Seven scientific women who deserve the spotlight
This article celebrates the minority women who made a major contribution to the world of STEM. After a podcast conversation with Dr. Ruchi Sharma, CEO and founder of Stemnovate, and Sabrina Fleurimé, Senior Research associate of Drug Development at Kymab and Corporate Partnership Director at BBSTEM, this article will cover the contributions of historical minority women in STEM.
It’s March, the month of the woman. International Women’s Day was on March 8, and as a young woman I would like to celebrate the minority women whose contribution was vast and yet equally overlooked. I am a passionate Politics and History graduate, and as this is Women’s History month, I want to introduce you to some of the minority women who have paved the way for me. I have taken time to inform myself on this subject and I was so excited to get to know them, that I think you should know them too…
The doctor: Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler
Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler was the first African American woman to earn a medical degree. She graduated from the New England Female Medical College in 1860, which was closed in 1873.
She had an instrumental role post-Civil War as she used her skills to heal the most in need many of whom were freed slaves who had no access to medical care. Like other black physicians who she joined in Richmond, Virginia, she suffered rampant and intense racism in the post-war South.
So, in 1883, Dr. Crumpler wrote ‘A Book of Medical Discourses’, which included heavily detailed notes on the care of infants and female medical conditions, including pregnancy and menstruation. On reflection, this is an incredibly important account of her experiences as a doctor because books detailing medical issues for women were often written by men. A book written for women by a female doctor meant that health issues relating to pregnancy and the female body were neither trivialized or confined to a single chapter in a medical journal.
To add some historical context here, even though Dr. Crumpler treated patients during and after the Civil War, it is incredibly important to highlight that very little changed in the racist behavior towards black individuals. They may no longer have been slaves, but the prejudice remained. The conclusion of the Civil War was labeled as an establishment of equal rights for the former slaves; however, the reality was far from this ideal. The Black Codes and the Jim Crow Laws were enacted post-Civil War which continued to scar black communities for decades when they should have been recovering from the age of slavery[1].
Considering this reality, the perseverance and tenacity of Dr. Crumpler exemplifies her greatness not just as a doctor, but as an individual and a woman who knew the future could be better. It is her incredible actions and hope for a better future that continues to inspire countless other women to seek a career in medicine.
The mathematicians who put men in space
During the 1960s, while some looked up to the stars, they also looked down on the people who could get them there.
The role of Black women at NASA during the years of America’s first space endeavors is massively overlooked. It was only after their triumph was highlighted in the 2016 biographical drama film, Hidden Figures, that these mathematicians received their due credit. Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Katherine Johnson were highly skilled mathematicians who found the solutions to the launching astronaut John Glenn into orbit. He became the first American to orbit the Earth.
Despite Mary Jackson becoming NASA’s first female African American engineer; Dorothy Vaughan being NASA’s first African American supervisor; and Katherine Johnson going on to calculate the trajectories for the Apollo 11 and Space Shuttle missions, they were not celebrated for their contributions until much later.
It is only in recent years that they have received the widespread recognition and accolades they are so deserving of. In 2015, Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the following year NASA established the Langley Research Center’s Katherine Johnson Computational Building in her honor.
When discussing her time at NASA, Johnson is quoted as saying, “They just said, ‘If she says it’s right, it’s right’ because the guys didn’t do the work. I did it.”[2]
The chemist: Alice Ball
Alice Ball was incredible. She made a massive contribution to human health at such a young age.
At the age of twenty-three, Alice Ball created the first effective treatment for leprosy. Due to her determination and intelligence the leprosy crisis was avoided in the early 1900s. This treatment was called the ‘Ball Method’.
The Ball Method involved using the first injectable leprosy treatment using oil from the chaulmoogra tree. Ball successfully isolated the fatty acid components which allowed her to manipulate the oil into a water-soluble injectable form.
Ball was the first woman and black scientist to graduate the College of Hawaii with a master’s in chemistry[3] . She was truly a pioneer, and her treatment remained the only effective cure for leprosy until penicillin.
Unfortunately, she died a year after her treatment was invented at the age of twenty-four.
One can only imagine the additional contributions that she would have made in her future.
The psychologist: Mamie Phipps Clark
In the 1940s, the segregation of schools in the United States of America was incredibly detrimental to the black youth. Even though this would now be considered an obvious effect of segregated schools, it was not until the work of Mamie Phipps Clark, a social psychologist, that this effect was proved.
Clark’s research on the effect of these schools on black children’s self-image was instrumental in proving the harm of Brown v. Board of Education. She created the ‘Doll Test’ to illustrate the effect on black children. One black doll and one white doll were presented to the black children who were asked to pick the doll who looked like them, which doll they would like to play with, and which doll was ‘a nice color’.
All participants were black, and the results were horrifying. 67% indicated that they preferred to play with the white doll, 59% thought that the “nice” doll was the white doll, and only 17% thought that the white doll looks bad. In contrast, as high as 59% of these children indicated that the black doll “looks bad”[4].
If it were not for Clark and her husband, and her psychological experiment, the racist school system may not have been dismantled as soon as it was. She helped to outlaw the system of segregation within schools; her courage and intelligence in studying racism’s intersectionality with the self-esteem of young black children means that we still discuss the ‘Doll Test’ method.
Unfortunately, her recognition diminished in comparison to her husband, this is likely due to the gendered and racial obstacles in her career. However, due to her incredible work in the psychology field she was the recipient of the Candace Award for Humanitarianism from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women in 1983 before she died a few months later[5].
The continued discussion of the ‘Doll Test’ is testament to Dr. Clark’s intelligence, bravery, and sheer determination to demolish the ‘separate but equal’ segregation of the US school system.
The oncologist: Dr. Jane C. Wright
The development of cancer treatments is still one of the most ‘top-of-mind’ topics in the industry, and an oncologist, Dr. Jane Wright, was instrumental to developing cancer treatments. When she began working in the 1940s, the available cancer treatments were not particularly safe, and chemotherapy was highly experimental.
Her work centered on making these treatments much safer, by decreasing the invasiveness when administered.
In 1960, Wright and her team used chemotherapy to regress a form of skin cancer, and after observing multiple patients treated with chemotherapy, she discovered that they lived ten more years than those treated with radiation.
Her critical contribution to oncology resulted in her being elected President of the New York Cancer Society, she was the first woman to be president. What is particularly poignant about this, is that she was elected by peers within her profession, so she was clearly respected and revered for her impact on the lives of those living with cancers.
Dr. Wright’s impact was not only felt in the state of New York, but over her forty-year career she led delegations of cancer researchers to Africa, China, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union. Clearly, for her it was not enough to consider the improvement of human health solely in the United States of America but should be expanded to the world.
These are but a few incredible women who have changed the world of science and medicine for the better. They faced adversity but did not let that prevent them from striving for a better world for all. These scientists deserve our admiration, respect, and thanks for all they have done for us.
“Don’t let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it and make it the life you want to live.”
— Mae Jemison, first African American woman astronaut in space
References:
[1] Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era: Now You See It, Now You Don’t, Robert Charles Smith, p. 37
[2] Inspirational Quotes: Katherine Johnson | NASA Mathematician (wearetechwomen.com)
[3] Alice BALL (scientificwomen.net)
[4] Science, Civil Rights, and the Doll Test (peacefulscience.org)
