Viral Discoveries, 1929

The “mother of plant virology and serology,” Helen Purdy Beale, developed techniques to understand the nature of viruses that went unappreciated for decades.

Written byMax Kozlov

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ABOVE: SAY CHEESE: Helen Purdy Beale (front row, in the fur coat) poses for a photo in 1919 with her mycology class at Cornell University, where she began her graduate work in plant pathology.
W.R. FISHER, CORNELL UNIVERSITY

In 1925, after years of study and research, Helen Purdy Beale seemed to be on track to become the first woman to graduate with a doctorate from Cornell University’s plant pathology department. Her final hurdle was to obtain the approval of her adviser, Herbert Whetzel, who, unbeknownst to her, had dissuaded previous female graduate students from obtaining PhDs on the grounds that overqualified women could not get hired at agricultural experimental stations. True to form, Whetzel told Beale that her thesis could not be accepted and returned it, heavily marked up with red ink. Beale hurled the pages into his face, screaming, “You have shown the claws of the devil!” and stormed out, ...

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Meet the Author

Max Kozlov
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Max is a science journalist from Boston. Though he studied cognitive neuroscience, he now prefers to write about brains rather than research them. Prior to writing for The Scientist as an editorial intern in late 2020 and early 2021, Max worked at the Museum of Science in Boston, where his favorite part of the job was dressing in a giant bee costume and teaching children about honeybees. He was also a AAAS Mass Media Fellow, where he worked as a science reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Read more of his work at www.maxkozlov.com.
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