 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|||
 |
 |
 |
|||||||
| Copyright © 2012. National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Terms of Use and Privacy Statement |
Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page R1
Nobel Prize Women
· ~ ~
m Science
Their Lives, Struggles, and
Momento?ls Discoveries
SECOND EDITION
Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
JOSEPH HENRY PRESS
Washington, D.C.
OCR for page R2
Bare-breasted woman adorns the reverse of the
Nobel Prize medals for physics and chernistry.
Copyright Nobel Foundation
OCR for page R3
Nobel Prize Women
in Science
Their Lives, Struggles, and
Momentous Discoveries
SECOND EDITION
Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
JOSEPH HENRY PRESS
Washington, D.C.
OCR for page R4
Joseph Henry Press · 2101 Consdmdon Avenue, N.W. · Washington, D.C. 20418
TheJoseph Hemy Press, am imprint of the National Academy Press, was created
with the goal of making books on science, technology, amd health more widely avail-
able to professionals and the public.Joseph Hemy was one of the founders of the
National Academy of Sciences and a leader of early American science.
Any opinions, findings. condusions, or recommendations expressed m dais volume
are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Acad-
emy of Sciences or its affiliated institutions.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publicadon Data
McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch.
Nobel Prize women m science: their lives, struggles, and
momentous discoveries Sharon Bertsch McGrayne.—Updated cd.
p.cm.
ISBN 0-309-07270-0 pbk.)
1. Women scientists—Awards. 2. Science—Awards. 3. Nobel Prizes.
1. Tide.
141.M358 1998
509 2'2—dc21
Designed by Ardashes Hampariam
Copyright 1993, 1998 Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
Printed in the United States of America
98-39490
CIP
OCR for page R5
TO
Hilde Proescholdt Mangold
1898-1924
llilde Proescholdt Mangold's doctoral thesis in biology won her ad-
viser a Nobel Prize. Mangold conducted the crucial experiments
demonstrating the nature and location of the organizer, the chemi-
cals that direct the embryonic development of different tissues and
organs.
Unlike the other women in this book, Hilde Proescholdt
Mangold did not conceive of or design her experiment. Her adviser,
Hans Spemar~n, did so. She executed the project umder his direction.
In 1924, the gas heater in Mamgold's kitchen exploded. Hilde
Proescholdt Mangold, the twenty-six-year-old mother of an infant
son and the codiscoverer of the organizer, died of severe burns.
Eleven years after her death, Spemann won the Nobel Prize.
Frieda Rob.~clzeit-RobbzrLs
1893-December 18, 1973
For thirty-eight years Frieda Robscheit-Robbins was the research
partner of George Hoyt Whipple. Although their joint work led to a
cure for the deadly disease pernicious anemia. it was Whipple alone
who won a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1934.
KWhipple's experiments," the Nobel Committee observed,
"were planned exceedingly well and carried out very accurately, amd
consequently their results can lay claim to absolute reliability." Frieda
Robscheit-Robbins helped to plam and carried out those experiments.
In fact, she was listed as the first author on Whipple's most im-
portant single paper, the report on which his scientific reputation
rested. Generally, the first author is primarily responsible for the
work summarized in the paper.
Whipple cited twenty-three scientific papers in his Nobel ad-
dress. Of these, Robschiet-Robbins was the coauthor of ten. Whipple
shared his prize money with Robscheit-Robbins and with two
women technicians.
Frieda Robscheit-Robbins was both in Germany, educated in
Chicago amd California, and received her Ph.D. from the University
of Rochester. She worked with Whipple from 1917 until her retire-
ment from the University of Rochester Medical School in 1955. Af-
OCR for page R6
vi
DEDICATION
ter thirty-eight years, she was still am associate in pathology, a junior-
grade employee.
Of scientific research she said, "You become possessed of a mag-
nificent obsession and determination to learn the truth of your scien-
tific theory if it takes sixteen years or many times sixteen. If you are
successful, you really deserve no great credit, for by that time experi-
ment has become the only thing in life you care to do."
OCR for page R7
Contents
Acknowledgments
Author to Reader
L · A Passion for Discovery
FIRST GENERATION PIONEERS
2 · Marie Sklodowska Curie
3 · Lise Meitner
4 · Emmy Noetber
SECOND GENERATION
· Gerty Radnitz Cori
~ · Irene Joliot- Curie
7 · Barbara McClintock
3 · Maria Goeppert Mayer
~ · Rita Levi-Montalcini
10 · Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin
11 · Chien-Shiung Wu
12 · Gertrude Belle Elion
13 · Rosalind Elsie Franklin
14 · Rosalyn Sussman Yalow
THE NEW GENERATION
15 · Jocelyn Bell Burnell
16 · Christiane Nusslein-Volhard
Afterword
Notes
vu
ix
xi
3
11
37
64
93
117
144
175
201
225
254
279
303
332
357
378
406
408
OCR for page R8
viu
CONTENTS
Picture Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author
viu
430
433
460
OCR for page R9
Acknowledgments
SINCE THE EIRST EDITION OE THIS BOOK APPEARED a tenth
woman scientist has won a Nobel Prize. Christiane Nusslein-Volhard
won the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 1995 for helping
explain how embryos develop in flies, fish, people, and a host of
other creatures. Her Nobel made a new and expanded edition of
J~ol6el Prize Womerr ~ Science necessary
The lives of the fifteen women in this book illustrate the chang-
ing patterns of discrimination against women in science, starting with
legal bars to academic high schools and universities in Europe, and
continuing in the United States with laws against working wives in
universities.
The new chapter on Christiame Nusslein-Volhard brings the
book full circle. Many of the problems that women have faced m
North America and Europe have been exacerbated by Germam atti-
tudes about research science and working wives. Thus, Christiame
Nusslein-Volhard's experiences cast light on the lives of women far
beyond the borders of her native Germamy.
At the same time, she herself raises a difficult issue. With the
decline in overt discrimination against women in science, we may be
approaching an era of more equal opportunity. If that is the case, the
future of women in science depends on what women wamt to make
of it. Their future will be up to them, and not to others.
For this book Drs. Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Dorothy Crow foot
Hodgkin, Barbara McClintock, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Christiane
Nusslein-Volhard, C. S. Wu, Rosalyn S. Yalow, and Gertrude B.
Elion graciously granted personal interviews.
Each chapter—whether its subject is alive or deceased—is also
based on primary and secondary sources and on extensive inter-
views with colleagues, students, family, friends, and experts in each
field. Their cooperation is testimony to the importance that leaders
of the scientific community place on attracting more woman to sci-
ence.
ix
OCR for page R10
x
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
All scientific explanations are nontechnical. Nothing is made up
or fictionalized, however. All quotations come from published
sources or from interviews. In many cases, the research revealed new
material about these women, their lives, amd their accomplishments.
Sources and recommended reading are provided at the end of the
book
I want to thank George E Bertsch for many invaluable discus-
sions on editorial and scientific questions. I would also like to ac-
knowledge the helpful comments made by Ruth Ann Bertsch amd
Frederick M. Bertsch. The staff of the Michigan State University li-
braries, especially the reference department of the main library and
Diane Clark of the physics library, were extremely helpful as well.
Particular thanks go to my agents, Julian Bach retired, and Susan
Rabiner, and to copy editor Connie M. Parkinson and to production
supervisor Donald J. Davidson at Carol Publishing Group.
The following persons deserve special thanks because they care-
fully read and advised me on one or more of the chapters in manu-
script: Bruce Alberts, Ruth Hogue Angeletti Frederick M. Bertsch,
George E Bertsch Ruth Ann Bertsch Jacob Bigeleisen Gloria Blatt,
Verena Brink, Peter A. Brix,James Burchall, Alice Calaprioe, Donald
L. D. Caspar, Mildren Cohen, Stanley Cohen, Mildred S.
Dresselhaus, Elizabeth E. K. Edwards, Jenny P. Glusker, James
Goodman, Viktor Hamburger, Anne Harrison, William Havens,
Gunter Herrmann, Linda Cooke Johnson, Charles Kimberling,
David M. Kipnis, Aaron Klug, Thomas A. Krenitsky, Helene
Langevin-Joliot, Joseph Larner, Leon J. Lidofsky, Neil Madsen Jo-
seph Meites, Ben Mottelson, Emiliama Pasca Noether, Hans Noll,
Markus Noll, Ronald Oppenheim, Jeremiah P. Ostriker, Richard E.
Phillips, Robert Provine, Robert G. Sachs, Anne Sayres, David
Sayres, Paul Schedl, Hartmut Schultz, Trudi Schupbach, Barbara
Sears, Ruth L. Sime, Susam Simkin, Martha K. Smith,Joseph Taylor,
Kenneth Trueblood, Alexander Tulinsky, Marcia Vam Ness, Robert
Ward, Spencer R. Weart, Alycia Weinberger, Eric Wieschaus, and
Evelyn Within.
OCR for page R11
Author to Reader
ALFRED NOEEE, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, died in
1896, establishing with his fortune the most famous of all interna-
tional awards, the Nobel Prizes. Following the dictates of his will,
annual awards are given for peace and literature and for discoveries
in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine. An economics
prize was added in 1968.
When the awards were established, a single prize represented a
fortume: thirty times the annual salary of a university professor, two
hundred times that of a skilled construction worker. Awards were
made for a discovery or improvement that had been made the pre-
ceding year and that had conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.
Prominent scientists throughout the world nominate candidates
for the science awards. The physics and chemistry winners are cho-
sen by the Swedish Academy of Sciences, amd physiology or medi-
cine winners are named by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
Nobel laureates are the aristocrats of science, the elite, the cream
of the crop. Approximately five hundred men have received science
Nobels since 1901. In the course of almost a century, only ten
women scientists have won Nobel prizes, a mere two percent.
This book examines the lives and achievements of fifteen
women scientists who either won a Nobel Prize or played a crucial
role in a Nobel Plize-winriing project. It offers one answer to the
question: Why so few women?
xi
OCR for page R12
