Scientists Anonymous: Great Stories of Women in Science [Paperback]

This book (in its 1st edition incarnation) provided some revelation for me - a female wanna-be scientist. Since reading it I have gone on to study for a PhD myself - perhaps I have become one of the women bridging back the gap(!) In any case, the revelation was nothing short of an understanding that women had not been absent from science in history because of oppression, but that they had just not been credited with their achievements because of that oppression - which in case you're wondering really IS a big revelation to young females competing with so much genderisation in the sciences.

The only failing of this book is that it cannot possibly fit all of the stories of forgotten scientists, nor adequately do each story justice - for that I think we are in need of a series.

Having got so much out of it myself I have recently bought the new edition in the hopes of inspiring my nieces. I only wish it could be core reading in schools!

There is much of interest in Patricia Fara's book, but the author's single-minded determination to 'confirm' the basic thesis of her book leads to her giving incomplete, and sometimes misleading and inaccurate, accounts of events. The tone of the book is set from the beginning, in the chapter with the title "Present": "Many people argue that it is a waste of time teaching girls physics, because they are inherently incapable of grappling with mathematical equations and lack a good 3-D imagination." I have been interested in science, education and politics for longer than I care to remember and I have never heard, or read, anyone uttering this absurd notion in the terms expressed by Fara, let alone "many people".

It would take an essay to point out some of the deficiencies and over-simplifications in Fara's accounts, so a couple of examples will have to suffice. Fara includes Rosalind Franklin as an example of "women excluded because of her sex" from a Nobel Prize. But Franklin was dead when the relevant award was made, and it is a condition of the Prize that it is not awarded posthumously. On the astronomer "Joyce" [actually Jocelyn] Bell Burnell, Fara writes: "According to Burnell, she should have shared the Nobel Prize that was awarded to her [Ph.D} supervisor." But in an article that appeared in "Annals of the New York Academy of Science" in 1977, Bell Burnell gave her reasons why she disagreed with those who thought she should have been awarded a share in the Nobel, finishing "I believe it would demean Nobel Prizes if they were awarded to research students, except in very exceptional cases, and I do not believe this is one of them."

Finally, in relation to Einstein's first wife, Mileva Maric Einstein, Fara that she "was also a physicist". In fact Mileva Maric twice failed the Zurich Polytechnic diploma exam for teaching mathematics and physics in secondary school, and did not publish a single article on physics. Fara also writes: "Some historians claim that Mileva Einstein (1875-1948) was the true source of inspiration for Albert Einstein's revolutionary theories of physics." Contary to this assertion, not a single one of the published proponents of this claim is an historian of physics, science, or any other kind of historian.

Children should be presented with a rounded account of scientific events and scientists, not one too often verging on propaganda for a particular point of view.

A nice introduction to women in science. Many I was not familiar with and each entry could most likely be written as a book. The photos and illustrations are excellent, the writing is clear and it's a quick read leaving you wishing for more details.