4. Women in Science – Caroline

This lecture was very interesting for me and I have been anticipating from the time I read our guest speakers on the class syllabus. As a woman in science it is very easy to see how that even today it is still uncommon for woman to credited with ground breaking research and/ or discover that impact the scientific community. This can be seen even more clearly when looking into the history of science and the lack of female presence in the those times and if they were given credit it was for very small acts. I found Mary Anning to be extremely interesting woman as her fossil discoveries started from a very young age and continued throughout her life. It is unfortunate to see that many of her discoveries were not credited to her as the people she had sold them to put the work in their name.  I hope that as we continue to move forward in learning about the history of science many of the woman that made large impacts will get fully credited to the work and time that they put into their  respective fields.

I thoroughly enjoyed this talk about women in science. Obviously, it is an extremely relevant topic that often times get overlooked due to the fact that many males have made discoveries within the scientific field. That could be also appointed to the fact that they were encouraged and given these resources to make these discoveries. Also, I wonder if there are more scientific discoveries that are accredited to male scientists because they were in fact discovered by women years before but not given the platform to share their discoveries. It makes me appreciate women scientists because of their hard work and willingness to step outside of typical roles for women. I am glad Dr. Breitenberger decided to present this topic because I found all of the women detailed incredibly interesting and inspiring. Rosalind Franklin’s story was fascinating because we often talk about her briefly in biology classes when discussing the discovery of DNA. However, I did not realize that she was not awarded the Nobel prize along with her peers after making the x-ray images of DNA.

Dr. Caroline Breitenberger spoke with us in class about women in science. I found this to be an interesting topic because I feel like it’s very common to see male doctors, scientists, or just males in the upper level jobs. Thankfully, this has slowly started to change in the more recent years. Learning about women in science thought me that even though none of them worked by themselves, there were still women who played a vital role in the field. It’s interesting how I have never heard of these women in any previous class or text book. There is no reason that women are any different than men, especially in the mind aspect, and I cannot wait to see more women with life changing discoveries.

I found this discussion of women in science to be very exciting. I thought it was interesting how many women got a start by helping with their husband’s work. Women were seen as supporters, not necessarily the main masterminds behind new scientific revelations. During the 19th century, women held a social position where they were excluded from professional space and organizations. For this reason, women were rarely members of the Royal Society and also were studying certain “field work” in things like astronomy or biology.

Many English and French women broke through barriers that had been set for them and other women. Out of the English women discussed, I connected with Margaret Carendish. She focused on the philosophy of science and had strong feelings regarding to the supernatural vs. natural side of science. I like how she focused on the idea of everything being made of something and is here, but supernatural things are not. However, it is possible to believe in both supernatural and natural, but I believe she meant more of the idea that natural science was not as dependent on religious factors as some people had suggested.

For the French women, I have always admired Marie Curie. Not only was she the first women to receive a Nobel Prize, she received 2 in her life. She discovered radioactivity and the purification of radium, which have led to many more things to be competed in science. She also gave the science community another contributor, her daughter, who discovered new isotopes and also won a Nobel Prize.

Overall, I always enjoy learning more about women in science. I think that even today women face a stigma of how much they can contribute to science. It is important to know that women aren’t just a helping hand, they can be main factors to important scientific discoveries. All of the women we discussed were perfect examples of this. I am excited to explore some of these ideas even farther when traveling.

Dr. Breitenberger gave an interesting lecture on the influence of women in science, including the history of some key players. The most interesting woman Dr. Breitenberger discussed, in my personal opinion, was Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673). Cavendish was a philosopher and writer who wrote about naturalism. I found it particularly humorous that if other philosophers, who were mostly male, would not responded to her discussion, she would publish critiques to a fictitious correspondent as if they had responded. Cavendish also caused an uproar for being invited to the Royal Society. Cavendish was my favorite because she did not gender roles and social expectations stop her from contributing to science. Although times have changed quite significantly since Cavendish’s time, there are still struggles for woman scientists due to societal expectations. Although Dr. Breitenberger discussed how few women in science there are in history, I was still surprised by the amount of women who were mentioned and thoroughly enjoyed getting to learn about their contributions.

As a woman in science, I found this presentation to be extremely relevant. Most of my science classes always mention the men behind historical experiments and theories, so it was refreshing for the women to finally receive some recognition. From Margaret Cavendish being the first woman to be invited to the Royal Society meeting in 1667, all the way to Marie Curie being awarded the first Nobel Prize to a woman in 1903, it is evident that traditional views have excluded women from science. Even women who did manage to overcome this suppression, they rarely did so independently. They all had families or husbands with whom they worked with, such as Caroline Herschel and Marie-Ann Lavoisier. It is frustrating that some women’s work has been misattributed to men. I appreciated how Dr. Breitenberger emphasized these wrongdoings.

English and French women scientists brought a new perspective of science that was often overlooked in the 19^th century. Science was thought to be just a collection of facts, but these women demonstrated that mathematical models, and the articulation and translation of science is just as valuable. I like how Dr. Breitenberger included how Marie Curie’s personal life was brought into question for her success in her professional life. That is something we still see today for renowned women. I enjoyed this presentation greatly. It showed how far we have come with the inclusion of women in science, and how far we still have to go.

I enjoyed Caroline’s presentation on the women of science because it brought attention to the overlooked scientists of this world. In most of my science classes that I have taken here at OSU, there is always some sort of brief or in depth history of the male scientist and their findings. However, there has only been one moment that a female scientist and her findings was ever mentioned in any of my classes (Rosalind Franklin – Bio 1113). However, I am glad that modern science has given much more credit and appreciation to female scientists, as seen with Nobel Prize awards given to Dorothy Hodgkin, Marie Curie and her daughter Irene Curie-Jiliot; As well as the burial of Margaret Cavendish in the Westminster Abbey. Caroline really showed us the women of science whom were never shown to me before, and explained their findings and their contributions to science.

Dr. Breitenberger’s presentation was very empowering as she discussed the major contributions of women in science in England and France. The gender inequality has always frustrated me in the past, as many women did not receive any recognition for their contributions towards science and all other fields. I thought it was really interesting to hear about the origin of the tongue twister “she sells sea shells by the sea shore”. Mary Anning spent much of her life collecting fossils, and that not only helped support her family but also scientific research on what organisms lived on this planet before humans. I also thought it was really interesting how Émilie du Châtelet and Marie-Anne Lavoisier both made contributions in translating books and documents into French. This makes me wonder, how advanced would science be today if there was never a language barrier?

Another thought that hit me was the evolution of nursing. It has been common for more females to take the role of a nurse rather than males in the past. Women have previously been seen as the ones to be the caretakers. With this being the case, women probably had just as much exposure to medicine as men in the past. I’m curious what discoveries and advancements would have occurred in the field of medicine if there was gender equality in the past, because women were so involved in the medical field but often ignored when it came to research.

I thought the most interesting part of the presentation was the section dedicated to Mary Anning. This is probably due to my great interest in paleontology and prehistoric life, but that says even more about the credit she receives for what she contributed to the scientific world. If I don’t know much about her, then people who don’t have an interest in the field probably haven’t either. I am glad to have learned more about her and think back to this presentation whenever I see anything about any of the prehistoric animals she helped discover.

Another thing I appreciated about this presentation was how in-depth it was with each of the women, while still getting through a good number of them at the same time. I enjoyed seeing all of the different backgrounds and breakthroughs these women were involved in, but still getting a very knowledgeable presentation on all of them with much detail. A lot of the women talked about were great examples of scientific paradigm shifts throughout the years. The most impressive thing about the presentation was how much information was covered in the time period it took to present it all.