Women in History - Biology

[Mary Curtis]

lappel at eagle.wesleyan.edu wrote:
: In article <3krvoq$mqo at monk.austin.cc.tx.us>, cddunn at monk.austin.cc.tx.us (charles dunn) writes:
: > This is women in history month at our school and I need material on women
: > who have done significant research in the biological sciences.  All the female
: > researhers I know of are still alive and hence not yet history.

: Putting aside for now the question of when history begins, two dead female
: biologists come to mind immediately--

: Hilde Mangold, working with Hans Spemann, did the elegant transplantation work
: that defined what became known as Spemann's organizer -- the classic example of
: primary induction in embryology.  See a standard text for details -- 
: Gilbert's  Developmental Biology gives more info and references about her.  If
: she had not been killed in an accident, she probably would have shared the
: Nobel prize.

: A woman who did get the Nobel prize by living long enough was Barbara
: McClintock, whose work on movable genetic elements in corn was so heretical 
: to the dogma of the irrevocable stability of the nuclear genome at the time
: she did it that it was ignored for many years by the mainstream, and only
: really appreciated several decades later.  See A Feeling For the Organism, her
: biography by E. Fox-Keller.


: Laurel F. Appel
: Dept of Biology 
: Wesleyan University 
: Middletown, CT 06459