As part of the celebration
by the University of Toronto of the 120th anniversary of the official
admission of women to our university, a discussion group met in the
seminar room of the Department of Biochemistry at 4.00 p.m. on March
9. The themes were the history of women in biochemistry and within our
department, followed by a discussion centred around the recent Brenda
Maddox book “Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA”; a
number of copies of the book had been distributed to members of the
department.
The Chair of the
department, Prof. Reinhart Reithmeier, introduced the session by pointing
out that until coming to Toronto and reading the plaque outside the
Medical Sciences Building, he had not known that the Menten of the famous
Michaelis-Menten equation was a woman. He also informed the group that
Margaret Thatcher had been a biochemist before rising to fame as the
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and he distributed copies of a
paper on which she was co-author under her maiden name of Roberts (H.H.G.
Jellinek and M.H. Roberts. The saponification of a-monostearin in a
monolayer, J. Sci. Food Agric., 2, September, 1951).
Prof. Reithmeier then introduced
the departmental historian, Prof. Marian Packham, to provide some recollections
about women in our department. Her comments follow.
This is a celebration
of the contributions of women to our department and of the many women
who have gone all over the world from our department as competent biochemists.
Prof. Reithmeier has suggested that my remarks should take the form
of the question, “Did you know?”, so I shall pose 10 questions.
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Did you know that
the first research paper of Maud Menten, later of Michaelis-Menten
fame, was written with her supervisor, Prof. A.B. Macallum, in 1906.
He was in the process of founding our department at that time.
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Did you know that
our first cross-appointed professor was a woman? Clara Benson was
listed as a member of our department from its founding in 1907 until
1928. She had obtained her Ph.D. in the Chemistry Dept. in 1903 and
was one of the first 2 women to hold professorial rank at U of T (1920).
She was first appointed as Associate Professor of Physiological Chemistry
(as Biochemistry was called at that time) in the newly formed Faculty
of Household Science. She later became Dean of that faculty.
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Do you know about
Jeanne Manery Fisher, the first woman to become a member of the core
professorial staff and an inspiration for all of us?
Jeanne Manery Fisher
She obtained her B.A. here in Biological and Medical Sciences in 1932
and went on to earn an M.A. and Ph.D. During post-doctoral studies
in the United States, she married K.C. Fisher who was appointed to
the Zoology Dept. at U of T. But in 1940 when Jeanne returned to Toronto,
her way to an appointment in our department was blocked because of
the universityís policy that there were to be no married women on
staff. However, Prof. Wasteneys, the chair, was able to wangle her
an appointment as a “junior demonstrator” because, as
she wrote “the position was so unimportant”. She remained
at this rank until 1948 when she finally became an Assistant Professor
(13 years after her Ph.D.!) From 1940 to 1948 (while she was a “junior
demonstrator”) her list of accomplishments is astounding. She
carried a full undergraduate teaching load in our department, including
double classes of medical students destined for war service, and took
over her husbandís lecture and laboratory teaching in the Dept. of
Zoology while he was involved with the war effort. She carried out
research on shock with Donald Solandt, established her own research
lab, where, with the connivance of Prof. Wasteneys, she was allowed
to supervise graduate students. Meanwhile, she gave birth to two children.
I do not have time to describe the research that she carried on until
her death in 1986, or her role in establishing the Equal Opportunities
Committee of the Canadian Biochemical Society, or the well-deserved
honours that eventually recognized her accomplishments. Our department
was enriched by her scientific achievements, her dedication to teaching,
her warm and encouraging relationships with students and colleagues
and her leadership toward the acceptance of women as equal partners
in the field of science.
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Did you know that
up to the end of 2003, about 88 women received Ph.D.s in our department,
and that half of these were awarded since 1990? We're making progress!
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Did you know that
one of these Ph.D. recipients from our department (in 1958) was Diana
Michener, who was the first head of the Michener Institute?
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Did you know that
our celebration of women in the department should not be confined
to professors and Ph.D. graduates? We must recognize and appreciate
the contributions of our Tutors and Lecturers. In recent years, all
of them have been women who chose to work part-time in our laboratory
courses, and some lecture courses. People holding these positions
were called “Fellows” in the 1950s ‚ I was a “Fellow”
at that time - I don't know when this inappropriate terminology was
dropped.
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Did you know that
in the 1940s our department was often referred to in the university
as “Miss Delamereís department” while Prof. Wasteneys
was chair? From 1919 to 1961 (42 years) Molly Delamere was the only
person in our departmental office. She was departmental secretary
and business officer; she typed correspondence and manuscripts, she
was the chief purchasing agent, the librarian, and custodian of the
only telephone in the department. Patricia Staton was our business
officer for 16 years and now we have had the skills of Suzanne DíAlvise
for 20 years. I should point out that with one exception (in 1986)
it has always been ëthe girls in the officeí who have kept us running
smoothly. Do you know that Carol Justice's history with us goes back
to our time in the old medical building before the days of electric
typewriters when she was a whiz at accurately typing 65 words a minute
(age 19)?
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Do you know that
we should also be celebrating the contributions of the many women
who have been post docs., research assistants and associates, technicians,
demonstrators, teaching assistants, glassware washers, and in the
old medical building, animal attendants and cleaners (in the old building
we had our benches, shelves and reagent bottles dusted by these women).
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Do you realize
how much the climate for women at the university has gradually changed
over the years? For example: In the 1940s, women were not allowed
to have keys to the Medical Sciences Building because it was judged
to be “unseemly” for them to work at night unchaperoned.
In 1957, the U of T President, Sidney Smith, in his Annual Report
, discussed problems of recruitment and salaries. He wrote, “The
young man completing graduate work this year does not care very much
about what salaries professors were making in 1938. He cares about
what he can make in 1957”. Obviously, in 1957, the president
of the university was expecting that only men would be hired into
professorial positions.
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Did you know that
it was not until 1973 when President John Evans appointed Prof. Jill
Conway as the first woman vice president (internal affairs) that women's
salaries were investigated. I remember filling out a form that asked
me to name a male professor in our department with an academic history
similar to mine. I wonít tell you whom I chose, but I received a 35%
increase in salary on July 1, 1974.
In 1953 when Watson and Crick
published their famous paper on the double helix, I was a graduate student,
and all the other graduate students working under my supervisor, Gordon
Butler, were working on DNA. So last week, I looked up what they had
written about this famous event. Chris Helleiner's thesis in 1955 mentioned
that both chemists and physicists were working on the structure of DNA
and “the model of Watson and Crick seems to supersede the others”.
Then he just went on to discuss the ideas of other investigators. In
1959, Renata Diringer (now Maas) wrote “Watson and Crick, arguing
from their X-ray crystallographic studiesÖ”. We now know that
Watson and Crick did not do the X-ray crystallography, but in the late
1950s it is evident that this was not understood in our department.
There was no mention of Rosalind Franklin in any of the theses I looked
at. So to-day, our department is very belatedly recognizing the contributions
she made.
These remarks were followed
by a compelling description by Prof. David Pulleyblank of the type of
environment in which Rosalind Franklin worked, and how her X-ray crystallography
contributed to Watson and Crickís concept of the double helix of DNA.
The ensuing lively discussion by staff and graduate students included
comments about Watson's book, the Double Helix, and speculations about
the reasons for the current dearth of women in professorial positions
in biochemistry.
For over a decade now, the
majority of full-time undergraduate students at the University of Toronto
have been women. The same is now true for full-time graduate students.
In the Department of Biochemistry, we have had an equal representation
of male and female graduate students, both at the M.Sc. and Ph.D. levels,
for many years. In the future, it will be important for the Department
to continue to make an effort to increase its complement of female faculty
members to more closely reflect our student population. Some progress
has been made in this regard, but it remains a challenge to be met.
Available for loan in the
Departmental Office are copies of:
The book: “Rosalind
Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA” by Brenda Maddox
A Nova Video entitled:
"The Secret of Photo 51" describing the role of Rosalind Franklin
in determining the structure of DNA
