Research Guides: [FAS] Culture and Belief 61:Gender and Science: From Marie Curie to Gamergate: Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America

Welcome!

What, Where, Why

For almost 75 years, the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America has served as the preeminent repository of women's history in the nation.

The breadth of our holdings sweeps from suffragists to labor organizers, feminists to politicians and housewives, and national and community organizations dedicated to social justice. We preserve and make women’s history accessible to students, historians and other scholars, artists and activists, and the public at large.

Our manuscripts, books and periodicals, audiovisual and photographic materials document the range of activities of women at home in the United States and abroad from the 19th century to the present.

The Schlesinger Library is located in Radcliffe Yard, 3 James Street.

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Collection Highlights

Welcome! This guide is an introduction to the Schlesinger library's collections relating to scientists including mathematicians, biologists, chemists, astronomers, and physicists, scientific research and writing, feminist activism of scientists, and gender discrimination in science.

It is meant to help you begin your research but it is not a complete list of relevant collections. Please Ask A Schlesinger Librarian if you have any questions or want further suggestions.

Archival Collections

Hazel Bishop (1906-1998)
Hazel Gladys Bishop graduated from Barnard College with a B.A. in chemistry and began her career in bio-chemical research as a chemical technician at the New York State Psychiatric Hospital and Institute (1930-1935). During the war Bishop was an organic chemist for Standard Oil Development Company (1942-1945), studying aviation fuels, and she continued her work in petroleum research until 1950 with the Socony Vacuum Oil Company. Using her home kitchen as a laboratory, she developed a nondrying, nonirritating, long-wearing lipstick and subsequently formed the cosmetics company Hazel Bishop, Inc., in 1948. After leaving the company due to internal conflict, Bishop developed other products including a leather cleaner, a foot care product, and a solid perfume stick. In the 1960s, she worked as a stockbroker and financial analyst. In 1978, she took a teaching position in the cosmetics, fragrances, and toiletries department of the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. She was appointed to the Revlon chair in cosmetics marketing in 1980.
Rachel Brown (1898-1980) and Elizabeth Lee Hazen (ca. 1888-1975)
Rachel Fuller Brown, a biochemist, and Elizabeth Lee Hazen, a microbiologist, were co-discoverers in 1950 of the drug nystatin, the first antibiotic administered to humans that safely and effectively treats serious fungal diseases. Both were employed by the Division of Laboratories and Research of the New York State Department of Health, Brown in Albany and Hazen in New York City. The collection includes correspondence, clippings, articles, speeches, pamphlets, photos, and biographical information detailing Brown and Hazen's research, accomplishments, and partnership.
Bureau of Vocational Information (New York, N.Y.)
The Bureau of Vocational Information (BVI) of New York City was the successor to the Intercollegiate Bureau of Occupations (IBO). IBO published studies on wartime training and on employment opportunities in a number of fields, including the civil service and science. In 1919, IBO was dissolved and BVI took over its functions, conducting research in women's occupations, providing information to colleges, and counselling individual women. The collection includes talks given in a course, "Woman in Industry: Her Opportunities in Business Today," at New York University in 1915-1916; correspondence and clippings; and questionnaires from women around the United States in the arts, business, engineering, law, medical professions, the sciences, statistics, and religious, secretarial, and social work. The papers also discuss the requirements, training, and advantages of the various fields and include material used by Beatrice Doerschuk in preparing the manuscript, "The Woman Secretary."
Elizabeth Lawrence Clarke
A plant pathologist, Clarke graduated from Smith College (1916), studied at Massachusetts Agricultural College, joined the Woman's Land Army, and in 1920 took a position at the Dimock Farm, Corinth, Vt. She turned to raising seed potatoes and became chief inspector for the Dimock Potato Corporation. By 1929 she was the first woman field inspector for the Vermont Seed Potato Certification Service.
Cornelia Mitchell Downs (1892-1987)
Cornelia "Cora" Mitchell Downs was educated at the University of Kansas at Lawrence, receiving her Ph.D. in 1924. She became professor of bacteriology at the University of Kansas, where she took part in a successful research effort to conquer tularemia, or rabbit fever. She is also credited with helping to perfect the fluorescent antibody technique, a diagnostic method of identifying viruses.
Irene K. Fischer (1907-2009)
Irene Kaminka Fischer, a mathematician and geodesist, studied descriptive geometry at the Technical University of Vienna and mathematics at the University of Vienna. In the 1950s, Fischer began working for the Army Map Service, now the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the Army Geospatial Center in Potomac, Maryland. During her tenure, she worked on the World Geodetic System project and produced many scientific presentations and publications. She published a high school geometry textbook in 1965. In 1967, she was the first Army Map Service employee, and only the third woman ever to receive the Distinguished Civilian Service Award. After 25 years of government service, she retired from the Army Map Service in 1975.
Genes and Gender Collective
On January 29, 1977, 350 women from scientific institutions and neighborhood organizations met at the American Museum of Natural History in New York to discuss the increasingly prevalent theories of genetic determinism and sociobiology. At this meeting, it was determined that further discussions on this topic would be welcome, and the Genes and Gender Collective was established with the goal of challenging the theory of genetic determinism and providing alternate theories and explanations.
Madeleine P. Grant (1895-1981)
A teacher of biology and zoology, Madeleine Parker Grant received her B.S. from Simmons College (1916) and her M.A. (1924) and Ph.D. (1932) in biology from Radcliffe College. She taught at Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers, the Hudson Shore Labor School, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole (Mass.) before joining the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College, where she spent most of her career. In addition to scholarly books and articles in her field, she wrote several books for young adults, including Wonder World of Microbes (1956) and a biography of Louis Pasteur.
Alice Hamilton (1869-1970)
A physician who was the first woman professor at Harvard University, Hamilton also worked as a resident researcher at Hull House, a researcher of industrial poisons for the U.S. Department of Labor, and a member of the League of Nations Health Organization and President Hoover's Committee on Social Trends. The collection includes correspondence, articles, speeches, notes, clippings, and awards documenting Hamilton's professional life and interests. The largest series contains her medical papers, including articles and notes on chemical compounds, their hazards in the workplace, and industry protest over her findings.
Margaret Harwood (1885-1979)
Harwood was an astronomer and directed the Nantucket Maria Mitchell Observatory (1916-1957). Her particular field was photometry, measuring variation in the light of stars and asteroids, especially that of the small planet Eros. A member of the American Astronomical Society and Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, Harwood corresponded with fellow astronomers and traveled widely in Europe and the United States.
Dorrit Hoffleit (1907-2007)
Hoffleit received her B.A. in mathematics from Radcliffe College in 1928 and took graduate classes at Radcliffe while working at the Harvard College Observatory, receiving her M.A. and Ph.D. in astronomy in 1932 and 1938, respectively. She was considered an expert on variable stars, the history of astronomy, and astrometry. In 1987, the International Astronomical Union named an asteroid after her in acknowledgment of her contributions to the field of astronomy.
Ruth Hubbard (1924-2016)
Biologist and feminist Ruth Hubbard was born in Vienna, Austria. In 1938 her family immigrated to the United States. She graduated from Radcliffe College (A.B. 1944, Ph.D. 1950) and served at Harvard University as a research fellow (beginning in 1953), research associate (beginning in 1958), lecturer (beginning in 1968), and professor (from 1974 until her retirement in 1990). She was the first woman to be awarded a tenured biology professorship at Harvard. Known for her work in the biochemistry and photochemistry of vision in vertebrates and invertebrates, Hubbard also wrote on the politics of health care and on the sociology of science, documenting how scientists’ approaches to asking and answering questions are shaped by their sex, race, and class, and by the social institutions in which they operate.
Vilma R. Hunt (1926-2012)
A dentist, scientist, researcher, writer, environmental activist, and feminist, Vilma Rose (Dalton-Webb) Hunt received her A.M. in physical anthropology from Radcliffe College (1958) and was a scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study (1961-1963). Affiliated with the Harvard School of Public Health (1962-1966), Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois (1963), and the John B. Pierce Foundation Laboratory in New Haven, Conn. (1966-1969), Hunt taught environmental health at Yale University School of Medicine (1967-1969) and Pennsylvania State University (1969-1972 and 1982-1985). During the 1970s she was Deputy Assistant Administrator for Health Research in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development and served on the EPA's Science Advisory Board.
Sharon Leijoy Johnson (1934-2013)
A scientist and educator (Iowa State University, B.S., 1955; M.I.T., Ph.D., 1959), Johnson was appointed assistant professor of biochemistry at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School in 1967. When denied tenure in 1973, she sued the university on the grounds of sex discrimination, retaining Sylvia Roberts as her attorney; the National Organization for Women Legal Defense and Education Fund supported Johnson. The university was cleared of sex discrimination charges in 1977. This collection consists primarily of legal materials relating to the case of Johnson v. the U. of Pittsburgh, but also includes Johnson's files containing her grant proposals, correspondence, and notebooks of activities.
Evelyn Fox Keller (b. 1936)
Evelyn Fox Keller graduated from Brandeis University (B.A. 1957), Radcliffe College (M.A. 1959) and Harvard University (Ph.D. 1963). She has taught, lectured, and written in a number of fields, including the history and philosophy of science, mathematical and molecular biology, and theoretical physics. Her research focuses on the intersection of science and gender and on the philosophy and history of modern biology.
Robin Ruth Linden (b. 1956)
Robin Ruth Linden is a sociologist who specializes in the areas of women's health, the politics of technomedicine, and the Holocaust. This collection contains background material for and videotapes and slides of two symposia, "Feminism and the Philosophy of Science" and "Women and Scientific Research," held at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on January 6, 1979.
Maria Mitchell (1818-1889)
Mitchell was an astronomer and educator. After discovering a comet, she became the first woman appointed to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She also taught astronomy at Vassar College and helped found the Association for the Advancement of Women.
Dinah L. Moché (b. 1936)
Dinah Levine Moché received a BA in physics from Radcliffe College (1958) and an MA in physics (1961) and a PhD in physics, astronomy, and science education research (1976) from Columbia University. The only woman ever to be a member of the Queensborough Community College physics department, Moché filed a sex discrimination suit against Queensborough Community College and City University of New York in 1976. The New York State Division of Human Rights found "probable cause" supporting Moché's complaint. She continued her struggle for equal treatment during the 1980s and 1990s. Moché is the author of over twenty books and lectures widely to lay audiences. She was a National Science Foundation Faculty Fellow (1976) and was invited to the White House for a conference on America's future in space (1984).
Alice Rich Northrop (1864-1922)
Botanist Alice Rich Northrop attended New York City public schools and Hunter College and taught briefly in the New York City school system. In 1889, she married John Isiah Northrop, an instructor of botany and zoology at Columbia University. As an instructor of botany at Hunter, Alice Northrop traveled widely in the American and Canadian west and northwest and in Central America and the Caribbean, often accompanied by her son. Throughout her adult life she endeavored to make the joys of nature available to people confined to cities, and for this purpose founded the School Nature League in 1917. The Northrop Memorial Nature Camp was eventually established at her property in Mt. Washington, Mass., to continue that work. Northrop helped write two books: A Naturalist in the Bahamas (1930) and Through Field and Woodland (1925). She also contributed articles to botanical journals and donated plant specimens to several major research institutions.
Helen Brewster Owens (1881-1968)
A suffragist and mathematician, Helen Barten (Brewster) Owens received her Ph.D. in mathematics from Cornell University in 1910. She served as chair of the Resolutions Committee for the New York State Woman Suffrage Association (1910), organized the College Equal Suffrage League at Cornell (1911), and was a paid organizer and chair of the Sixth Judicial District for the Empire State Campaign Committee (1913-1916). She also campaigned for suffrage in Kansas (1911-1912). Owens taught math at Wells College in Aurora, N.Y. (1914-1917) and at Cornell (1917-1922). She was associate editor of American Mathematical Monthly and conducted research on women in mathematics and science.
Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Company
The company was founded in 1873 by the children of Lydia Estes Pinkham (1819-1883) to sell the vegetable compound that she had been giving away as a cure, mainly for female maladies. The collection contains financial records including journals, ledgers, cashbooks, payroll records, freight bills, orders, price lists, contracts, inventories, and taxes; advertising registers and test copies of ads; correspondence; notebooks; market and research studies; trademark registrations; manufacturing, labeling, packaging, and shipping records; articles; photos; pamphlets; clippings; and books that depict the daily operations of the company.
Joanne Henderson Pratt (b. 1927)
Joanne Henderson Pratt attended Oberlin College (B.A. 1948) and Radcliffe College (A.M. 1950), majoring in chemistry. Her first job after graduating from Radcliffe was conducting research at the Yamins Laboratory in Beth Israel Hospital. In 1953 Pratt became a physical chemist at Arthur D. Little, the global management consulting firm, in Boston, MA. In 1971 Pratt, along with James Pratt, Sarah Barnett Moore, and William T. Moore, founded the Allied Professionals Educational Consulting Services (APECS), a not-for-profit interdisciplinary research and consulting group, which specialized in custom-designed workshops. In 1980 Pratt founded Joanne H. Pratt Associates, a virtual company that conducted research and helped public and private organizations implement telework. Major projects of the company included the first classification, or survey, of teleworkers using micro-computers at home.
Radcliffe "Women in Science" Exhibit
The “Women in Science” exhibit was held July-September 26, 1936, in connection with Harvard's tercentenary. The collection contains correspondence, financial records, clippings, lists of women scientists, and the publications that made up the exhibit. The publications, the bulk of the collection, are by women in astronomy, biology, botany, chemistry, geology, physics, and the medical sciences.
Report on the participation of women in scientific research
This 1978 report was prepared by Janet Welsh Brown, Michele L. Aldirch, and Paula Quick Hall of the Office of Opportunities in Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science, for The National Science Foundation.
Margaret W. Rossiter (b. 1944)
Margaret W. Rossiter, professor at Cornell University and historian of science, graduated from Radcliffe College (AB 1966), the University of Wisconsin-Madison (MS), and Yale University (M.Phil, Ph.D). Her early interest in the history of science led her to explore the systematic disadvantages facing women in the sciences. Her three-volume chronological work entitled Women Scientists in America was published in 1982, 1984, and 2012. This collection consists of Rossiter's research files for volumes 2 and 3 of Women Scientists in America.
Freda Friedman Salzman (1927-1981)
A physicist (Brooklyn College, B.A., 1949; University of Illinois, Ph.D., 1953), Salzman held research positions at the Universities of Wisconsin, Rochester, and Colorado, and in 1965 she was appointed with her husband to the original physics department of UMass Boston. Two years later the university attempted to terminate her appointment on grounds of nepotism. After a five-year struggle, she was reinstated in 1972 and received tenure in 1975. Salzman was active in Science for the People, particularly its Sociobiology Study Group and Women's Issues Project Group, and also in organizations of women scientists.
Cecily Cannan Selby (b. 1927)
Scientist, educator, and consultant Cecily Cannan Selby was born in London in 1927 and educated at Radcliffe College (A.B. 1946) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D 1950). After ten years of research on biological cell structures at Sloan-Kettering Institute (1950-1956) and Cornell Medical College in New York (1956-1958), she became headmistress of the Lenox School in New York City (1959-1972) and executive director of the Girl Scouts of the USA (1972-1976). Her work in science education has included serving as dean of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (1979-1985) and on the faculty at New York University's School of Education (1985-).
Ellen K. Silbergeld (b. 1945)
Environmental toxicologist and research scientist Ellen (Kovner) Silbergeld holds degrees from Vassar College (A.B. 1967) and Johns Hopkins University (Ph.D. 1972). Her professional interests include neuropharmacology, toxicology, and environmental risk assessment. In particular, Silbergeld has studied lead poisoning and the effects of dioxins and PCBs on humans.
Silent Spring Institute
Dedicated to identifying links between the environment and women's health, especially with respect to breast cancer, the Silent Spring Institute was founded in 1994 as a non-profit scientific research organization. The Institute continues to conduct leading edge research and influences the public policy agenda nationally by bringing together activists, scientists, and the people affected by breast cancer.
Joanne Simpson (1923-2010)
Simpson was a meteorologist and atmospheric scientist who became the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology. She worked as a research meteorologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in the 1950s, studying tropical clouds and flying in a Navy-provided plane full of equipment over the Pacific Ocean. In 1960, she left Woods Hole to teach at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she began her work on weather modification. Simpson later became an advisor to the United States Weather Bureau's National Hurricane Research Project, working on Project Stormfury, focusing on how to weaken hurricanes. In 1979, NASA started the Laboratory for Atmospheres at the Goddard Space Flight Center, and Simpson was offered a position to head up the Severe Storms Board. Simpson eventually joined NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Project in 1986, which involved launching a satellite into space and using radar to measure how much rain fell in tropical areas.
Jolane Baumgarten Solomon (1927-2001)
Jolane Baumgarten Solomon took evening classes at New York University and Hunter College while working in the calculation division of the Manhattan Project and as a laboratory technician at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Upon receiving her bachelor's degree in zoology from Hunter College in 1952, Solomon moved to Cambridge to attend Radcliffe Graduate School. She received her doctorate in biology and physiology in 1958 and worked as a post-doctorate fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health. In 1963 Solomon joined the biology department at Boston College, where she taught a popular endocrinology course and was dedicated to promoting and furthering the role of women in science and research. To this end, she chaired a committee to study the role of women at the college. She was promoted to full professor in 1980, thus becoming the first female full professor in the natural sciences.
Interviews by Bonnie Spanier
A graduate of Bryn Mawr (B.A. 1967) and Harvard University (Ph.D. 1975), Bonnie Spanier taught biology at Wheaton College and women's studies at the State University of New York at Albany. From 1978 to 1980 she was a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, where she carried out a number of interviews with women scientists to look at their experiences as women within a male-dominated field.
Henrietta Hill Swope (1902-1982)
Swope, an astronomer, worked at the Harvard Observatory (1928-1942) and was a member of the 1936 expedition to study the solar eclipse in Soviet Central Asia, a staff member of the MIT Radiation Laboratory, a mathematician in the Hydrographic Office of the U.S. Navy during WWII, a teacher of astronomy at Barnard (1947-1952), and an assistant, then research fellow, at the Mt. Wilson and Palomar Observatories in California (1952-1968). Swope did research on photometry and variable stars, and she developed a new technique for measuring the universe, using the brightness of stars to measure distance.
Helen Meriwether Lewis Thomas (1905-1997)
Helen Meriwether Lewis Thomas received her A.B. (1928) in astronomy and Ph.D. (1948) from Radcliffe College. She was the first woman and second American to earn a Ph.D. in the history of science. Employed first at the Harvard College Observatory, she worked during World War II at the Radio Research Laboratory at Harvard and then at the Radiation Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was senior engineer at Raytheon (1947-1954) and editor, later head of publications, at MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics. In 1956, she entered the Trans World Airlines "Cosmic Contest" and thirty years later won a $50,000 prize for correctly predicting the future nature of air travel.
Sheila Tobias (b. 1935)
In her position as associate provost at Wesleyan University, Sheila Tobias became aware of students' fears of mathematics and began her work on math anxiety, arguing that math avoidance results from lack of confidence rather than lack of ability. Tobias worked, among other things, as an educational consultant, engaging in a research and writing assignment for the Research Corporation, working for the Sloan Foundation in its development of the professional science master's degree, and conducting a long-term association with the Universities of Leiden and Amsterdam in the Netherlands, among many other activities. In addition to demystifying math and science, Tobias wrote extensively on issues such as military spending and weaponry and was a longtime active feminist.
Elga Wasserman
A graduate of Smith College, Elga Wasserman earned a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Harvard University (1949) and a J.D. from Yale Law School (1976). She became assistant dean overseeing Yale's graduate science programs and later oversaw the advent of coeducation at Yale (1968-1973). A growing interest in issues of equal access led her to law school; she subsequently practiced family law. Her interest in the barriers to women in science and how women have nonetheless managed to rise to the top of their professions led to the publication of The Door in the Dream (2000), a discussion of women scientists elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Naomi Weisstein (b. 1939)
After graduating from Bronx High School of Science in 1957, Weisstein went on to receive her B.A. from Wellesley College in 1961. At Harvard University, she won a Departmental Distinctions award and gained her Ph.D. in social psychology (1964) after two and a half years. From 1964 to 1965 she was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow with the Committee on Mathematical Biology at the University of Chicago, and in 1966 began teaching psychology at Loyola University in Chicago. In 1973 Weisstein became professor of cognitive psychology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, teaching courses and running her own data research lab. A pioneer in cognitive neuroscience, Weisstein published major articles in several leading scientific journals. Over the next several years, she was awarded grants from major research foundations. Weisstein was also an important figure in the feminist movement. See also Naomi Weisstein, Audiovisual collection
Agnes Ermina Wells (1876-1959)
Wells was Dean of Women and professor of mathematics and astronomy at Indiana University, where she is best remembered for her contributions to guidance and housing for women students. She was active in many educational associations, the National Woman's Party, and the Michigan State Society.

Accessing the Collections

The Schlesinger Library is open Monday-Friday only, 9am-5pm.

First time users must complete a reader application form and show one form of photo ID.
Materials in Schlesinger are non-circulating and must be used in the library's reading room. The collection is "closed stacks," which means that you can't browse the library shelves. Staff will retrieve items for you.
Many items are held off-site at the Harvard Depository; always check the HOLLIS+ record for location information. HD items are typically available at Schlesinger 36 hours after you make your request.
Digital cameras can be used to photograph materials, but check with the reference staff first. The reading room is equipped with 16 document cameras.