European Women In Chemistry

"I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one, please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory", said Marie Curie about her wedding dress. According to her lecture notes, Gertrude B. Elion is quoted a few decades later: "Don't be afraid of hard work. Don't let others discourage you, or tell you that you can't do it. In my day I was told women didn't go into chemistry. I saw no reason why we couldn't." These two quotations from famous, Nobel Prize winning chemists amply demonstrate the challenges that female scientists in the past centuries have had to overcome; challenges that are still sometimes faced by the current generation. They "must have the noblest courage, quite extraordinary talents and superior genius" wrote Carl Friedrich Gauss 1807 in a letter to mathematician Sophie Germain. For the official book to celebrate the International Year of Chemistry, the European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences (EuCheMS) has chosen one of the central goals of the International Year: the contribution and role of women in chemistry. This celebration, which is the focus of European Women in Chemistry, takes us on a journey through centuries of chemical research, focusing on the lives of those amazing women from ancient times to the current day who dared to study this subject, often against advice or societal expectations. These portraits emphasize the extraordinary path and personality of these fascinating women, their major contribution to chemistry, but all in the context of their time and social environment. Some of these women, like Marie Curie and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, are famous and still well-known today. Others have contributed significantly to the development of science and lived an exceptional life, but are nowadays almost forgotten. This book is a tribute to all of them and a motivation for new generations to come to tread new paths, fight for unusual ideas and control one?s own destiny.

During the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century chemical societies were established all over Europe. The book focuses on this process and further development of the European chemical societies before World War I and in exceptional cases up to 1930. It comprises chapters based on a common set of questions and an extensive concluding chapter that provides a comparative analysis of the early development of the European chemical societies. The book offers unique historical material showing the social, intellectual and political circumstances in which the chemical societies were constituted and function, their relations to universities and chemical industries, everyday lives, international contacts, etc. The analysis of data explores how networks in chemistry and professional autonomy were constituted, and investigates the process of demarcation that inevitably takes place when a social institution of a scientific discipline is formed. The reader gets answer to the important question of what chemistry was and was not in the latter half of nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. Various aspects of creating scientific societies have been of much interest to historians of science in recent years. Nevertheless, histories of scientific societies are mostly occasional publications written to celebrate their jubilees. This volume represents a first international comparative analysis on the beginnings of chemical societies in Europe based on a detailed historical research done by a group of renowned historians of chemistry from several countries. As such it is an entirely new contribution to the history of chemistry in Europe and European scientific societies in general and a unique source for chemists and historians. Its ambition is to become a reference work in history of chemistry, set the standard for similar studies in other disciplines, and serve European chemical societies to provide a context for their complex histories and relationships. The book can be read by miscellaneous audiences and various types of readers with diverse intentions who will benefit differently from it: - A member of a national chemical society will find there narrative on his "own" society's establishment and early history and the opportunity to compare it with societies from other countries - Historically interested chemists will find in the book details as well as wider perspectives on the institutional history of their discipline - Historians of chemistry will get a thoroughly documented and scholarly book on the early history of chemical societies in Europe, written by acknowledged colleagues. The individual chapters will offer additional literature and sources for their research into history of chemistry. - Historians of science will get material for comparative studies on scientific institutions on the roles of learned societies on national and international level. They can be inspired to create similar studies related to other scientific disciplines. The underlying common set of guidelines can provide methodological assistance. - Teachers of history of chemistry and history of science will find in the book additional reading material and literature. - Social and general historians will be given a well-edited and reliable source on a number of social institutions that played versatile roles in local/national settings. The establishment of chemical societies can be compared with other kinds of learned, professional, and amateur societies in the same period. They also will get data and information about some aspects of the scientific boom in the second half of the nineteenth century and pre-WW1 period.

Though rarely noted, women have been active participants in the chemical sciences since the beginning of recorded history. This thought-provoking book brings to life the many talented women who--besides the universally respected Marie Curie--made significant contributions to chemistry. The Rayner-Canhams examine the forces that have defined women's roles in the progress of chemistry, observing that many were thwarted from capitalizing on their achievements by the prejudices of their time. Their book discusses women chemists from as far past as the Babylonian civilization but focuses on professional women chemists from the mid-19th century, when women gained access to higher education. Read this book and learn about the chemist-assistants of the French salons, about independent researchers in the 19th century, about the three disciplinary havens for women in the 20th century, about how war helped bring women into the chemical industry--and much more!

A survey of nineteenth-century women whose journal publications are listed in the 19 volume London Royal Society's Catalogue of scientific papers, 1800-1900, comprising an author index to scientific papers contained in the transactions of societies, journals, and other periodical works, being the major index of scientific journal literature for the period.

This year we celebrate the 150th anniversary of Mendeleev's first publication of the Periodic Table of Elements. This book offers an original viewpoint on the history of the Periodic Table: a collective volume with short illustrated papers on women and their contribution to the building and the understanding of the Periodic Table and of the elements themselves.Few existing texts deal with women's contributions to the Periodic Table. A book on women's work will help make historical women chemists more visible, as well as shed light on the multifaceted character of the work on the chemical elements and their periodic relationships. Stories of female input, the editors believe, will contribute to the understanding of the nature of science, of collaboration as opposed to the traditional depiction of the lone genius.While the discovery of elements will be a natural part of this collective work, the editors aim to go beyond discovery histories. Stories of women contributors to the chemistry of the elements will also include understanding the concept of element, identifying properties, developing analytical methods, mapping the radioactive series, finding applications of elements, and the participation of women as audiences when new elements were presented at lectures.As for the selection of women, the chapters include pre-periodic table contributions as well as recent discoveries, unknown stories as well as more famous ones. The main emphasis will be on work conducted in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Furthermore, the book includes elements from different groups in the periodic table, so as to represent a variety of chemical contexts.'As with the discoveries themselves, bringing these tales of female scientists to light has taken much teamwork, including by contributors Gisela Boeck, John Hudson, Claire Murray, Jessica Wade, Mary Mark Ockerbloom, Marelene Rayner-Canham, Geoffrey Rayner-Canham, Xavier Roqué, Matt Shindell and Ignacio Suay-Matallana.Tracing women in the history of chemistry unveils a fuller picture of all the people working on scientific discoveries, from unpaid assistants and technicians to leaders of great labs. In this celebratory year of the periodic table, it is crucial to recognize how it has been built — and continues to be shaped — by these individual efforts and broad collaborations.'Nature 565, 559-561 (2019)

June 21-23, 2018 Paris, France Key Topics : Organic Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, Analytical Chemistry, Green Chemistry, Physical Chemistry, Theoretical Chemistry, Environmental Chemistry, Materials Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, Medical Biochemistry, Biological Chemistry, Nuclear Chemistry, Petro Chemicals, Multi-disciplinary Chemistry, Chemistry Education,

This work includes 1000 entries covering the spectrum of defining women in the contemporary world.

Women Activists between War and Peace employs a comparative approach in exploring women's political and social activism across the European continent in the years that followed the First World War. It brings together leading scholars in the field to discuss the contribution of women's movements in, and individual female activists from, Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Russia and the United States. The book contains an introduction that helpfully outlines key concepts and broader, European-wide issues and concerns, such as peace, democracy and the role of the national and international in constructing the new, post-war political order. It then proceeds to examine the nature of women's activism through the prism of five pivotal topics: * Suffrage and nationalism * Pacifism and internationalism * Revolution and socialism * Journalism and print media * War and the body A timeline and illustrations are also included in the book, along with a useful guide to further reading. This is a vitally important text for all students of women's history, twentieth-century Europe and the legacy of the First World War.