Great Women And Their Scientific Contributions

GREENWICH — In the 1890s and the first decades of the 20th Century, women worked hard to overcome the perception that higher education and careers were unsuitable or even dangerous for them. “Great Women, Great Science,” a brand-new exhibition at The Bruce Museum, examines the lives and work of four women pioneers in science who overcame these barriers to have long and successful careers in science.

The exhibition will open on August 14, and will remain on view through April 10, 2005. The family-friendly show invites visitors to explore the discoveries made by these four remarkable women through hands-on activities related to their scientific fields.

Chemist and physicist Marie Curie, astronomer Annie Jump Cannon, geologist Inge Lehmann, and geneticist Barbara McClintock are featured in the exhibition organized by the Bruce Museum and guest curated by Dr Louise Palmer. These women’s stories come to life through a remarkable collection of personal objects, scientific instruments, photographs from their life and work, video clips and archival audio recordings. Visitors of all ages will enjoy learning about the scientific principles behind the discoveries of these women scientists through colorful models, illustrations, and interactive experiment stations.

Although women are now active in all the scientific disciplines, the women featured in “Great Women, Great Science” were exceptional for their time. Marie Curie (1867-1934) won two Nobel Prizes, in chemistry and physics, for her groundbreaking research on radioactivity. The astronomer Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941) created a classification system for stars, classified 400,000 stellar bodies, and discovered more than 300 variable stars and five novae.

Inge Lehmann (1888-1993) studied the seismic waves produced by earthquakes and determined the inner structure of the earth. Geneticist Barbara McClintock (1902-1992) won the Nobel Prize for her discovery of transposition, or “jumping genes.” The talents and efforts of these remarkable women helped pave the way for future generations of scientists and continue to inspire us all.

Born in 1867 in Warsaw, Poland, Marie Curie went to Paris in 1891 to study at the Sorbonne because women were not allowed to attend university in Poland at the time. It was during her doctoral research that Curie discovered the two new elements radium and polonium and studied the properties of radioactivity.

“Great Women, Great Science” includes photographs from the Association Curie et Joliet-Curie Archives in Paris of Marie Curie at work in her laboratory, a handwritten note on loan from the National Museum of American History from Curie’s tour of the United States in 1921, and archival sound recordings. Museum visitors can also explore the properties of radioactivity in common objects using a vintage Geiger counter.

Annie Jump Cannon was one of the first American women to forge a career in science. Born in Dover, Del., in 1863, Ms Cannon became interested in astronomy early in her life when she and her mother viewed the stars through a telescope in the attic of their home.

Ms Cannon attended the five-year-old Wellesley College, and in 1896 she became an assistant at the Harvard College Observatory. She is best known for her work classifying stars by their spectra; she perfected the classification system in use today. Her career gave her the opportunity for international travel, and Ms Cannon proudly stated “astronomer” as her occupation in the passports on exhibit.

On loan from the Harvard College Observatory are large photographic plates of stellar spectra taken in the 1800s that Ms Cannon examined in her scientific work. The exhibition also features hands-on experiment stations where museum visitors can split light with spectroscopes and try classifying stars using real stellar spectra.

Seismologist Inge Lehmann, born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1888, collected data at remote seismic stations in Greenland and Denmark, and in 1936 she was able to propose a new structure of the Earth that included a solid inner core within the liquid outer core.

Objects on display include a seismograph chart on loan from the Smithsonian Institution similar to those Ms Lehmann used, which illustrates how early seismometers scratched tracings of earthquakes into the surface of hand-smoked paper. Visitors can also use a touch screen to track all seismic activity going on in the world; the program created by Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) downloads and incorporates new data every 20 minutes. In addition, visitors will be able to make their own earthquake waves and see how a seismometer works.

Finally, the first woman ever to win a Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, Dr Barbara McClintock was born in Hartford in 1902. She had a long and distinguished career as a maize (Indian corn) geneticist at Long Island’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Her work on transposition – the process in which genes change positions on chromosomes – was the foundation for understanding important processes such as why cells suddenly become cancerous and how white blood cells are produced so quickly in response to infection.

In this exhibition, visitors can see photographs of Ms McClintock at work in the laboratory and in the field and view some of the scientific equipment she used in this work, including her favorite microscope. Her original Nobel Prize Certificate is on loan from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives on Long Island. Interactive displays allow visitors to see interesting maize chromosomes just as McClintock did. Other hands-on activities give visitors the chance to explore the fascinating topic of genetics and learn about how their own characteristics are passed down from generation to generation.

The Bruce Museum of Arts and Science is at 1 Museum Drive in Greenwich. Museum hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm; and Sunday, 1 to 5 pm.

General admission is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and students, and free for children ages five and under. Please note an additional fee may be charged for select exhibitions.

Groups of 12 or more require advance reservations. Museum exhibition tours are held Fridays at 12:30 pm. Free, on-site parking is available. The Bruce Museum is accessible to the handicapped.

For information call the Bruce Museum at 203-869-0376 or www.BruceMuseum.org.