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Catherine and Wolf Fridman met more than 40 years ago when they were research trainees at the Saint Louis Hospital in Paris. “Wolf is a very articulate person and I was impressed by his medical knowledge,” says Catherine, now an immunologist at the University Paris-Descartes. Wolf, an immunologist at the same institute, was similarly impressed with Catherine, who he found “very smart.” It would be another six years—and a marriage and divorce for each of them—but the two researchers eventually started dating, and got married.
The Fridmans are one of many couples whose romance was catalyzed by science: according to a survey of academics at 13 universities reported in 2008 by The Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, 36 percent had a partner who was also an academic. In the natural sciences, 83 percent of women and 54 percent of men in academic ...
