DOCSLIB.ORG

6. One Hundred Years of Women in Chemistry in the 20Th Century

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
6. One Hundred Years of Women in Chemistry in the 20Th Century RACHEL MAMLOK-NAAMAN, RON BLONDER, AND YEHUDIT JUDY DORI 6. ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF WOMEN IN CHEMISTRY IN THE 20TH CENTURY Sociocultural Developments of Women’s Status INTRODUCTION The Scientific Revolution established science as a source for the growth of knowledge. During the 19th century, the practice of science became professionalized and institutionalized in ways that continued through the 20th century. As scientific knowledge rapidly increased in society, it was incorporated into many aspects of the characteristics and functions of nations and states. A chain of advances in knowledge, which have always complemented each other, has marked the history of science. Technological innovations bring about new discoveries, which lead to other innovations, which inspire new possibilities and innovative approaches to long-standing scientific issues and open questions. However, women scientists often had difficulty in combating gender discrimination in their professional lives. For example, socialist women scientists who believed in Marxist principles regarding class as the dominant social force have long resisted the idea of struggling against gender bias because it would detract from the presumably more basic class struggle. Many other women scientists disliked attracting attention as women, as opposed to being acknowledged as just (presumably gender-neutral) scientists. This chapter is devoted to the contribution of five women whose chemistry discoveries were part of the development of scientific and technological innovations from the beginning of the 20th century. We also discuss reasons for women’s underrepresentation in the sciences. BACKGROUND The 20th century was characterized by a major shift in the way that vast numbers of people lived, as a result of changes in politics, ideology, economics, society, culture, science, technology, and medicine. Terms such as ideology, world war, genocide, and nuclear war became common. Scientific discoveries, such as the theory of relativity and quantum physics, drastically changed the scientific world as it was then known, and scientists realized that the universe was much more complex than previously believed (Read, 1995; Wolff, 1967). Hopes were dashed M.-H. Chiu, P. J. Gilmer, and D. F. Treagust (Eds.), Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Madame Marie Sklodowska Curie’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry. 119–139. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved RACHEL MAMLOK-NAAMAN, RON BLONDER, AND YEHUDIT JUDY DORI at the end of the 19th century that the last few details of scientific knowledge were about to be completed. Increased scientific understanding, more efficient communication, and faster transportation transformed the world in those hundred years more rapidly and widely than in any previous century. It was a century that began with horses, simple automobiles and airplanes and culminated with the space shuttle and the space station. These developments were made possible by large- scale exploitation of fossil fuel resources (especially petroleum), by which large amounts of energy were available in an easily portable form; however, this also caused widespread concerns about pollution and the long-term impact on the environment. Other new developments included humans exploring outer space for the first time, even taking their first footsteps on the Moon (Mamlok, 1996; Mamlok-Naaman, Ben-Zvi, Hofstein, Menis, & Erduran, 2005). The media, telecommunication, and information technology (especially computers and the Internet) made the world’s rapidly increasing knowledge more widely available to everyone. Many people’s view of the world greatly changed as they became much more aware of the struggles of others and, as such, became increasingly concerned with human rights. Advancements in medical technology also improved the welfare of many people and the average life expectancy of humans increased from 35 years to 65 years in a short period of time during the 20th century (Brooks, 1996; McKeown, 1976). Rapid technological advancements, however, also allowed warfare to achieve unprecedented levels of destruction. In World War II alone over 60 million people were killed and nuclear weapons gave humankind the means to annihilate or greatly harm itself in a very short period of time. The world also became more culturally homogeneous than ever with rapid developments in transportation and communications technology, popular music and other influences of Western culture, mass migration, and the rise of international corporations, and what was arguably a true global economy by the end of the century. Scientific Discoveries The beginning of the 20th century ushered in a revolution in physics. The long-held theories of Newton were shown to be sometimes incorrect. Beginning in 1900, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and others developed quantum theories to explain various anomalous experimental results by introducing discrete energy levels. Not only did quantum mechanics prove that the laws of motion did not hold on small scales but, even more disturbing, the theory of general relativity, proposed by Einstein in 1915, revealed that the fixed background of space-time, on which both Newtonian mechanics and special relativity depended, could not exist. In 1925, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger (Goldstein, 1995) formulated the quantum mechanics, which explained the preceding quantum theories. The observation by Edwin Hubble in 1929 that the speed at which galaxies recede correlates with their distance, led to our understanding that the universe is expanding, and to the formulation of the Big Bang theory by Georgios Lemaitre. 120 ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF WOMEN IN CHEMISTRY IN THE 20TH CENTURY Note that currently, general relativity and quantum mechanics are inconsistent with each other and efforts are underway to reconcile the differences. From the late 1920s to the present, the field of Signal Production-Reproduction for video acquisition and replay has rapidly developed. Dr. August Karolus at the University of Leipzig, Germany, first developed a television signal. His student and laboratory assistant, Dr. Erhard Kietz, researched frequency constancy of electric tuning forks for his dissertation in 1939; he later emigrated to the US where he developed several patents in the field of video signals for Ampex Corporation. Further developments took place during World War II, which led to the practical application of radar and the development and use of the atomic bomb. Though the process had begun with the invention of the cyclotron by Ernest O. Lawrence in the 1930s, physics in the postwar period entered into a phase of what historians have called “Big Science”, requiring massive machines, budgets, and laboratories in order to test physics theories and to move into new frontiers. The primary patron of physics became state governments, which recognized that the support of basic research could often lead to technologies useful for both military and industrial applications. Women’s Status Women have been and still remain underrepresented in science and engineering. During the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century aristocratic women were active as both patrons and spokespeople of natural philosophers. In the 19th century, the ever-increasing professionalization of science and specialization of scientific domains, as well as its increasing location in the laboratory, caused science to depart from its traditional domestic base. This transition, however, further excluded women from science because social pressure kept them tied to their homes and children (Rayner-Canham & Rayner-Canham, 1997). Nevertheless, some women made important contributions: Mary Somerville and Jane Haldimand Marcet in England, through their informal textbooks, and Maria Mitchell, in the United States, who taught science to many women at Vassar College. The rise of women’s colleges in the last third of the 19th century, as well as the willingness of some universities to allow foreign women to study or even graduate, created the first generation of formally educated women scientists. In the 20th century, the shortage of technical personnel during the two world wars temporarily opened up further opportunities for women in science. Women’s place in science tended to greatly vary by discipline. Women encountered substantial resistance in the laboratory sciences. However, they were more readily accepted in observational sciences such as botany and classical astronomy, where the need for large-scale collecting and observing encouraged the spreading of an amateur subculture for both men and women. In theoretical sciences—except for mathematics, in which there was an often-explicit bias against women—they also faced fewer barriers since the equipment and facilities required were minimal. Both observational and theoretical pursuits seemed tolerably compatible 121 RACHEL MAMLOK-NAAMAN, RON BLONDER, AND YEHUDIT JUDY DORI with women’s primary familial responsibilities; observation also belonged to a socially acceptable tradition of amateur practice. During the 20th century an increasing number of women, many of them aided by enlightened male mentors, excelled in the experimental as well as the theoretical sciences. Among them were Marie Sklodowska Curie, a co-discoverer of radioactivity and radium, who worked in state-funded laboratories in Paris and won two Nobel Prizes; her elder daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, who shared the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with her husband Frédéric Joliot for discovering artificial radioactivity; Hertha Ayrton
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Is the Brain-Mind Quantum? a Theoretical Proposal with Supporting Evidence
    IS THE BRAIN-MIND QUANTUM? A THEORETICAL PROPOSAL WITH SUPPORTING EVIDENCE Stuart Kauffmana and Dean Radinb a Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] b Chief Scientist, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, CA; , Associated Distinguished Professor, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA, USA [email protected]. ORCID: 0000-0003-0041-322X Abstract If all aspects of the mind-brain relationship were adequately explained by classical physics, then there would be no need to propose alternative views. But faced with possibly unresolvable puzzles like qualia and free will, other approaches are required. We propose a non-substance dualism theory, following a suggestion by Heisenberg, whereby the world consists of both ontologically real Possibles that do not obey Aristotle’s law of the excluded middle, and ontologically real Actuals, that do obey the law of the excluded middle. Measurement converts Possibles into Actuals. This quantum-oriented approach solves numerous puzzles about the mind-brain relationship, but it also raises the intriguing possibility that some aspects of mind are nonlocal, and that mind plays an active role in the physical world. We suggest that the mind-brain relationship is partially quantum, and we present evidence supporting that proposition. Keywords: brain-mind, quantum biology, consciousness, quantum measurement 1. Introduction Of the three central mysteries in science, the Origin of the Universe, the Origin of Life, and the Origin of Consciousness, the last is the most challenging. As philosopher Jerry Fodor put it in 1992, “Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything could be conscious” [1].
    [Show full text]
  • Women in Chemistry
    Women in Chemistry Her Lab in Your Life: Women in Chemistry is a new this message, the exhibit team concentrated on three exhibition that takes a fresh look at everyday life, related themes: women chemists have improved our revealing how chemical science and engineering help understanding of the physical world, they have shape it. Designed by the Chemical Heritage helped shape the material circumstances and popular Foundation (CHF)—a U.S.-based foundation—this culture of our everyday lives, and they have broken exhibition showcases women chemists who have new ground in the chemical professions and served as helped create our modern world and their historic role models for young women. contributions to science and technology. From the action of atoms to the substance of stars, these Choosing the Women and Their women have given us new visions of the material Story world and our place in it. The exhibition—traveling or online—was created especially for high school and Faced with the difficult task of choosing which impor- college students but designed to engage general tant and interesting women chemists to include, the audiences. exhibit team eventually selected 68 and created research files for each one. Such a large number is clear proof that the achievements of women chemists Her Lab in Your Life* are not isolated blips on a professional map. Many by Josh McIlvain who did not make it into the panel of the traveling exhibit have been included on the exhibit’s compan- HF’s newest traveling exhibit, Her Lab in Your ion Web site. Life: Women in Chemistry, focuses on the rich Some of the women highlighted in Her Lab in Your Chistory of women chemists by highlighting Life are still alive and active chemists.
    [Show full text]
  • Annotated Bibliography: Women in Physics, Astronomy, and Related Disciplines
    Annotated Bibliography: Women in Physics, Astronomy, and Related Disciplines Abir Am, Pnina and Dorinda Outram, eds. Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1787-1979. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987. Abir Am and Outram’s volume includes a collection of essays about women in science that highlight the intersection of personal and professional spheres. All of the articles argue that the careers of women scientists are influenced by their family lives and that their family lives are impacted because of their scientific careers. This text is significant in two ways: first, it is one of the earliest examples of scholarship that moves beyond the recovering women in science, but placing them in the context of their home and work environments. Second, it suggests that historians of science can no longer ignore the private lives of their historical subjects. This volume contains four articles relating to women in physics and astronomy: Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie’s “Marital Collaboration: An Approach to Science” (pages 104-125), Sally Gregory Kohlstedt’s “Maria Mitchell and the Advancement of Women in Science” (pages 129-146), Helena M. Pycior’s “Marie Curie’s ‘Anti-Natural Path’: Time Only for Science and Family” (pages 191-215), and Peggy Kidwell’s “Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin: Astronomy in the Family” (pages 216-238). As a unit, the articles would constitute and interesting lesson on personal and professional influences. Individually, the articles could be incorporated into lessons on a single scientist, offering a new perspective on their activities at work and at home. It complements Pycior, Slack, and Abir Am’s Creative Couples in the Sciences and Lykknes, Opitz, and Van Tiggelen’s For Better of For Worse: Collaborative Couples in the Sciences, which also look at the intersection of the personal and professional.
    [Show full text]
  • SEAFARING WOMEN: an Investigation of Material Culture for Potential Archaeological Diagnostics of Women on Nineteenth-Century Sailing Ships
    SEAFARING WOMEN: An Investigation of Material Culture for Potential Archaeological Diagnostics of Women on Nineteenth-Century Sailing Ships by R. Laurel Seaborn April, 2014 Director of Thesis/Dissertation: Dr. Lynn Harris Major Department: Department of History, Program in Maritime Studies ABSTRACT During the 19th century, women went to sea on sailing ships. Wives and family accompanied captains on their voyages from New England. They wrote journals and letters that detailed their life on board, adventures in foreign ports, and feelings of separation from family left behind. Although the women kept separate from the sailors as class and social status dictated, they contributed as nannies, nurses and navigators when required. Examination of the historical documents, ship cabin plans, and photos of those interiors, as well as looking at surviving ships, such as the whaleship Charles W. Morgan, provided evidence of the objects women brought and used on board. The investigation from a gendered perspective of the extant material culture, and shipwreck site reports laid the groundwork for finding potential archaeological diagnostics of women living on board. SEAFARING WOMEN: An Investigation of Material Culture for Potential Archaeological Diagnostics of Women on Nineteenth-Century Sailing Ships A Thesis/Dissertation Presented To the Faculty of the Department of Department Name Here East Carolina University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by R. Laurel Seaborn April, 2014 © R. Laurel Seaborn, 2014 SEAFARING WOMEN: An Investigation of Material Culture for Potential Archaeological Diagnostics of Women on Nineteenth-Century Sailing Ships by R. Laurel Seaborn APPROVED BY: DIRECTOR OF THESIS:_________________________________________________________ Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • The Dorothy Hodgkin Symposium
    The Principal and Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford together with UNESCO and the International Union of Crystallography request the pleasure of your company at The Dorothy Hodgkin Symposium Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the award of Dorothy Hodgkin’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the International Year of Crystallography Wednesday 29th October 2014 You are warmly invited to attend a one-day symposium that aims to recognise Dorothy Hodgkin’s legacy and mark the award of her Nobel Prize. Her field, crystallography, underpins all of the sciences today and has an extensive range of applications within the agro-food, aeronautic, computer, electro-mechanical, pharmaceutical and mining industries and more. 45 scientists have been awarded the Nobel Prize over the past century for work that is either directly or indirectly related to crystallography, and yet it remains a field relatively unknown to the general public. This year UNESCO has joined forces with the International Union of Crystallography to promote education and public awareness, and we are delighted to contribute to this effort with the Dorothy Hodgkin Symposium. PROGRAMME 2:45 pm Tea & Coffee, Somerville College, Flora Anderson Hall 3:00 pm Hidden Glory, Dorothy Hodgkin in her own words, Somerville College, Flora Anderson Hall A filmed performance of a short, one-woman play about the life and work of Dorothy Hodgkin, followed by Q&A with the playwright Georgina Ferry 4:00 pm Registration, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford 4:10 pm Welcome, Mathematical Institute,
    [Show full text]
  • Women in Chemistry Mary Lyon (USA, 1797 - 1849) Alice Hamilton (USA, 1869 - 1970)
    Women in Chemistry Mary Lyon (USA, 1797 - 1849) Alice Hamilton (USA, 1869 - 1970) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Lyon-American- https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/land educator marks/rachel-holloway-lloyd.html Mary Lyon founded Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, Rachel Lloyd was an American chemist best known for her work one of the first women's colleges. At the time, most colleges on the chemistry and agriculture of sugar beets (Beta vulgaris). taught chemistry as a lecture-only class. Lyon made lab exercises She studied at the Harvard Summer School before receiving her and experiments an integral part of undergraduate chemistry doctorate from the University of Zurich in 1886, becoming the education. Her method became popular with the result that most first American female to earn a doctorate of chemistry. In 1891, modern chemistry classes include a lab component. she became the first regularly admitted female member of the American Chemical Society. More than a century later, the Society designated her research and professional contributions to chemistry a National Historic Chemical Landmark on October 1, 2014, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Women in Chemistry Marie Curie (Poland, 1867 - 1934) Alice Hamilton (USA, 1869 - 1970) http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1911/m https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Hamilton arie-curie-bio.html Marie Curie was one of the three persons who pioneered Alice Hamilton was a chemist and physician who directed the radioactivity research. In 1903, she along with her husband first governmental commission to investigate industrial hazards Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel shared the Nobel Prize in in the workplace, such as exposure to dangerous chemicals.
    [Show full text]
  • Fetch-Limited Barrier Islands: Overlooked Coastal Landforms
    SECTION MEETING: Rocky Mountain, p. 14 VOL. 17, No. 3 A PUBLICATION OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA MARCH 2007 Fetch-limited barrier islands: Overlooked coastal landforms Inside: Call for Committee Service, p. 18 Groundwork—Scientific uncertainty and public policy: Moving on without all the answers, p. 28 It’s Not Just Software. It’s RockWare. For Over 23 Years. RockWorks™ LP360™ 3D Subsurface Data LIDAR extension for ArcGIS Management, Analysis, and The LP360 LIDAR extension Visualization uses a specially-designed ™ All-in-one tool that allows you ArcMap data layer to draw to visualize, interpret and points directly from LAS fi les present your surface and thereby integrating LIDAR data sub-surface data. Now with with the rest of your GIS. LIDAR Access Database for powerful data can be viewed together queries, built-in import/export with data in any format ™ tools for LogPlot data, and LAS supported by ArcGIS , including and IHS import. vector data, rasters, and imagery. Free trial avialable at www.rockware.com. $1,999 Commercial/$749 Academic $2,995 AqQA™ ChemStat™ Spreadsheet for Water Analysis Ground Water Data Statistical • Create Piper diagram, Stiff Analysis diagram, Ternary, and eight other The easiest and fastest applica- plot types tion available for the statistical • Instant unit conversion — shift analysis of ground water moni- effortlessly among units toring data. ChemStat includes • Check water analyses for most statistical analysis methods internal consistency described in the 1989 and 1992 • Manage water data in a USEPA documents, U.S. Navy spreadsheet Statistical Analysis Guidance document, and other guidance Free trial avialable at www.rockware.com.
    [Show full text]
  • Guidelines for Science: Evidence and Checklists
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Marketing Papers Wharton Faculty Research 1-24-2017 Guidelines for Science: Evidence and Checklists J. Scott Armstrong University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Kesten C. Green University of South Australia Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/marketing_papers Part of the Econometrics Commons, and the Marketing Commons Recommended Citation Armstrong, J. S., & Green, K. C. (2017). Guidelines for Science: Evidence and Checklists. Retrieved from https://repository.upenn.edu/marketing_papers/181 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/marketing_papers/181 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Guidelines for Science: Evidence and Checklists Abstract Problem: The scientific method is unrivalled as a basis for generating useful knowledge, yet research papers published in management, economics, and other social sciences fields often ignore scientific principles. What, then, can be done to increase the publication of useful scientific papers? Methods: Evidence on researchers’ compliance with scientific principles was examined. Guidelines aimed at reducing violations were then derived from established definitions of the scientific method. Findings: Violations of the principles of science are encouraged by: (a) funding for advocacy research; (b) regulations that limit what research is permitted, how it must be designed, and what must be reported; (c) political suppression of scientists’ speech; (d) universities’ use of invalid criteria to evaluate research—such as grant money and counting of publications without regard to usefulness; (e) journals’ use of invalid criteria for deciding which papers to publish—such as the use of statistical significance tests. Solutions: We created a checklist of 24 evidence-based operational guidelines to help researchers comply with scientific principles (valid inputs).
    [Show full text]
  • SFRA Newsletter
    University of South Florida Scholar Commons Digital Collection - Science Fiction & Fantasy Digital Collection - Science Fiction & Fantasy Publications 6-1-1999 SFRA ewN sletter 240 Science Fiction Research Association Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/scifistud_pub Part of the Fiction Commons Scholar Commons Citation Science Fiction Research Association, "SFRA eN wsletter 240 " (1999). Digital Collection - Science Fiction & Fantasy Publications. Paper 59. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/scifistud_pub/59 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Digital Collection - Science Fiction & Fantasy at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Digital Collection - Science Fiction & Fantasy Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. #140 lilliE 1### Coed'tors: lIonfiction ReY'ew Editor: Karen Hellellson &. Crals Jacobsen lIeil Barron . ~ . ..: .. .. !;] AGAIN INTO CYBERSPACE Alan Elms First, SFRA's Web page address is now officially <http://www.sfra.org>. That may seem a very small step for humankind, but have you ever tried to tell a potential member of our organization, "Oh, sure, all you need to do is check out <http://www.uwm.edul~sands/sfraJscifi.htm> .. ? Much thanks again to Pete Sands, Adam Frisch, and Len Hatfield for overcoming the various complications of get­ ting the new address and for keeping the Web page going, and extra thanks to Len's home institution for giving the page a free home on its server. (Thank you, Virginia Tech, thank you thank you thank you.) The new address was set up just in time, too. The current issue of the SFWA Bulletin says somebody has been snapping up such Web addresses as <annemccaffrey.com> and darryniven.com>, presumably in hopes of selling them to the named authors or their publishers for a profit as Web commerce expands in scope.
    [Show full text]
  • Forest Decision Making Under Uncertainty: Adaptive
    FOREST DECISION MAKING UNDER UNCERTAINTY: ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT FOR THE CONSERVATION OF BIRD POPULATIONS ON A NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE by CLINTON THOMAS MOORE (Under the direction of Michael J. Conroy) ABSTRACT I constructed a stochastic, spatially-explicit landscape model to seek optimal forest management decisions for long-term persistence of populations of red-cockaded woodpecker (Picoides borealis) and wood thrush (Hylocichla mustelina) on the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge in Georgia, USA. I addressed uncertainty in decision making by considering alternative model forms that expressed different mechanisms of response by the forest and the bird populations to silvicultural actions. The implication of model uncertainty in this system is that conservation tradeoffs for both species differ according to choice of model. Decision variables in each model were the spatial scheduling of forest compartments for silvicultural treatments and the average periodicity of prescribed burning in compartments. Model responses were the number of active woodpecker clusters and abundance of wood thrushes. Additionally, I obtained a composite response as the average of the two abundance responses, each scaled by its standard error. I simulated each model under extremes of the decision alternatives, and I found a near- optimal management schedule for each model and for each of the responses. I also found near-optimal schedules for the case of complete uncertainty with regard to all models in the model set. Forest and bird monitoring data collected on the Refuge are the means by which measures of belief in each model are updated and decisions are adaptively improved. In nearly all models, both species responded strongly, but in opposite directions, to burning, and woodpeckers were sensitive to compartment scheduling.
    [Show full text]
  • Women in Chemistry History 2018.Indd
    WOMEN IN CHEMISTRY HISTORY MARIE-ANNE PAULZE LAVOISIER MARIE SKŁODOWSKA CURIE ALICE AUGUSTA BALL BORN 1758 DIED 1836 BORN 1867 DIED 1934 BORN 1892 DIED 1916 Married chemist Antoine Lavoisier and Carried out pioneering research on Developed an injectable oil which was the received training in chemistry. Worked radioactivity. The first woman to win a most effective treatment for leprosy until with Lavoiser editing and drawing his Nobel Prize, and the only person to win a the 1940s. She died before the results of methods so they could be understood. Nobel Prize in two different sciences. her work were published. GERTY THERESA CORI IDA EVA NODDACK IRÈNE JOLIOT-CURIE BORN 1896 DIED 1957 BORN 1896 DIED 1978 BORN 1897 DIED 1956 Helped establish how glycogen is broken She was the first person to propose Daughter of Marie Curie. A joint Nobel down in muscles then remade and stored the idea of nuclear fission, which she Prize in Chemistry winner in 1935 with as an energy source (the Cori Cycle). She suggested in 1934. She was also the co- Frédéric Joliot-Curie for their discovery of jointly won a Nobel Prize for her work. discoverer of rhenium, in 1925. and work on artificial radioactivity. KATHLEEN LONSDALE DOROTHY MARY HODGKIN GERTRUDE BELLE ELION BORN 1903 DIED 1971 BORN 1910 DIED 1994 BORN 1918 DIED 1999 Pioneered use of X-rays to study crystals, Used X-ray crystallography to determine Developed numerous drugs, including and also used the technique to confirm the structure of vitamin B12, for which the first immunosuppresive drug used for that a benzene ring is flat.
    [Show full text]
  • Women in Eurjoc (Eur. J. Org. Chem. 2021/2011)
    PROFILES Women in EurJOC MICROREVIEWS What is the secret to being a successful female scientist? A successful scientist has to be fascinated by their own re- search. It can happen that you are absorbed in a thought and forget the world around you until you suddenly come Esther Lete (Universidad del Paı´s up with a new idea or totally different interpretation. Then, Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibert- of course, you need analytical skills, but also creativity and sitatea, Bilbao, Spain) openness. The creative side is where women probably have a Research interests: Lithium and pal- slight advantage, which we should use. Besides the work on ladium chemistry for the develop- our own desks, collaboration and communication give valu- ment of new methodologies for the able impulse to research. For women in science, this involves stereocontrolled synthesis of hetero- learning to understand how men think and communicate; cycles. however, we should never try or pretend to be them! DOI: 10.1002/ejoc.201100123 Joe¨lle Prunet (University of Glas- gow, Glasgow, United Kingdom) As a female chemist, how did you overcome the obstacles that Research interests: Total synthesis you have encountered? of bioactive natural products and I honestly don’t think I have found any particular obstacle development of new methodologies being a female chemist, as the access to public university in organic chemistry. positions or to public funding for research in Spain is based DOI: 10.1002/ejoc.201100442 on academic and research merits with equal and public cri- teria. In fact, the number of female full professors in or- What is the biggest challenge facing ganic chemistry in Spain has increased in the last years, female organic chemists? and it is probably relatively higher than in other countries.
    [Show full text]