ARCHIVE: Manuscripts.
Thomson, Laura Gamble. Manuscript Collection. 1895-1902.
An archive of 17 manuscript essays, articles, and lectures, housed together in a specially made cloth slipcase.
A brief analysis of one essay—entitled “Women in Science”—will give a sense of the content and style.
In this lecture Thomson offers a brief history of professional women—women doctors are paid respect, she claims, but not so often women lawyers or Doctors of Divinity, both of which are rare—and gives a chronology of specific women in science, especially astronomy. In part:
No field has ere been trodden by man but woman has followed with forceful strides… And this, notwithstanding the male prejudice exerted against higher education of women for centuries. So quietly have women pursued their studies along scientific lines, that the world in general has no idea of the extent of their research or the number of women engaged in the work…now that the laboratories and museums of the colleges are open to them, their advance in science is only a question of time. Let us hope that the day is not distant when sex prejudice will be entirely done away with, and the ‘new woman’ will not be mentioned either in mocking or sneering tones. Just as the tendency so prevalent for many years, to cultivate the “emotional” rather than the “reasoning” faculty in woman, is entirely a thing of the past. The spirit of investigation in woman is not now so generally ridiculed….
She notes that women scientists go back thousands of years, to Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron, who in addition to being a musician and poet, was also “learned in the sciences,” and inventor of the double-boiler, and “wrote a practical treatise on alchemy which is still extant.”
Among the women in the history of science who receive Thomson’s further attention are
astronomist Maria Mitchell (1818-1889), who discovered a comet in 1847; Dr. Dorothea Khumpke, on staff at the Paris Observatory and Chief of the bureau for the measurements of the photographic star charts, “said to be the only woman who has the distinction of having received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Paris” and who published in many scientific journals, her chief work being a book on the rings of Saturn; Mitchell’s student, Miss Margaretta Palmer, who published a work on the “Determination of the Orbit of the Comet of 1847” (Mitchell’s comet). Miss Mary Proctor sought to popularize astronomy, and on August 9, 1896, observed the total eclipse of the sun; she also wrote “Stories in Starland” and edited the astronomical section of several scientific magazines. Christine Ladd Franklin published numerous articles, especially on light and vision. Professor Ellen H. Richards applied her knowledge of chemistry to the woman’s world in “The Chemistry of Cooking and Cleaning,” and more broadly in her developments in the analysis of drinking water and in her nutritional studies. Miss Florence Boscom was a pioneer in geology.
And so I could go on page after page…on dozens and dozens of others…This brings me to the question, which is conducive to the best good for humanity, in general: the woman who discovers a comet, one who writes an able treatise on the “Characteristics of Symbolic Logic,” or one who raises one or more children to be an honor to their day and generation?…As a general rule the scientific woman must be strong enough to stand alone, able to bear the oft unjust sarcasm and dislike of men who are jealous of seeing what they consider their own field invaded. This masculine attitude has been summarized by De Goncourt who writes: “There are no women of genius, when they become geniuses, they are men.”
Her essay—which reads somewhat like a school research report—only occasionally lapses into silliness, as when she notes that women are sometimes just as gender-biased as men, offering as proof the “fact” that though women would not rush to send their sons to universities where “young an
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