Women in their element. Their contributions to the periodic system

When telling the history of the periodic system, it often seems that only (white and often bearded) men contributed. Women however are far from absent. Brigitte’s talk will focus on selected female contributions, beyond the well-known personalities such as Marie Curie or Lise Meitner, with the aim of making historical women chemists more visible, and also to shed light on the multifaceted character of their work on the chemical elements and their periodic relationships. Indeed, stories of female input that avoid creating new stories with heroines instead of heroes, may contribute to a better understanding of the collaborative nature of science as opposed to the traditional depiction of the lone genius.

 

And extending the investigation beyond the development of the periodic system and the quest for missing elements allows to fully grasp the spectrum of scientific work. While the discovery of elements is a natural part of this collective work, chemical knowledge is more than discovery stories and includes understanding and refining the concept of element, identifying properties and finding applications for elements and their compounds, developing analytical methods as well as reaching out to the general public and monitoring the impacts of elements and their compounds in the world.

 

Beyond an informed account of these contributions, these stories of female input also provide a spectrum of acknowledgement, covering the full range from universal fame to invisibility. For instance, Marie Skłodowska-Curie and her discovery of polonium and radium in collaboration with her husband Pierre Curie are well celebrated by the general public: she rose to fame, even during her lifetime, as the awardee of two Nobel prizes, among other achievements. The same goes, to a lesser extent, for Lise Meitner or Irène Joliot-Curie. But others, like Harriet Brooks, Stefanie Horovitz, Erika Cremer or Yvette Cauchois are known only to specialized circles of scholars despite their important contributions. All the while, many have remained almost invisible, as for example Toshiko Mayeda or Maria Del Carmen Brugger and Trinidad Salinas, even though they spent most of their life working on the bench, and participating actively to their field of interest.

 

Brigitte Van Tiggelen is Director for European Operations at the Science History Institute, Philadelphia, USA and member of the Centre de Recherche en Histoire des Sciences, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium.

 

She graduated both in physics and history, and devoted her PhD to chemistry in the XVIIIth century Belgium. She has authored and edited books on collaborative couples and women in science, domestic science and Belgian chemistry. She has chaired the EuChemS Working Party on the History of Chemistry since 2013 and the Commission for the History of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences (IUHPST) since 2017. To promote the history of science among the general public and secondary school teachers, she founded Mémosciences asbl. Publications include co-edited books From Bench to Brand and Back: The Co-Shaping of Materials and Chemists in the Twentieth Century (2017); Domesticity in the Making of Modern Science (2016); For Better Or for Worse?: Collaborative Couples in the Sciences (2012),and The Public Image of Chemistry (2007).

 

Her latest book is devoted to Women’s contribution to the Periodic System: Women in Their Element, ed. with Annette Lykknes, published in August 2019.