Margaret W. Rossiter

"I can still recall my astonishment when I discovered in 1972 some women's entries in the old directories, and when I read biographies of several scientists in the then-new '. Here were people who had been present at many of the familiar places and events, but were totally unknown even to those well versed in the history of American science. I felt like a modern Alice who had fallen down a rabbit hole into a wonderland of the history of science that was familiar in some respects but distorted and alien in many others. Learning more about these women and bringing their stories into closer connection with the rest of history of this period became a compelling and absorbing intellectual task. The initial stumbling block was locating material, since most of the women scientists bordered, for a variety of reasons, on the "invisible.""

"Although by all accounts the period 1940–72 was a golden age for science in America, it has generally been considered a very dark age for women in the professions. ... How could this have been? Were not women an integral part of American science by 1940? Why, then, in a period of record growth in almost every aspect of American science that one could count—money spent, persons trained, jobs created, articles published, even s won—were women so invisible?"

"We live in historic times. This is especially trued for American women in science and engineering. Opportunities have greatly expanded since the early 1970s because of a variety of factors, starting with but extending beyond —new expectations, new energy, a growing economy, new technical industries and opportunities, battles won and programs instituted. The women's liberation movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s inspired many women scientists and their supporters to new levels of activism, and legislators passed and President Richard M. Nixon signed significant legislation that greatly affected traditional patterns in academia."

"Margaret W. Rossiter, a historian whose trilogy, “Women Scientists in America,” documented in sharp detail the ways women were excised from the annals of science — and who coined the term “,” named for the 19th-century suffragist , to describe the age-old practice of attributing scientific achievements of women to their male colleagues — died on Aug. 3 in ... Among the scientists Dr. Rossiter wrote about was , who with the German chemist developed the theory of . He won the for that discovery; she did not. The “Matilda effect” was but one of the many career blows that were queasily familiar to female scientists. So was the “harem effect,” a term Dr. Rossiter coined to describe male scientists’ habit of surrounding themselves with, as she put it, a “bevy of competent female subordinates who would not be as threatening as an equal number of bright young men.” (And who would presumably stay put, because their opportunities were so limited.)"

"The of would have been a very different story had advances and applications in chemistry matched progress in . As it was, there wre no "green revolutions," and chemical knowledge played a minor role until almost the end of the nineteenth century. Margaret W. Rossiter's interesting monograph on the influence of shows that the indifference of s to the blandishments of science was as much a consequence of the meager fare offered by the scientists as of any ingrained anti-intellectualism on the part of cultivators."