Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1789-1979

These pioneering studies of women in science pay special attention to the mutual impact of family life and scientific career. The contributors address five key historical changes in such concepts as scientific career, profession, patronage, and family; differences in “gender image” associated with various branches of science; consequences of national differences and emigration; opportunities for scientific work opened or closed by marriage; and levels of women’s awareness about the role of gender in science. 

An international group of historians of science discuss a wide range of European and American women scientists–from early nineteenth-century English botanists to Marie Curie to the twentieth-century theoretical biologist, Dorothy Wrinch.