I am very excited to welcome guest blogger Tami Stout. She is currently studying political science and women and gender studies and has kindly offered to give us her insight about Margaret Sanger. Thank you Tami!
Margaret Louise Higgins Sanger (1879 – 1966) was an American activist born in 1879 in Corning, New York. Sanger was one of eleven children born to an Irish-Catholic immigrant working class family. Her mother, Anne Purcell Higgins died of tuberculosis and cervical cancer at the age of 50 having born the strain of 11 pregnancies and seven stillbirths. As the story goes, Margaret lashed out at her father over her mother’s coffin that he was responsible for Anne’s death due to so many pregnancies.
Margaret was determined to have a different future. She left Corning to attend nursing school in the Catskills. Margaret married William Sanger in 1902 and had three children of her own. In 1910, the Sangers moved to New York City and settled in Greenwich Village. The area was known as being bohemian and supported the more radical politics of the time.
Margaret returned to New York City to work as a visiting nurse on the Lower East side. Here was where she saw the lives of poor immigrant women. Without effective contraceptives many of these women, when faced with another unwanted pregnancy, resorted to five-dollar back-alley abortions or attempted to self-terminate their pregnancies. After botched abortions Margaret was called in to care for the women. After watching the suffering and trauma so many women experienced, Sanger began to shift her attention away from nursing to the need for better contraceptives. Sanger objected to the suffering and fought to make birth control information and contraceptives available. She began dreaming of a “magic pill” to be used to control pregnancy. “No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother,” Sanger said.
Indicted under Comstock Laws for sending diaphragms through the mail and arrested in 1916 for opening the first birth control clinic in the country, which was only open for nine days before she was arrested, Margaret Sanger would not take no for an answer. In 1921 she founded the American Birth Control League, the forerunner to Planned Parenthood and she spent the next thirty years trying to bring safe and effective birth control to the American woman.
Gregory Pincus
By the 1950’s, although Sanger had many victories, she was far from finished. Frustrated with limited birth control options on the market, Margaret still was in search of the “magic pill”. No longer a young woman and in failing health, she was not ready to give up and made it her mission to find someone to complete her vision of a contraceptive pill as easy to take as an aspirin, inexpensive, safe, and effective. In 1951 Sanger met Gregory Pincus, an expert in human reproduction. Now all she needed was the money to make her vision happen and she found that in heiress Katherine McCormick. Pincus partnered with Dr. John Rock and the collaboration led to the FDA approval of Enovid, the first oral contraceptive in 1960.
Katherine McCormick
There were of course bumps in the road on the way to an effective contraceptive available to the masses. Pill trials in Puerto Rico did cause health problems and deaths due to extremely high levels of hormones. Sanger also faced controversy over her association with eugenics. Sanger’s grandson, Alexander Sanger, chair of the International Planned Parenthood stated that his grandmother “believed that women wanted their children to be free of poverty and disease, that women were natural eugenicists, and that birth control was the panacea to accomplish this.”
With the invention of the “magic pill” Margaret Sanger accomplished her life-long goal of bringing safe, affordable, and effective contraception to the masses. Not only did she see the pill realized, but four years later, at the age of 81, Margaret Sanger witnessed the undoing of Comstock Laws. In the 1965 Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut, the court ruled that the private use of contraceptives was a constitutional right. When Sanger passed away a year later, after more than half a century of fighting for the rights of women to control their own fertility, she died knowing she had done what she set out to do.
Margaret Sanger was a champion of women and by giving women the right to control their own fertility, she gave them the right to control their lives. No longer held hostage by your body, you have the right to seek education, employment, and a rich and fulfilled life whether that involves children or not.
Sanger’s Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau operated from this New York building from 1930 to 1973. It is now a National Historic Landmark.
As a girl, Caroline Herschel’s expectations were limited, but she had a quick mind and the ability to learn. Although most of what Caroline learned would be to benefit and help her brother, she went on to become a brilliant astronomer in her own right, discovering nebulae, star clusters, and eight comets.
Caroline Herschel was born March 16, 1750 in Hanover (now in Germany.) She was the fifth of six children born to Isaac Herschel and Anna Moritzen. Her parents were industrious and hard-working, her mother a housewife and her father a gardener and musician. Her mother saw no need to educate a girl, but Caroline was able to learn the basics of reading and writing, and because of the family talent for music, her father insisted that she learn to play the violin.
Caroline suffered a couple of childhood illnesses that left their mark; smallpox when she was three left her with scars and a damaged left eye; typhus at the age of ten stunted her growth, leaving her with an adult height of 4′ 3″. Her mother showed her little affection and envisioned Caroline as her housekeeper. Her father reminded her frequently that she was unlikely to find a husband because she had no fortune or beauty. She was probably looking at a bleak future.
In 1767, Caroline’s father died and her favorite brother William, who had moved to England, suggested that she come live with him. William’s intention was to make his living as a musician and to study astronomy, and he wanted Caroline to come keep his house. At first her mother refused to give up the work that Caroline did for her, but she agreed when William promised to send her the money to get a maid to make up for Caroline’s absence. So in 1772 at the age of 22, Caroline returned with her brother to England.
Telescope made for Caroline by William in 1795 (Photo: Wikipedia user Geni, source)
Even though she still kept house, Caroline’s life was completely different with her brother. She studied math for the first time, so that she could keep his household accounts. William gave her voice lessons and she learned to play the harpsichord so that she could accompany him. Soon she became well-known for her singing and began to get engagements for solos, although she refused if William couldn’t be the conductor. William also insisted that she take lessons in dancing and how to conduct herself in society. She thought many of the people she met in society shallow, but the lessons would serve her well because she and William soon came to the attention of King George III for their work in astronomy.
William’s astronomy work began to take up more and more of his time. Displeased with the telescopes available he began to build his own and was soon selling them to others. Caroline and their brother Alexander ground by hand the mirrors needed for the telescopes, and Caroline did William’s calculations, carefully cataloging his observations in the night sky.
On March 13, 1781, William spotted what he thought was a new comet, but after careful observation realized that it was a planet. His discovery of the planet Uranus brought him to the attention of the King. The next year William was made the official astronomer of King George III and received a pension of £200. Caroline was no longer just a helper, but an apprentice and would soon be credited with her own discoveries. This also brought with it more visibility in society and with the royal family. William and Caroline were often invited to Windsor, and Caroline got to know the princesses Sophia and Amelia as she patiently answered their questions about the stars.
Caroline never wanted to outshine her brother, but in 1783 while he was away she discovered 3 nebulae. Then on August 1, 1786, she discovered her first comet. This discovery brought her to the attention of the scientific community and The King gave her a small salary for her work as William’s assistant. It was only £50, but she wrote in her diary that it was the first money she had ever received that she felt she could spend on whatever she wished.
Sir William Herschel c. 1805 by James Sharples (source)
Around this time William got married and Caroline began doing more work on her own. Between 1788 and 1797, she discovered seven more comets and began work on revising Flamsteed’s star catalog. She verified the information, made corrections, and added 560 stars that she and William had observed. She submitted this catalog to The Royal Society for publication. But her most impressive and recognized work was The Reduction and Arrangement in the Form of Catalogue, in Zones, of All the Star-Clusters and Nebula Observed by Sir William Herschel in His Sweeps. For this work, the Royal Astronomical Society awarded her a Gold Medal calling it “a work of immense labor” and “an extraordinary monument to the unextinguished ardor of a lady of seventy-five in the cause of abstract science.”
The medal from the Royal Astronomical Society was awarded to her in 1828, six years after William’s death and after she had returned to Hanover. She also received medals from the King of Denmark and the King of Prussia, and in 1835, the Royal Astronomical Society bestowed honorary membership on two women for the first time, Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville. The extract for the award stated that “the time is gone by when either feeling or prejudice, by whichever name it may be proper to call it, should be allowed to interfere with the payment of a well-earned tribute of respect.”
For Caroline, however, her crowning achievement probably came only a few months before she died. The work mentioned above was the basis for her nephew’s study of his fathers work. William’s vast undertaking, The Survey of the Heavens, was completed when his son Sir John Herschel completed and published the survey of the heavens in the southern hemisphere. She received a copy of Cape Observations just months before she died on January 9, 1848 at the age of 97.
Even in her death she was concerned for her brother’s fame. Her epitaph, which she composed, states in part “The eyes of her who is glorified were here below turned to the starry heavens. Her own discoveries of comets and her participation in the Immortal labors of her brother, William Herschel, bear witness of this to future ages.” Working with her brother, she advanced the science of astronomy and the recognition of women in science.
Resources Women in Mathematics by Lynn Osen Women in Science: Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century by Marilyn Bailey Ogilivie Women in Science by H. J. Mozans
In 1925, Irène Curie walked into an auditorium of 1000 people to defend her dissertation. This was big news because she was the daughter of two time Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie. The pressure could have been enormous, but as usual Irène was calm, confident, and dressed unfashionably! From an early age, Irène had dealt with her parent’s fame both positive, such as when at the age of six she calmly told the reporter who came to the house that her Nobel Prize winning parents were at the laboratory, and negative when a classmate handed her a newspaper article about her mother’s affair with Paul Langevin. She had come to see fame as something external and of no real importance. She didn’t pursue her research for fame, but for the sheer joy of the science itself.
At first glance, Irène was a quiet, shy child, some might even say somber, but as time would show, she just had little energy or attention for things that in her mind didn’t matter or that bored her. Born in September of 1897, her parents Pierre and Marie Curie were in the midst of their most intense period of research. In spite of this, she was a wanted and welcome addition to the family. Limited time and resources, however, did mean that the young parents needed help, and this came in the form of Pierre’s father, Eugene Curie. Pierre’s mother died shortly after Irène was born, so Eugene moved into the house to take care of her.
Eugene was a more openly affectionate person than either Marie or Pierre, and gave Irène, and later her sister Eve, born in Paris in 1904, much of their emotional foundation. Irène later said that many of her values and beliefs about religion and politics came from her grandfather rather than her mother. When Pierre died in 1906, Marie was so distraught that she wouldn’t let his name be spoken around her. Eugene helped the girls by talking to them and teaching them about their father. After Eugene died in 1910, Marie, Irène, and Eve became much closer and remained close for their entire lives.
In spite of a more reticent personality, Marie and Eugene agreed on many things. Because of his unique personality and abilities, Pierre’s parents had home-schooled him, and Marie felt that the same approach would be better for Irène. To supplement the public school, she organized a cooperative among other scientists and academics to provide classes in their homes for their children. The subjects ranged from mathematics and science, to literature and art. Emphasis was put on creativity, play, and self-expression. Other physical and practical activities weren’t neglected either. Marie made sure the girls learned to cook, knit, and sew, as well as to swim, bicycle, and ride horseback. Irène was especially athletic. She took long backpacking trips during the summer, frequently swam the Australian crawl in the Seine, and could dance until early in the morning. It didn’t phase her that backpacking and the Australian crawl were considered men’s sports.
From an early age it was clear that Irène was very much like her father. Among her friends she was calm and relaxed, but she was less comfortable with strangers, rarely smiling in public. Her thought process was much like his as well, not as quick as Eve, but a deep analytical thinker. It was also clear that Irène would be good at science. After the cooperative ended, Marie continued to teach Irène mathematics to give her the foundation she needed, even sending problems back and forth in the mail when Marie was away at conferences. After a couple more years in public school, Irène finally entered the Sorbonne to study science.
In 1914, World War I interrupted Irène’s studies. Marie had written to Irène saying that she hoped they could both be of service, so when her mother developed a mobile x-ray unit, she went into the field to help operate and maintain them. But to say that she helped her mother is to greatly understate the situation. The need was so great that they worked independently of each other. Irène went to the front to set up, repair, and operate the units. Often they were used during surgery to help locate shrapnel in the body. When she wasn’t at the front trying to convince experienced military surgeons that a teenaged girl knew more about x-rays and geometry than they did, she was training other technicians. In spite of spending her eighteenth birthday alone at the front, she seems to have handled this time with composure and a confidence that is rare, although her mother never doubted her. Irène later said, “My mother had no more doubts about me than she had about herself.”
Once the war was over, Irène returned to the Radium Institute, run by Marie, to continue her research and study. Here in 1924, just before receiving her doctorate, Irène met Frédéric Joliot. Two years her junior, Frédéric was outgoing and charming. According to their daughter Hélène, they were “opposites in everything.” He was from a big family, had a wide variety of interests, and was much more sociable than Irène, but they shared some very important things. They loved outdoor sports, had similar political views, and loved science. When they were married in October of 1926, they had lunch at Marie’s apartment and went back to work.
Irène and Frédéric worked together for the rest of their lives and collaborated on their most important work. As with other creative teams, their approaches were very different. He moved quickly from one idea to the next, taking creative leaps, while Irène was slower in her thought process, but moved steadily toward logical conclusions. Several times they made important discoveries, but didn’t interpret the information correctly. One of these experiments was similar to that done by Otto Hahn which was interpreted by Lise Meitner leading to Hahn’s Nobel Prize. Finally, in 1935, Irène and Frédéric Joliet-Curie received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of artificial radioactivity.
In the intervening years, Irène had given birth to a daughter, Hélène in 1927, and to a son Pierre in 1932. She loved being a mother and in many ways was traditional, but she maintained her career. Although Marie died in 1934, she had lived long enough to see the experimental results that she knew would ensure her daughter a Nobel Prize. So in 1935, their lives were marred by only one thing – the growing Fascist threat in Europe.
After 1935, Irène and Frédéric no longer collaborated directly in their work. Frédéric took a position at the Collège de France where he worked in nuclear physics, building a cyclotron and raising funds for scientific research. In this position he became very powerful and contributed greatly to France’s ability to produce nuclear energy. Irène became a professor at the University of Paris, but continued as the research director at the Radium Institute. She also got involved in politics and joined several women’s rights organizations.
Irene and Frederic Joliot in 1934 photo by GFHund for Wikipedia
When the Popular Front, an anti-Fascist coalition, was elected in 1936, Irène was offered and accepted the position of under-secretary of scientific research, making her one of the first women cabinet members in France. As the war progressed, Frédéric joined the resistance and eventually, the Communist party because it was the most active anti-Fascist group in the country. Irène’s activity, however, declined. For almost twenty years she had suffered from tuberculosis and was having to take more and more time away from work and in the Alps on the “rest” cure. Finally, Frédéric, as head of his resistance organization, was forced to go underground and arranged to have Irène and the children smuggled into Switzerland, on June 6, 1944.
After the war, Frédéric was considered a hero, and appointed head of France’s Atomic Energy Commission with Irène as a commissioner. Irène was able to obtain streptomycin to cure her tuberculosis and continue her work for women’s rights and as director of the Radium Institute. For a while things were good, but by 1950, the Cold War was gaining ground and anti-communist sentiments were growing. Both Irène and Frédéric found themselves out of favor and for the first time outside the scientific community. Frédéric was fired from the Commission, and unable to obtain other scientific work, began to work for peace organizations. Irène was at least able to continue her work at the Institute, but the years of work had taken another toll.
Like Pierre and Marie before them, Irène and Frédéric were both suffering from the effects of prolonged exposure to radiation. Their health declined steadily in the 1950s. Even though Marie continued to work and worry about Frédéric’s health, she was finally unable to ignore the effects. On a trip to the Alps, Irène became ill. Returning to Paris, she checked in to the hospital and on March 17, 1856, Irène died of leukemia. Frédéric was too ill to see her for more than a few minutes. He died two years later. By this time the worst of the red scare was past and they were both honored with national funerals. They had spent their lives doing what they loved.
“I discovered in this girl whom other people regarded somewhat as a block of ice, an extraordinary person, sensitive and poetic, who in many ways gave the impression of being a living replica of what her father had been. I had read much about Pierre Curie. I had heard teachers who had known him talking about him and I rediscovered in his daughter the same purity, his good sense, his humility.” ~ Frédéric Joliot-Curie about Irène
Resources Nobel Prize Women in Science by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie by Barbara Goldsmith Marie Curie – early life Marie Curie – scientific discoveries and Nobel Prize
Mary Fairfax Somerville, c. 1834, by Thomas Phillips (source)
“I was annoyed that my turn for reading was so much disapproved of, and thought it unjust that women should have been given a desire for knowledge if it were wrong to acquire it.”
Mary Fairfax Somerville
The 17th and 18th century women mathematicians and scientists that we’ve looked at so far have been accepted into intellectual circles. Their intelligence and works were recognized and in Italy they were even allowed to teach. They were accepted that is, once they got there. Maria Agnesi, Emilie du Chatelet, and Laura Bassi all had one advantage – parents, or at least fathers, that indulged their intellectual curiosity and gave them the education they craved. Mary Fairfax Somerville did not have this advantage.
As a young girl, Mary Fairfax, born in Jedburgh, Scotland on December 26, 1780, was by her own admission a “wild creature.” Her father, a Vice Admiral in the British Navy, was away from home for long periods of time and her mother was quite permissive. With the exception of learning to read the Bible, the catechism, and daily prayers, she received no academic lessons. She was taught “useful” skills, how to care for the garden, preserve fruit, tend the chickens and cows, tasks reserved for the women of the household. Apart from these chores, there were few demands made on her time, so she would roam the countryside and seashore near her home in Burntisland, Scotland observing sea creatures and birds, collecting things, and learning the names of the plants around her home. At night, the stars she could see from her window held equal fascination.
When she was about nine years old, this carefree existence came to an end when her father returned from a long voyage to learn that Mary’s reading skills were minimal and she couldn’t write. At least the basics were expected of young women, so Mary was sent to a school run by Miss Primrose. In spite of her intellectual curiosity, Mary didn’t fair well at the school where she was expected to prepare lessons laced into stiff stays and steel busks designed to improve her posture. The teaching techniques focused on memorization including pages from the dictionary and gave little room for curiosity or critical thinking. After one year at the school, she returned home and continued her wandering existence, but at least she had increased reading skills that allowed her to enjoy a small number of books in their home. Mary’s only other formal education was a year spent in a local school where she learned to “write a good hand”, basic arithmetic, and the womanly arts of needlework, painting, music, etc.
Mary’s interest in mathematics was piqued by a couple of chance encounters. Once during a party she was paging through a women’s magazine and came across a puzzle. When she looked at the answer it had x’s and y’s in the solution. Curious, she asked a friend who told her that it was something called algebra, but she couldn’t tell her what it was. The second conversation that would set the stage for her life long interest was an overheard conversation between a painting instructor and a male student. The instructor told him that he should study Euclid’s The Elements about geometry to better understand perspective.
Now Mary knew the names of two things she wanted to study, algebra and geometry, but how could she get the required books? To do this she conspired with her brother’s tutor. His skills were limited, but he agreed to obtain books for her and demonstrate the first problems in The Elements. She was on her way! Each night after the rest of the household retired, Mary would study mathematics by candlelight. But then the candle supply started to diminish and it was noticed.
For many people during this time, keeping women away from intellectual pursuits wasn’t just a matter of propriety. Some people believed that women’s minds couldn’t handle it and it would drive them crazy, or that mental exertion would take away from their ability to have children. In essence, that they had a “delicate constitution” that had to be protected. In her recollections of childhood, Mary recalls her father saying, “Peg, we must put a stop to this, or we shall have Mary in a straight-jacket one of these days. There was X who went raving mad about the longitude.” So when her parents discovered that she was studying at night, the servants were instructed to take away her candles. However, at this point she had already progressed through the first six books of Euclid, so she depended on her memory and worked through the problems in her mind each night until she knew them thoroughly.
In 1804, Mary was married to a distant cousin, Samuel Greig. Although not interested himself, it seems that Greig tolerated Mary’s intellectual interests, but the marriage was short-lived. Greig died in 1807 leaving Mary with two boys and a small inheritance. She returned to her parent’s home, but her inheritance gave her an independence that allowed her to continue her studies. She began reading The Mathematical Repository, a journal which aimed at exposing the general public to some of the new developments in mathematics. Through the journal, she began a correspondence with William Wallace a professor at the University of Edinburgh. Wallace provided Mary with a list of important books on mathematics and science, and she began to accumulate a library.
Mary’s second marriage to another cousin, Dr. William Somerville, inspector of the Army Medical Board, was completely different. Dr. Somerville didn’t just tolerate Mary’s interests, he encouraged them. Together they raised a family, traveled, collected specimens, and associated with some of the greatest scientists and mathematicians of the day. They would remain together for the rest of their lives.
Mary’s first work was published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London and titled “On the Magnetizing Power of the More Refrangible Solar Rays.” Although she was not a member of the Society at the time (1826) and her paper had to be presented by her husband, it attracted the attention of Lord Brougham, of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. He commissioned her to write what would become probably her greatest and most well-known work, a translation of Laplace’s Mécanique Céleste. The purpose of the Society of the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was to make new scientific discoveries accessible to the general public that might not have the educational background to read the original documents. As it turned out Mary had a gift for this type of writing.
Mary had studied Laplace’s work, but being largely self-taught and having doubts about her ability to do it justice, she extracted a promise from Lord Brougham and her husband that if it wasn’t sufficient it would be burned. She spent the next four to five years working on it and when it was complete it was much more than Lord Brougham needed. Her introduction alone met his needs and was published separately, but the entire work was published as The Mechanism of the Heavens and became a favorite among students at Cambridge. She had a gift of being able to communicate in clear, concise terms, complicated subjects, translating as she said “algebra into English.” Her later works include On the Connection of the Physical Sciences published in 1846, Physical Geography in 1848, and Molecular and Microscopic Science in 1860.
Mary Somerville continued writing for the rest of her long life. She died in Naples, Italy on November 28, 1872. Her legacy is one of excellently written scientific books that continued in use for many years, but also one of what a woman can do when she has a drive to do it. As she said herself it is indeed “unjust that women should have been given a desire for knowledge if it were wrong to acquire it.”
Resources Personal Recollections from Early Life to Old Age of Mary Somerville by Martha Somerville Women in Mathematics by Lynn Osen Notable Women in Mathematics edited by Charlene Morrow and Teri Perl
The entrance of women into the sciences has been a long process beginning several centuries ago. It’s not easy to find these women in the 18th century, but those that made a name for themselves did so because they were far from ordinary. Admittance into this formerly all male club seems to have begun in Italy (at least for post-Renaissance Europe,) specifically the University of Bologna where Laura Bassi became the first woman professor of physics in Europe.
Born November 29, 1711, Laura Bassi was the only child in her family to survive to adulthood. As with many (maybe most) scientifically inclined women prior to the 20th century, she received an education because her father recognized her ability and brought tutors into their home. This was a privilege reserved for the well-to-do, if not exclusively for the aristocracy. Bassi’s father was a successful lawyer, but the family was not of the nobility.
From the age of five Laura was instructed in French, Latin, and mathematics by a cousin, and later by the family physician in philosophy, natural philosophy, metaphysics, and logic. Her abilities were known throughout the city attracting attention of people who would visit her home to meet her. Similar to the salons in France, the intellectual elite in Italy would gather in homes to discuss philosophy, literature, science, mathematics, etc. Laura seems to have been put on display in her home in much the same way Maria Agnesi was.
In 1732, in a public debate Laura presented and defended her ideas regarding Newton and the new physics. She was awarded her doctorate and offered a position teaching at the University of Bologna. This required another public examination where she was successful, becoming the first woman professor of physics in a European University. As with Maria Agnesi, there is disagreement among scholars as to the extent of her teaching responsibilities. Some think that she was limited to occasional lectures, others believe she had a full teaching load. It seems to be a matter of propriety. Lectures in public would attract both women and men, but teaching at the university would usually entail being alone in a classroom with all male students.
A coin was minted to commemorate Bassi’s acceptance as a professor at the University of Bologna.
This situation was relieved when in 1738 she married Giovanni Guiseppe Veratti, a fellow scientist and professor. As a married woman, the university made allowances for Bassi to lecture in her home. Bassi and her husband had eight to twelve children. There is disagreement on the number of children, but baptismal records seem to support eight, five of whom survived to adulthood. Laura and her husband shared a love of science, created a laboratory in their home, and performed experiments together. Teaching from her home gave her more flexibility to perform experiments and to choose which topics she taught.
During her examination for her professorship, she attracted the attention of Cardinal Prospero Lambertini (later Pope Benedict XIV) who was impressed and extended his support to Laura in her studies. In 1745, he appointed her to an elite group of scholars known as the Benedettini in which she was the only woman. Originally intended to be a group of 24, Lambertini met with resistance when he wanted to appoint Bassi to one of the positions. He then added a twenty-fifth position for her. After Bassi’s death this seat remained vacant until the 1800s. The purpose of the Benedettini was to encourage scientific advancement in Italy. Each member was responsible for writing and presenting a paper to the pope each year. Lambertini also arranged for Bassi to have access to scholarly documents in the Vatican which were usually restricted to male scientists over the age of 24
The scientific community was small in Europe at the time and Bassi communicated with leading scientists. She appears to have been instrumental in getting Voltaire admitted to the Academy of Sciences at Bologna and I’m sure through him she would have been familiar with Emilie du Chatelet’s works on mathematics and physics. At the beginning of her career, Newton’s ideas were still new and somewhat controversial and it’s easy to believe that she may have had a hand in introducing them to Italy. Bassi’s surviving papers however, are related to compression of air, hydraulics, a couple of dissertations on mathematics, and later electricity.
Bassi took on additional teaching positions later in her life. In 1766, she assumed a position teaching physics for the Collegio Montalto, a free seminary where students were taught in professor’s homes and earned degrees in theology or law. In 1776, Bassi’s husband was an assistant to Paola Battista Balbi the Chair and Institute Professor of Experimental Physics when Balbi died leaving a vacancy. Although her husband would have been the obvious choice, Bassi petitioned to be considered for the post. It seems that her skills in mathematics made her a more logical choice and she received the appointment. When Bassi died two years later, her husband took the post and was later succeeded by their son Paolo keeping it in the family until 1796.
I had never taken notice of Laura Bassi until recently. She doesn’t appear at all in several books I have on women in science and math and where she does appear it is cursory. I’m not sure why, because she had a life long career in science. It could be because she didn’t publish major works that were accessible to a lay person. Her works were scholarly and original. Unlike Agnesi, who went on to do work among the poor and destitute after the death of her father, even though she was concerned for the poor, it wasn’t Bassi’s primary focus. And of course, Emilie Du Chatelet was a scientist, but also the lover of a famous man, Voltaire, and we all seem to love to hear about a scandalous woman. Regardless of the reason, we should take note of Laura Bassi. She had tremendous staying power, a long career in a man’s field, and she raised a family. Sounds like something that many contemporary women are trying to do and would be inspired by.
Oh and she has a crater on Venus named for her – what more could you ask from a woman!
Resources Women in Science: Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century by Marilyn Bailey Ogilivie Women in Science by H. J. Mozans
Marie and Pierre Curie were both people who preferred to stay out of the limelight. As their fame grew, Marie probably adjusted to the attention better than Pierre did, but doing the work of science was foremost for both of them. Pierre still had a low level position in one of the less prestigious schools in Paris even though he had friends who worked to try to get him a position at the Sorbonne. Marie had finished her work on magnetism and began to look around for a topic for her doctoral thesis. They took a small apartment, Pierre took on more tutoring work and Marie got her teaching certification. Their income was small, but they could make it.
During this time, there was a series of discoveries which would set the stage for the work which would bring Marie Curie her fame. Conrad Röntgen discovered X-rays. The exact nature of this radiating energy was unknown, but a connection was hypothesized between X-rays and phosphorescence. Henri Becquerel, with an interest in phosphorescence, experimented to determine whether or not other minerals known to be florescent produced X-rays. After testing many different minerals, the only one which exhibited a similar type of radiating energy was uranium.
The discovery of X-rays created quite a stir, particularly with its implications for medicine, so of course the Curie’s followed the related research. Marie thought that uranium and this radiating energy were of interest and decided to investigate further. By examining ore samples containing uranium, she determined that the amount of radiation was directly related to the amount of uranium in the sample. It wasn’t affected by other factors such as temperature or other elements contained in the sample. This led her to hypothesize that the radiation was a characteristic of the atom itself.
One of the minerals that she investigated was pitchblende. Here she measured much higher levels of radiation than could be accounted for by uranium. She concluded that there must be additional elements within pitchblende that also exhibited this property of radiating energy and began the long and tedious process of isolating and identifying them. She coined the term radioactivity and established the science that would be used to analyze it.
It is important to remember that other scientists were actively involved in similar investigations. Becquerel had in fact discovered, and maybe more importantly, published the concept of radioactivity first. In Marie’s experiments she discovered that the element thorium was radioactive, but Gerhard Schmidt in Germany had discovered the same thing and published it earlier. Marie knew of the importance of announcing and publishing her work in a timely fashion. Since, neither she nor Pierre were members of the French Academy of Science, her former professor Gabriel Lippman presented her first paper on the subject for her in 1898.
It took about four years for Marie to complete her work. She isolated two radioactive elements in pitchblende: polonium and radium. At some point, Pierre put his work aside and began to work with her, as did other scientists and students. Much of the work, especially at the beginning, required back breaking effort. As it turns out, they had to process from 6- 7 tons of pitchblende to get a miniscule amount of radium. Radium is the element that caught the imagination of the world and would be used in things from paint on watch dials to “health” drinks, much to the detriment of those that came in close contact with it.
During this period of time, Marie gave birth to their first daughter, Irene, in 1897. It was, of course, expected that a woman would take care of everything related to the home. When Marie and Pierre were married, their home and lives were simple. It is said that they only had two chairs at their table to discourage visitors from staying. In the evening, they would companionably read physics together. They had a shared obsession with science that overshadowed everything else. When Irene was born this changed dramatically.
Marie went back to her work, but would have to rush home to nurse Irene. She didn’t have enough milk and had to hire a wet nurse. With two nurses to care for the baby, their meager income was stretched even more. With the hard physical work she was doing, the increased expenses, and the feeling of failure at not being able to nurse her baby, the stress took its toll on Marie’s health. Pierre’s father came to the rescue. Dr. Eugene Curie was the physician who had delivered Irene. During the same month, his wife, Pierre’s mother died of breast cancer. So, at the beginning of 1898, Dr. Curie moved in with Marie and Pierre to care for Irene.
Dr. Curie was a godsend. He was a warm, expressive man who Irene and later Eve would remember fondly. He is probably responsible for meeting most of their emotional needs. There is no doubt that Marie loved her children, but she and Pierre were in many ways lost in their scientific world. And after Pierre died in 1906, Marie would close herself off emotionally, preventing them from even mentioning Pierre’s name in her presence.
Pierre had been denied the acclaim in France that he had received internationally, in part due to his unconventional background, and Marie faced these kinds of prejudices as well because she was a woman. By 1902, she had isolated enough radium to determine its place on the periodic table and to satisfy the chemists that it was indeed a new element. She wrote her thesis and received her doctorate and in 1903, Marie, Pierre, and Henri Becquerel were nominated for and received the Nobel Prize in physics.
It wasn’t quite that simple though. The Nobel Prizes were first given beginning in 1901. That first year, and again in 1902, Charles Bouchard nominated all three of them. Other people were chosen both years. Then in 1903 four influential scientists, including Gabriel Lippman, Marie’s former professor whom she considered a friend, nominated Henri Becquerel and Pierre Curie for the physics prize with no mention of Marie. Magnus Gustaf Mittag-Leffler a respected Swedish mathematician who was on the nominating committee told Pierre of the nomination. Pierre wrote him that he would not accept the prize unless Marie was included. He approached the committee with this letter, and with the support of Charles Bouchard, the nomination was changed to include Marie.
(Mittag Leffler believed that women were under appreciated in the sciences. He was also the person responsible for raising the private funds to support the appointment of Sonya Kovalevsky to a position of full professor in mathematics at his university in Sweden. She was the first woman to become a professor of mathematics and Marie Curie the first woman to become a Nobel Prize winner. Thank you Professor Leffler!)
Life changed after the Nobel Prize. Although, the Curie’s had not patented their process for extracting radium, they did receive some income from it due to its immense popularity, but probably not enough to make up for the time they had to spend dealing with other people. They had made this choice on principle believing that it was more important to facilitate the work of science than to profit from it.
In 1904 Pierre was finally offered a chair at the Sorbonne, the same year a second daughter, Eve, was born. And in 1905, he was offered membership in the French Academy of Science. The latter came with lab facilities and three posts, one of which he gave to Marie. Then tragedy struck in 1906, when Pierre fell in the street and was struck in the head and died.
Pierre’s death changed Marie. Joy and light seemed to be taken from her. Dr. Curie sustained his granddaughters and taught them about their father, because Marie refused to discuss him after his death. This would be especially important for Eve since she was less than two years old when he died. Marie would be actively involved in their lives, planning their education and being with them, but it was never the same.
Life is complicated and it is difficult if not impossible to determine cause and effect in many areas of our lives. But Pierre Curie understood his wife in a way that I’m not sure anyone else did. Her drive to study science was probably motivated by several things, interest and ability of course, but possibly a need to do the things that had been denied her father, as well as a need to retreat from every day life when depression threatened to overwhelm her.
Curie in a World War I mobile x-ray vehicle
It’s also impossible to give an accurate picture of a complicated person in 3000 words or less. Marie went on to become a professor at the Sorbonne in 1908 and win the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of radium, an award that was almost derailed because of an affair with Paul Langevin. (This, in itself, is a study of how women were treated differently even in the “rational” world of science. The same standard certainly wasn’t applied to Langevin or to Einstein for that matter.) She oversaw the building of The Curie Institute, developed and implemented mobile X-ray machines during World War I, and even got involved in a little intrigue to prevent the Germans from getting their hands on radium during the war.
Marie continued to teach young scientists, although she would do no more original work of the caliber she did in her early life. Some (at least at the time) would try to claim this as evidence that Pierre was the real scientist of the two, but I don’t think this is the case. Many scientists do their best work at an early age. I think they were both exceptional scientists with individual accomplishments and an understanding of each other that brought out the best of each.
Note: The next woman to win a Nobel Prize would be Marie and Pierre’s daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie with her husband Frederic Joliot-Curie in 1935, the year after Marie’s death.
One of the most famous pictures of Marie Curie is the photograph taken at the 1911 Solvay Conference. In it she is the only woman surrounded by some of the most well known scientists and mathematicians of her day: Perrin, Poincare, Einstein, Rutherford, and Langevin to name a few. It is easy to assume that genius is always recognized whether it is in a man or a woman, but Marie Curie’s fame was hard won. She also didn’t get there due exclusively to her own efforts, but in part due to the fact that there were those in her field who weren’t willing to let her be denied simply because she was a woman. There were scientists who worked against her, but also those who defended her, her discoveries, and her genius.
1911 Sovay Conference, Marie Curie is second from the right seated and the only woman (source)
Marya Salomee Sklodowska, nicknamed Manya, was born in Warsaw on November 7, 1867. Her parents, Wladyslaw Sklodowski and Bronislava Boguski were intelligent members of the lower aristocracy. Their families no longer had wealth but they valued education and had a fierce loyalty to their native Poland. From the time of Manya’s birth until after World War I, the area of Poland where she was born and grew up was occupied by Russia. After several uprisings, the Russian government worked to suppress Polish nationalism.
Because of the suppression of the Polish people, although educated in St. Petersburg, Wladyslaw was a physicist who was not allowed to perform experiments or practice his science. He was reduced to taking low paying teaching positions in schools administered by Russians. Bronislava worked hard to get an education and worked her way up to becoming headmistress of the Freta Street School, a private school for girls in Warsaw. During this time, women were not expected to work outside their homes and were not eligible for higher education.
When Wladyslaw and Bronislava married in 1860, they moved into the apartment provided for Bronislava as the headmistress of the Freta Street School. Five children followed in six years: Zofia in 1862, Jozef in 1863, Bronislava (Bronya) in 1865, Helena in 1866, and Manya in 1867. The year Manya was born Wladyslaw received a position as assistant director of a Russian school on the western side of Warsaw which came with an apartment. The family moved and for a while Bronislava tried to continue in her position as headmistress. Eventually, the strain of caring for her family combined with travel to the Freta school and maintaining her job there took its toll and Bronislava resigned her position.
It seems that their family life was happy for a time. Both parents valued education and loved their children. At first Bronislava educated the older children at home, but her health began to decline. In 1871, when Manya was four, her mother began to show the classic symptoms of tuberculosis. Over the following years, she would go away several times for a “cure” taking Zofia with her as a nurse. When Manya was 10 her sister Zofia died from typhus. Two years later her mother succumbed to tuberculosis. These deaths hit Manya very hard. For most of her life she would suffer from periodic bouts of severe depression. At times she was able to hide it, retreating into a book, her studies, or later her work, but other times she would take to her bed refusing to eat or see anyone.
Manya continued her studies, graduating first in her class in 1883. This continued perseverance in the face of great loss took its toll. After she graduated she withdrew into despair. As a remedy, she was sent to spend the next year with relatives living in the country. She would later describe this year as one of the happiest of her life. Manya came back to Warsaw determined to work to help her family. She made a deal with her sister Bronya. She would work to help Bronya get her medical degree, then Bronya would in turn help her. To do this she took a series of jobs as a governess. One of these jobs was for the Żorawski family. During this time she fell in love with their son Kazimierz Żorawski. The feeling was mutual and they wanted to marry, but his parents were adamantly opposed to their son marrying a penniless governess.
In 1890, Bronya, who had finished her medical training and married another doctor, wrote to her sister to come to Paris. Manya still had hope that Kazimierz would be able to go against his parents and marry her. She decided not to go to Paris and began her scientific training in what was called the “Floating University.” The Floating University, or Flying University, was an underground, illegal, series of courses taught in private homes. The goal was to keep alive the Polish culture under the repressive rule of the Russians. This also provided a means for girls to get a higher education.
Eventually, Manya received a letter from Kazimierz which ended any thoughts of marriage in Manya’s mind and she decided to accept Bronya’s offer and go to Paris. In the fall of 1891, she arrived in Paris and taking the French form of her name, Marie, she entered the Sorbonne to study physics and mathematics. Initially staying with her sister, Marie found the constant activity in the home distracting and eventually rented a small garret room where she would spend her evenings studying, often without heat and neglecting her own health. She worked hard and received her degree in physics in 1893, and her degree in mathematics in 1894.
Sklodowski Family: Wladyslaw Skłodowski and his daughters Maria, Bronisława and Helena c. 1890 (source)
One of Marie’s professors, Gabriel Lippman, was able to get a small research opportunity for her to study magnetism. While attending the Floating University, Marie had begun work investigating magnetism in a laboratory run by a cousin, so it was an area of interest to her, but she had little laboratory space and poor equipment. Friends suggested that she consult a young scientist named Pierre Curie. Pierre had also done work in the area of magnetism which Marie was familiar with, but more importantly he and his brother Jacques had invented several pieces of equipment that would make Marie’s work much easier.
Pierre was a quiet man who had an unconventional upbringing. As a child he struggled learning some basic things such as reading and writing, but his genius in mathematics was recognized early. For this reason, his parents chose to educate him at home. Whether because of temperament or because of his early lack of experience with others outside the home, Pierre would always shy away from the public spotlight. This affected his ability to promote himself and achieve recognition in the form of lucrative positions in universities.
Before Marie met Pierre, he and Jacques had discovered piezoelectricity, a concept that explained the relationship between volume changes in crystal quartz and electricity. This discovery would become the foundation of many inventions in the future, such as sonar, ultrasound, and quartz wristwatches. It also brought Pierre and Jacques international acclaim in the scientific community. In spite of this, when Marie met Pierre, he was teaching at an industrial school for engineers with a small salary. It certainly wasn’t a position commensurate with his abilities or fame.
In many ways they were made for each other. Pierre never thought he would meet a woman who didn’t distract him from his science. Marie also had a need to be free from distraction, and in Pierre, she had met a man who not only understood her, but wasn’t threatened in any way by her genius. It took some persuading along with help from Marie’s sister Bronya and Pierre’s mother, but Marie finally agreed to marry Pierre in 1895. Although she needed persuading, they were very much in love, and after the wedding they settled down to work together.
Next Post – The discovery that made Madame Curie famous and how she and Pierre were able to balance science with family life.
Resources: Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie by Barbara Goldsmith Six Great Scientists by J. G. Crowther
I intended this to be a blog about women in history, as in not currently living, but I’ve already added a book review about a women currently fighting for human rights in Afghanistan and I can’t resist posting the link below about the gains women are making in STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.
I studied math in college, both undergraduate (in the 70s) and graduate (in the mid 80s.) I remember how few women were in my classes. As a freshman and sophomore there were more, but as those who planned to teach moved on to education classes, there were fewer of us in the more technical classes. (I never really planned to teach high school math, it ended up being a fall back job for me about 20 years later.) When I got to graduate school I studied Applied Math which basically means I was in class with a lot of future engineers. It wasn’t unusual to be one of 4 or 5 women in a class full of men. Oddly enough, we didn’t usually hang out and study together. I guess we just worked on our “boy social dynamics” as Rebecca Allred says in the article. I feel very fortunate that I didn’t really run into any problems. I always had a few classmates to study with which was all I wanted.
Women have made great strides in fields that have traditionally belonged to men. I never really felt as though I had something to prove in those days, but I know many women did. From reading this article it seems as though maybe we really are moving into a time when women can just study and do what they like and are good at without thinking twice about whether it is a man’s field or not. Which is as it should be. Check out the article here.
Margaret Louise Higgins Sanger (1879 – 1966) was an American activist born in 1879 in Corning, New York. Sanger was one of eleven children born to an Irish-Catholic immigrant working class family. Her mother, Anne Purcell Higgins died of tuberculosis and cervical cancer at the age of 50 having born the strain of 11 pregnancies and seven stillbirths. As the story goes, Margaret lashed out at her father over her mother’s coffin that he was responsible for Anne’s death due to so many pregnancies.
