About biographies
Hi!
I've decided to let you in on my activities while I was away, when my impressive friend Susan Castagnetto stimulated you with her great posts. I think we need more biographies of women in science and have started trying to write one myself. I was away at the Norman Mailer Writers Colony in Provincetown, MA taking a week-long workshop on Biography writing with Deborah Martinson, who wrote a spectacular biography of Lillian Hellman.
So, given that new factor in my life, I would love to hear from you what makes you want to read a biography? When you imagine a biography of a woman in science, as came up in our 5 women in science discussion, do you yawn or do you perk up with interest? What kinds of things do you enjoy reading in biographies? In particular, how much science, how much family, how much other aspects of her life? What makes biographies boring, so I can avoid doing those things?
I'd love to hear your thoughts!
A. Biographies of women in science don't offer a good escape so i don't read them.
B. I like a good biography of a woman doing something unusual, but it has to move along and not drag.
C. I love to read anything about the experience of other women in science, will even put up with some slow-moving passive voice prose to find out more.
I'd say refuge and vision along with money. Vanevar Bush among others really saw how basic science buildup would yield great returns for the country, and after Sputnik money poured into science to make the US more competitive with the Soviet Union. I hated pretending that getting under school desks would protect children from atomic bombs during that cold war period, but the recognition of the importance of science was really a good feature of the paranoia.
cheers,
Laura
I hadn't hear about Rita Levi-Montalcini. Her story sounds fascinating as well. I think about all the amazing scientists that the US (especially) garnered because of WWII, and it makes me wonder would we be the science powerhouse we are today if not for one group's intolerance for people and ideas? Not that the US was a science backwater before WWII, but certainly it wasn't the "place" to be for exceptional science. Maybe the money helped too:)
Hi Helen,
I like your ideas about what such a biography should have. No one really believes a perfectly good or perfectly evil person could exist, but finding a balance when you write about living people is a challenge! I know what you mean about Meitner, and it's also true but less so, perhaps, for Rita Levi-Montalcini, who was doing science in her bedroom on a farm in Italy when they were seeking Jewish people relentlessly, but she didn't leave the country until much later.
cheers,
Laura
Dear reader woman,
Joan Steitz was James Watson (of Watson and Crick)'s first female graduate student. She went on to discover a big class of non-coding RNAs, the snRNAs, U1-U6, that are essential in the splicing of messenger RNA. She also discovered snoRNAs and has found interesting effects of the miRNAs that regulate gene expression, including that under some conditions, they stimulate gene expression instead of just inhibiting it. She's an HHMI professor at Yale, member of the National Academy of Sciences, has won pages of other awards.
Jennifer Doudna received her PhD 20 years later and is a professor at UC Berkeley. She didn't encounter so many barriers as she progressed through her training and getting a faculty position. She also works on noncoding RNAs and she crystallized and got an x-ray diffraction based structure of a ribozyme, the type of RNA that speeds up reactions. She is also in the National Academy, won the Waterman Award from NSF, and is an HHMI professor, among many other awards. I plan to contrast the environments they encountered as well as showing how each one contributed to the idea of an RNA World at the dawn of life.
cheers,
Laura
What do I look for? A good science story, usually in an area I don't know much about. What's boring? If it's all the science and nothing about the world around the person. That's what made the Lise Meitner biography so interesting. Her science was amazing, but her inability to grasp the very real danger she was surrounded by until the very end made a harrowing tale! The best? A balance of the science and the person with their flaws. Showing complexity so that you can't love or hate the person makes her more real to me.
Hi Laura,
Can you say a bit more about Joan Steitz and Jennifer Doudna? I am not familiar with them.
Thanks, Female Biology Professor. I have started on one that is a dual biography of Joan Steitz and Jennifer Doudna, both women who have studied RNA and been quite successful (NAS, HHMI, etc). I'm excited about this project.
cheers,
Laura
I think you should go ahead and write one. It might be used as a real life example in Women in Science classes all over the country, especially if it showed how a woman could be both relatively 'normal' and a first rate scientist. FBP
I think the bio of Rachel Carson and the first one about Rosalind Franklin really opened people's eyes (Ann Sayres' I think). It's funny how pleasure reading sticks in people's minds longer than seminars and lectures on how to be a woman in science, even good ones. I believe there is a bio of Yalow, Laura, that shows her marriage and children. It may not still be in print.
I like the idea of one on Carol Greider!
Hi Reader,
I'm kind of busy right now, but who knows, I'd be interested in Greider too. Loved what she said about doing laundry when she got the Nobel phone call, and having to postpone her spinning class because she won the Nobel prize.
Thanks for the thoughts!
cheers,
Laura
Can we suggest some subjects for you, Laura? I want to read a biography of Carol Grieder. She said in an interview that she was dyslexic, did poorly on the GRE (or was it the SAT) but had great research and recommendations. There's a real science-y biography of Liz Blackburn but not one of Grieder.
Also, I'd like to know more about Ada Yonath, who won the Nobel this year for ribosomes. She won with two men, but it's my understanding she invented the techniques that made all three of them succeed. And she had a daughter but is not married. Lots of good material!
RW
That's cool. You don't hear about scientists becoming writers very often. And we sure need some biographies of women in science who enjoy other aspects of life too, like family. You go girl!
