July 7, 1995 - Episode 343 - Women of Achievement and Herstory

           Born July 7, 1851, Lillian Jane Martin, American psychologist,
     who in 1929 at age 78 started the field of gerontology by opening a
     clinic for the aged.
         She herself worked on proudly and productively to an advanced
     age, doing such things as traveling through the jungles of South
     America at 87. Her "before" career was as a full professor of
     psychology at Stanford and she was the first woman to head any
     department there. After mandatory retirement at 65, she opened a
     children's clinic and then nine years later moved on to create the
     field of gerontology.
           Her mother wanted her to go to college and both she and her
     mother worked to raise the tuition.  LJM tried to go to Cornell, which
     turned her down because she was a woman.  Vassar, however, gave
     her a full scholarship after she scored so well on her entrance exam,
     (B. A. 1880). 
           Wrote with close friend Fidelia Jewett and later wrote with Mrs.
     Clar de Gruchy.  After teaching for a time, she decided to study
     psychology, went to Gottingen in Germany where, in face of sexual
     discrimination, persisted in gaining her degree.  Worked through the
     ranks at Stanford to become a full professor in 1911, retired at 65 in
     1916. In 1913 the University of Bonn awarded her a Ph.D. for her
     work and discoveries in psychology.
           Became bored and began feeling old so she taught herself to
     type and exercised to strengthen her body. In 1920 she founded Mt.
     Zion Hospital in San Francisco, the first mental hygienic clinic for
     normal pre-school children.  In 1919 she started the work which has
     resulted in reinventing old age.  Led suffrage parade in London with
     Anna Howard Shaw.  Authored _Salvaging Old Age_ (1930) and
     _Sweeping the Cobwebs_ (1933).

     07-07 .................................................

           B. July 7, 1861, Dr. Nettie Maria Stevens, biologist who in 1905
     announced that chromosomes X and Y were responsible for the sex of
     the individual.  A Columbia University professor also published the
     same findings the same year. Earlier she had worked with Thomas
     Hunt Morgan who later won the Nobel Prize for work in genetics.

           Executed July 7, 1865, Mary Surratt was hung without a civil
     trial because she kept a boarding house in which her son and John
     Wilkes Booth sometimes met. No proof of her involvement in the
     assassination of Abraham Lincoln was ever submitted.  According to
     President Andrew Johnson, she "kept the nest that hatched the egg,"
     and that was enough to kill her by an official act of the United
     States. Her son, tried later by a *civilian* court, was acquitted.

           B. July 7, 1915, Billie Holiday, immortal jazz blues singer.

           Event July 7, 1992, incited by Muslim holy men who blamed a
     drought on the immoral and indecent behavior of women, mobs of men
     in Zinder, Niger, burned bars, attacked and burned suspected houses
     of prostitution, and went on a general spree of mayhem against
     women. No numbers of the dead were released.
     Quotes du jour ................................................

           "Age is an accident and nothing to pride oneself on.  The
     important thing is to adapt oneself to the requirements of each
     successive age-class and to function in each as an active participant
     in life, a fully adjusted human being."
           -- Lillian Jane Martin, American psychologist who at age 78,
     started the field of gerontology.

           .................................................

     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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