books about women and science

The Immortal Life of
Henrietta Sacks
Rebecca Skloot
2010

Equal parts history, psychological drama, expose and character study, Rebecca Skloot's gripping debut is a deeply affecting tour de force that effortlessly bridges the gap between science and the mainstream.

Her subject is the multilayered drama behind one of the most important--and in many ways, problematic--advances of modern medicine. Captivated by the story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor African-American woman whose cervical cancer cells (dubbed HeLa) were the first immortalized cells grown in culture and became ubiquitous in laboratories around the world, Skloot set out to learn more about the person whose unwitting "donation" of the cells transformed biomedical research in the last century. Her research ultimately spanned a decade and found her navigating (and to some extent, mediating) more than 50 years of rage over the white scientific establishment's cavalier mistreatment and exploitation of the poor, especially African Americans.

Skloot deftly weaves together an account of Lacks's short life (she died at age 31) and torturous death from an extremely aggressive form of cancer; the parallel narrative concerning her cells; and the sometimes harrowing, sometimes amusing chronicle of Skloots's own interactions with Lacks's surviving (and initially hostile and uncooperative) family members. Moving comfortably back and forth in time, the richly textured story that emerges brings into stark relief the human cost of scientific progress and leaves the reader grappling with many unanswered questions about the ethics of the scientific endeavor, past and present. While the goals of biomedical research may be noble, how they are achieved is not always honorable, particularly where commercialization of new technologies is at stake. Skloot offers a clear-eyed perspective, highlighting the brutal irony of a family whose matriarch was a pivotal figure in everything from the development of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine to AIDS research to cancer drugs, yet cannot afford the very medical care their mother's cells helped facilitate, with predictable consequences.

Reviewed by Daffy Du

The Wheel of Life A Memoir
of Living and Dying
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
1998

Those of us who gained immensely from Kubler-Ross' first book "On death and dying" will be interested to read her final book. And what a dichotomy from the first! Instead of a carefully reasoned, almost scientific treatise on the subject of life and death, Kubler-Ross throws us onto the roller coaster that has been her life. Unsatisfactory relationships, a definite superiority complex (Kubler-Ross is always right) and a profound belief that her life has eveolved the way it has in order for her to learn the lessons she needs to - and yet
mysterious and thought-provoking. The way in which she refers to her "spooks" (her term), the spirit guides which live with her each day, and her encounters with out of body experiences leave us more grounded souls with a high degree of scepticism. And yet ... Read this book and make up your mind for yourself.

Reviewed by a Customer

Another Day in the Frontal
Lobe: A brain surgeon exposes
life on the inside
Katrina Firlik
2007

Whoa, can this woman write! It's an adventure following along this highly intelligent but very unusual young woman as she narrates the path to becoming a neurosurgeon, and the adventures encountered along the way and on arrival (not for the faint of
heart). Her cool head, surprising combination of scientific detachment and human sympathy make her a truly unique voice, and she describes a world most of us will never view. It's like a fascinating voyage to a strange planet, and highly, highly entertaining.
Reviewed by Bonnie

On a Farther Shore
William Souder
2012

When I first started this book, which I got as a Goodreads giveaway, I was a little unsure as to whether I would enjoy it. Although I enjoy spending time outside, I have never really been a nature girl---I have always preferred a day in the city to a day in the country. However, as I followed the story of Rachel Carson's immersion in the ocean world that fascinated her, I became more open to learning how this author changed the course of natural history.
After writing two very popular books about ocean life, Carson then took on the task of writing about the nuclear and pesticide pollution which was running rampant in the 1950s. Carson's break through thesis was that the reason these things we are putting into the environment are important is because the natural world is all connected, the bugs, to the birds, to the plants, to mammals and to us. I learned that Carson was not a crusader, but merely someone who felt deeply connected to the natural world and was worried that it was being destroyed.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in nature or environmental issues. I also think it is of interest because Carson was a woman who was writing on a topic that was not largely thought to be a woman's realm. The book reveals that the press of the time often referred to her as a "spinster". She did not have the husband and children that were expected of a woman at the time and instead chose to devote her energy to her passions. I think that is an important lesson for women today.

Reviewed by Elizabeth

The Riddle of the Labyrinth
Margalit Fox
2013

This book seems quite accurate (based on my having read Chadwick's Decipherment). It gives credit to both Kober for what she accomplished, and to Ventris not just for his flash of insight, but also for the rigor with which he pursued the decipherment, building on Kober's methodology. Perhaps there is some exaggeration of Kober's lack of recognition, but not really much, and she does make a compelling case that Kober's substantial contribution--in the face of many difficulties--should be given more than just a passing mention. Fox document difficulties Kober faced as a woman in an academic profession in the 1940s--difficulties which not only she but also a male colleague recognized at the time. Fox also documents difficulties Kober faced working during the WWII era in period of scarce resources, and not being able to work with an adequate corpus of the Linear B documents, due to delays in publication by those in control of them. Fox tells us more of the rather sad personal histories of both Kober and Ventris than Chadwick's succinct and elegant classic does, but he was writing while the story was still just a few years old and the primary figures were not long dead. All in all, I think Fox's book is a sober and solid work of popular non-fiction on a scholarly subject.

Reviewed by William Walderman

        Terrific title and an interesting story of Augusta Ada Byron Lovelace, daughter of poet Lord Byron. She lived in a time when the                 contribution of a woman could be easily overlooked or discounted, though Ava was a strong person with an interesting life, even         without the math connection. The early chapters delve intimately into the behavior of Lord Byron, which would be fairly scandalous         by today's standards. Maybe I missed it, but I never did get exactly what the algorithm was--or maybe the explanation was too                 mathematical for my humanities-oriented brain. I thought there was going to be an "aha" moment concerning modern                             computers, but it never quite came.

        Not that I'm complaining. Author James Essinger has a readable style and appears to have done his research well. His asides             to the reader share points on which he differs from other experts, and why he has come to certain conclusions. He uses original l       letters as well as many secondary sources to follow Ada from her birth (1815) through her sometimes precarious but privileged             child hood of music lessons and mathematics tutors, on through adulthood. She was still expected to marry young and marry             well, but even as a married woman she carried on a primarily professional correspondence with the much older Charles                         Babbage, "the man generally credited with inventing the computer."

        Suggest this to readers looking for a thoughtful and slightly offbeat biography of an interesting woman -- a specific interest in                 math or computers is not necessary.
                                                                        Reviewed by Maggie Knapp

Ada"s Algorithm
James Essinger
2014

While the STEM debate rages, Rise of the Rocket Girls shatters the American stereotype that girls can't do numbers. Rocket Girls tells the story of California's JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) from the early days (1940s) when the main goal was to strap a rocket onto a plane to make it go faster, to the present time of space exploration. In 1940, when the guys were shooting rockets out of a dry canyon in southern California, one of them just happened to be married to a girl who was good with numbers. Barbara calculated speed, trajectory, combustion, and other factors for rocket and propellant development, and she set the tone for future projects.

As the work grew, and young JPL expanded, the number of women "computers" (they computed! The term predates the machines) grew. The woman who was in charge of the "computers," Macie Roberts, hired only women for the department, because she wanted to preserve the camaraderie and team spirit so essential to this critical work. Thus, in a benevolent form of gender discrimination, JPL developed a sterling team of brilliant women. Macie often reminded the women, "In this job you need to look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man, and work like a dog."

As we learn about the development of rocketry, the author, Nathalia Holt, weaves in cultural developments, such as the invention of pantyhose and the rise of the women's liberation movement. She also includes snippets from the women's personal lives (like the fact that pregnancy meant instant termination--until the program realized it was dead without the women computers, and adapted flexibility to accommodate them).

The women went from pencils and notebook paper to making history. Their calculations put the first man on the moon.

Reviewed by Lynne Spreen

Rise of the Rocket Girls
Nathalia Holt
2016

If you bake the career of a scientist with a moving coming-of-age story, and add in a slapstick buddy comedy road trip, it turns into a moving story about the lives of people and plants. The story is told on the foundation of a unique and dedicated relationship that forms the heartwood.

How is that people who were not born into our family become family to us? While ostensibly a memoir of Jahren, the stand-out character is her companion in the lab and the field, Bill. Just as good scientific research leads to more questions than answers, the stories that Jahren selects for the book make you want to know the characters even more.

Jahren writes with a level of self-awareness and humility that is refreshingly honest. I realize that "refreshing honesty" is a cliché, but that's the first description of tone that comes to mind. The account bypasses self-deprecating humor in favor of humble introspection and insight. Some of the biggest connections that the reader make with Jahren are through the trees that she studies, as our struggles for existence aren't that different. She spends little time on triumphs, and tells the stories of the struggles, many of which which seem to be more fun and worthwhile in the long run.

Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals is kindred to Lab Girl. Durrell's story is a set of vignettes as a boy in the greek island of Corfu, as he learned more about nature, including ourselves. Jahren's story replaces the Greek island with a richer set of vignettes that take her from her childhood in Minnesota, through college, grad school, a series of faculty positions in search of an equilibrium. She makes plants sound a lot more interesting than Durrell's exploration of bugs.

Reviewed by T McGlynnon

Lab Girl
Hope Jahren
2016

Radium Girls
Kate Moore
2017

In the early twentieth century one of the best jobs young girls and women in America could have involved something exciting and brand new: radium. Sparkling, glowing, and beautiful, radium was also, according to the companies that employed these young women, completely harmless. A century later the truth about radium and its assorted isotopes is all too well known. In The Radium Girls Kate Moore tells the story of these young women, seemingly so fortunate, who were poisoned by the jobs they felt so lucky to have.

Radium was widely heralded as a wondrous new substance after it was first isolated by the Curies. It appeared to have an infinite number of uses, one of the first of which was to make the numbers on clocks and watches easier to see. Workers were needed to coat the dials with radium paint, and the best and most efficient workers were women and girls, some as young as 14 or 15. The work was pleasant and sociable: the women sat around tables painting, moistening the thin brushes in their mouths before they dipped them into the paint, chatting, eating, and drinking while they worked, sometimes taking extra paint home with them to practice with, sometimes painting their teeth, faces, hair, and clothing to make them sparkly. When they left the studio their clothing would be covered with radium dust, and would glow ghost-like in the night. The pay was good and the work was easy, but then some of the women started having strange pains in their mouths and bones. Their teeth would loosen and fall out and their jaws, legs, and ankles would develop permanent aches or even crumble.

After some of the women died and more became ill the companies making large profits on radium rushed to dismiss any hint that the work was unsafe. Victims and their families sought relief and assistance, but found they were responsible for their own mounting medical bills. The federal, state, and local governments all disavowed any responsibility. Eventually publicity stemming from lawsuits filed by some of the victims (using their own scanty resources) focused enough attention on the problem that governments felt compelled to set safety standards and regulations.

The Radium Girls is a horrifying read. The careless ways in which radium was handled, the indifference of the radium using industries and the governments involved to the safety of the women painters (in contrast to the men who worked to produce the radium, who were protected by lead shields), and the pain and suffering of the women themselves are appalling. The safety regulations and restrictions which were finally put into place hardly seem adequate, and the Epilogue and Postscript giving details of the women's later lives, as well as an account of another industry that made careless use of radium as late as the 1970s, are especially harrowing. This is a well written, meticulously research and documented, account of tragedies that never should have been. The radium girls' lives can't be returned to them, but thanks to Kate Moore we can remember, and learn, from their pain.

reviewed by John Cofield

Wandering Gene and the Indian Princess
Jeff Wheelwright
2012

New Mexico's history comes alive through the framing device of one woman, whose death from breast cancer illuminates how one gene can be identified with a particular group of people, how that people's history can be forgotten, how genetic testing for a cancer gene (or more precisely, a broken cancer suppression gene) can become the subject of intense religious controversy, and how DNA can be used to trace surprising secrets. Because the book focuses on Shonnie Medina, it's being compared to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, but it's as much about history and religion and a unique part of the United States as it is about science and the tragic death of young one woman. If you're from NM, as I am, this book is a must read; if you're interested in Jewish history, in DNA mapping, or the role history and religion play in modern-day controversies about genetic testing, this is one you'll like.

Reviewed by Ashley McConnellon

In the same vein as "Hidden Figures", this history of the female codebreakers that contributed significantly to the progress of WWII is long overdue. The author interviewed a number of the codebreakers and their families and researched the topic extensively when the previously classified information was finally declassified. The codebreakers were sworn to silence while employed and for many years afterwards; in most cases their husbands and families had no idea of the importance and complexity of the job the young women were doing during the war. It was generally believed that they had fulfilled some menial clerical function.

The author incorporates personal information from a number of the "code girls" and factual information on many others. Women were responsible for many of the most important code breaking accomplishments during the war, and their efforts definitely helped the U.S. to win the war on both fronts. They actually learned of the Japanese surrender before many in the government and military did!

Women were recruited from colleges and universities, and many had been trained as teachers, one of the few occupations available to educated women at the time. They underwent extensive screening and training to ensure that they were fit for the work. They arrived in Washington, D.C. in droves and were housed in hastily constructed rather Spartan accommodations. The work was scheduled 24 hours a day, and housing was so limited that it wasn't uncommon for multiple girls to use the same bed. They were housed and fed, and provided with a wage that was more than any of them could ever had made as teachers; nevertheless their pay rate was still 25-30% less than men doing the same work. It was an exciting time to be in the Capitol, and the women also had lively social lives, some of them being courted by multiple men in uniform and all of them maintaining a steady correspondence with one or more men who were serving the country.

The technical information relating to the strategy and tactics of code breaking was quite detailed, but somewhat inscrutable to me so I skimmed quickly some of those sections; suffice it to say that it required an extreme amount of organization, attention to detail, a mathematical orientation, razor sharp memories and ability to see patterns, both small and large.

I found the book quite riveting, with enough personal detail to enliven the story, and enough technical detail to establish just how serious and demanding their work was. I can definitely imagine that a movie will be made of this exciting and interesting chapter in our nation's history.

reviewed by Jill Clardy

Code Girls
Liza Mundy
2017

Reviewed by Robin Harris Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a regular MD degree in the English-speaking world, is a legitimate hero to women, to medicine, and perhaps anyone who has tackled societal prejudices. Nimura does a wonderful job of bringing her story, and equally importantly, her sister's story to a new generation. The Blackwell family left mountains of letters and Nimura has plumbed them for nuggets that put an accessible human feel to a brilliant, determined, and often standoffish person. As a reader, and a physician, I felt that I could probably see Blackwell or her current incarnation in people around me. Nimura has also made a nice addition to the Blackwell canon, which already has a first-rate biography (Julia Boyd's 2005 "Excelllent Doctor Blackwell") and numerous admiring retellings of her story. If I could offer a criticism, and it is not to Nimura as much as to the wave of current reviewers, Blackwell was a genuine innovator, no doubt, but she had help. Austin Flint, Stephen Smith and other New York physician leaders were appalled by their colleagues' misogyny and swam against professional currents from the Blackwells' arrival in New York until their death in 1910 - and beyond. This does not get much attention in Blackwell biographies and even less in homages to her. I don't wish to downplay the challenges women physicians faced, and to some extent still face, but change is about bringing others along. This point in our history feels like a good time to ask how to do that.

Reviewed by Robin Harris

The Doctors Blackwell
Janice Nimura
2021

The Code Breaker
Walter Issacson
2021

Doudna is an interesting woman due to the fact that she is really quite “normal” in her brilliance for bio chemistry. I was struck by her genuine affection for her co-workers that’s evidenced in the included photos as well as some of the lengths she went to helping her competition. She states that money is not her motivation but “publish or perish” is ingrained in most academics and even that seems to be under developed in Jennifer. THAT will become an issue...

Parts of this formidable volume read like a thriller. There’s intrigue, court battles, and friends with misunderstandings. Part Seven consists of 5 chapters that discuss the issues of ethics as relates to DNA and changing the structure of life, ordering the structure of life. Who has the right? Who controls the rights? Is it right at all? These are supremely serious questions that should be considered be every adult.

Reviwed by Linda Galllea