Forgotten women in chemistry

It all began with a cameo portrait of a young woman in the book, Discovery of the Elements by Mary Elvira Weeks. The young woman was Harriet Brooks. Her research work with Ernest Rutherford, and later J J Thompson and Marie Curie, had long been forgotten. We wondered why Weeks had included the image of this young woman in among all the portraits of aged males. As we traced Brooks’ life through her publications and correspondence, it became clear there was a story which needed telling.

We wrote it. And it was rejected – justifiably so. We had written the book as natural scientists: what she did; where she went; excerpts from her letters; all done. It was fortunate that a reviewer, the late Marianne Ainley, came to our rescue, pointing out that we were doing Brooks a disservice by sharing ‘just the facts’. We needed to contextualise and delve deeply into our subject and her life, to describe the challenges facing a young Victorian woman trying to follow her dream of scientific research in an exclusively male world; we had to re-invent ourselves as amateur social scientists. This we did, producing a richer and more flowing account of her life and work.