Book suggestions (women and science): Rosalind Franklin and Henrietta Lacks.

[BlueIris]

Last edited Fri May 4, 2012, 01:30 AM - Edit history (1)

Book suggestions are different from my book recs because I haven't read these titles. They have been very popular with friends and family, however, so I thought I would pass them along.

Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, by Brenda Maddox.

http://www.amazon.com/Rosalind-Franklin-The-Dark-Lady/dp/0060985089

From Amazon: "In 1962, Maurice Wilkins, Francis Crick, and James Watson received the Nobel Prize, but it was Rosalind Franklin's data and photographs of DNA that led to their discovery.

Brenda Maddox tells a powerful story of a remarkably single-minded, forthright, and tempestuous young woman who, at the age of fifteen, decided she was going to be a scientist, but who was airbrushed out of the greatest scientific discovery of the twentieth century."


The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336103016&sr=1-1

"Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells."

[MuseRider]

1. Oooh

I started but sadly never finished the Henrietta Lacks book. Too busy to actually read much these days except to come here now and again. It was a great book as far as I got. What I read was sad but not surprising at all.

[LiberalLoner]

3. I read it all the way through - great book!

Also made a donation to the Lacks family. Felt I owed them something.

[longship]

2. Others

Brian Trent wrote a novelization about one of my favorite woman in history, Hypatia, the last curator of the Library of Alexander.

More:

Hildegard of Bingen, another polymath, who lived in the 12th century CE. A physician, a composer, a mathematician.

Caroline Herschel, who was an exquisite astronomer. Unfortunately her discoveries were eclipsed -- so to speak -- by her brother's gender. But astronomers worldwide recognize her as important in the world of astronomy.

Ada Lovelace, who is legendary in computer science as the very first computer programmer. Furthermore, she did it in the 19th century! Charles Babbage designed the first computing devices. Ada was his programming staff. By the way, she was Lord Byron's daughter.

Marie Curie was the first person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes in science (physics and chemistry). I do not know for certain, but this may be an achievement that has not been repeated. Regardless, it is a rare event, first achieved by a woman.

Henrietta Leavitt made one of the most profound astronomical discoveries of the the 20th century. Without her discovery Edwin Hubble does not come up with the theory of the expanding universe, or the Big Bang. She never got credit for it, except history tells the real story.

There are a multitude of other women in history of science who have had profound influences, which brings us back to Rosiland Franklin. Indeed, without her work on X-Ray examination of what we all know as DNA, Watson and Crick might not have figured out the double helix. Unfortunately, Franklin did not live to see the Nobel awarded for their achievement (Nobel prizes are not given posthumously). Only alternative realities could speculate whether her X-Ray photos of DNA would have been enough. I suspect, if she had lived, she would have shared in Crick's and Watson's triumph.

There are many other women in science stories. All are compelling. Many tell a story of a women holding herself up against gender bias of the likes that modern women have no experience.

BTW, women are kicking guys asses in undergraduate academics. They are also doing the same in graduate biology and medicine! Look it up. It's a fact!

[MuseRider]

4. Hildegard of Bingen

Wonderful!

Have you heard Rainbow Body by Christopher Theofanidis?

A wonderful piece I have been priviledged to play twice.

"Rainbow Body was the coming together of two ideas- one, my fascination with Hildegard of Bingen's music (the principal melody of Rainbow Body is loosely based on one of her chants, "Ave Maria, O Auctix Vite&quot , and two, the Tibetan Buddhist idea of "Rainbow Body," which is that when an enlightened being dies physically, his or her body is absorbed directly back into the universe as energy, as light. This seemed to me to be the metaphor for Hildegard's music as much as anything."