Honey I shrank the contributions of women in science

I’m sure we’ve all had that moment when you’re around a group of friends and everyone is clowning around. You crack a joke that no one hears only for someone else to overhear you and repeat it louder. The entire group starts laughing at a joke that was stolen from you. They get acclaim from the group about their wits and intelligence. To make matters worse, they are credited for your work in joke books. Films are made about the historic moment. They win a Nobel Prize for it.

While stealing a joke may not seem like a big deal, imagine this scenario happening about your life’s work or your proudest accomplishment. When someone steals our work or ideas, we sometimes feel minimized, dismissed and cast aside.

This was the fate of many women scientists. In recent years, there has been an effort by historians to uncover the truth about how women who made major contributions in the field of science have been erased from textbooks and replaced with their male counterparts. By digging through diaries, old scientific publications and conference records, the stories of these women have been revealed. In the spirit of Women’s History Month, I wanted to highlight the stories of overshadowed women scientists.  

Eunice Newton Foote (July 17, 1819 – September 30, 1888)
If John Tyndall is credited as the father of climate change, then Eunice Foote should be deemed the grandmother. Eunice Newton Foote was a scientist, inventor and women’s rights activist. She worked out of an at-home laboratory/workshop where she pursued her interests in understanding energy exchange.

One of the notable findings that came out of her at-home laboratory was an observation about the relationship between CO2 levels and temperature that laid the foundation for the development of what we now know as the “Green House Effect”. Using cylinders as a representation of the atmosphere, Foote was able to compare how different combinations of gases affected the amount of heat that gets trapped after sitting in the sun for a specific period of time. Her conclusions laid the base for what would soon become the science behind global warming.

"Foote, Ball and Rosalind were never given the opportunity to present their own work or to tell their own stories. All of these women had no control over the story of their science or the narrative of their identities."

-- Emma Funk

Her work was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Science in August of 1856, as well as published in The American Journal of Science and Arts in November 1856 and summarized in the 1857 volume of Annual Scientific Discovery.

These sources of documentation show that Foote was the first individual to experimentally show how CO2 levels increase the internal temperature of systems.

When her work was first presented, Eunice did not present it herself; rather, she had her colleague, Joseph Henry, deliver the findings for her at the 1856 conference. Before he presented her work, he credited her as the author and prefaced the presentation by stating that “science was of no country and no sex”, likely to encourage the audience to put aside their preconceived notions of the credibility and thoughts of women.

Three years later in 1859, John Tyndall published similar conclusions from his more technologically savvy experiments. Tyndall acknowledged a fellow male scientist for his research in the field of solar energy that guided his thinking; however, Eunice Foote’s published discoveries of a similar nature were left unnamed and unacknowledged.

Alice Ball (July 24, 1892 – December 31, 1916)
If you look in the 1910 copy of the Seattle High School yearbook, you will find a quote from soon to be scientist, Alice Ball: “I work and work and it still seems like I have done nothing”.  While this statement may seem weighty for an 18-year-old to say about the short amount of life they have lived, it presages the events of her life.

Alice Ball studied pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of Washington. She was just 22 when she graduated with two degrees and a publication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Her academic journey continued at the University of Hawaii where she obtained her Master's in chemistry. She studied the chemical structure of medicinal compounds in plants and worked on effective methods for injectable delivery of these compounds.

During her time at the University of Hawaii, there was an epidemic of leprosy. Since the 1830s, leprosy cases in Hawaii had been on the rise, and in 1865 the government began to detain infected individuals in a desperate attempt to contain the spread of the disease.

"The stories of these women go beyond the sexism that existed in science at the time. It adds to a larger narrative of how individuals in power are often the ones who are shaping how and what stories are told."

-- Emma Funk

Chaulmoogra oil had shown promise in treating infected individuals but treating patients proved ineffective. Patients refused oral and topical administration of chaulmoogra oil due to its taste and texture. Medical professionals then focused on trying to administer it via injection. However, injecting the water-insoluble oil caused painful bumps under the skin, and patients refused that treatment as well.

Dr. Hallmon, a physician at the University of Hawaii, recruited Alice Ball to help in his fight against leprosy based on her impressive Master’s work. Using her chemistry background, Ball painstakingly designed a process to create a water-soluble compound from the chaulmoogra oil that was effective, easier to deliver to patients and had none of the previous side effects.

Her workflow, later termed the “Ball Method”, allowed for around 8,000 detained patients to return to their families. During the process of publishing her work, Alice Ball suddenly died at the age of 24. After her passing, Arthur Dean, president of the University of Hawaii, took it upon himself to pick up and publish her work without giving her a sliver of credit, as if she had never existed. He even had the audacity to rename her lifesaving technique the “Dean Method” and began mass producing the injectable extract for global distribution.

Although Ball’s collaborator, Hallmon, did speak out about Dean stealing her work and credited her in a 1922 publication, she was never given proper credit, nor did Dean face repercussions. Her identity and role in this scientific discovery was not uncovered until 1988, more than 70 years after her initial discovery. In 2000, the University of Hawaii dedicated a plaque in front of a chaulmoogra tree on campus to honor Alice Ball and her trailblazing achievements.

Rosalind Franklin (July 15, 1920 – April 16, 1958)
Do you know the names of the individuals who discovered the structure of DNA? If you said Watson and Crick, you would be only partially right. Photograph 51 was instrumental in solving the puzzle of determining the structure DNA. But how did these two men see the image in the first place?

Rosalind Franklin studied physical chemistry at Newham College, Cambridge University and received her bachelor’s degree in 1941. As World War II darkened Europe, Rosalind Franklin switched her studies to support England’s efforts. She began to work for the British Coal Union Association where she made breakthrough discoveries using the microstructures of carbon and graphite to predict their performance as fuels. This work was adopted as her thesis and she graduated with her doctorate in 1945.

Franklin then joined the Biophysical Laboratory at King’s College where she worked alongside Maurice Wilkins as part of a task force aimed at uncovering the structure of DNA. In 1951, using purified DNA and x-rays, Franklin was the first person to photograph the structure of DNA image – Photograph 51.

In 1952, Watson and Crick visited Wilkins in the lab at King’s College. Wilkins, not believing that Franklin understood her data, showed Watson and Crick her notes, including Photograph 51, without her permission. 

"It was women who laid down fundamental tracks that contributed to discoveries that propelled these scientists to fame. And as the men used those tracks to move their careers forward, the women were left at the station."

-- Emma Funk

Through trial and error, and using this insider information, Watson and Crick were finally able to assemble a full picture of the structure of DNA that matched with the experimental data. While Franklin’s contributions were acknowledged by Watson and Crick in published papers and statements, she was never seen as an equal to the other men on her team.

Rosalind Franklin was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1956 but continued to pursue her research and grow her lab studying DNA viruses. She lost her battle to ovarian cancer in 1958 at the age of 38. In 1962, four years after her passing, Watson, Crick and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of the structure of DNA. Rosalind Franklin’s contributions were once again shrunk in the narrative of the discovery as told by her male colleagues.

Gone, but never again forgotten
When diving into the scientific life of these three women, I noticed a thread that tied all these stories together. Foote, Ball and Rosalind were never given the opportunity to present their own work or to tell their own stories. Foote had her work presented by a male colleague. Ball had her method stolen and renamed. Franklin’s intelligence and contributions were shrunk by her collaborators. All of these women had no control over the story of their science or the narrative of their identities.

Growing up, most of what we learned about scientific discoveries was based upon written accounts told by the big names, mostly male, in the sciences – presidents of universities, founders of fields of study and Nobel Prize winners.

Using overlooked historical accounts, these forgotten figures are finally revealed as important contributors to these pivotal discoveries. It was women who laid down fundamental tracks that contributed to discoveries that propelled these scientists to fame. And as the men used those tracks to move their careers forward, the women were left at the station.

The stories of these women go beyond the sexism that existed in science at the time. It adds to a larger narrative of how individuals in power are often the ones who are shaping how and what stories are told.

As we conclude Women’s History Month, let us not only take time to celebrate the amazing accomplishments of women in STEM and across other fields, but let us read between the lines of these women’s stories and reflect in our own lives how we can advocate for others to make sure that their accomplishments and stories are not shrunken and erased.