Women in Crystallography Is Climbing
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bodies, such as the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) and the European Neutron Scattering Association (ENSA), to establish and present the community view. These organizations should commis- sion independent scientific and technical reviews, similar to the US Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey, and make recommendations for future projects. CHARLES HEWITT/PICTURE POST/GETTY HEWITT/PICTURE CHARLES Although this approach may be adequate to coordinate road maps for national facilities of the scale of ISIS, higher-level political power play is nec- essary for multinational facilities such as the European XFEL and the ESS. An international organization of facility users, with the political muscle of CERN, should be set up urgently to provide gov- ernance, mediate with national and inter- national political bodies, and implement community decisions. In fact, it is questionable whether the multilateral funding model for the largest international facilities is still fit for pur- pose. With its reputation for excellence, the European Research Council could become the primary funder for the next generation of European facilities, with a suitable increase in its budget (currently €13.1 billion for 2014–20). Extra contribu- Pioneer: Kathleen Lonsdale was one of the first women to be elected to the Royal Society. tions would come from the host nations, as for the LHC, and other international part- ners. Such a radical change will not hap- pen immediately, but these ideas should be discussed ahead of the renewal of the Women in European Union Framework Programme for Research and Innovation in 2020. The 23rd IUCr Congress and Gen- eral Assembly in Montreal, Canada, in crystallography August will provide plenty of opportu- nities to celebrate the past triumphs of Georgina Ferry celebrates the egalitarian, crystallography. It would also be wise for the community to use the occasion collaborative culture that has so far produced two to start discussions about securing the female Nobel prizewinners. field’s future. ■ Paolo G. Radaelli is professor of t takes a very special breed of scientist to let such comments get in her way. Howard experimental philosophy and head to do this work … it is an area of got the job, established one of the world’s lead- of condensed-matter physics at the science in which women dominate.” So ing laboratories for low- and variable-temper- University of Oxford, UK. “I said the professor introducing distinguished ature structural chemistry, served as head of e-mail: [email protected] British crystallographer Judith Howard in the department of chemistry, was elected a 2004 as she received an honorary degree Fellow of the Royal Society and became the 1. Cavalleri, A. Nature 448, 651–652 (2007). from the University of Bristol, UK. founding director of Durham’s interdepart- 2. Lockyer, N. Nature 504, 367–368 (2013). 3. House of Lords Select Committee on Science Some 15 years previously, Howard had mental Biophysical Sciences Institute. and Technology 2nd Report of Session received an invitation to apply for a new Whatever their level of distinction, female 2013–14: Scientific Infrastructure (Authority chair in structural chemistry at Durham crystallographers have always in fact been of the House of Lords, 2013). 4. European Commission ESFRI Roadmap for University, UK, framed in similarly irksome in the minority. But there is a relationship Research Infrastructures (EC, 2006, 2008 terms: “because aren’t women supposed to between the outstanding achievements of 2010); available at http://go.nature.com/ be good at that sort of thing?” Her former some of them and the reputation and cul- ip6afc. PhD supervisor, the Nobel prizewinner ture of the field that is worth examining as 5. Banks, M. ‘Funding shortfall hits European X-ray laser facility’ Physics World (29 July Dorothy Hodgkin, encouraged Howard not we celebrate the International Year of Crys- 2011); available at http://go.nature.com/ tallography. I would argue that the features ojuhdg. CYSTALLOGAPHY AT 00 of this field that have attracted, retained 6. Kjems, J., Taylor, A. D., Finney, J. L., Lengeler, and encouraged women have lessons to H. & Steigenberger, U. ESS: A Next-Generation A Nature special issue Neutron Source for Europe (ESS Council, nature.com/crystallography offer for the future of women’s progress in 1997). science more generally. 30 JANUARY 2014 | VOL 505 | NATURE | 609 © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved COMMENT Women were among crystallogra- of the University of York, UK, who began as It did not occur to her to look for a female phy’s earliest pioneers. William Bragg, co- Hodgkin’s technician, was the main instiga- role model, because she was surrounded discoverer of X-ray crystal analysis with tor behind CCP4, the collaborative comput- by them. “Louise [Johnson] was the head his son Lawrence a century ago, recruited ing project that currently shares more than of structural biology, and there were a lot Kathleen Lonsdale to his laboratory in 1922. 250 software tools with protein crystallogra- of women in biophysics at Oxford,” says Working at the Royal Institution in London, phers worldwide. Lea, “so I never really thought about it.” She she confirmed the structure of the benzene But the widespread assumption that these remembers “a very good atmosphere”, cit- ring, carried out studies of diamond, was illustrious figures reflect a predominance of ing the normality of children being around one of the first two women to be elected women in the field is false. More than two in the lab: “It was expected that if you were to the Royal Society (in 1945), and was decades ago, the US mathematical crystal- bright you would get the job done.” In 1995, appointed the first female tenured professor lographer Maureen Julian of the Virginia having completed her PhD on structural at University College London. Polytechnic Institute and State University studies of the foot-and-mouth disease Hodgkin was one of several women (Virginia Tech) in virus, Lea was one of the first to receive a who joined the lab of the physicist “Women’s Blacksburg tallied the Dorothy Hodgkin fellowship from the Royal John Desmond Bernal (a former Bragg stu- names adorn entries in the World Society, designed to allow some flexibil- dent) in Cambridge, UK, in the 1930s, and many of the Directory of Crystal- ity around family and other commitments with him she took the first X-ray photographs textbooks lographers and found for early-career scientists. Her first child of crystalline proteins. Her solutions of the and research that the proportion was born a year later. structures of penicillin and vitamin B12 won resources in of women was 14% That collaborative ethos owes as much to her the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964. Of the field.” internationally (and the nature of the science as to the benevo- the four women who have won the chemistry slightly lower in the lent legacy of the Braggs. “It’s a science that, Nobel, two were crystallographers: Hodgkin United States)1. At the time, only 2% of the when practised well, tends to involve six to and the Israeli scientist Ada Yonath, who was members of the American Physical Society eight disciplines,” explains Lea. “One minute awarded the prize in 2009. were women; Julian concluded that a percent- I’m talking to a virologist, the next a crystal- Rosalind Franklin is chiefly remem- age in double figures gave the impression that lographer, the next an immunologist.” For bered for taking the X-ray photograph of the field was “saturated with women”. Hao Wu, who uses structural techniques to a DNA fibre that proved instrumental to Today, the International Union of Crys- study innate immunity at Harvard Medi- James Watson and Francis Crick’s Nobel- tallography’s online list of eminent crystal- cal School in Boston, Massachusetts, this prizewinning discovery of the double helix. lographers (go.nature.com/g5iarg) is more interdisciplinarity was a prime attraction. In her short life (she died of cancer in her than 90% male. Its prestigious Ewald Prize, “I had no clue about other women crystal- 30s), she also carried out important struc- awarded triennially since 1987, has had one lographers when I started,” she says. “What tural studies of carbon in coal and graphite, female recipient (Dodson) out of 14 (7%). attracted me was that it had mathematics, and of plant and animal viruses. physics and biology in it.” Isabella Karle of the United States Naval A COLLABORATIVE ETHOS As she neared her graduation in medicine Research Laboratory developed an experi- There are grounds, however, for believing in Beijing, Wu was fascinated by a lecture mental approach to using ‘direct methods’ that the field of crystallography was unu- from Michael Rossmann, visiting from of structural analysis for the solution of mol- sually welcoming to women at its founda- Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indi- ecules smaller than 1,000 atoms. Her applica- tion a century ago, at least by comparison ana. Rossmann is a mathematical crystallog- tion of this statistically based technique for with other branches of physical science. In rapher who met Lonsdale as a schoolboy, did estimating the phases of the X-ray reflections her 1990 study1, Julian also traced a scien- a PhD with J. M. Robertson (a former Bragg enormously expanded the range of substances tific genealogy starting with the Braggs, student), and worked with molecular biolo- that could be tackled. Yet only her husband through colleagues both male and female, gist Max Perutz (a student of Bernal’s) on Jerome shared the 1985 Nobel Prize in Chem- to a total of 50 female crystallographers. the solution of the haemoglobin structure. istry with Herbert Hauptman, for developing Bragg protégés such as Lonsdale and Bernal Wu subsequently secured a PhD place in the theoretical underpinnings of the method.