Women in science: Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin

Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin with insulin model.
About.com: Chemistry

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910-1994) was a founder of protein crystallography.

Hodgkin and her mentor, J.D. Bernal, were the first to successfully apply X-ray diffraction to biological crystals. She identified the structures of cholesterol, lactoglobulin, ferritin, tobacco mosaic virus, penicillin, and vitamin B-12. She also described the structure of insulin in 1969, a problem on which she worked for 34 years.

Hodgkin received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1964 for her work on vitamin B-12. Her biography on this Nobel Prize Web site notes, "By choosing projects others considered impossible, she helped to establish one of the characteristic features of contemporary science: the use of molecular structure to explain biological function."

This post was created to mark the second annual Ada Lovelace Day, an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. Read more about Ada Lovelace Day and women in science here.

Geek girl, circa 1830

Ada Augusta Byron, Lady Lovelace (1815-52) has been described as the first computer programmer.

She was the daughter of the poet George Gordon Byron. Her mother, who was briefly married to Byron and wanted to stamp out any poetical tendencies in their daughter, encouraged Ada to study mathematics and sciences.

Ada met mathematician/inventor Charles Babbage and was fascinated by his design for the analytical engine, a machine for making numerical calculations. She published an annotated summary of his work, adding (with his approval) several pages of notes on a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers, a sequence of numbers important to number theory.

Lady Lovelace took Babbage's ideas one step further, speculating that the analytical engine could be used for "developping [sic] and tabulating any function whatever," including music composition.

Today, March 24th, is Ada Lovelace Day, an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.

Read about pioneering computer programmer Admiral Grace Hopper and other women scientists at the Women in Science site, sponsored by the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

That melon has teeth!

Recently I attended a fundraiser for presidential candidate Barack Obama in Silicon Valley.

Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared at the event, at the home of California Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, and gave a short speech.

While waiting for the senator, I was distracted by good Mexican food, a mariachi band, intermittent rain showers, and this pleasant fellow.

I had to ask a server: Donkey's toothsome grin was made with kernels of hominy. I'm already planning next my next jack o'lantern.

I'm not usually star-struck, but it was a little thrill to be able to shake hands and say, "How nice to meet you, Senator." Perhaps I would have felt the same about any senator, but especially so for the most well-known of the 16 women in the Senate. That's 16, out of 100. An all-time high.

Protest, not brunch

I recently learned that Mother's Day originated as a protest against war.

Julia Ward Howe -- writer, poet, abolitionist, suffragist and Unitarian -- is best known as the author of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." She began advocating a "mothers' day for peace" after seeing the death and desolation that followed the Civil War.

This fierce declaration, published in 1879, speaks to me today.

Julia Ward Howe (Wikipedia)

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

A woman's place

Capistrano Beach, Calif.


Church Fires Teacher for Being Woman
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 21, 2006
Filed at 8:40 a.m. ET
WATERTOWN, N.Y. (AP) -- The minister of a church that dismissed a female Sunday School teacher after adopting what it called a literal interpretation of the Bible says a woman can perform any job -- outside of the church.
The First Baptist Church dismissed Mary Lambert on Aug. 9 with a letter explaining that the church had adopted an interpretation that prohibits women from teaching men. She had taught there for 54 years.
The letter quoted the first epistle to Timothy: ''I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.''
The Rev. Timothy LaBouf, who also serves on the Watertown City Council, issued a statement saying his stance against women teaching men in Sunday school would not affect his decisions as a city leader in Watertown, where all five members of the council are men but the city manager who runs the city's day-to-day operations is a woman.


My initial, gut reaction to this story was to feel relief that I have only sons, not daughters. My boys will undoubtedly encounter prejudice, but it’s unlikely anyone will ever fire them, from a job they have held for decades, because they are men.

A local news channel quotes Lambert as saying that she and the church pastor have had “differences of opinion concerning the direction of the church.” The final sentence of the Associated Press story says that “other issues were behind Lambert’s dismissal,” but church board members chose not to elaborate.

The pastor and the church's deaconate board addressed these "issues" a few days later in the local news. At this time they stated that the scriptural imperative was "only a small aspect" of the decision, and that "Christian courtesy" prevented them from saying anything more -- implying, of course, that the woman who took her story to the media was behaving in a way that was neither Christian nor courteous.

To claim that Lambert was fired because of a re-interpretation of the New Testament appears to be a sneaky attempt to put a holy stamp on the board's actions, when it seems to me that what is going on here is more political, or personal. Would these “issues” have been a firing offense if Lambert was a man?

I belong to a church in which women are fully represented in all positions of teaching, leadership and decision-making. It is not the denomination in which I was raised. When my sons were old enough to start asking questions, and I began looking for a place that I hoped would become their spiritual home, I had to confront the gaps between what I was taught as a child and what I had come to believe with time and life experience.

It took me a while to comprehend how important it was for me to see women preaching a sermon, presenting a report from the church's board of trustees, chairing the annual capital campaign, and donning hard hats to break ground for a new church building.

If I had a daughter, I realized, I could not raise her within a religious tradition that would bar her from participating in some part of that community. And I don't want my children, regardless of gender, to be told that women are not credible as leaders, spiritual or otherwise.

Recently I had a bedtime conversation with my oldest son about the people pictured on U.S. currency. E asked me to tell him again about the woman on the gold dollar coin. Then he wanted to know why she was the only woman, why all the other figures were men.

I explained that at one time, women were not permitted to vote, that they were primarily expected to be mothers and take care of their homes, and that they were not considered capable of being leaders. My son’s mouth hung open in surprise. “Why would anyone ever think that?” he asked. Indeed.