Mentorship and collaboration necessarily shaped opportunities for women in science, especially in the late nineteenth century at rapidly expanding public co-educational universities. A few male faculty made space for women to establish their own research programs and professional identities. At the University of Minnesota, botanist Conway MacMillan, an ambitious young department chair, provided a qualified mentorship to Josephine Tilden. He encouraged her research on algae and relied on her to do departmental support tasks even as he persuaded the administration to (...) move her from instructor to assistant professor in 1903. Resulting publications on Minnesota algae led her to look further west, first at Yellowstone National Park and then along the Pacific Northwest coast. After visiting a particularly productive littoral site on Vancouver Island, she suggested that they establish a Minnesota Seaside Station there. Over its seven years in operation under the Midwestern leaders, that location proved remarkably productive. At the remote site, the two operated within their typical but not inevitable gendered roles and deliberately defined their seaside station as unconventional. They expected participants to study productively and, at the same time, find imaginative ways to enjoy nature at a place far from urban amenities. Gendered expectations remained casual as participants moved both within and against them. This study investigates how, in the early twentieth century, the role and expectations of mentorship shifted as Tilden established her own independent research agenda. The Minnesota Seaside Station, in particular, proved significant in developing the leadership skills essential for her to pursue research in the Pacific region at a time when American expansionism and indigenous cooperation made sites accessible to academic researchers. (shrink)

Aron Arthur Moscona was an Israeli-American developmental biologist whose name is associated with research on cell interactions during embryonic development. His appearance on the international scene dates back to a paper published in 1952, while he was working, together with his wife Haya Sobel Moscona, at the Strangeways Research Laboratory of Cambridge. Together they demonstrated that cells from previously dissociated chick tissues undergo histiotypical and organotypical aggregation in vitro. From 1952 to 1997, Moscona focused his research on cell recognition mechanisms, (...) ultimately demonstrating the role of transmembrane proteins in cellular adhesiveness, tissue segregation, and organ tridimensional assemblage during development. However, who was Aron Moscona before 1952 and what brought him to developmental biology? A Polish Jew who immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1933, Moscona belonged to the first generation of biologists formed in the newly established Zoology Department of the Hebrew University. With a particular focus on the Israeli context, the paper reconstructs the evolution of Moscona’s scientific thought by emphasizing the cultural and experimental context of his training and early research at the Hebrew University. The aim is to investigate how local scientific traditions influenced Moscona’s eventual research as well as enabled the relevant experimental innovation he contributed to the field of developmental biology and pathology. The paper can be read both as a scientific biography of Aron Moscona and as a preliminary contribution to the historiography of embryology in the Mandatory Palestine/Israeli context. (shrink)

The marriage of Sally Peris Hughes (1895–1984) and Franz Schrader (1891–1962) in November 1920 launched a highly successful scientific collaboration that lasted over four decades. The Schraders were avid naturalists, adroit experimentalists, and keen theoreticians, and both had long, productive, and fruitful careers in zoology. They offer an extraordinarily rich case study that provides an insightful view of the work carried out in several areas of the life sciences from the 1920s to the 1960s—fieldwork, cytology, cytogenetics, and entomology—as well as (...) critical aspects of the social world of contemporary science. By focusing on the fieldwork the couple carried out in Mexico and Central America in the late 1920s and early 1930s, this paper seeks to illuminate how this collaborative scientific marriage embodies a collective, complex, and integrated personal and social arrangement that served to enhance both knowledge production and disciplinary development in several areas of science. It also reveals ways in which marriage could serve as a means to help both parties navigate and negotiate restrictive sociocultural norms and institutional arrangements in science involving gender, power, and authority in the early twentieth century. (shrink)

The essays in this special issue of Centaurus examine overlooked agents and sites of knowledge production beyond the academy and venues of industry- and government-sponsored research. By using gender as a category of analysis, they uncover scientific practices taking place in locations such as the kitchen, the nursery, and the storefront. Because of historical gendered patterns of exclusion and culturally derived sensibilities, the authors in this volume find that significant contributions to science were made in unexpected places and that these (...) were often made by women. The shift in focus to these different sites and different actors broadens the spectrum of what counts as science and where science happens. That is, in moving beyond the parameters of formal academic structures, this special issue seeks to recast the ways in which the production of science itself is defined and to engage readers in the redesign of the boundaries of our discipline. (shrink)

This article examines the notion of the `scientist as a moral person' in the light of the early stages of the commodification of science and the transformation of research into a big enterprise, operating on the principle of the division of labour. These processes were set in train at the end of the 19th century. The article focuses on the concomitant changes in the public persona and the habitus of scientific entrepreneurs. I begin by showing the significance of the professional (...) networks that were built up and maintained to further a group's research ideas and the careers of its members, thus demonstrating one condition on which depended their practice of science and their ability to earn a living. This leads to a characterization of the changing styles of work, thought and life, and to a consideration of public perceptions and of the ways in which a new self-image of scholarship and science was fashioned. A critical discussion of the public role of these mandarin scientists follows in order to highlight the strains created by the commodification of science at a time of international tensions and conflicts, when shared beliefs in scholarly cosmopolitanism were subverted by appeals to science and scholarship to work in the service of one's own nation as its `courtiers'. Various considerations of peculiar analogies between national styles of research and the style of social organization are then noted. In the final section, the article queries the long-term impact of these developments on the ideal of the scientist as a `moral person'. Taking a cue from Max Weber and pursuing reflections by Zygmunt Bauman on `science moralized', I argue that the emergence of a type of `specialists without spirit' was an unintended but fatal consequence of the changes in research practices promoted by scientific entrepreneurs such as Du Bois-Reymond. I conclude that the temptation to sever the ties to a general ethos of civil virtues lay in the rationalization, specialization and potential de-humanization of the objectifying scientific outlook once advocated for its efficiency. (shrink)

This essay surveys the situation of Italian women life scientists from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. It follows the path that took women from being an exceptional presence to becoming a common, yet not equal, presence in the Italian science departments. Very different proportions of women occupied the three ranks in the academic hierarchy—students, research staff and professors. From the late nineteenth century onwards, women started to enrol in Italian universities. Initially, the second most popular department among female (...) students—outdone only by the humanities—was that of mathematics, physics and natural sciences. Concerning women among research staff, a brief statistical analysis reveals the growing proportion of the female workforce in academic institutions and brings into view poorly known female assistants and technicians. The most difficult career step for women was to gain a tenured university position. A comparison between bacteriologist Giuseppina Cattani’s ‘failure’ to gain such a position and the ultimately successful strategy of zoologist and limnologist Rina Monti, who became one of the very first female university professors in Europe, illustrates the opportunities as well as the obstacles women naturalists encountered on the way into the academia. These experiences and those of others show that well into the twentieth century the support of powerful male mentors continued to be indispensable for women scientists. Positions in peripheral institutes or specializations in emerging research fields, in particular hydrobiology, entomology and cytogenetics, provided opportunities for Italian women to work their way up to professorships. (shrink)

This essay offers a short overview of feminist history of science and introduces a new project into that history, namely feminist history of colonial science. My case study focuses on eighteenth-century voyages of scientific discovery and reveals how gender relations in Europe and the colonies honed selective collecting practices. Cultural, economic, and political trends discouraged the transfer from the New World to the Old of abortifacients.1.

Ruth Myrtle Patrick was a pioneering ecologist and taxonomist whose extraordinary career at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia spanned over six decades. In 1947, an opportunity arose for Patrick to lead a new kind of river survey for the Pennsylvania Sanitary Water Board to study the effects of pollution on aquatic organisms. Patrick leveraged her already extensive scientific network, which included ecologist G. Evelyn Hutchinson, to overcome resistance within the Academy, establish a new Department of Limnology, and carry (...) out the survey, which was a resounding success and brought much needed money to the Academy. As demand for her expertise grew among industrial companies, such as the chemical company DuPont, Patrick became more active in the world of applied science. She repurposed data and instruments from her river surveys to run new experiments, test ecological theories, and conduct long-term ecological studies. Through these studies, she advanced an argument that biologist Thomas Lovejoy dubbed the “Patrick principle,” the idea that the ecological health of a body of water could be measured by the relative abundance and diversity of species living there. Patrick was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1970, became a board member of DuPont in 1975, and received two of the most prestigious awards in ecology: the Eminent Ecologist Award from the Ecological Society of America in 1972 and the Tyler Ecology Award in 1975. This article analyzes Patrick’s unusual success in bridging the worlds of science and industry and her unusual ability to cross, and redefine, the perceived boundary between basic and applied fields in biology. It argues that Patrick’s position at the Academy, an institution of natural history that was both willing and able to accept money from industrial corporations, is key to understanding her success in, and influence on, the field of river ecology. (shrink)

ArgumentThis article explores the scientific partnership between geology professor Gerard De Geer and his wife Ebba Hult following their marriage in 1908. De Geer was an influential participant in Swedish academia and international geology. Hult worked as his assistant until his death in 1943. The partnership was beneficial for both spouses, in particular through the semi-private Geochronological Institute, which they controlled. The article argues that marriage was a culturally acknowledged form of collaboration in the academic community, and as such it (...) offered Hult access to geological research. However, the paper also argues that the gendered scientific institutions produced a fractured position. Partly, Hult managed to create her own role as researcher in geochronology. As a woman and a wife, however, she never moved out of her husband's shadow. Gender is understood as a relational category: Hult was an outsider who participated partially in standardized structures which gave great power to her husband and other men. The fact that she shared this status with other women in Swedish science at the time indicates the structural nature of their position. Nevertheless, they all had individual trajectories through academia. Indeed, the study of collaborative couples illustrates the multifaceted links between individual actions and the historical context of science. (shrink)

A summary of revisionist accounts of the contextual meaning of "professional" and "amateur," as applied to the mid-Victorian X Club, is followed by an analysis of the liberal goals and inner tensions of this coalition of gentlemen specialists and government teachers. The changing status of amateurs is appraised, as are the new sites for the emerging laboratory discipline of "biology." Various historiographical strategies for recovering the women's role are considered. The relationship of science journalism to professionalization, and the constructive engagement (...) of X Club publicists with their empowering audiences, are discussed. Finally, the article assesses how far the content and boundary closure of "biology," forged by Thomas Henry Huxley, were related to 'professional' and political goals. Pure biology's social and medical roots are examined, and the way inter-professional and wider Darwinian conflicts resulted in a new lexicon of words for the X Clubbers around 1870, including "evolution" and "agnosticism," as well as "biology." Biology's role in the forging of British national identity is discussed, as are its relationship to the social strategies of liberal, Dissenting, and industrial groups in the country, whose authority sustained the new laboratory rhetoric. (shrink)

The aftermath of the Second World War represented a major turning point in the history of French and European physical sciences. The physicist's profession was profoundly restructured, and in this transition the role of internationalism changed tremendously. Transnational circulation became a major part of research training. This article examines the conditions of possibility for this transformation, by focusing on the case of the summer school for theoretical physics created in 1951 by the young Cécile Morette (1922–2017), just in front of (...) Mont Blanc, at Les Houches. First I show that ultimately it was only thanks to extremely specific and intertwined social positions and dispositions, in terms of class and gender (derived from her socialization as an expecteddame de la bourgeoisie), and through the interactions between such social attributes and a dramatic life event, that Morette managed to gather a network diverse, powerful and transnational enough to create this institution. Then, following the first years of this school, I show how it became an international model, paving the way to new articulations between the local, the national and the global scales, even beyond the Cold War oppositions. (shrink)

Drosophila flies began to be used in the study of species evolution during the late 1930s. The geneticists Natasha Sivertzeva-Dobzhansky and Elizabeth Reed pioneered this work in the United States, and María Monclús conducted similar studies in Spain. The research they carried out with their husbands enabled Drosophila population genetics to take off and reveals a genealogy of women geneticists grounded in mutual inspiration. Their work also shows that women were present in population genetics from the beginning, although their contributions (...) have previously remained unacknowledged. The similarities between their research biographies also illustrate their position in a genealogy of partnerships working on Drosophila genetics. (shrink)

In the early decades of the 20th century, women's access to the historical discipline followed fundamentally two paths. For the first time, some (a small minority) entered the profession as academic historians; others worked outside or on the margins of academia, pursuing their research interests as independent scholars. What did being an independent scholar mean for these women? Was it always a form of externally imposed marginalization? My paper argues that this is not the case. First of all, being an (...) independent scholar did not necessarily mean marginality. Some of these women scholars exerted a deep influence on 20th century historiography, and their work is still influential today. Quite apart from posthumous fame, moreover, it should be noted that the lack of academic affiliation did not necessarily preclude for some of these women the possibility of recognition and influence during their lives. Secondly, we should be careful not to assume that being an independent scholar was invariably an externally imposed marginalization. Some of these women scholars can be defined as ‘obligatory amateurs,’ because they were frustrated in their attempt to pursue an academic career. But others, in contrast, deliberately chose independent scholarship over an academic job, and can thus be defined ‘amateurs by choice.’ What was the motivation behind this choice? I argue that an important factor was the resilience of the amateur tradition in historical writing. The amateur tradition offered a strong counterbalance to women's marginality in academia and a source of positive values and models for their participation in the intellectual life. (shrink)

From the 1950s to the 1970s, a group of physician–researchers forming the ‘Liverpool school’ made groundbreaking contributions in such diverse areas as the genetics of Lepidoptera and human medical genetics. The success of this group can be attributed to the several different, but interconnected, research partnerships that Liverpool physician Cyril Clarke established with Philip Sheppard, Victor McKusick at Johns Hopkins University, the Nuffield Foundation, and his wife Féo. Despite its notable successes, among them the discovery of the method to prevent (...) Rhesus haemolytic disease of the newborn, the Liverpool School began to lose prominence in the mid-1970s, just as the field of medical genetics that it had helped pioneer began to grow. This paper explores the role of partnerships in making possible the Liverpool school's scientific and medical achievements, and also in contributing to its decline. (shrink)

Women educators played an essential role in transforming public museums that had been focused on collections and research into effective educational and informational sites that engaged broad publics. Three significant innovators were Delia Griffin of St. Johnsbury Museum in Vermont who emphasized hands-on learning, Anna Billings Gallup who shaped a distinctive model museum for children in Brooklyn and Laura Bragg of the Charleston Museum who established strong collaboration with the local public schools. Joining museum curatorial staffs and professional associations that (...) were largely male, these women educators and their peers typically provided pedagogical insights and teaching skills that enabled them to work effectively with school systems, teachers, pupils and parents. Genuinely interested in natural science, they shaped careers which included opportunities to engage with science, provided a considerable degree of autonomy and enabled them to experiment with hands-on learning. They built networks of museum educators and influenced the young American Association of Museums. Women museum educators created a bridge between semi-public natural history establishments for collection, preservation and scientific research and an active audience of teachers, pupils, visitors and patrons. Their efforts transformed museums into sites for education and broad public access to science in the early 20th century. (shrink)