June 16, 1995 - Episode 322 - Women of Achievement and Herstory

      B. 06-16-1902, Barbara McClintock, geneticist whose
groundbreaking work was published in 1951 when she was 49, but
the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine based on that work was
not awarded until 1983 when she was 81.  The Nobel is not awarded
postumously.  
      Her contribution was so great a leap in scientific thinking that
her discovery that chromosomes were not stable and genetic material
could change in a short period of time was considered a crackpot
theory when she postulated it. It took the several Nobel awards to
men whose discoveries in DNA structure came AFTER hers to verify
her basic theory. She was only the third woman to be awarded the
prize as an individual as she was the third woman (in 1944) to be
elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
      Her theory of the two-unit interacting system of genetics was
the precursor of the gene regulation theory which won Francois
Jacob and Jacquest Monod the Nobel in 1965. Then in 1962
biophysicists Maurice Wilkins, James Watson, and Francis Crick
received the Nobel (leaving out any mention of Rosalin Franklin who
provided the basic scientific evidence for the DNA double helix
theory but who had died at 37) for what amounted to proof of
McClintock's basic theory. (This is a somewhat simplistic definition of
a VERY complex scientific subject, but the awarding of the Nobel 32
years AFTER the publication of her theory and AFTER several other
scientific groups had won the prize in related research, and AFTER
she had lived long past her expected longevity is just plain politics.)
      She was awarded a chair at Cornell University in 1965 where
she had obtained her Ph.D. in 1927, and received the Albert Lasker
Basic Medical Research Award plus many others long before the
Nobel. Her father opposed education for girls and her mother thought
her interest "unfeminine."  

06-16 Anniversaries ...............................................

      B. June 16, 1738, Mary Katherine Goddard.  Her name was on
the masthead as editor and publisher of the newspaper _The
Maryland Journal_.  She had taken over the printing business from
her husband. She was the first to publish the Declaration of
Independence in 1776 and was postmaster of the US Post Office in
Baltimore 1775-1789 to be replaced by a male who allegedly could
travel (and was more suitable).

      B. June 16, 1842, Mary Nimmo Moran, artist of copperplate
etchings of such quality that she became the first woman elected to
the prestigious New York Etching Club and earned a world renowned
reputation.

      B. June 16, 1881, Natalia Sergeyeuna Goncharova, prominent
Russian abstract painter.

      B. June 16, 1892, Jennie Grossinger, Austrian-born American
hotel executive and philanthropist, directed the family enterprise
from the time it was a small farm hostel taking in summer boarders
to one of the most famous resort hotels in the world: Grossinger's in
the Catskill Mountains. At her death in 1964, Grossinger's consisted
of 35 buildings on 1,200 acres and served 150,000 guests a year.  Her
children carry on the tradition. To begin, her parents had borrowed
$450 to buy a farm where her mother cooked, her father did
maintenance, and Jennie was the chambermaid and bookkeeper for a
few summer guests.  

      B. June 16, 1917, Katharine Graham, newspaper executive of the
_Washington Post_ who okayed the investigation which uncovered the
Watergate scandal that felled President Richard Nixon and who
approved the publication of the _Pentagon Papers_ that exposed high
Defense Department misdeeds.  Without her courage and putting her
financial neck on the block, neither story would probably have been
printed.  

Quotes du jour ...............................................

      "Why is it men are permitted to be obsessed about their work,
but women are only permitted to be obsessed about men?"     

            -- Barbra Streisand

      ....................... * .......................

      Our thanks to Paula Levine, the expert on commas, for her
splendid proofreading of this series.

      ....................... * ........................

>>>(C) 1995 Irene Stuber, PO Box 6185, Hot Springs National Park, AR
71902, 501-624-5262 for direct fax or voice mail ID #300,
irenestuber@delphi.com. Distribute verbatim copies freely with
copyright notice for non-profit use. Don't let anyone tell you there
weren't notable and effective women throughout history.  They were
always there, but historians failed to note them in our histories so
that each generation of women has had to reinvent themselves.
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