The Exceptions
Nancy Hopkins and the Fight for Women in Science
Published on 28. February 2023
432 pages
978-1-9821-3185-2 (ISBN)
Description
A New York Times Notable Book
As late as 1999, women who succeeded in science were called "exceptional" as if it were unusual for them to be so bright. They were exceptional, not because they could succeed at science but because of all they accomplished despite the hurdles.
"Gripping…one puts down the book inspired by the women's grit, tenacity, and brilliance." ?Science
"Riveting." ?Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Gene
In 1963, a female student was attending a lecture given by Nobel Prize winner James Watson, then tenured at Harvard. At nineteen, she was struggling to define her future. She had given herself just ten years to fulfill her professional ambitions before starting the family she was expected to have. For women at that time, a future on the usual path of academic science was unimaginable?but during that lecture, young Nancy Hopkins fell in love with the promise of genetics. Confidently believing science to be a pure meritocracy, she embarked on a career.
In 1999, Hopkins, now a noted molecular geneticist and cancer researcher at MIT, divorced and childless, found herself underpaid and denied the credit and resources given to men of lesser rank. Galvanized by the flagrant favoritism, Hopkins led a group of sixteen women on the faculty in a campaign that prompted MIT to make the historic admission that it had long discriminated against its female scientists. The sixteen women were a formidable group: their work has advanced our understanding of everything from cancer to geology, from fossil fuels to the inner workings of the human brain. And their work to highlight what they called "21st-century discrimination"?a subtle, stubborn, often unconscious bias?set off a national reckoning with the pervasive sexism in science.
From the Pulitzer Prize?winning journalist who broke the story, The Exceptions chronicles groundbreaking science and a history-making fight for equal opportunity. It is the "excellent and infuriating" (The New York Times) story of how this group of determined, brilliant women used the power of the collective and the tools of science to inspire ongoing radical change. And it offers an intimate look at the passion that drives discovery, and a rare glimpse into the competitive, hierarchical world of elite science?and the women who dared to challenge it.
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02/2024
Simon & Schuster
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02/2023
Simon & Schuster
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Person
Kate Zernike
Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- A Note on Names and Language
- Prologue
- Part 1
- Chapter 1: An Epiphany on Divinity Avenue
- Chapter 2: The Choice
- Chapter 3: An Immodest Proposal
- Chapter 4: At the Feet of Harvard's Great Men
- Chapter 5: Bungtown Road
- Chapter 6: "Women, Please Apply"
- Chapter 7: The Vow
- Part 2
- Chapter 8: "We Should Distance All Competitors"
- Chapter 9: Our Millie
- Chapter 10: The Best Home for a Feminist
- Chapter 11: Liberated Lifestyles
- Chapter 12: Kendall Square
- Chapter 13: "This Slow and Gentle Robbery"
- Chapter 14: "Fodder"
- Chapter 15: Fun in Middle Age
- Chapter 16: Three Hundred Square Feet
- Chapter 17: MIT Inc.
- Part 3
- Chapter 18: Sixteen Tenured Women
- Chapter 19: X and Y
- Chapter 20: All for One or One for All
- Chapter 21: "The Greater Part of the Balance"
- Epilogue
- Photographs
- The Sixteen
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on Sources
- About the Author
- Notes
- Index
- Copyright
