During a ceremony earlier this month at which the first Weizmann Women and Science Award was presented to biochemist Joan A. Steitz of Yale University School of Medicine (B. Spector, The Scientist, June 13, 1994, page 3), speakers referred repeatedly to the lack of recognition given women scientists and decried the chauvinistic assumption that research is incompatible with femininity. But the winner of the award told the attendees that "an overt act of prejudice against women in science turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me." When she was a graduate student at Harvard University in the 1960s, Steitz said, she approached the professor who was her first choice for a thesis adviser and was told, "You're a woman, you're going to get married and have kids--what future do you think you have in science?" In the face of this rejection, she went to her second ...
Notebook
Zoning In Overcoming Bigotry -- And Then Some Women In Math Award Oncology On The Internet Atlanta Team Captures Science Bowl Inventive Minds Forrest M. Mims III, a science writer who last year won a 50,000-Swiss-franc (about $32,500) Rolex Award for inventing a hand-held ozone-monitoring device called a total ozone portable spectroradiometer, or TOPS (Notebook, The Scientist, June 28, 1993, page 4), detected record-low ozone leve
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