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Historic Struggle -- Women in Science
An Historic Struggle — Women in Science
Jonathan Cohen
Women's history month can be springboard for learning about pioneering research, the lives of important scientists, and the struggles women have experienced in gaining proper recognition for their work and equal access to institutions of research and higher learning. Try some of these ideas in your classroom this month. They have been developed primarily for upper grades but can be modified for the middle grades. You can choose from two different approaches. Discussion questions, lists of women scientists, and some great web resources are included.
- Focus on Scientific Inquiry
- Focus on women's historic struggles for access to the institutions of scientific research
- Discussion Questions
- Women in Biology and Medicine
- Women in Ecology, Animal Behavior, Environmental Work
- Women in Chemistry and Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science
Web Resources
Focus
on Scientific Inquiry
Have students pick or assign one scientist per student or group of students.
Students can make a chart or a poster or use these questions to organize
a research paper or an oral report depending on your goals.
- What was one main research questions that this scientist investigated?
- What were her hypotheses?
- What were her experimental methods?
- What methods did she use to analyze her data?
- What did she conclude from this research?
- What future research questions can you think of that this research makes you curious about?
- What is your hypothesis about these questions?
- How could you test your hypothesis
Focus
on women's historic struggles for access to the institutions of scientific
research
Have students research the life
of a woman scientist from the 19th century and compare her life with a
woman scientist working today. The Women
of NASA website is a good resource. Ask the following questions:
- Do you think a women scientist in the 19th century had the same opportunities for education as a woman scientist today?
- Do you think the atmosphere in a college, university and laboratory of the 19th century was the same as it is today?
- Did 19th century women scientists receive equal recognition for their work?
Discussion
Questions
Here are some possible
questions to help lead into a discussion on women in science over the
course of history. Have students research these questions and present
their discoveries to the class. Other examples will work too!
- What is the Nobel Prize? How many women have won the Nobel Prize in the sciences? How many men? Why do you think this is so?
- Who was Rosalind Franklin? What happened to her x-ray photographs? What is your opinion about this?
- What was the research of Barbara McClintok? What happened to her research in the years after she first worked on corn genetics?
- Who was Maria Mitchell? How did she get her first big telescope?
- When Jane Goodall was a young woman preparing to go to Africa to do scientific research, the university authorities almost didn't allow her to go. Why? How did she get to go? Would this have been the same if she were a young man?
- Who was Sohpie Germain? Why did she work under an alias? What was her alias?
- What hindered Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin's early academic career?
- Roger Ariliner Smith (yes, Roger) was the first African American woman to receive a doctorate in zoology. What was her life like?
- What are admitting privileges for doctors at hospitals? Find out about the life of Mary Edward Chinn. When did she start her career? How long did it take for her to get her admitting privileges at Harlem Hospital?
- Jocelyn Bell-Burnell helped discover pulsars. What are pulsars? The leaders of her research project received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of pulsars. Do you think she should have been awarded the Nobel Prize too? Jocelyn Bell-Burnell's biography can be found on this website: http://www.ceemast.csupomona.edu/nova/burn.html
These science pioneers have been organized by their subject area. Many are Nobel Prize winners and the work of some is more readily understood by students in the middle grades.
- Rosalind Elsie Franklin: DNA crystallographer (work relates to middle school science topics)
- Roger Arliner Young: zoologist (work relates to middle school science topics)
- Mary Anning: fossil researcher (work relates to middle school science topics)
- Gerty Radnitz Cori: catalysis of glycogen (Nobel Prize 1947)
- Rosalyn Sussman Yalow: radioimmunoassay of peptides (Nobel Prize 1977)
- Barbara McClintock: mobile genetic elements (Nobel Prize 1983) (work relates to middle school science topics)
- Rita Levi Montalcini: growth factor (Nobel Prize 1986) (work relates to middle school science topics)
- Gertrude Elion: transplant drugs (Nobel Prize 1988) (work relates to middle school science topics)
Ecology, Animal Behavior, Environmental Work
All these women have done work that middle school science students can relate to their knowledge of ecosystems, species and habitat preservation.
- Jane Goodall: primatologist
- Dian Fossey: primatologist
- Rachel Carson: environmental author, scholar and activist
- Wangari Muta Maathai: community and environmental activist
- Julia Butterfly: environmental activist
Chemistry and Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science
- Marie Sklodowska Curie: discovered, isolated, and synthesized radioactive elements (Nobel Prizes 1903 and 1911) (work relates to middle school science topics)
- Irene Joliot Curie: (Nobel Prize 1935) (work relates to middle school science topics)
- Maria Goeppert Mayer: nuclear shell structure (Nobel Prize 1963) (work relates to middle school science topics)
- Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin: x-ray crystallography pioneer; discovered structure of insulin, penicillin, and vitamin B12 (Nobel Prize 1964) (work relates to middle school science topics)
- Annie Jump Cannon: astronomer, pioneered star classification (work relates to middle school science topics)
- Maria Mitchell: astronomer (work relates to middle school science topics)
- Lise Meitner: mathematician, physicist
- Emmy Noether: mathematician, physicist
- Ada Byron Countess of Lovelace: mathematician
- Rozsa Peter: mathematician
- Sophie Germain: mathematician
- Grace Murray Hopper: inventor of computer languages
- Helen Sawyer Hogg: cataloger of various stars (work relates to middle school science topics)
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