Lise Meitner, Who Refused to Join the Project Keen to Hear More About Women in Stemfatale Is Another Excellent but on Whose Research It Was Based
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No. 117: October 2018 VIEWPOINT MAGAZINE OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE Suffragette Surgeons Dissecting the history of London’s Endell Street military hospital and its all-female medical staff ISSN: 1751-8261 News • Manhattan Project • Birthing a Monster • Women in Engineering • Notices • HSTM Podcasts RUNNING HEADER Contents Astrographic telescope Welcome | News 2-3 named after Annie Maunder Endell Street Hospital 4-5 A telescope installed at the Royal Obser- vatory Greenwich has been named after Women in Nuclear Physics 6-9 Irish astronomer and mathematician Birthing A ‘Monster’ 10-11 Annie Maunder (1868-1947). It is one of several new instruments at the History’s Female Engineers 12-13 observatory, which has been recently reopened as a site of active astronomi- Blackwell’s Illustrated Herbal 14 cal research after a 60-year hiatus. Interview: Tim Boon 15 Maunder began her astronomi- cal career in 1891, joining the Royal BSHS information & publications 16 Observatory as a ‘lady computer’ in the Courtesy of the Royal Astronomical Society/Dorrie solar photography department. With her mage: husband Walter, she went on to make I Above Annie Maunder, astronomer. Giles . Cropped. several significant astronomical obser- Editorial vations, contributing original research author of The Heavens and their Story To commemorate the 2018 centenary on the sun’s cycles of activity. (1908), co-authored with her husband. of women’s suffrage in the UK, this Much of Maunder’s work was credited The Annie Maunder Astrographic issue features a collection of articles on to Walter and her contributions to British Telescope (AMAT) will be used to women in the history of science. science are still being recognised. She observe our sun, solar system, and Our cover feature, by outgoing BSHS beyond. The revamped observatory will President Patricia Fara, explores the lives resigned from her position at Greenwich and careers of doctors Flora Murray and upon marriage in 1895, but continued to be made accessible to researchers, Louisa Garrett Anderson, who founded research and was credited as primary amateurs, and schoolchildren. • Endell Street Military Hospital in London during the First World War. Then follows a pair of articles on nuclear physics. Jessamyn Fairfield intro- duces the women of the Manhattan Pro- Women in HSTM Podcasts ject, while Juliane Borchert profiles Lise Meitner, who refused to join the Project Keen to hear more about women in STEMFatale is another excellent but on whose research it was based. science, medicine, and technology? series, which looks at the lives of th Taking us to 17 -century England, Then subscribe to one of the historic and current women in HSTM, Kathryn Shaw discusses early modern podcasts being produced including organic chemist ‘monstrous’ births, focusing on the case by historians and Dr Asima Chatterjee, of Mary Waterman, a mother of con- joined twins. Then Elizabeth Bruton and scientists dedi- the first woman in Graeme Gooday investigate the role of cated to histories India to recieve women in the history of engineering. of women in a doctorate in Catherine Booth puts an illustration HSTM. science. by botanist Elizabeth Blackwell ‘Under Lady Science Superwomen the Microscope’, and, lastly, we interview is an online in Science looks incoming BSHS President Tim Boon. We hope you enjoy the new look. You magazine about at a wide range of can let us know what you think by email women and gen- women’s scientific or on Twitter @BSHSViewpoint. der in the history endeavours, from Contributions to the next issue should and popular culture of arts research to STEM be emailed, by 15 December 2018, to science. The Lady Science fields, and, finallly, Femmes [email protected]. podcast covers topics from trans and of STEM was founded to battle the Hazel Blair, Editor queer histories of science, to technol- myth that women and minorities are ogy and women’s labour. newcomers to science. • 2 WELCOMEVIEWPOINT | NEWS 116 Conference Report: ‘Global BSHS President: Science Mountains’ at Cambridge Museum’s Tim Boon Tim Boon, former BSHS Vice-Pres- In July, an international group of schol- ident and Head of Research and ars gathered in Cambridge to critically Public Policy at the Science Museum Group, has taken over from Patricia analyse mountains as sites and scales Fara as BSHS President. for global histories. The BSHS thanks Patrica for her The ‘Global Mountains’ conference dedication to the Society since she was a great success. The substantial took up her presidency in 2016. Turn to p. 15 for our interview with audience listened and responded to 11 Tim, and to learn about his ambi- Min Jung Kim talks spread across five panels cover- tions for the Society and HSTM. • ing mountain environments, mountain Image: politics, mountain societies, mountain provide to external powerholders and Marie Curie voted world’s imaginaries, and mountain sciences. forms of modern intervention; verti- most significant woman These presentations took us from cality as related to scientific practice 16th-century South America to 21st-cen- Marie Skłodowska-Curie has been and knowledge of the natural world; voted the most significant woman tury North Korea, and from concepts of and the importance of multiple – and in history in a poll conducted by ice as vibrant matter to mountains as often unexpected – agents in creating BBC History Magazine, which spaces of religious ritual. Although geo- published a shortlist of ‘100 women ‘global’ connections and structures. The graphically and chronologically diverse, who changed the world’, chosen by participants have already begun to share 10 experts. The magazine asked its the talks proved to have substantial plans for continuing collaborative work readers to help rank the nominees. thematic overlaps. Born in Poland in 1867, Curie was to explore these and other discussion The keynote speaker, Bernard Debar- a pioneer of radiation research. She points in the future. was nominated by Patricia Fara, bieux from the University of Geneva, Another key point of debate, picked outgoing President of the British gave a fascinating and generous paper up on especially in the roundtable that Society for the History of Science. (pictured) that integrated other present- ‘[Curie] boasts an extrordinary concluded the conference, was inter- ers’ findings alongside a deep examina- array of achievements,’ says Fara. disciplinarity, and the way that studying ‘She was the first woman to win tion of knowledge of mountains, from mountains invites and even necessitates a Nobel Prize, first female professor 19th-century discussions of Humbold- diverse approaches. The conference at the University of Paris, and tian science to contemporary political the first person – note the use of featured anthropologists, geographers, person there, not woman – to win a activism in relation to mountain spaces and cultural studies scholars, as well as second Nobel Prize.’ • and climate. historians and historians of science. The BSHS’s funding enabled substan- While questions were inevitably raised tial participation from early career schol- Society’s Postgraduate about constructively combining meth- ars and graduate students, who made up Conference 2019 odologies, the shared benefits of using a large portion of the audience as well The 2019 BSHS Postgraduate mountains as scales was readily appar- as seven of the speakers. A notable and Conference will be hosted by ent. In particular, conversations continue Cambridge University’s Department welcome feature of the conference was 1917.’ London. Chalk drawing by Francis Dodd, Endell Street, ‘An operation for appendicitis at the Military Hospital, as to how considering uplands spaces of History and Philosophy of Science the development across the two days as distinctive from the more populous between 10 and 12 April. of lines of conversation during lengthy This annual event provides a and historiographically dense lowlands friendly environment for graduate discussion portions built into each panel, might lead to productive new research researchers to present their work. building off pre-circulated papers. ECRs questions across disciplines. Graduate students working in any and students were every bit as active in area of the history and philosophy On behalf of all the participants at these sessions as tenured academics. of science, medicine, and Global Mountains, we would like to technology, or a related field, should Among the core themes that emerged Wellcome Collection / CC BY 4.0. express our sincere thanks to the Society submit abstracts for 20-minute during the conference were: the gen- for its generosity. • papers by 9 November 2018. dered and racial dimensions of upland For the full CfA, see: www. Tom Simpson & bshs.org.uk/bshs-postgraduate- spaces and activities; the multivalent Lachlan Fleetwood conference-2019-cfa. • forms of resistance that mountains University of Cambridge Main Cover Image: 3 Equality Matters: Endell Street Hospital in the First World War Patricia Fara explores the wartime history of a London hospital staffed entirely by women. uring the First World War, a jour- midwifery. There is something indecent Louisa Garrett Anderson and her long- nalist waiting to interview a female about a girl studying in midwifery.’ term companion, the physician Flora Ddoctor eavesdropped on two patients: Segregated for dissections, anatomy Murray, both militant suffragettes. After classes, and ward rounds, even after quali- they converted a central Paris hotel into Said one of