birthday, Caroline was awarded the King of Prussia's Gold Medal of Science for her life long achievements. Since her death in 1848 she has had stars, an asteroid and even a crater on the moon named after her. She has continued to inspire astronomers, and is proof that even physical impairments don’t have to stand in the way of following a dream. Now that is a ‘happily ever after’.

Women's History Month 2013 - Day 17

There are several things that attracted me to today’s dame du jour; the least of which is that she was a talented mathematician and physicist, author and translator of important scientific works. Attributes that have made her an even more favourable candidate for my compendium are that she belonged to the lower ranks of the French Aristocracy in the early 18th Century (I am a complete Francophile and sucker for heroines in corsets), she defied the conventions of her sex with her thirst for education and academia, and she was a bit of a rebel. She was also scandalously passionate, and had a love affair with philosopher and writer Voltaire, who frankly, is also my 18th Century crush. She was the early definition of a feminist, promoting education and happiness for women, while following her own path with determination. Hers is a torrid tale of sex and science and should be shared.

Émilie du Châtelet (1706-1749)

Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet was born in Paris in 1706. The society in which she was born was one of polite repression for women; they were to be good courtiers, wives and ladies, accomplished in music and dancing and that's about it. Emilie, however, was fiercely intelligent and the only daughter in a family of six. Emilie’s father held an interest in science and mathematics and exposed his eager daughter to these subjects, along with languages, fencing and riding. Aware of her keen mind, he encouraged her talents and brought tutors and academics to the house for her to study with. At aged ten she was discussing the finer points of astronomy with esteemed writer Fontanelle. She excelled in her studies, especially in languages, but mathematics remained her first love.

Despite her progressive education, Emilie couldn't completely escape the conventions of the day. Although being of a ‘passionate nature’ with no lack of romantic attachments in her youth, she was still formally married at the age of 18, within the French court, to the Marquis Florent-Claude du Chastellet-Lomont, who was twelve years her senior. Emile thrived at court; she enjoyed dancing, acting and playing music, and thanks to her mathematical talents she was quite the keen, and successful, gambler!

After leaving court to marry and have three children (also suffering the death of her youngest son when he was an infant), aged 26 Emilie returned to court, and resumed her studies in mathematics, tutoring under some of the finest academics of the day. Her husband spent most of his time on garrison duties, which meant that he spent long periods away from his wife, but Emilie was never in want of entertainment or company.

Emilie had met Voltaire as a teenager and from their early friendship it was clear they were kindred spirits. Although they met through Emilie’s father’s academic connections when she was still young, their friendship became cemented once Emilie returned to society. This was a meeting of minds, of hearts, and it has to said, loins. The Marquis, had an understanding attitude to his wife’s attachments (Voltaire was by no means her only lover since her marriage); in fact, evidence shows that the three had a good friendship – how very modern!

Voltaire resided at the couple’s country home while in exile, where he added a library and collection of scientific instruments. His love for Emilie ran deeper than lust; he loved and admired her mind and enthusiasm for life. He wrote of her: ‘I found in 1733 a young lady who felt more or less as I did, and who resolved to spend several years in the country to cultivate her mind, far from the tumult of the world. It was the marquise Du Châtelet, the woman who in all France had the greatest disposition for all the sciences. ... Seldom has so fine a mind and so much taste been united with so much ardour for learning; but she also loved the world and all the amusements of her age and sex.’ – Oh Voltaire, sigh.

Emilie was keen to apply all her years of study and Voltaire encouraged her; she jointly worked on a translation of Newton’s theories with him, wrote a book on physics Institutions de Physique in 1740, and in 1744 a paper entitled Dissertation sur la nature et la propagation du feu, based upon her research into the science of fire and light. She was in regular discussion with famous mathematicians of the day, including Maupertuis and Clairaut – another one of her lovers – and through her translation of Mandeville's The fable of the bees, she wrote a preface of her own ideas of morality, arguing strongly for the importance of educating women.

Emilie took another lover in 1748, the poet Jean-Francois de Saint-Lambert, and quickly fell pregnant. This did not dim Voltaire’s love for her and their friendship continued, he even helped her keep peace with her husband over this indiscretion. She worked on her writing throughout her pregnancy, sacrificing only her social life at court to make room for her work. She gave birth to a daughter in 1749, going into labour while still at her writing desk. Alas, the work was to be her last, a few weeks later, her baby daughter died, and Emilie followed a few days later, apparently from an pulmonary embolism, she was only 43.

For such a short life, Emilie achieved so much, living her life to the fullest, especially for someone of her sex at that time – shunning convention and embracing knowledge, academia, friendship and love with all she had, and the inspiration of that is a legacy in itself. But more than that she is considered to be one of the most influential mathematicians of her time, her influence shaping the subject into what is know today, and shaping the hearts of her peers, especially Voltaire… a true libertine bluestocking if ever there was one!

Women's History Month 2013 - Day 16

I want to showcase another one of my current heroes of science today. I first came across her when I saw her TED talk on her experiences of having a stroke. She has inspired me in my own love of pyschology and neuroscience and through reading her work I have gained a better understanding of how the brain works and how we interact with the world around us. Dr Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist, with a particular interest in the pathology of brains in connection with schizophrenia and the severe mental illnesses. In 1996, she, herself, suffered a massive stroke and spent the next eight years recovering from it, and since then has been a spokesperson and speaker on neurological recovery.

Dr Jill Bolte Taylor (born 1959)

Dr Taylor has meant so much to me as I discovered her at a time when I’d seen my own father suffer from strokes and dementia, and she helped give me a great insight into what may be happing inside his mind. She has also helped me consolidate some of my own wonderings about the workings of our minds and how we connect to the world, to life and to death.

Rather than do my usual biography, I wrote to Dr Taylor and asked her some questions about her experiences of being a women in science in honour of Women’s History Month, and lo and behond if she didn’t reply! So I would add in that not only is she a brilliant scientist, speaker and inspiration to many, she is also a super nice lady! As I discovered Dr Taylor’s work through her TED talk (my favourite TED talk of all time) please do watch it if you can, and you’ll see why I am so inspired by her.

When you were growing up, who were the women who inspired you? Did you have any role models?

I had two powerful female role models when I was young, my mother who was a superwoman – a mother of three, wife of a clergyman with a 300 family congregation; and math professor at the local university. There was also my 'adopted mother' ,who lived right across the street who stimulated my interest in biology and animal dissection.



Did you encounter much sexism or discrimination in your chosen academic career of neuroanatomy? And if so, how did you overcome this?

Yes, but I didn't let it get in my way. It was clear to me that to be a successful woman in science it was necessary to be more competitive than my male counterparts. And even if that didn't pay off, I could have made an issue of it, gotten my nose out of joint about it or just put in my effort, serve my time, jump through the hoops and move on. I chose to not throw bad energy and feed negative causes.



What has been the highlight of your career so far?

Having a stroke, recovering from it, writing a book about it that went to the NY Times bestseller list and ultimately buying my freedom from any academic institution so I can now pick and choose what I want to do with my time rather than have that dictated by a boss.



What advice would she have to any young women who are trying to get into psychology and neuroscience today?

Learn neuroanatomy and everything about the brain you can learn. Knowledge of the brain is power, because so many people shy away from it by thinking it is too hard to learn. Don't fall into that trap, don't shy away. The neuroanatomy of the brain is beautiful, and if you have that knowledge then it will underly everything else about the brain you will study.


A big thank you to Dr Taylor for answering my questions.

Women's History Month 2013 - Day 15

We have an all-American hero for you today, another one of those women who manages to achieve so much that a mere list of accomplishments would fill a blog post. This woman got things done. I will try and narrow down her story to that concerning her involvement in science (she was a surgeon to be precise), as that is our theme of the month... however please forgive me if I venture into her feminist ways, her penchant for the practicality of male clothes and her involvement in politics. She is also another amazing hat wearer and I simply cannot resist them.

Dr Mary Edwards Walker (1832-1919)

Mary Edwards Walker was the youngest of five daughters (with one younger brother) and was born in the state of New York in 1832. From being very young she shunned ‘female’ clothes in favour of more masculine garms, she worked on the family farm and found them more practical and comfortable. Her father supported this practical mode of dress for women, he also believed in a good education for girls as well as boys, and Mary and all her sisters attended the local school where their mother taught. He was also an abolitionist and freethinker, and general all round good guy I think it’s fair to say.

Like Nettie (from WHM Day 13), Mary became a teacher in order to save up enough money to put herself through higher education. In June 1855 Mary, the only woman in her class, graduated from the eclectic Syracuse Medical College, the nation's first medical school that accepted women and men on an equal basis. She graduated at age 21 after three 13-week semesters of medical training which she paid $55 each for, this put her in the small, but steadily growing ranks of female doctors in the US.

Keeping up her interests in women’s rights, advocacy for women to wear trousers (or bloomers as they were coming to be known), Mary set up in New York as a doctor at a practice with her new husband Albert, another physician. It’s fair to say that Mary wore the trousers in the relationship, quite literally. During this time, in the evenings, she would lecture on women’s rights while wearing full men’s evening dress.

In 1861 the American Civil War broke out, and Mary was keen to sign up and use her medical skills. Mary went to Washington and tried to join the Union Army. Surprise, surprise she was denied a position as a medical officer, but volunteered anyway, serving as an assistant surgeon, the first female surgeon in the US Army. Later, she worked as a field surgeon near the Union front lines for almost two years; of course she used this opportunity to wear an adapted military uniform!

In April, 1864 she was captured by Confederate troops and arrested as a spy and imprisoned for four months. She was eventually released back, but spent the rest of the war practicing at a Louisville female prison and an orphanage in Tennessee. She was paid $766.16 for her wartime service. Afterward, she got a monthly pension of $8.50, later raised to $20.

In 1865 Mary was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour for Meritorious Service (the USA’s highest military award), in recognition of her contributions to the war effort. She was the only woman ever to receive it. However, in 1917 Congress took away her medal, along with the medals of 910 others, when the Medal of Honour standards was reviewed to only include only “actual combat with an enemy”. But Mary refused to hand over her medal, wearing it every day until her death in 1919. A relative told the New York Times: "Dr. Mary lost the medal simply because she was a hundred years ahead of her time and no one could stomach it." The US Army reinstated Walker's medal posthumously in 1977, citing her "distinguished gallantry, self-sacrifice, patriotism, dedication and unflinching loyalty to her country, despite the apparent discrimination because of her sex." Damn straight!!

After the war, Mary lectured (usually in top hat and tails), and wrote books and articles on such subjects as suffrage, dress reform and health. She was ahead of her time in pointing out the health risks of smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol. She must have got something right as she lived to the ripe old age of 86. In 1919 she died of natural causes in her home state of New York. At her funeral an American flag was draped over the coffin in true hero style. She was, of course, buried, as always, in her smart black suit.

Women's History Month 2013 - Day 14

For you British blog followers, let me give you a little background information about a star not very far from here. In fact, in recent centuries it was discovered that out humble little planet actually revolves around it. To the rest of the world it provides heat and light. To us it’s that yellow disc-shaped phenomenon that is often seen for a couple of days in April and then September and usually prompts a selling-out of sausages in Sainsburys and a hosepipe ban.

Wry British weather-based humour aside, today I want to showcase a splendid dame who’s work in astronomy and astrophysics revealed some of the most important secrets of our universe, including what stars, including our own elusive sun is made of. The male astrophysicists of the day may have eclipsed this woman’s achievements and discoveries, but her contributions to the field are some of the most important in understanding how are universe works, so it really is time to give her some credit and give her a day in the sun.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin 

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was born in Wendover, UK, in 1900. One of three children, her barrister father died when Cecilia was four leaving her mother to raise Cecilia and her two brothers alone. Unsurprisingly there was money to send her two brothers to college but not her, but Celilia, being so bright, won a scholarship to Cambridge, where she read botany, physics and chemistry, and sparked a life long passion in astronomy. Although she completed her studies, Cambridge did not award degrees to women – of course not – so her work went uncredited.

Realising the limitations of the British academic system for her gender, Cecilia headed to America. Harlow Shapley, the then director of Harvard College Observatory picked up on the talents of this bright young girl and encouraged Cecilia to write a doctoral dissertation. So in 1925 she became the first person to embark on a PhD in astronomy. Her thesis “Stellar Atmospheres, A Contribution to the Observational Study of High Temperature in the Reversing Layers of Stars” drew acclaim from her peers, and was quoted to be, by fellow astronomer Otto Struve “undoubtedly the most brilliant Ph.D thesis ever written in astronomy”.

It was at Harvard that she suggested that silicon, carbon, and other common metals seen in the sun were found in about the same relative amounts as on Earth, but helium and particularly hydrogen were vastly more abundant, concluding that hydrogen was the main constituent of stars. So with this star finding, how is it that you’ve never heard of her? She wasn’t fully credited with the discovery at the time because her male superiors convinced her to retract her findings on stellar hydrogen and publish a far less definitive statement, and Cecelia was worried about her academic career if she argued. Within a few years, however, she was proven to be correct. Not only was it shown that that all stars are essentially the same, her work also allowed astronomers to determine the temperature of any star from its spectrum.

Cecilia remained working in the scientific field for all of her life, spending her entire academic career at Harvard. Initially, she had no official position, merely serving as a technical assistant, with a meagre salary. Efforts were made to improve her position when she threatened to leave, and in 1938 she was given the title of "Astronomer". None of the courses she taught at Harvard were recorded in the catalogue until 1945. By the time she was awarded her PhD, she had published six papers on stellar atmospheres. By the time of her death she had published over 150 papers and monographs. To this day, women in science fight for the recognition of her name, and a call to have one of the major telescopes named after her.

Women's History Month 2013 - Day 13

Men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Or not. Or girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice, while boys are made from slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails. Or not. Now most of us sensible, liberally minded sorts have agreed that gender and gender expression are nice and malleable, can change from the gender you were born into, or not, and can be expressed across the spectrum of male and femaleness and everything in between, and hoorah for that! The determination of the biological sex of a human, and other species is, however, a little more boringly black and white, due to the old XX and XY chromosomes, even if some people don’t let such details stand in their way of their true colours!

My hero du jour was one of the first biologists to notice this difference in the chromosomes; she was also a pioneer of women in her field and a somewhat controversial character, as posthumously it was difficult for her to hang on to her credits for the research work she did. Anyway, rocking her XX chromosomes like no other (and another spiffing hat), I give you...

Nettie Stevens (1861-1901)

Nettie Maria Stevens was born into a working-class Vermont family in 1861. Nettie, like so many of the women I’ve written about, was raised during a time when women's educational opportunities were limited to say the least. However, she was a promising student with a gift for science and mathematics, consistently scoring the highest in her classes. She attended college in Massachusetts, and spent the next ten years teaching, saving money from her wages so that she could fulfill her dreams of going to university, there certainly wasn’t any grants or student loans in those days!

In 1896, at the age of 35, Nettie attended Leland Stanford University, graduating with a masters’ in biology. After Stanford, she carried on her graduate work at Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia. In 1903, Stevens was awarded her PhD, and was subsequently given an assistantship by the Carnegie Institute, after glowing recommendations from the president of Bryn Mawr.

During her research at Bryn Mawr and the Carnegie Institute Nettie discovered that in some species chromosomes are different among the sexes, mainly through her observations and research of insects (mainly mealworms). Investigating the mealworms, she found female cells contained 20 chromosomes, but male cells contained 19 large chromosomes and one very small one. She showed that the X body paired with a 20th, much smaller, chromosome in meiosis. She proposed that these two chromosomes be called X and Y, and explained that females contained two X chromosomes. The discovery was the first time that differences of chromosomes could be linked to an observable difference in physical. Nettie did experiments on a range of insects to determine this and prove her theories, and deduced the chromosomal basis of sex depended on the presence or absence of the Y chromosome.

As Nettie's scientific reputation grew, Bryn Mawr established a professorship for her, but alas she was not to take it. Nettie developed breast cancer and died in 1901, aged only 51. Following her death, her old head of department Thomas Hunt Morgan wrote an extensive, if somewhat dismissive, obituary for the journal Science, implying that she was more of a technician than a scientist, and some believe her position in the field of genetics has largely been ignored because the credit for the discovery of X and Y chromosomes is instead generally given to Morgan and his predecessor Edmund B. Wilson, who both received the Nobel prize for the discovery. But later manuscripts reveal that it was Nettie who discovered the two XXs. Although the history books may miss Nettie’s credit out, she is not to be forgotten, as without her attention to detail, the discovery may not have been made. She published more than 38 papers from 1901 to her death, in cytology and experimental physiology, and was one of the first American women to be recognized for her contribution to science. Proving that sometimes two Xs are better than one.

Women's History Month 2013 - Day 12

Although this is technically Women’s ‘History’ month, I’m sure our science sisters of bygone years won’t mind too much if I include some of my modern-day heroes in my little run down. As women in science and technology today are still less represented than men, are still pioneers and are still kicking butt in a ‘man’s world’ I think it is only fair to give them some space. Recent history has meant that they have still had to overcome sexism and misogyny to get where they are today. Whereas there are more women across the spectrum of science and technology in general, my own work and study tends to be on psychology and neuroscience so here are where my heroes lie. However I may be including some different current women soon, so watch this space.

The first of these I want to add has been someone I’ve been interested in for a few years, ever since I saw a documentary about her on a C4 documentary (The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow). I was happy therefore to find her mentioned in nearly every one of my textbooks when I was studying for my psychotherapy degree. Not only is she a woman with incredible achievement and insight, she also has a fascinating story, so much so that an abridged version hardly does her justice so please, please find out more about her if you don’t know her already. Hopefully you have heard the name, but if not I give you...

Dr Temple Grandin (Born 1947 )

You may have heard of Temple Grandin because of her work in innovation, especially in the farming and meat industry in America; or you may have heard of her because she is probably one of the most famous people living with autism in the world at this moment. I say living with rather than autism sufferer, as Temple has always promoted her autism as a unique characteristic rather than a handicap, and is an advocate for autism activism. She has done a lot to explain autism and how the autistic person thinks. In my favourite quote from her she says “What would happen if the autism gene was eliminated from the gene pool? You would have a bunch of people standing around in a cave, chatting and socializing and not getting anything done.”

Temple was born in 1947 in Boston. She didn’t speak until she was three and the doctors wrongly diagnosed her with brain damage. Just as women’s rights were poor in the 1950s, so were those of people with learning difficulties. The doctors advised her parents to put her in an institution. But Temple’s devoted mother was having none of it, and instead did everything she could to help Temple catch up. When her autism was diagnosed, little was known of the condition, and 'emotionally cold mothers' were usually blamed. Temple's mother knew she had been loving and supportive of her daughter so to hear blame from the doctors was devastating.

Although socially she found school, college and even university difficult, she developed ways of overcoming her anxieties. She is quite famous for her invention of the ‘squeeze box’ a device she made to calm herself down, which mimics a hug without human touch, something that many autistic children find uncomfortable. She was inspired to create it after seeing how a similar device calmed down cows on her aunt’s ranch when they were being inoculated. It was here that she also discovered her infinity with cattle, and her long, extraordinary career in livestock management and invention was sparked.

She went on to study livestock management. She was horrified at the way cows on ranches and feedlots were treated. Her empathy for animals motivated her to want to create a more humane system of care and slaughter. Because of her autism, she was able to visualize the process not only in far more detail than anyone else had, she was able to see it from the cattle’s perspective and understand why certain things went wrong in the process. The men she encountered in the industry mocked her observations, but Temple rose above it. Even when they vandalized her car, tried purposely to force her out of the field of study, and mocked her openly – based as much on her sex as her autism as farming was considered ‘a man’s job’, Temple pressed on.

After completing an MA and PhD in animal science, Temple went on to invent many new systems of cattle management and slaughter, wrote countless articles on the subject and lectures on animal welfare to this day. It is estimated that today over half the animals slaughtered in the US are done so through systems Temple designed. It may seem a ironic that someone who loves and cares for animals so much has helped designed systems for their slaughter, but Temple has said “I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect... Nature is cruel but we don't have to be”

Temple has become a hero to many people, both in her autism activism work and in animal welfare and farming circles. In 2010 she was named as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. Through her nine books and countless public lectures, Temple Grandin has made us think differently about autism... taking us on a journey inside the autistic mind, and teaching us that autism can be a gift – and that children with autism can go on to achieve amazing things.

Here is Temple talking about the role autism can have in the world:

Women's History Month 2013 - Day 11

Throughout history, folklore, fiction and mythology there have always been stories of women disguising themselves as boys and men to change their fortunes and challenge the status quo. Obviously this connotes the very real, practical implications that, until recently on the grand scheme of things, women had fewer opportunities to excel than boys, were not allowed to do many things and the only way to make it in a man’s world was to effectively ‘change gender’. Even the notion of a woman wearing trousers or going without a corset, was a shocking notion until the early part of last century!

A more modern eye, and one that reviews from a point in history where people are able to change gender and express their gender as they wish (even if it does not match up to the gender they were born into), could also attribute these stories to being about early transgendered men who changed their lives accordingly in the only way they could. With that in mind I am going to focus on a French botanist and explorer from the 18th and 19th Century who dressed as a man in order to become the first woman to circumnavigate the world.

Now I do not know, as my research has not turned anything up, if Jeanne (Jean) Baré was transgendered, or simply a women who realised that her sex at that time would hinder her ache for adventure and so dressed as a boy as a way to fulfill her dreams. Either way, hers is a story that should be told...

 

Jeanne Bare 1740-1807

Little is known of Jeanne Bare’s early life, except records tell us that she was born 1740, in the village of La Comelle in the Burgundy region of France; and interestingly her father was Jean Baret and her mother was called Jeanne. At this time this region of France was very rustic and poor and her family were probably labourers with little education. Jeanne presented herself as an orphan when she set out on her adventures, but this story was never confirmed. Neither was it confirmed how a girl with such humbled beginnings had educated herself so well.

Jeanne left her village and became a housekeeper to the naturalist Philbert Commerson. His wife died shortly after giving birth to a son, and it was thought that Jeanne took over the running of the house, as well as forming a less than domestic relationship with Commerson, which seemed to result in an illegitimate child (who was put up for adoption and died young).

Louis-Antoine, Comte de Bougainville, was a French Admiral and explorer. A contemporary of James Cook, he went on expeditions to settle the Falkland Islands and voyaged into the Pacific. In 1765, Commerson was invited to join Bougainville's expedition. His appointment allowed him one payroll servant – Jeanne was the obvious choice, but women were completely prohibited on French navy ships at this time. Jeanne had a cunning plan though...

No one noticed anything untoward for more than a month.

Jean Baré, was simply a 26-year-old valet, who had signed up to take part in one of the greatest voyages of exploration – Louis de Bougainville’s 1766 circumnavigation of the globe. Jean seemed to be an expert botanist and dedicated valet to his master. After a month at sea, some of the crew began to spread gossip and rumours about Jean and Philippe. Jean confronted the rumours head on. He told the ship’s surgeon that he slept in the same cabin on account of Commerson’s ill health, so he could help him better.

Jeanne’s voyage, however, was not going to be plain sailing. In March 1767, the ship landed at Tahiti, and Jean and Commerson was among the landing party, who were all eager to explore the island paradise. There was soon trouble though when the party happened upon some locals, who rushed to the beach and surrounded Jean and started touching him and shouting that he was a woman in disguise, they made it clear that they intended to rape her. The crew came to Jean’s rescue, but now there were serious questions to be answered – the ship’s surgeon asserted that Baré was indeed a woman in disguise.

Jeanne had to think fast. She first told Bougainville and his fellow officers that she was not a woman, but a eunuch, but Bougainville demanded further proof. To avoid further humiliation and degradation she eventually told the truth. Jeanne was now in fear of two things, punishment for her deception and sexual abuses from the crew. To protect herself from the latter she slept low down in the ships with two pistols to hand at all time. She did however escape punishment from Bougainville, perhaps because she and Commerson had found, and named, the spectacular flower Bougainvillea. Indeed, when the voyage landed back in France she actually she found herself celebrated as the first woman ever to circumnavigate the globe. ‘I admire her determination all the more,’ wrote Bougainville, ‘because she has always behaved with the most scrupulous correctness.’

Jeanne Baré lived a long life, enjoying the fame she attracted for her adventures, and after Commerson’s death, she married a blacksmith and settled back into provincial life. Regarded as ‘an extraordinary woman’, she was eventually given a substantial royal pension in celebration of her achievement.

Women's History Month 2013 - Day 10

Today here in the UK it is Mothering Sunday, so firstly happy Mother’s Day!! One thing I have noticed in my research of great lady scientists and technologists is how few of them married or had children. It is perhaps a sign of the times that they lived in, or that we live in now, that to be a successful woman in science or academia used to mean forfeiting a family.

I have read how the ‘done thing’ was to give up work once one got married, and I suppose this was both a cultural sign of the times, and also a practical one. I can’t imagine the universities who were letting women in for the very first time, or the academic institutions that would not even pay women for their work, were going to provide childcare options as well! Neither do I expect there were many stay-at-home dads, work share schemes or laboratory crèches! I am far from saying that all women desire a family, and many women then and now would rather focus on their work than having children round their ankles, but it is interesting to note that more women in the field of science and technology in current times seem to at least have the option of doing both… and extra admiring love to them this Mother’s Day!

Anyway. After a bit of digging I have found someone who was both a mother of SIX and a science writer, astronomer and mathematician in a time where a women doing anything except playing the piano forte was considered inappropriate, so let’s give her a round of applause…

Mary Somerville 1780-1872

Mary (Fairfax) Somerville was the daughter of Sir William George Fairfax (an Irish vice-admiral); born in Scotland in 1780. Like so many of our other heroines she was a willful, ‘spirited’ girl, leading her own father to brand her a ‘savage’ and pack her off to an expensive boarding school, which is very much how things were done in those days (and occasional still, I know I was). Unsurprisingly she wasn't taught much other than the basics, but she had a thirst for knowledge and she was soon furthering her own education both with tutors and by her own initiative – she was evidently jealous of her brother’s tutelage, especially when she considered herself intellectually superior!

In 1804 she married her distant cousin, Captain Samuel Greig. They moved to London and Mary bore two sons. But it was not a happy time for her – although she could study more easily – surprise, surprise – her husband did not think much of women's capacity to pursue academic interests. Tragedy struck twice for Mary when she lost her husband and then one of their sons within a year. She returned home to Scotland upon their death in 1807.

Mary’s life was going to take a positive turn though. Grieg had left her enough money so that she could independently pursue her intellectual interests. Mary gained encouragement from leading intellectuals and scholars in Edinburgh, and advanced her studies of higher mathematics and physical astronomy. She read Isaac Newton's book Principia and began to submit solutions to problems posted in contests run by mathematics journals. In 1811, Somerville won a silver prize for solving a diaphiantine equations problem in Mathematical Repository.

Romantically Mary had some good fortune too, falling in love and marrying army doctor William Somerville in 1812. The couple had four children, three daughters and a son, though only two survived into adulthood. Unlike Grieg, William Somerville was completely supportive of his wife's intellectual interests. He was proud of her achievements and encouraged her to further study Greek, geology, botany, and mineralogy.

Four years after they were married, the family moved back to London, where William was elected to the Royal Society of Surgeons, and Mary established a name for herself in the British scientific society. In 1826, she published the results in "On the Magnetizing Power of the More Regrangible Solar Rays," in the Royal Society's Philsophical Transactions (Though her husband had to present the paper, because women were not permitted to attend meetings of the Royal Society – obviously!)

Mary’s reputation went from strength to strength and over the years translated complex books on astronomy and gravity into layspeak. The success of these publications prompted the Royal Astronomical Society, in 1833, to name her an honorary member. Mary’s next book was an even bigger success. The Connection of the Physical Sciences was first published in 1834, and summarised all that was known in the physical sciences, but also showed how different branches of science overlap in techniques and ideas.

When William became ill in 1838, the family relocated to Italy. Mary spent the rest of her life mainly on the continent—even after the death of her husband in 1860. Though family concerns were paramount, Mary continued her scientific work and spent most of the remainder of her life writing books on all aspects of science. She even ruffled religious feathers for arguing that the earth was older than stated in the Bible, based on geologic evidence.

Mary's last work of note was the two-volume On Molecular and Microscopic Science, published in 1869. She was awarded the Victoria Gold Medal at the Royal Geographic Society of London. Although she was a patron of the Society, she never achieved member status because of her gender.

Mary Somerville died at her home in Naples in1872. She was almost 92 years old and still working on a mathematics article at the time of her death. She was honored by Oxford through the naming of Somerville Hall, the creation of the Mary Somerville scholarship for women in math, and the establishment of Somerville College in 1879.

Women's History Month 2013 - Day 9

In a 2010 study it was revealed that from a sample of 2,043 sample air passengers, 83 percent said they felt safer with a male pilot than a female pilot. Which is crazy considering how many of aviation's pioneers were actually women (not to mention WTF, WHY??). The history of aviation (as well as aeronautics) is littered with the stories of girls dreaming of taking to the skies and finding adventure. Beyond Amy Johnson and Amelia Earhart, Ruth Nichols and Jacqueline Cochran there are countless women to choose from to honor. The one I have chosen appealed to me because she was a real trailblazer and achieved so much in her short life. Her whole life seemed to be about breaking with convention and battling sexism in the industry. Her suicide at 37, seemingly in part caused by her frustrations at never quite getting to where she wanted to be in 'a man's world', touched me closely and made me want to share her tale.

Helen Richey (1909–1947)

Helen Richey was the first female to be hired as a commercial pilot in the US. She was born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania in 1909. She was an 'unconventional child' by the standards of those days, shunning dolls and girlish artifacts in favour of boyish pursuits, and even attempted to run away to join the circus when she was 12. During her teens, Richey was one of the few girls in her town to wear trousers. She learned how to fly a plane at age 20, and although her father was strict and had disapproved of her 'ways', he did buy her a plane when she obtained her pilot's license. That sure beats a pony!

A year later she earned her commercial pilot's license, then in 1933 she was contacted by fellow pilot Francis Marsalis about making an attempt at an endurance flying record. After taking off from a Miami airport the two women stayed aloft in a small monoplane for nine days and 22 hours! Soon after setting this record, Helen was hired by by Central Airlines. On December 31, 1934 making her the first female pilot to work as a pilot for a regularly scheduled commercial airline and the first female to fly the mail. However despite this milestone, Helen’s application to the pilot’s union was rejected because she was a woman. After ten months she resigned from Central Airlines.

In 1942 the US Woman’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) was organised and Richey was one of the first to sign up. She spent the next 16 months ferrying aircraft from American factories to air bases. The WASP organization was disbanded in December of 1944 and Helen Richey returned to McKeesport, PA.

After the war – and with the men returned – Helen was unable to find work, without being allowed to join unions, sexism thwarted her beloved career at every turn, despite her world records and war effort. On January 7, 1947 she was found on the bed in her New York apartment, dead from an apparent overdose of sleeping pills. The aviation industry honour her as a pioneer and inspiration to this day.

Women's History Month 2013 - Day 8 (happy International Woman's Day!!)

Firstly happy International Women’s Day!!! I’ve felt a real buzz in the air since I woke up, and I think it’s because this year more than ever people are acknowledging the day; perhaps because the memory of 1billion rising is so recent in our minds (if you’re unaware of 1billion rising and V-day have a read). So to commemorate I went to a film screening about reclaiming natural childbirth, where I was surrounded by lots of lovely pregnant hippy ladies (what could be more appropriate), and then went for tea and cake. Tonight I’m going to a Women’s Day event at The Stag and Hounds in Old Market… Happy Women’s Day indeed!!

I went to the film because since I became a hypnotherapist I have realised that one of the most important and influential opportunities in my work is to help women have a peaceful, empowered and natural pregnancy and birth. In terms of feminism I think it is vital, and I could (and almost certainly will) dedicate a whole blog article to it at some point. Anyway, I want to tie this into my Women’s month project. I wanted to cover a woman famous to midwifery and obstetrics, but surprisingly there aren’t many. This is possibly because childbirth used to be considered, quite rightly, a completely natural bodily process that required little intervention. Midwifes were no more than local good ‘wives’, healers, herbalists and ‘wise women’ who would assist at births because they held knowledge that had been passed down through the generations about the natural workings of a woman’s body….

Then the Christian dark ages happened, sigh, and a lot of these women were accused of being witches and executed, or they lived in fear of practicing their craft. Women were now expected to suffer for 'Eve’s sin', often confined into dark rooms for their internment. An air of fear and grimness hung around childbirth and, without the old ways, deaths and complications were common. This fear grew, and soon the doctors of the age tried to come up with the cures and remedies of this ‘affliction’ of childbirth… from the middle ages to the 1950s everything was tried, from torturous birthing instruments to knocking women out with chloroform! Most of these doctors over this period were, of course, men. Once birth had become something requiring medical intervention, women were moved into hospitals to give birth, which were, until a hundred years ago, pretty unsanitary places to go. Infant and women mortality remained high, as it wasn’t until the medical industry learned of the importance of hand washing, that infection and disease could be spread at a great rate.

Fortunately things are coming back full circle and since the 1970s a more natural approach to childbirth is being accepted again. More and more women want to get control back over their own bodies and labour just as their bodies know how. Unfortunately a lot of that fear and anxiety remains, but that is something that the likes of me and my other natural birth comrades are trying to deal with!

So with not much room left, I am going to just pay a short homage to one of the first women to recognise that, in birth, going backwards in time was the way to go forwards, and that natural birth was best.

Elisabeth Bing (Born 1917)

Elisabeth Bing is of German- Jewish decent. She was educated in the UK and then fled to America during the Nazi uprising, settling in New York. She co-founded the American Society for Psychoprophylaxis in Obstetrics (now Lamaze International) in 1960. Elisabeth was instrumental in bringing the Lamaze Method to the U.S. and a pioneer in educating parents for childbirth. Bing lived for many years at 164 West 79th St., and she operated a centre on the ground floor of the building, at which generations of Manhattanite parents prepared for the birth of their children under her tutelage. This grassroots organisation promoted a calmer, more mother-central approach to birth, with as little medical-management as possible; proving that medical intervention was not necessarily safer. She is quoted as saying “Physicians must learn to keep their hands in their pockets unless there are specific medical indications.” Her contribution to public health, pregnant women, safety of newborns, their partners and the family is monumental.

So this International Women's Day and Mother's Day on Sunday, give love and gratitude to the mums, mothers, midwifes, doctors and doulas who help us all all get into this world safely.

Women's History Month 2013 - Day 7

Today we feature someone you may have heard of, as she was in the news recently when Michael Gove suggested removing her from the British syllabus. Fortunately there was a swift U-turn due to public outcry, and a Peggy Mitchell-esque screech of ‘over my dead body!’ from Nick Clegg. However being educated during the very politically incorrect Thatcher years I never learned of this wonderful lady until recently, and I imagine some of my peers are the same. So just to put everyone in the picture about this valiant woman, I am putting her in my own mini history book, just so we’re all in the know. And I expect your essay about her on my desk by Monday morning, or there will be detention.

Mary Seacole 1805-1836

Mary Seacole was born Mary Grant in Jamaica in 1805, the daughter of a Creole women and a British Army officer from Scotland, Mary was very proud of her dual heritage and often quoted her strengths coming from both her Creole traits and her "good Scots blood". She had a good education both at school and from her mother, who was a traditional Jamaican healer with an encyclopedic knowledge of herbal properties, and this gave her a thirst for medicine and nursing. As a young woman she travelled to London, and around the Caribbean, training in nursing and working alongside her mother. She married in 1836 to a descendant of Admiral Nelson five years later, but her happiness was short lived. Five years on and Mary was beset by a plethora of personal tragedy; the family boarding house was destroyed in a fire, she lost her husband, then her beloved mother. After a period of grief she composed herself ‘to turn a bold front to fortune’ and got to work, throwing herself into the work of nursing Jamaica’s cholera epidemic and shunning many offers of marriage... atta girl.

After this she continued traveling and nursing through Central America and the Caribbean. When she heard of the outbreak of the Crimean war in 1853, she saw it as a challenge right up her street and set sail to Britain to volunteer. Despite bringing with her references and a CV that any Harley Street doctor would snap up today, Mary was not even granted an interview. She applied to charities and the war office but nobody would accept her...she realised that the racism she had encountered in the Americas had spread to Britain.

Not being one to back down or give us, Mary travelled to Crimea under her own steam anyway, handing out cards to advertise her services at the ‘British Hotel’ – in her own words "a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers”. During this time she applied to join Florence Nightingale’s team, but was rebuffed, with Nightingale even comparing the British Hotel to being ‘no better than a brothel.’- Saucer of milk for Miss Nightingale please.

That didn’t deter Mary and she kept the British Hotel open as a nursing home for wounded soldiers until the war ended in 1856. By now Mary was bankrupt, the hotel was unsellable and her debts needed to be paid. She returned to London and tried to make good, but to no avail. With help from her admirers and fans she raised enough money to return to Jamaica for a while, but she soon returned to Britain in 1870 when she heard of the Franco-Prussian war breaking out. However instead of returning to war she settled in society, becoming a personal massage therapist to the Prince of Wales and writing her book.

To achieve so much as a widowed, dual-heritage female in those times is a feat that is hard to comprehend. To travel so much and as an independent woman, and care for so many, I am glad she has managed to hang on in there in the British history books. Do read up more on her if you haven’t got any children to fill you in. Alternatively here’s a bit more info from the Horrible Histories crew who do history better than I ever could (the part of Mary Seacole possibly being played by Azalea Banks, but I can’t be sure in that mop cap).

Women's History Month 2013 - Day 6

In terms of feminism and women’s rights, two pivotal moments of history that spring to mind are women getting the vote and the invention of the birth control pill. We may take both these things for granted these days, but try and imagine a world without them... go on. Imagine it. Sucks, right? So today I would like to honour a woman who not only made waves in science and technology through her philanthropy; but also helped develop the birth control pill and was a life long suffragette and woman’s rights campaigner. I take my hat off to her, although mine is inferior to her fabulous millinery styling....

Katherine McCormick 1875 - 1967

Katherine (Nee: Dexter) McCormick was born Michigan in 1875. She had a good start in life being raised by a women’s rights' activist mother and a lawyer father who, himself had campaigned to abolish slavery. Being imbibed with social justice from a young age was one motivating factor in her life; the other was the untimely death of her brother and father from meningitis and a heart attack respectively. This gave her an ambition to study medicine. She was awarded her biology degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1904, only the second woman to do so and the first with a science award.

Her plans for medical school were put on hold indefinitely though, as she fell in love and married International Harvester heir Stanley McCormick. Alas within two years of marriage, Stanley had developed schizophrenia and five years into marriage he was declared mentally incompetent and institutionalised. This meant that his sizable fortune was passed on to Katherine and his family (she eventually inherited his $35 million estate when he died in 1947, which added to her own fortune of $10 million). In 1909 she joined the US suffrage movement, speaking at the first outdoor rally. She became vice president and treasurer of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and organized much of the efforts to get women the vote in the US.

In the 1920s she met Margaret Sanger (who went on to start Planned Parenthood in the US), who had an interest in developing birth control. She and Katherine dedicated the next two years promoting the development of contraception, even smuggling diaphragms from Europe to New York!

Once Katherine had inherited her fortune she didn’t fritter it away, frittering time and money was not her style. In 1953 Katherine met Gregory Goodwin Pincus, a scientist that had been working on developing the first hormonal method of birth control. Katherine agreed to fund Pincus’ research, and she also persuaded another scientist, John Rock, to conduct the first human clinical trials on the pill. Katherine provided almost the entire $2 million that was necessary to develop and test the pill for human use. She didn’t stop there though, her philanthropic ventures included establishing the Neuro-Endocrine Research Foundation at Harvard Medical School, a $5 million donation to Planned Parenthood, and a $1 million dollar donation to Worcester Hospital for a research and care facility for the mentally ill. In addition, she supported women’s education at MIT by donating money to build the Stanley McCormick Hall – the first all female halls at MIT capable of housing 200 female students.

Katherine died in 1967 at the ripe old age of 92, having lived to see the effect that the pill was beginning to have on women. Her philanthropic ways carried on even after her death, as see bequeathed $5 million to Stanford University School of Medicine to support female doctors; $5 million to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and $1 million to the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology. This means that she helped to save many lives but more importantly helped improve the quality of life of literally millions of women. Spare her a thought next time you pop one of your pills.

Women's History Month 2013 - Day 5

From the stars to the earth! Today we go back in time to 19th Century Dorset, to a lady (I will call her a lady, she wore a bonnet and everything) called Mary, who discovered fossils and bones around the cliffs of Lyme Regis, helping the Geological Society of London with their work and becoming an authority on the subject, and risking her life for her work. She is a fascinating woman with a tragic tale, and for that I love her.

Mary Anning 1799-1847

I first discovered Mary Anning on a trip to the Natural History Museum. Surrounded by large scale installations of bones and rock formations, there was a diminutive portrait of her on the wall, posing with her dog and her fossil sack. I had to research her further and on reading of her life, imagined it as some amazing Hollywood script (If Harvey Weinstein is reading this, I am happy to have a crack at it), but for now she will have to settle for a humble little blog spot. I do urge you to read up more on her though (or wait for my movie) ... her story has everything, dinosaurs, adventure, a miracle, a sea dragon, a rise from poverty, tragedy, cute pets, passion and even laudanum. Sigh.

Mary Anning has been credited as being one of the greatest fossil hunters ever known, yet due to her status as a working-class woman, never achieved the academic status she deserved. Mary was born in 1799 in Lyme Regis to a cabinetmaker and his wife and was one of ten children! Her intellect and curiosity as a child became part of local legend, and was attributed to an incident that happened in her infancy when she survived being struck by lightening. Miracle or not, Mary grew to be passionately curious and educated herself by reading newly published articles on geology.

As a young woman Mary would go out along the cliffs of Lyme Regis and collect ‘curiosities’ to sell to tourists. It was dangerous work, and she nearly lost her life in 1833 during a landslide that killed her beloved dog, Tray. Soon her discoveries were attracting more than just tourists - geologists and palaeontologists were flocking to see her for samples. She is known to have found the first ichthyosaur skeleton to be correctly identified, the first two plesiosaur skeletons ever found an the first pterosaur skeleton located outside Germany. Her opinions were regularly sought from the scholars of the day and her reputation began to grow.

But if things were tricky for women scientists in the 20th Century, in the 19th they were nigh on impossible. Although more than intellectually qualified she was not allowed to join the Geological Society of London because of her sex and class. The science world was dominated by rich Anglican men and Mary grew resentful of the fact that she knew more about fossils and geology than many of the wealthy men to whom she sold – it was always the gentlemen geologists who published the scientific descriptions of the specimens she found, often neglecting to even mention her name.

Mary Anning fell ill with breast cancer in her forties, she had lost a lot of her hard-earned money in a bad investment, and her reliance on laudanum for pain made her a bit of an outcast in her community. The scientific community did however at least feel a pang of conscience and affection for her. The geological community raised money from its members to help with her expenses and the council of the newly created Dorset County Museum made her an honorary member. Mary died in 1847 aged just 47, but her legend, just like the fossils she found, has lived on.

Posthumously, president of the Geological Society Henry De la Beche, wrote a eulogy that he read to a meeting of the society and published in its quarterly transactions, the first such eulogy given for a woman. Charles Dickens wrote an article about her life in February 1865 in his literary magazine All the Year Round that emphasised the difficulties she had overcome, especially the scepticism of her fellow townspeople. He ended the article with: "The carpenter's daughter has won a name for herself, and has deserved to win it."

Women's History Month 2013 - Day 4

Today we have a celestial Goddess who reached for the stars and boldly went where no African American woman had gone before... (you’ll get that reference in a minute). Not only was this starry-eyed woman an astronaut, she’s a trained doctor, has worked for the Peace Corps, is an education advocate, can speak four languages fluently, is trained in dance and choreography and now works in technological research; in short, she’s a badass – SHE EVEN GUEST STARRED IN AN EPISODE OF STAR TREK!! Overcoming not only the institutionalised sexism of academia, but also racism, to reach the stellar heights of her profession, ladies and gentleman I give you...

Dr Mae Jemison (born 1956)

Mae Jemison was born in Alabama in 1956, then moved to Chicago with her family when she was three in order to get a better education, and it was here that an uncle introduced her to the world of science. Now many little kids dream of being an astronaut, buy Mae also had a passion for anthropology, archaeology, and astronomy that she pursued throughout her childhood. She enrolled at Stanford University at the age of 16, and in 1977 graduated with degrees in both chemical engineering and Afro-American studies. Jemison faced both racism and sexism at Stanford, particularly in the engineering department, a place that was the domain of privileged white men. She has described, looking back, occasions where professors would ignore her input while congratulating her male classmates for the exact same comments. This only made her more determined to succeed.

Mae went on to study medicine at Cornell University, getting her doctorate in 1981. During this time also travelled through Asia and Africa with the Peace Corps, working as a doctor and legislator, before settling in California to work as a GP. But soon she decided to set her sights higher (I promise I’ll finish with the puns soon).

In 1987, on her second try, she was selected by NASA to be one of the 15 out of 2,000 applicants for their training program, and in 1988 she became the first black female astronaut in NASA history. Dr. Mae Jemison finally went into space in 1992, as the science mission specialist on STS-47 Spacelab-J. STS-47 was a cooperative mission between the United States and Japan. The eight-day mission was accomplished in 127 orbits of the Earth, and included 44 Japanese and U.S. life science and materials processing experiments.

Once back on terra firma, Mae did not rest on her laurels. She has gone on to set up projects to develop technology to help the developing world, which has worked on projects including thermal energy generation for developing countries, and satellite communications for facilitating health care in West Africa; and a second project which runs international science camps for students in their teens, aimed at encouraging people to think globally about how technology can deal with global problems.

Not content with encouraging the next generation, she has also appeared ON The Next Generation (even I groaned). In 1993 she became the first real life astronaut to appear on the show. Her honours and awards are too countless to list, but needless to say she is still working hard, advocating science and technology (especially for young girls and ethnic minorities), working within her established foundations, teaching and doing many public appearances. She continues to be a role model and inspiration to others.

Woman's History Month 2013 - Day 3

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I have a cold sore. These painful, ugly little blighters have popped up on my bottom lip since I was little and are a nuisance. However if I catch them in time I can cut the healing time in half, with lysine supplements and Zovirax. Zovirax has been a staple of my bathroom cabinet since I was a teenager. So I think it is very fitting today that my chosen women of science is the person responsible for discovering the therapeutic qualities of acyclovir, the active ingredient in Zovirax. I mean she also helped developed drugs to treat leukaemia, gout and the rejection of transplanted organs too, but today I’m very grateful for her saving my poor pout every winter...

She is another who had to fight the inequalities of academia and who triumphed over personal tragedy to make important strides in science, this time in the field of medical research, with a legacy that includes the thousands of lives touched by the drugs she and her associates developed over the 20^th Century. 

Gertrude Belle Elion 1918 - 1999

Gertrude (Trudy) Belle Elion was born in New York City 1918, to Lithuanian immigrant dentist Robert and Bertha (Cohen) Elion. Trudy's intellect manifested itself at an early age; she was a voracious reader and an excellent student, graduating from Walton High School at age fifteen. It was the death of her beloved grandfather from stomach cancer that propelled this intellect towards the desire to find a cure for cancer, and she chose to study chemistry as “a logical first step in committing myself to fighting the disease.”

Despite being awarded a first-class degree in chemistry she found it difficult to find work as a woman chemist, and nobody was willing to fund her to do a PhD as they worried about having the influence of a women in the lab. So instead she worked many jobs including being a teacher and chemical plant worker and food analyst.

Tragedy struck again in 1940 when her fiancé died of a bacterial infection. This only fuelled her passion for medical research further. Finally in 1944 she landed a dream job (in part due to the “manpower” shortage of such work due to the Second World War) at the pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome as a senior research chemist. Here she worked on developing chemotherapy drugs – substances that could interrupt metabolic processes in cancer cells without damaging normal body cells; immunosuppressive drugs for kidney transplants (azathioprine), treatments for gout, lupus, and severe rheumatoid arthritis, and the all important antiviral drug acyclovir used to treat those rotten cold sores. Her work even went on to start development of drugs to treat the AIDS virus.

In 1988 at the age of 70 Trudy was awarded – shared with her peer George H. Hitchings and British chemist Sir James Black the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine “for their discoveries of important principles for drug treatment.” In addition to this she was awarded over twenty honorary doctoral degrees, countless medals and awards and after her retirement in 1983 served on the boards of the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, and the Multiple Sclerosis Society, to name but a few.... not bad for someone who wasn’t able to get funding for a PhD!

She died in her sleep, at her home in North Carolina in 1999. One of her legacies was a folder full of letters from people whose lives she had touched and whose lives she had helped save.

Women's History Month 2013 - Day 2

Today I bring you a British biophysicist that is integral to the spirals of science history, and to the very understanding we have of what makes us, us… Rosalind Franklin.



Rosalind Franklin 1920-1958

In 1962 James D. Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, for their work regarding the discoveries of the properties and appearance of DNA. However their work could not have been completed without the input of a fourth person – Rosalind Franklin. As Rosalind passed away in 1958 and the Nobel Prize can only be awarded to a maximum of three people (and not posthumously), Franklin was left out of the history books, and indeed when Crick and Watson’s study was published, Franklin’s only credit was how their work was ‘stimulated by experimental results from Kings College researchers’ as a footnote. It wasn’t until 1968 when Watson published his personal account of the discovery of DNA – The Double Helix – that Franklin’s work was truly acknowledged – although he did try to bury this under claims that she couldn’t read her own data, and constantly referred to her as Rosy – a patronising name she never used or liked.

So who was Rosalind Franklin, and what was her role in this scientific breakthrough? Franklin was born in London in 1920. At the age of 15 she decided she wanted to become a scientist, but her first battle was with her father, who didn’t believe in the education of girls. Once she won that one, she found herself at Cambridge… Women were not entitled to full degrees at the time and upon passing her finals in 1941, Franklin received a titular degree. She remained at Cambridge where she worked towards a PhD in physical chemistry, which she received in 1945.

In January 1951, Franklin became a research associate at Kings College London in the Medical Research Council’s biophysics unit. She was a highly skilled x-ray crystallographer and was originally employed to work on x-ray diffraction of proteins. However, before she even reached Kings College, unit director John Randall reassigned Franklin to work on x-ray diffraction of DNA. After WWII ended, the race for who could discover the structure of the DNA truly began. In 1953, Watson and Crick proposed the idea that the DNA’s structure was a double helix. This discovery was based on an x-ray diffraction image that Franklin took. This included the infamous photo 51 – an x-ray diffraction image of DNA, which was critical in identifying its structure. This photograph ultimately proved what Watson and Crick were thinking – DNA was a helical structure – and they set about building their now famous model.

Rosalind Franklin died on 16 April 1958, aged only 37, of bronchopneumonia, secondary carcinomatosis and carcinoma of the ovary – possibly caused by exposure to x-ray radiation. She remained unaware of the legacy she left behind her and the Nobel Prize that she should have shared in. She has since received some credit for her work, but if you’re ever in a pub quiz and are asked to name the discoverers of DNA, spare a thought for Rosalind Franklin.

Woman’s History Month 2013 - Day 1

So today marks the first day of Woman’s History Month. The theme, so I’m told, is:

Women Inspiring Innovation Through Imagination:
Celebrating Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

Which I think is a pretty good theme, especially as this is one area of history that women are often conveniently left out of, or passed over for their male counterparts. Subsequently to honour this month – and also educate myself a bit more – each day of WHM I am going to honour one women from the annals of science, technology and mathematics history and give them a bit of a cyber pat on the back. There are a few women who did make it to the collective consciousness, so I am going to focus on the ones that didn’t... Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace and Florence Nightingale I salute you all, but please understand your lesser-known sisters need some airtime. I may write short biographies, I might write poems or short stories, depending on my inspiration, I’m going to try and mix it up.

If you can think of anyone you would like me to include over the next 31 days, please email or Tweet me. I will also endeavour to get my facts right (and stay off Wikipedia) but if I have got anything wrong and you can point me to a correct source instead then please let me know! So today I would like to start off with:

Amalie (Emmy) Noether (1882 – 1935)

Emmy Noether has often been referred to as the "most important mathematician you’ve never heard of:, and indeed Albert Einstein called her the most “significant” and “creative female mathematician of all time". She taught at the University of Göttingen, then Bryn Mawr College in the US. Her ground-breaking work in abstract algebra and theoretical physics led to concepts like "Noether's Theorem," "Noetherian rings," and "Noetherian induction."

Emmy was born in Germany in 1882 to a Jewish family, her father being a prominent mathematician at The University of Erlangen. Although originally she was going to train to be a teacher, Emmy enrolled to study maths here too; and after completing her dissertation worked at the Mathematical Institute of Erlangen, without pay, for seven years – because you know, obviously as a woman she couldn’t ACTUALLY be allowed to be on the academic staff.

This would be a theme of her early life, although working for The Circolo Matematico di Palermo, The German Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Institute in Göttingen, she still never secured a paying position. It was at this latter institution though, that she pursued important mathematical work that confirmed key parts of the general theory of relativity. Finally in 1919 she won the right to be a privatdozent – meaning that she would still work without a salary but could teach and charge students directly. In 1922, the University gave her a position as an adjunct professor with a small salary, but with no tenure or benefits. She was well-respected and liked by her students, and during this time worked on her 'ring theory' and ideas that became foundational in abstract algebra. Her work earned her enough recognition that she was invited to guest teach at The University of Moscow and in 1930 at the University of Frankfurt.

During the 1930s the Nazis purged the German universities of Jewish academics and so Emmy fled to America. The 'Emergency Committee to Aid Displaced German Scholars' obtained an offer of a professorship at Bryn Mawr College in America for Emmy, and they paid, with the Rockefeller Foundation, her first year's salary. The grant was renewed for two more years in 1934. This was the first time that Emmy was paid a full professor's salary and accepted as a full faculty member. What could have been a career chance that may have propelled her into the spotlight, alas her success was cut short and she tragically died a year later in 1935 during surgery to remove a tumour.

Her most famous legacy ‘Noether’s Theorum’ has been described by academics as ‘essential’, ‘beautiful’ and ‘integral’. I am not a mathematician so I am not going to attempt to explain it, however for all you maths geeks out there here is a link:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/noether.html