Read Ebook: Woman in Science With an Introductory Chapter on Woman's Long Struggle for Things of the Mind by Zahm J A John Augustine

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Among the many inventions attributed to Hypatia, besides the planisphere and astrolabe which she designed for the use of astronomers, are several employed in the study of natural philosophy. Probably the most useful of these is an areometer mentioned by her pupil Synesius. He calls it a hydroscope and describes it as having the form and size of a flute, and graduated in such wise that it can be used for determining the density of liquids. That Hypatia was thoroughly familiar with the science of natural philosophy, as then known, there can be no doubt. That she also contributed materially to its advancement, as well as to that of astronomy, in which she always exhibited a special interest, there is every reason to believe.

All things considered, the Marquise du Ch?telet deservedly takes high rank in the history of mathematical physics. In this department of science she has had few, if any, superiors among her own sex. And, when we recollect that she labored while the foundations of dynamics were still being laid, we shall more readily appreciate the difficulties she had to contend with and the distinct service which her researches and writings rendered to the cause of natural philosophy among her contemporaries.

The first woman to occupy a chair of physics in a university was the famous daughter of Italy, Laura Maria Catarina Bassi. She was born in Bologna in 1711--but five years after the birth of Madame du Ch?telet--and from her most tender years she exhibited an exceptional facility for the acquisition of knowledge.

After she had, through the assistance of excellent masters, become proficient in French and Latin, she took up the study of logic, metaphysics and natural philosophy. In all these branches of learning her progress was so rapid that it far exceeded the fondest expectations of her parents and teachers. Thanks to a wonderful memory and a highly developed reasoning faculty, she was able, while still a young maiden, to prove herself the possessor of knowledge that is ordinarily obtained only in the maturity of age and after long years of systematic study.

When she had attained the twenty-first year of her age she was induced by her family and friends--much against her own inclination, however--to take part in a public disputation on philosophy. Her entering the lists against some of the most distinguished scholars of the time was made the occasion for an unusual demonstration in her honor. The hall of the university in which such intellectual jousts were generally held was too small for the multitude that was eager to witness the young girl's formal appearance among the scholars and the notables of the old university city. It was, accordingly, arranged that the disputation should be held in the great hall of the public Palace of the Senators.

When the argumentation began the young girl found herself pitted against five of the most distinguished scholars of Bologna. But she was fully equal to the occasion and passed the ordeal to which she was subjected in a manner that excited the admiration and won the plaudits of all present. Cardinal Lambertini was so impressed with the brilliant defence which she had made against the five trained dialecticians and the evidence she gave of varied and profound learning that he paid her a special visit the next day in her own home to renew his congratulations on her signal triumph and to encourage her to continue the prosecution of her studies.

In less than a month after this interesting event Laura Bassi, in response to the expressed desire of the whole of Bologna, presented herself as a candidate for the doctorate in philosophy. This was the occasion for a still more brilliant and imposing ceremony. It was held in the spacious Hall of Hercules in the Communal Palace, which was magnificently decorated for the splendid function. In addition to the distinguished personages who had been spectators of the fair student's triumph a few weeks before, there was present in the vast audience the noted French ecclesiastic, Cardinal Polignac, who was on his way from Rome to France.

The heroine of the hour, dressed in a black gown, was ushered into the great hall, preceded by two college beadles and accompanied by two of the most prominent ladies of the Bolognese nobility. She was given a seat between the chancellor and the prior of the university, who, in turn, were flanked by the professors and officials of the institution.

So profound was the impression made on the university senate by the deep erudition of Laura Bassi that it was eager to secure her services in its teaching body. But, before she could be offered a chair in the institution, long-established custom required that she should pass a public examination on the subject matter which she was to teach. Five examiners were chosen by lot, and all of them proved to be men whose names, says Fantuzzi, "will always be held by our university in glorious remembrance." They had all to promise under oath that the candidate for the chair should have no knowledge before the examination of the questions which were to be asked, and that the test of the aspirant's qualifications to fill the position sought should be absolutely free from any suspicion of favoritism or partiality.

Notwithstanding the difficulties she had to confront, Laura acquitted herself with even greater credit than on former occasions of a similar character. There was no question in the mind of any one present at the examination of the candidate's ability to fill the chair of physics, and it was, accordingly, offered to her by acclamation.

A few years after she had become a member of the university faculty Laura was a European celebrity, and no one eminent by learning or birth passed through Bologna without availing himself of the opportunity of making the acquaintance of so extraordinary a woman. Men of science and letters vied with princes and emperors in doing honor to one who was looked upon by many as being, like Arete of old, endowed with a soul and a genius far above that of ordinary mortals, and as being the possessor of a talent that indicated something superhuman.

Laura Bassi was in constant correspondence with the most celebrated scholars of Europe, and more especially with those who had attained eminence in her special line of work. Among the letters received from her illustrious correspondents were two from Voltaire. They were written shortly after the author had been refused admittance into the French academy. He then bethought himself of securing membership in the Academy of Sciences of Bologna. This, he reasoned, would be a splendid tribute to the versatility of his genius and would, at the same time, be a biting satire on the demigods of French literature who had dared to exclude him from their society.

That he might not meet the same refusal on the part of the Academy of Bologna as he had experienced in Paris, Voltaire determined not to rely entirely on the good will of the male members of the Bolognese academy. He accordingly resolved to enlist the services of Laura Bassi, who was one of the leading members of this distinguished body, and trust to her influence in his behalf on the hearts of her colleagues.

The first letter, written in Italian, is so characteristic of the writer that it will bear reproduction.

"Most Illustrious Lady," he writes from Paris, the 23d of November, 1744, "I have been wishing to journey to Bologna in order to be able one day to tell my countrymen I have seen Signora Bassi; but, being deprived of this honor, let it at least be permitted me to place at your feet this philosophic homage and to salute the honor of her age and of women. There is not a Bassi in London, and I should be more happy to be a member of the Academy of Bologna than of that of the English, although it has produced a Newton. If your protection should obtain for me this title, of which I am so ambitious, the gratitude of my heart will be equal to my admiration for yourself. I beg you to excuse the style of a foreigner who presumes to write you in Italian, but who is as great an admirer of yours as if he were born in Bologna."

The second letter of Voltaire is in response to one received from Laura Bassi announcing that he had been elected to membership in the Bologna Academy. The first sentence of it suffices to indicate its tenor. "Nothing," he writes, "was ever more grateful to me than to receive from your hand the first advice that I had the honor, by means of your favor, of being united by this new link to one who had already bound me to her car by all the chains of esteem and admiration."

Like so many of her gifted sisters of sunny Italy, Laura was in every way "a perfect woman nobly planned." Of a deeply religious nature, she was as pious as she was intelligent, and was throughout her life the devoted friend of the poor and the afflicted. The mother of twelve children, she never permitted her scientific and literary work to conflict with her domestic duties or to detract in the least from the singular affection which so closely united her to her husband and children. She was as much at home with the needle and the spindle as she was with her books and the apparatus of her laboratory. And she was equally admirable whether superintending her household, looking after her children, entertaining the great and the learned of the world, or in holding the rapt attention of her students in the lecture room. She was, indeed, a living proof that higher education is not incompatible with woman's natural avocations; and that cerebral development does not lead to race suicide and all the other dire results attributed to it by a certain class of our modern sociologists and anti-feminists.

Considering her manifold duties as a professor in the university and the mother of a large family, it was scarcely to be expected that Laura Bassi would have much time for writing for the press. She was, however, able to devote some of her leisure moments to the cultivation of the Muses, of whom, Fantuzzi informs us, she was a favorite. Her verses, as well as her contributions to the science of physics, are scattered through various publications, but they suffice to show that the accounts of her transmitted to us by her contemporaries were not exaggerated.

A learned French traveler who visited Laura in Bologna describes her as having a face that was sweet, serious and modest. Her eyes were dark and sparkling, and she was blessed with a powerful memory, a solid judgment, and a ready imagination. "She conversed fluently with me in Latin for an hour with grace and precision. She is very proficient in metaphysics; but she prefers modern physics, particularly that of Newton."

How many of our college women of to-day could readily carry on a conversation in Latin, if this were the sole medium of communication, or discuss the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle in the tongue of Cicero, or give public lectures on the physico-mathematical discoveries of Descartes and Newton in what was the universal language of the learned world, even less than a century ago?

It must not, however, be inferred from the foregoing statements regarding the great intellectual capacity of Laura Bassi or the enthusiastic demonstrations that were so frequently made in her honor that she was unique in this respect among her countrywomen. Special attention has been called to her as a type of the large number of her sex who, by their learning and culture, graced the courts and honored the universities of her country for full ten centuries. Scarcely had death removed Laura Bassi from a career in which for twenty-eight years she had won the plaudits of the whole of Europe, when the University of Bologna welcomed to its learned halls two other women who, in their respective lines of research, were fully as eminent as their departed countrywoman. These were Maria dalle Donne, for whom Napoleon established a chair of obstetrics, and Clotilda Tambroni, the famous professor of Greek, of whom a noted Hellenist declared, "Only three persons in Europe are able to write Greek as well as she does, and not more than fifteen are able to understand her."

Burckhardt, in his thoughtful work on the culture of the Italian Renaissance, has a paragraph which expresses, in a few words, what was always the attitude of the Italian father toward the education of his daughter.

"The education of the woman of the upper class was absolutely the same as that of the man. The Italian of the Renaissance did not for a moment hesitate to give his son and daughter the same literary and philosophical training. He considered the knowledge of the works of antiquity life's greatest good, and he could not, therefore, deny to woman participation in such knowledge. Hence the perfection attained by the daughters of noble families in writing and speaking Latin."

This attitude of the members of the nobility toward the education of their daughters was essentially the same as that of the universities of Italy toward women who had a thirst for knowledge. For from the dawn of learning in Salerno to the present there never was a time when women were not as cordially welcomed to the universities as students and professors as were the men; and never a time when the merit of intellectual work was not determined without regard to sex.

In Bologna, where were passed the sixty-seven years of her mortal life, the name of Laura Bassi, like that of her illustrious colleague, Luigi Galvani, is one to conjure with, and a name that is still pronounced with respect and reverence. Her last resting place is in the Church of Corpus Domini, the same sacred shrine in which were deposited all that was mortal of the renowned discoverer of galvanic electricity.

Two years after Signora Bassi was gathered to her fathers there was born near Edinburgh to a Scotch admiral, Sir William George Fairfax, an infant daughter who was destined to shed as much luster on her sex in the British Isles as the incomparable Laura Bassi had diffused on womankind in Italy during her brilliant career in "Bologna, the learned." She is known in the annals of science as Mary Somerville, and was in every way a worthy successor of her famous sister in Italy, both as a woman and as a votary of science.

After Mrs. Somerville's death, in 1872, at the advanced age of ninety-two, the number of women who devoted themselves to the study and teaching of physics was greatly augmented. The brilliant success of Laura Bassi and Mary Somerville had not been without results, and their notable achievements as authors and teachers had the effect of stimulating women everywhere to emulate their example, and encouraging them to devote more attention to a branch of science which, until then, had been regarded by the general public as beyond the sphere and capacity of what was assumed to be the intellectually weaker sex.

One of the most eminent scientific women of the present day in England is Mrs. Ayrton, the wife of the late Professor W. E. Ayrton, the well-known electrician. Her chosen field of research, like that of her husband, has been electricity, in which she has achieved marked distinction. Her investigations on the electric arc and on the sand ripples of the seashore won for her the first medal ever awarded to a woman by the Royal Society. When, however, in 1902, she was formally nominated for fellowship in this same society, she failed of election because the council of the society discovered that "it had no legal power to elect a married woman to this distinction."

How different it was in the case of Laura Bassi, who was an active member of all the leading scientific and literary societies of Italy, where from time immemorial women have been as cordially welcomed to membership in its learned societies as to the chairs of its great universities.

The list of the women who in Europe and America are now engaged in physical research and in teaching physics in schools and colleges is a long one, and the work accomplished by them is, in many cases, of a high order of merit. It is only, indeed, during the present generation that such work has been made generally accessible to them; and, considering the success which has already attended their efforts in this branch of science, we have every reason to believe that the future will bring forth many others of their sex who will take rank with such intellectual luminaries as Hypatia, Mme. du Ch?telet, Laura Bassi and Mary Somerville.

FOOTNOTES:

Nobilis hic Arete dormit, lux Helladis, ore Tyndaris at tibi par, Icarioti, fide. Patris Aristippi calamumque animamque dederunt, Socratis huic linguam Maeonidaeque Dii."

WOMEN IN CHEMISTRY

The first woman deserving special mention in the history of chemistry is the wife of the immortal Lavoisier, the most famous of the founders of modern chemical science. While yet in her teens, this remarkable woman gave evidence of exceptional intelligence and will power. She was thoroughly devoted to her husband, and had the greatest admiration for his genius. Her highest ambition was to prove herself worthy of him and to render herself competent to assist him in those investigations that have given him such imperishable renown. With this end in view, she learned Latin and English, and she thus became an accomplished translator from these languages of any chemical works which might aid her spouse in his epoch-making researches. It was she who translated for him the chemical memoirs of Cavendish, Henry, Kirwan, Priestly and other noted English scientific investigators.

All Mme. Lavoisier's writings testify to her great admiration of the genius of her husband. Intimately associated with him in his work, she combatted for the triumph of his ideas and sought to make converts to them. One of her most notable converts was the Swiss chemist, de Saussure. "You have, Madame," he writes her, "triumphed over my doubts, at least in the matter of phlogiston, which is the principal object of the interesting work of which you have done me the honor of sending me a copy."

To realize the importance of the work in which Mme. Lavoisier participated, it suffices to recall the fact that her husband, as one of the creators of modern chemistry, was the first to demonstrate the existence of the law of the conservation of matter, which declares that in all chemical changes nothing is lost and nothing is created. The co-discoverer with Scheele and Priestly of oxygen, he was the first one to exhibit the r?le of this important element in the phenomena of combustion and respiration and the first, also, to lay the foundations of a chemical nomenclature. We are not, then, surprised to learn that Mme. Lavoisier's salon, even long after her lamented husband's death, was frequented by the most eminent savants of the time. For here were gathered such scientific luminaries as Cuvier, Laplace, Arago, Lagrange, Prony, Berthollet, Delambre, Biot, Humboldt, and others scarcely less brilliant.

After the conclusion of Mme. Lavoisier's work in the laboratory of her husband, little was accomplished by women in chemistry for more than half a century. The reason was simple. Chemistry was not a part of the curriculum of studies for girls either in Europe or America. Even "during the sixties," writes a teacher of one of the prominent female seminaries of the United States, "the study of chemistry was mostly confined to the textbook, supplemented once a year by a course of lectures from an itinerant expert, who with his tanks of various gases produced highly spectacular effects."

When one recollects that the first institution in America--Vassar--for the higher education of women was not opened until 1865, one will understand that there were previously to this date few opportunities for women to study either chemistry or any of the other sciences.

The first scientific institution to open its doors to women was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This was on May 11, 1876, when the governing board of the institute decided that "hereafter special students in chemistry shall be admitted without regard to sex." In less than a year after this event every department of this institution was open to women, and any one who could pass the requisite examination was admitted as a student.

Five years, however, before women were formally admitted to the courses of chemistry an energetic young graduate from Vassar, eager to devote her life to the pursuit of science, had, as an exceptional favor, been allowed to enter the Institute as a special student in chemistry. As she was the first woman in the United States to enter a strictly professional scientific school, her entrance marks the beginning of a new epoch in the history of female education. The name of this ardent votary of science was Miss Ellen Swallow, better known to the world as Mrs. Ellen H. Richards.

Mrs. Richards had not devoted herself long to the study of her favorite science before she resolved to apply the knowledge thus gained to the problems of daily life. She saw, among other things, the necessity of a complete reform in domestic economy, and resolutely set to work to have her views adopted and put in practice. She was, in consequence, one of the first leaders of the crusade in behalf of pure food, and her lectures and books on this all-important subject contributed greatly toward the diffusion of exact knowledge respecting the dangers lurking in unwholesome food.

She was likewise one of the first to apply the science of chemistry to an exhaustive study of the science of nutrition--to the study of food and the proper preparation of food materials. In this she was eminently successful, and was able to achieve for home economics what the illustrious Liebig had many years before accomplished for agricultural chemistry--put it on a firm and lasting basis. To her the kitchen was the center and source of political economy.

The facts of science, indeed, were to Mrs. Richards more than mere uncorrelated facts. They are potential agencies of service, and their chief value consists in their enabling us to control our environment in such wise as to secure the maximum of physical well being. Hence her constant insistence on personal cleanliness, on the cleanliness of food, of the house we live in, and, above all, of the kitchen. Hence, also, her preaching, in season and out of season, on the necessity of pure air, pure water and abundance of vitalizing sunshine.

We cannot, then, wonder that sanitary chemistry eventually became the life work of Mrs. Richards, and that, when the course of sanitary engineering was inaugurated in the Institute of Technology--the first course of its kind in the world--she became an important agent in its development and contributed immensely to its popularity and prestige.

She held the position of instructor of sanitary chemistry in the institute for twenty-seven years. During this time she trained a large number of young men in her chosen specialty, and these, after graduating, engaged in similar work in various parts of the New and the Old World.

The branch of sanitary chemistry to which Mrs. Richards devoted most attention was air, water and sewage analysis. In this she was a recognized expert, and her advice and services were sought in all parts of the country. During the last three years of her life she acted, according to her own testimony, as general sanitary adviser to no fewer than two score corporations and schools. In addition to this she was also during this brief period consulted on the subject of foods by nearly two hundred educational and other institutions.

What, however, constituted the greatest contribution of Mrs. Richards to the public health was the part she took in the great sanitary survey of the waters of the State of Massachusetts. During this long and laborious investigation she analyzed more than forty thousand samples of water. These analyses exhibited the condition of the water from all parts of the state during all seasons of the year and were of the greatest value in solving a number of important problems in state sanitation.

But notwithstanding the drafts made on her time and energy by her classwork in the laboratory and her occupation as sanitary engineer for scores of public and private institutions, she still found leisure to engage in many important movements which had in view the public health and the betterment of sanitary conditions in city and country. It is safe to say that no one ever put her knowledge of chemical science to more practical use or made it more perfectly subserve the public weal than did Mrs. Richards. To spread among the masses a knowledge of the principles of sanitation, to make them realize how indispensable to health are pure food, pure water, pure air and life-giving sunshine was her great mission in life, and in this she displayed an energy and a tireless zeal which were an inspiration to all with whom she came into contact.

This indefatigable woman, it is proper to record here, might have distinguished herself as a discoverer in chemical science had she elected to devote her life to original research rather than to utilizing the knowledge already available for the welfare of her fellows. Thus, after a careful analysis of the rare mineral samarskite, she found an insoluble residue which led her to believe might contain unknown elements. This view she repeatedly expressed to her co-workers in the laboratory. But she was unwilling to take from what she regarded more important work the time necessary for making investigations which might have given her undying fame as a discoverer. For not long afterward this insoluble residue, in the hands of two French chemists, yielded the exceedingly rare elements, samarium and gadolinium.

Another chemist of a less altruistic nature than Mrs. Richards would not have resisted the temptation to achieve distinction in the domain of original research. But where there was so much suffering to be relieved and so much ignorance to be removed regarding the most fundamental principles of sanitation, this philanthropic woman preferred to put to practical use what she called "the considerable body of useful knowledge now lying on our shelves."

Her duty, as she conceived it, is well indicated in the following paragraph, taken from a thoughtful discussion by her of the subject of home economics a short time before her death in 1911. "The sanitary research worker in laboratory and field," she declares, "has gone nearly to the limit of his value. He will soon be smothered in his own work, if no one takes it. Meanwhile children die by the thousands; contagious diseases take toll of hundreds; back alleys remain foul and the streets are unswept; school-houses are unwashed and danger lurks in the drinking cups and about the towels. Dust is stirred up each morning with the feather duster to greet the warm, moist noses and throats of the children. To the watchful expert it seems like the old cities dancing and making merry on the eve of a volcanic outbreak."

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