Nobel Prize Women In Science

Since 1901 there have been over three hundred recipients of the Nobel Prize in the sciences. Only ten of themâ€"about 3 percentâ€"have been women. Why? In this updated version of Nobel Prize Women in Science, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne explores the reasons for this astonishing disparity by examining the lives and achievements of fifteen women scientists who either won a Nobel Prize or played a crucial role in a Nobel Prize - winning project. The book reveals the relentless discrimination these women faced both as students and as researchers. Their success was due to the fact that they were passionately in love with science. The book begins with Marie Curie, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in physics. Readers are then introduced to Christiane Nusslein-Volhard, Emmy Noether, Lise Meitner, Barbara McClintock, Chien-Shiung Wu, and Rosalind Franklin. These and other remarkable women portrayed here struggled against gender discrimination, raised families, and became political and religious leaders. They were mountain climbers, musicians, seamstresses, and gourmet cooks. Above all, they were strong, joyful women in love with discovery. Nobel Prize Women in Science is a startling and revealing look into the history of science and the critical and inspiring role that women have played in the drama of scientific progress.

Only nine of the more than 300 Nobel prizes awarded in science since 1901 have been won by women, notes science writer Bertsch as she sets the context for the biographical essays that follow. Examining the careers and lives of 14 women scientists "who either won a Nobel Prize or played a crucial role in a Nobel winning project," she movingly depicts their battles against gender discrimination for recognition and respect and she describes the self-conflict about their roles. Subjects range from Marie Curie (1867-1934) to such contemporaries as Rosalyn Yalow, awarded a Nobel Prize in 1977 for her work as a medical physicist, and Jocelyn Bell Burnell, an astrophysicist credited, at the age of 24, with the 1968 discovery of pulsars, who made large personal sacrifices for her science.

History has seen many incredible men and women make their mark on the field of science. One woman who will forever be remembered for her groundbreaking work is Marie Curie. She was one of the first people to explore radioactivity, and her contributions led her to become the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. This book explores Curie’s life, accomplishments, and legacy.

The zebrafish has become one of the most important model organisms to study biological processes within a living body. As a vertebrate that has many of the strengths of invertebrate model systems, it offers numerous advantages to researchers interested in many aspects of embryonic development, physiology and disease. This book not only provides a complete set of instructions that will allow researchers to establish the zebrafish in their laboratory. It also gives a broad overview of commonly used methods and a comprehensive collection of protocols describing the most powerful techniques.

The historian and author of Lillian Gilbreth examines the “Great Man” myth of science with profiles of women scientists from Marie Curie to Jane Goodall. Why is science still considered to be predominantly male profession? In The Madame Curie Complex, Julie Des Jardin dismantles the myth of the lone male genius, reframing the history of science with revelations about women’s substantial contributions to the field. She explores the lives of some of the most famous female scientists, including Jane Goodall, the eminent primatologist; Rosalind Franklin, the chemist whose work anticipated the discovery of DNA’s structure; Rosalyn Yalow, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist; and, of course, Marie Curie, the Nobel Prize-winning pioneer whose towering, mythical status has both empowered and stigmatized future generations of women considering a life in science. With lively anecdotes and vivid detail, The Madame Curie Complex reveals how women scientists have changed the course of science—and the role of the scientist—throughout the twentieth century. They often asked different questions, used different methods, and came up with different, groundbreaking explanations for phenomena in the natural world.

This book is a companion to the IYC-2011 celebration. The eleven chapters are organized into three sections: Section 1: Marie Curie’s Impact on Science and Society, Section 2: Women Chemists in the Past Two Centuries, and Section 3: Policy Implications. The authors invited to contribute to this book were asked to orient their chapter around a particular aspect of Marie Curie’s life such as the ethical aspects of her research, women’s role in research or her influence on the image of chemists. Our hope is that this book will positively influence young women’s minds and decisions they make in learning of chemistry/science like Marie Curie’s biography. But we do hope this book opens an avenue for young women to explore the possibility of being a scientist, or at least to appreciate chemistry as a human enterprise that has its merit in contributing to sustainability in our world. Also we hope that both men and women will realize that women are fully competent and capable of conducting creative and fascinating scientific research.

Women of Science is a collection of essays dealing with contributions women have made to various scientific disciplines, written by women scientists in those disciplines. The areas covered are: astronomy, archaeology, biology, chemistry, crystallography, engineering, geology, mathematics, medicine, and physics. The women who have written these essays are, for the most part, not professional historians, but rather scientific professionals who felt the necessity of researching the contributions women have made to the devlopment of their fields. The essays are unique, not only because they recover lost women who made significant contributions to their disciplines, but also because they are written with a depth of understanding that only a scientist working in a specific area can have. The essays will be of interest not only to students (especially women students) of science who may be unaware of the many contributions women have made, but also to readers of the history of science whoses texts more often than not fail to include the work of most women scientists.