Book Review: Women of Oblivion

Review

Women who have studied the natural sciences have been around for centuries. Margriet van der Heijden honors them in this readable book.

Who was the first to demonstrate the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide? Irishman John Tyndall perhaps? In 1861, he published laboratory results which showed that water vapor and CO₂ absorb heat radiation. Or the Swede Svante Arrhenius, who in 1896 came up with calculations of fluctuating temperatures on earth due to variations in CO₂? The answer: neither.

These gentlemen were predeceased by the American Eunice Newton Foote, who in 1856 wrote an article in the American Journal of Science showed that the solar heating of the air increases under the influence of carbon dioxide. “If the air at any time in history had been mixed with a greater amount of carbon dioxide than it does today, it would have resulted in a higher temperature,” she noted. . The idea, unlike Tyndall’s a few years later, was met with lukewarm reception.

The reason for this is actually unknown, writes Margriet van der Heijden in the book published in November Unknown. About women scientists who have been overlooked. Maybe Newton Foote was taken less seriously because she was a woman, maybe because she didn’t hold an academic position, maybe because the time wasn’t (just) the right time. Well. But regardless, the publication is a reason to honor her as the first-ever climatologist.

Van der Heijden has written a column in recent years NRC, with short biographies of women who made discoveries in the natural sciences, but did not end up in the history books. These stories have been collected in this book, supplemented by portraits of a number of better-known women scientists, and accompanied by an in-depth essay on women in science, the expectations of “modest service” and how it can be ‘oppose.

Incognito

Like, for example, the mathematician Grace Chisholm Young (1868-1944). “I liked to be incognito to the outside world, and I felt I had every right to do so, because husbands are a unit…I don’t want to be confused with the modern, ambitious woman , ambitious for herself and self-glorification.” For example, she explained to a friend why the joint publications of her and her husband had been published for many years under one name, namely that of the husband.

“Everything now under my name, and later, when it no longer brings material gain, everything under your name”, this is what the man himself said about this. Not out of pride, arrogance or underestimation of his wife, but simply for practical reasons: it was important to him, because he had to earn a living. After all, she couldn’t find a job.

It was often these kinds of roles, laws and practical considerations that prevented women of the time from becoming a star in their profession, Van der Heijden shows. She does this without blaming anyone: Van der Heijden is not judging, but simply describing what it was like to be both a natural scientist and a woman.

In some cases, women’s successes were due precisely to the (practical) help of male friends or acquaintances. Van der Heijden describes how it is that most of these women never became famous and still gives them the platform they deserve.

Again

The introductory essay shows that women in the natural sciences are still not taken for granted. When Van der Heijden – himself a particle physicist – once went out with a photographer to interview someone at a technical university, the answers with technical details were invariably addressed to the photographer. An anecdote of course, but that all women know.

Van der Heijden hopes the short portraits will not only give insight into how women in the natural sciences have behaved over the past centuries, but also provide reading pleasure, she writes in her introduction. It certainly worked. The stories are interesting, clear and easy to read. And that’s partly due to the fascinating lives of the women it’s about.

Unknown. About Women Scientists Who Have Been Neglected

Margriet van der Heijden | 208p. | €19.99

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