M A R S H A L . R I C H M O N D*
Women as Public Scientists in the Atomic Age:
Rachel Carson, Charlotte Auerbach, and Genetics
A B S TR A C T
With the onset of the atomic age in 1945, geneticists increasingly spoke out about
how nuclear fallout and radiation impacted heredity and reproduction. The scholarship
discussing post–World War II activism focuses almost exclusively on males, with little
attention given to women who served as public scientists or the role gender played in
gaining public trust and influencing policy makers. This paper examines two women,
both trained in genetics, who became activists in the 1950s and 1960s to educate
the public about the dangers radiation and wartime chemicals posed to the human
germ plasm. In Genetics in the Atomic Age (1956), Charlotte Auerbach (1899–1994)
described basic genetic principles to explain why radiation-induced mutations could
be harmful. In Silent Spring (1962), Rachel Carson (1907–1964) drew on genetics to
warn about the possible mutagenic properties of DDT along with other concerns.
Both women fostered scientific literacy to empower an informed citizenry that could
influence public policy. They appealed both to men and to the growing cadre of
middle-class educated women, encouraging an expanded role for maternal responsibility: not only protecting families but also the well-being of all humankind.
This essay is part of a special issue entitled THE BONDS OF HISTORY edited by
Anita Guerrini.
K E Y WO RD S : genetics, public scientists, scientific activism, environmental citizenship, women in
science, Charlotte Auerbach, Rachel Carson, radiation, environmentalism, DDT, pesticides
*Department of History, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan 48202, marsha.richmond@
wayne.edu
The following abbreviations are used: AEC, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission; CAC/EUA,
Charlotte Auerbach Collection, Edinburgh University Archives, University of Edinburgh,
Edinburgh, Scotland, UK; HJMM/LLIU, Hermann Joseph Muller MSS, Lilly Library, Indiana
University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA; PSAC, President’s Science Advisory Committee; RCP/
BLYU, Rachel Carson Papers, YCAL MSS 46, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale
University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, Vol. 47, Number 3, pps. 349–388. ISSN 1939-1811,
electronic ISSN 1939-182X. © 2017 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights
reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content
through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.
ucpress.edu/journals.php?p¼reprints. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2017.47.3.349.
| 349
350 | RICHMOND
INTRODUCTION
As J. D. Bernal noted, the Second World War was ‘‘the first war in which the
applications of science appear without disguise.’’ It was thus only natural that
the role of scientists as arbiters in matters of social concern involving science
was enhanced in the early 1940s.1 After the dawn of the Atomic Age in August
1945, physicists were certainly the scientists best known to the public.2 But
among biologists, geneticists had gained considerable attention for speaking
out publicly about such issues as eugenics and evolution.3 When the Lysenko
controversy of the 1930s peaked in 1948, geneticists in the United States and
Britain responded, even if their messages were tempered by the growing
anti-Communist ideology of the early Cold War period.4
In the early 1950s, when public alarm began to grow about the danger of
widespread fallout from testing thermonuclear weapons, geneticists faced
another dilemma: how, given a lack of data on the impact of low-level radiation
1. J. D. Bernal, The Freedom of Necessity (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949), 272. For
scientific activism before the war, see Peter J. Kuznick, Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists as Political
Activists in 1930s America (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987), and William
McGucken, Scientists, Society, and State: The Social Relations of Science Movement in Great Britain,
1931–1947 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984), chap. 7.
2. Daniel J. Kevles, The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971). See also Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light:
American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age (New York: Pantheon, 1985), and
Brian Balogh, Chain Reaction: Expert Debate and Public Participation in American Commercial
Nuclear Power, 1945–1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
3. Kenneth M. Ludmerer, Genetics and American Society: A Historical Appraisal (Baltimore
and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972); Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics:
Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (New York: Knopf, 1985); and Diane B. Paul, The Politics
of Heredity: Essays on Eugenics, Biomedicine, and the Nature-Nurture Debate (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1998).
4. Historians have noted how the leftist political sentiments of geneticists complicated their
response to Lysenkoism: Kuznick, Beyond the Laboratory (ref. 1); William deJong-Lambert, The
Cold War Politics of Genetic Research: An Introduction to the Lysenko Affair (New York: Springer,
2012); Nikolai L. Krementsov, Stalinist Science (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996);
Audra J. Wolfe, Competing with the Soviets: Science, Technology, and the State in Cold War America
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013); William deJong-Lambert, ‘‘Hermann J.
Muller, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Leslie Clarence Dunn, and the Reaction to Lysenkoism in
the United States,’’ Journal of Cold War Studies 15, no. 1 (2013): 78–118; Rena Selya, ‘‘Defending
Scientific Freedom and Democracy: The Genetics Society of America’s Response to Lysenko,’’
Journal of the History of Biology 45, no. 3 (2012): 415–42; and Oren S. Harman, ‘‘C. D. Darlington
and the British and American Reaction to Lysenko and the Soviet Conception of Science,’’
Journal of the History of Biology 36, no. 2 (2003): 309–52.
WOMEN AS PUBLIC SCIENTISTS | 351
on humans rather than plants and animals, to reconcile differing interpretations of the theoretical consequences of the potentially increased mutational
load on the human gene pool.5 The lack of consensus was confusing, leaving
some to believe that a scientist’s position on the issue reflected political views as
much as expertise.6
On the face of it, genetics was well positioned to instruct the public about
the biological effects of ionizing radiation. After radium’s discovery around
1900, laymen and scientists alike speculated about the new element’s vital
properties and, stimulated by Hugo de Vries’s mutation theory, its prospects
for initiating biological and possibly evolutionary change.7 Such associations
were seemingly validated by H. J. Muller’s discovery in the late 1920s that
x-rays did indeed induce mutations in the fruit fly Drosophila, for which he
received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1946.8 Muller used the
occasion of his Nobel lecture to warn that humans too were harmed by x-rays
and to advocate for patients and technicians to be protected from excessive
exposure to radiation, noting that ‘‘with the coming increasing use of atomic
energy, even for peace-time purposes, the problem will become very important
of insuring that the human germ plasm—the all-important material of which
we are the temporary custodians—is effectively protected from this additional
and potent source of radiation.’’9 The effectiveness of his message, however,
5. Balogh, Chain Reaction (ref. 2).
6. Curt Stern laid out the complexity of the problem facing geneticists in ‘‘Genetics in the
Atomic Age,’’ Eugenics Quarterly 3, no. 3 (September 1956): 131–38, noting that harm by mutations
caused by irradiation ‘‘is a matter both of fact and theory,’’ but that data on humans ‘‘is not the
kind of material to which the geneticist is accustomed’’ (132–33). As Jessica Wang notes,
‘‘American scientists, like other groups, were deeply divided by political differences during the
Cold War. They were, simultaneously, partially responsible for but also subject to the ideological
constraints of the postwar era. Conservative, liberal, and leftist scientists articulated competing
visions for the role of science in the postwar political order, and their ranks included both winners
and losers.’’ Jessica Wang, American Science in an Age of Anxiety: Scientists, Anticommunism, and
the Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 4.
7. Luis A. Campos, Radium and the Secret of Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).
See also Jim Endersby, ‘‘Mutant Utopias: Evening Primroses and Imagined Futures in Early
Twentieth-Century America,’’ Isis 104, no. 3 (2013): 471–503.
8. H. J. Muller, ‘‘Artificial Transmutation of the Gene,’’ Science 66 (1927): 242, and H. J.
Muller, ‘‘The Production of Mutations by X-Rays,’’ Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences 14 (1928): 714–21.
9. H. J. Muller, ‘‘The Production of Mutations’’ (1946), Nobel Lecture, http://www.nobel
prize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1946/muller-lecture.html (accessed 20 Mar 2017). See
also Ludmerer, Genetics and American Society (ref. 3), and Elof Axel Carlson, Genes, Radiation,
and Society: The Life and Work of H. J. Muller (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981).
352 | RICHMOND
was moderated by the general enthusiasm of physicians and the public alike for
the potential of radiation to treat cancer and other medical conditions.
Not all geneticists agreed with Muller about the biological consequences of
radiation. Differences of interpretation were further complicated by a general
confusion about the nature of mutation. As Angela Creager notes, ‘‘both
scientists and safety officials treated ‘genetic’ effects—mutations—as separate
from ‘somatic’ ones.’’ Misunderstandings were further nurtured by assertions
of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Created in 1946 to cultivate
the peaceful use of the atom in both nuclear medicine and energy, the agency
sought to allay public concerns about atomic energy by minimizing risk and
maintaining ‘‘that its safety guidelines were sufficient to protect workers and
the general population from dangerous exposures to ionizing radiation.’’10
From the late 1940s through the 1960s, then, an ongoing international
debate ensued among scientists, government officials, the media, and the
public about the biological effects of exposure to ionizing radiation. 11
Disagreements among leading experts and authorities often left the public
bewildered about whom or what to believe.12 Asked in 1955 about the danger
of radioactive dust in the atmosphere, Robert Oppenheimer admitted,
‘‘Physicists don’t know. Specialists in genetics don’t know. Nobody knows,
and we must take account of this ignorance.’’ Asked what the role of scientists
should be, he retorted, ‘‘not only to find new truths but to communicate them
and to teach them to all who sought to learn them.’’13 This overall climate of
10. Angela N. H. Creager, ‘‘Radiation, Cancer, and Mutation in the Atomic Age,’’ Historical
Studies in the Natural Sciences 45, 1 (2014): 14–48, on 15, 14. See also Richard G. Hewlett and Jack
M. Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 1953–1961: Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission
(Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1989).
11. The most detailed account of the scientific and public debates over fallout in the
United States is J. Christopher Jolly, ‘‘Thresholds of Uncertainty: Radiation and Responsibility in the Fallout Controversy’’ (PhD dissertation, Oregon State University, 2003). For the
United Kingdom, see Andrew Brown, Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience: The Life and Work of
Joseph Rotblat (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). For Germany, see
Alexander Schwerin, Strahlenforschung: Bio- und Risikopolitik der DFG, 1920–1970 (Stuttgart:
Steiner, 2015).
12. As William deJong-Lambert points out, ‘‘Müller’s [sic], Dobzhansky’s, and Dunn’s
efforts against Lysenko often met with resistance from the very audience they sought to
educate. The U.S. public was not always inclined to trust the opinion of geneticists—at least
as far as the Lysenko affair was concerned.’’ DeJong-Lambert, ‘‘Hermann J. Muller . . . ’’ (ref. 4),
80–81.
13. ‘‘Bomb Peril Cited by Oppenheimer,’’ New York Times, 31 May 1955; ProQuest Historical
Newspapers: The New York Times, pg. 7. Robert A. Divine, Blowing on the Wind: The Nuclear
Test Ban Debate, 1954–1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 57.
WOMEN AS PUBLIC SCIENTISTS | 353
doubt provided an opening for new voices to join the chorus: those of women
scientists who stepped up to both educate and seek the public’s trust.
Although there is an extensive body of literature on scientific activism
during the Cold War, few works analyze the role that either women or gender
played in influencing public opinion. Only recently have the pivotal contributions women made to the conservation efforts of the Progressive Movement,14
or to the protest movements of the 1950s and 1960s against nuclear testing or
environmental problems, begun to be explored.15 As we shall see, however,
women were not simply participants but also assumed leadership roles.
This paper examines the activism of two such women scientists—Charlotte
Auerbach (1899–1994) and Rachel Carson (1907–1964)—who were sufficiently concerned about certain critical issues that they chose to enter
the public arena. Members of the generation of women scientists educated
in the 1930s, by the 1950s they had attained sufficiently stable positions to
provide them both job security and the authority to enable them to speak out
as scientific experts.16 Interestingly, the continued marginal status of women
in the sciences may have shielded them from the negative political repercussions that activism sometimes brought male colleagues, thus enhancing their
effectiveness.17
14. Caroline Merchant, ‘‘Women of the Progressive Conservation Movement: 1900–1916,’’
Environmental Review 8, no. 1 (Spring 1984): 57–85, on 57; Adam Rome, ‘‘‘Political Hermaphrodites’: Gender and Environmental Reform in Progressive America,’’ Environmental History 11,
no. 3 (2006): 440–63, on 440; and Robert K. Musnil, Rachel Carson and Her Sisters: Extraordinary Women Who Have Shaped America’s Environment (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 2014), who discusses Alice Hamilton’s crusade for safer industrial workplaces.
15. Michael Egan, Barry Commoner and the Science of Survival: The Remaking of American
Environmentalism (Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press, 2007), mentions women’s role in the
Greater St. Louis Citizens’ Committee for Nuclear Information. See also Lawrence S. Wittner,
‘‘Gender Roles and Nuclear Disarmament Activism, 1954–1965,’’ Gender & History 12, no. 1
(2000): 197–222, and Adam Rome, The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-in Unexpectedly
Made the First Green Generation (New York: Hill and Wang, 2013), 29–37.
16. Margaret W. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Before Affirmative Action, 1940–1972
(Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), chap. 11. Rosalind Rosenberg,
Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1982).
17. Audra Wolfe discusses how job insecurity may have hindered some biologists from expressing their views on Lysenko, noting that this ‘‘episode raises important questions about the
limits of scientists’ roles as public figures, both as individuals and as members of scientific institutions.’’ Wolfe, ‘‘What Does It Mean to Go Public? The American Response to Lysenkoism,
Reconsidered,’’ Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 40, no. 1 (2010): 48–78. For the example
of L. C. Dunn, see deJong-Lambert, ‘‘Hermann J. Muller . . . ’’ (ref. 4), 110–11.
354 | RICHMOND
My thesis about their role as public scientists is two-pronged. First, I argue
that Auerbach and Carson were frustrated by the seeming inability of life scientists to change government policies that threatened society. Both assumed the
mantle of citizen scientists to enhance scientific literacy so that citizens would be
better able to exert an influence on state policies. Second, I suggest that gender
was a potent force aiding their causes, directly and indirectly. The fact that they
were women—‘‘outsiders’’ within the contentious male-dominated scientific
community and yet scientific experts invested with traditional female authority
over moral matters—may have helped them gain the public’s trust. Gender may
also have influenced the expression of their activism. Whereas male geneticists
tended to use the media—magazines, newspapers, and radio—to get their messages across and expected readers to accept their views as ‘‘experts,’’ both Auerbach and Carson primarily chose to educate through writing popular books.
Their books provided a basic knowledge of scientific principles, data, and analysis to enable individuals to draw their own conclusions, guided by the authors.18
Finally, although Auerbach and Carson certainly directed their messages at men,
they particularly targeted the growing cadre of educated middle-class women to
advance their causes. Judging by the considerable popularity of their books, they
reached large audiences and enhanced public scrutiny of the issues they addressed. Their efforts helped bolster the moral and cultural authority of science
as well as draw attention to the rising status of women as authorities in science.
W O M E N AS S C I E N TI F I C AC TI V I S T S
Women were absent from the list of geneticists speaking out about issues of
social concern in the 1940s, but this changed in the 1950s and 1960s when two
women biologists, both trained in genetics, stepped forward to assume the
mantle of public scientist. The German Jewish geneticist Charlotte Auerbach
18. On the use of different media by biologists, see Audra Wolfe, ‘‘Speaking for Nature and
Nation: Biologists as Public Intellectuals in Cold War Culture’’ (PhD dissertation, University of
Pennsylvania, 2002). See also Kelly Moore, Disrupting Science: Social Movements, American
Scientists, and the Politics of the Military, 1945–1975 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2008). Muller, for example, was roundly criticized by readers for expecting them to accept his
views about Lysenko expressed in ‘‘Back to Barbarism Scientifically,’’ The Saturday Review of
Literature, 11 Dec 1948, 8–10. See William deJong-Lambert, ‘‘Hermann J. Muller and the Biopolitics of Mutations and Heredity,’’ in Making Mutations: Objects, Practices, Contexts, vol.
preprint (#393), eds. Luis Campos and Alexander Schwerin (Berlin: Max Planck Institute for
the History of Science, 2010), 151–75, on 161–63.
WOMEN AS PUBLIC SCIENTISTS | 355
penned the popular tract Genetics in the Atomic Age in 1956, which aimed to
provide the general public with a basic understanding of principles of genetics
to help them understand the threats radiation and certain chemicals posed in
inducing mutations in the human germ plasm.19 Two years later, the American marine biologist and science writer Rachel Carson began work on a new
book, Silent Spring, which, unlike her earlier popular works on the sea and
marine life, addressed the more sinister topic of the harm wrought by DDT
and other insecticides on humans and nature.20 Both books established the
authors as authorities on issues of contemporary scientific concern, a notable
achievement at the time. How these women emerged as public scientists in the
contested arena created by the Atomic Age is the focus of this article.
Auerbach and Genetics in the Atomic Age
Charlotte ‘‘Lotte’’ Auerbach came from a distinguished German Jewish scientific family.21 She graduated from university with a degree in biology and
minors in physics and chemistry, and pursued postgraduate research in developmental physiology at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology in BerlinDahlem under the embryologist Otto Mangold (1891–1962) before accepting
a teaching position at a secondary school.22 Fired in 1933 following the implementation of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service
(Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums, April 7, 1933), Lotte
took her mother’s advice and immigrated to Britain to pursue graduate
study.23 With the assistance of a family friend, she gained a place at the
19. Charlotte Auerbach, Genetics in the Atomic Age (Edinburgh and London: Oliver and Boyd,
1956; Fair Lawn, NJ: Essential Books, 1956). A second edition was published by Oxford University
Press in 1965.
20. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962). Paul Brooks, ‘‘Foreword:
Rachel Carson and Silent Spring,’’ And No Birds Sing: Rhetorical Analyses of Rachel Carson’s Silent
Spring, ed. Craig Waddell (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), xi–xiii.
21. As a relative noted, ‘‘Science seemed to run in the family. Her uncle Felix Auerbach was
a professor of Physics, and her grandfather Leopold Auerbach was a professor of Medicine who
discovered the ‘Auerbach Plexus’—and her father seems to have been a chemist working for the
Health Department.’’ Inge Gudrun Auerbach Linker to G. H. Beale, 24 Aug 1994, CAC/EUA.
See also B. J. Kilbey, ‘‘Charlotte Auerbach (1899–1994),’’ Genetics 141 (1995): 1–5.
22. G. H. Beale, ‘‘Charlotte Auerbach,’’ Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 41
(1995): 20–42. Auerbach left the institute because she could not accept Mangold’s authoritarian
attitude toward directing her work.
23. Geoffrey Beale, ‘‘The Discovery of Mustard Gas Mutagenesis by Auerbach and Robson in
1941,’’ Genetics 134 (1993): 393–99, on 393–94. As a friend recalled, ‘‘Lotte told us that she had been
356 | RICHMOND
FIG. 1.
Charlotte Auerbach, n.d. (Conrad Hal Waddington Photograph
Album), Edinburgh University Archives.
Institute of Animal Genetics at Edinburgh University directed by F. A. E.
Crew (1886–1973), a fortuitous choice given that Edinburgh was one of the
leading centers of genetics in Britain.24 Auerbach obtained her PhD in 1935
-
‘pushed up stairs’ by Hitler, because had it not been for the war she would have been a Biology
teacher in Germany in a high school.’’ Berta Hay to G. H. Beale, 31 Aug 1994, Papers of Geoffrey
Beale relating to Charlotte Auerbach, ref. no. Coll-1266/4, CAC/EUA.
24. Beale, ‘‘Charlotte Auerbach’’ (ref. 22), 24–25. Having begun a PhD in embryology in
Germany, Auerbach had wanted to go to Cambridge to work with C. H. Waddington, but
decided against it when she learned it took three years instead of two to get a degree (Charlotte
Auerbach audiotape interview with Margaret Deacon, Fall 1971, EUA CA16/1/1). On genetics in
Britain, see Jennifer Marie, ‘‘The Importance of Place: A History of Genetics in 1930s Britain’’
(PhD dissertation, University College London, 2004).
WOMEN AS PUBLIC SCIENTISTS | 357
with a dissertation on developmental genetics in Drosophila and remained at
Edinburgh her entire career, retiring in 1969 (Fig. 1).25
Auerbach, Chemical Mutagenesis, and Human Heredity
Late in 1937, when Auerbach was serving as Crew’s personal assistant, H. J. Muller
(1890–1967) arrived at the institute as a visiting scholar. Muller had been working
at the Institute of Genetics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow, but left
abruptly after Lysenko’s rise to power.26 Eager to welcome Muller to Edinburgh,
Crew assured him that Lotte would help him with cytology, but without informing her first. Crew was incensed when Lotte declined.27 Wanting to apologize for the misunderstanding, Muller sought her out, as she later described:28
One day Muller came to visit me in the laboratory. He sat down next to me and
asked me what I hoped to achieve with my work. I said I wanted to find out
something about the action of mutant genes. He replied that there are thousands of genes for which this might be studied, but that none of these studies
really led back to the gene itself—which was, of course, true in 1938. ‘‘If you
want to find out something about the gene,’’ he said, ‘‘you have to study how it
can be made to change by mutation.’’ This conversation set me on the path of
my pilgrimage in mutation research. I have never regretted that I chose it.
Muller’s advice fundamentally altered the direction of Auerbach’s career. Despite
having to retool her work, she followed his counsel and began trying to induce
chromosome changes in flies by exposing them to powerful chemical agents.29
25. Charlotte Auerbach, ‘‘The Development of the Legs, Wings and Halteres in Wild-Type
and Some Mutant Strains of Drosophila Melanogaster,’’ Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 58 (1936): 787–814. Beale, ‘‘Charlotte Auerbach’’ (ref. 22), 25. See also Ute Deichmann,
‘‘Frauen in der Genetik, Forschung und Karrieren bis 1950,’’ in ‘Aller Männerkultur zum Trotz’:
Frauen in Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 1997),
245–82; Kilbey, ‘‘Charlotte Auerbach’’ (ref. 21); and Brian J. Kilbey, ‘‘Auerbach, Charlotte
(1899–1994),’’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), online ed.
26. Carlson, Genes, Radiation, and Society (ref. 9). For the rise of Lysenko in 1935, see Peter
Pringle, The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov: The Story of Stalin’s Persecution of One of the Great
Scientists of the Twentieth Century (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), chap. 21.
27. Beale, ‘‘Charlotte Auerbach’’ (ref. 22), 27. See also F.A.E. Crew to H. J. Muller, 26 Oct
1937, HJMM/LLIU. (I thank Elof A. Carlson for sharing his notes on the Muller–Auerbach
correspondence with me.)
28. Charlotte Auerbach, ‘‘Forty Years of Mutation Research: A Pilgrim’s Progress,’’ Heredity
40 (1978): 177–87, on 177. In the interview with Margaret Deacon (ref. 24), Lotte said Crew
wanted her to serve as Muller’s cytologist, but she hated cytology.
29. For her early work on this problem, see Charlotte Auerbach and F.A.E. Crew, ‘‘Tests of
Carcinogenic Substances in Relation to the Production of Mutations in Drosophila Melanogaster,’’
358 | RICHMOND
With the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Muller
decided to leave Edinburgh and return to the United States. He left Britain
in September 1940, taking with him his new wife, Dorothea (Thea) Kantorowicz (1909–1986), a German Jewish physician working at the institute as
a technician.30 Despite the loss of her mentor, Auerbach continued to work
on mutagenesis, frequently corresponding with Muller to describe her results
and ask for advice, especially given her technical difficulties in delivering
chemicals to the insects.31 The situation changed when she agreed to collaborate with the pharmacologist J. M. Robson (1900–1982) in an investigation of
the mutagenic properties of mustard gas. In November 1940, they began
exposing Drosophila to mustard gas, with Auerbach carrying out the genetic
analysis using Muller’s ClB technique to detect lethal mutations in treated
males.32 By 1941, Auerbach and Robson had solid evidence that mustard gas
did indeed induce mutations, although wartime secrecy delayed full publication of their results until 1946.33 Their study provided the first evidence that
-
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, B 60 (1940): 164–73. Auerbach told Margaret Deacon,
‘‘As [Guido] Pontecorvo also stated, to have worked with Muller was an experience for your whole
life, and not only scientifically but also humanly. He was a marvelous person’’ (ref. 24).
30. A medical student when arrested and imprisoned by the Nazis, Thea Kantorowicz
completed her medical degree in Istanbul, where her family had fled from Germany. Immigrating
to England and unable to practice as a physician, she worked in a London clinic before moving to
Edinburgh and working as a technician in the Pregnancy Diagnosis Laboratory of the Institute of
Animal Genetics. Lotte gave her Muller’s book Out of the Night: A Biologist’s View of the Future
(1935), and then introduced her to Muller, probably in late 1938. (I thank Helen Juliette Muller for
providing valuable information about her parents.)
31. The Muller–Auerbach correspondence (in HJMM/LLIU and CAC/EUA) is substantial,
with the first letter dated 6 September 1938 and the last 28 March 1967, just days before Muller’s
death on 5 April.
32. Beale, ‘‘Charlotte Auerbach’’ (ref. 22), 27–29. Auerbach told Margaret Deacon that using
mustard gas was ‘‘entirely a pharmacological suggestion’’ because it ‘‘was known to have similar
pharmacological reactions as X-rays.’’ Both she and Robson were exposed to the gas from the
primitive equipment they first used, leading Auerbach to suffer serious lesions and an allergic
reaction that forced her to give this work off to technicians (ref. 24). On Muller’s development of
the ClB system that enabled researchers to screen for lethal mutations on the X chromosomes in
samples of male gametes, see James Schwartz, In Pursuit of the Gene: From Darwin to DNA
(Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2008), 224–26.
33. Charlotte Auerbach and J. M. Robson, ‘‘Chemical Production of Mutations,’’ Nature 154
(1946): 302; Charlotte Auerbach, J. M. Robson, and J. G. Carr, ‘‘The Chemical Production of
Mutations,’’ Science 105 (1946): 243–47; Charlotte Auerbach and J. M. Robson, ‘‘The Production
of Mutations by Chemical Substances,’’ Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, B 62 (1947):
271–83. See also Auerbach, ‘‘Forty Years of Mutation Research’’ (ref. 28), and Charlotte Auerbach,
‘‘History of Research on Chemical Mutagenesis,’’ in Chemical Mutagens: Principles and Methods
WOMEN AS PUBLIC SCIENTISTS | 359
chemicals could induce mutations and established her reputation as a founder
of the new field of chemical mutagenesis.34 Auerbach continued to investigate
mutagenic properties of chemicals for the rest of her career, gaining an
international reputation in mutation studies.35
Auerbach, Radiation, and Scientific Activism
Auerbach was influenced by Muller in another important way. Even before the
United States dropped the atomic bomb in August 1945, Muller had expressed
concern about excessive x-ray exposures for patients and radiologists.36
Although initially he believed x-rays posed a greater danger than low-level
radiation from fallout, he soon changed his mind. In March 1954, the United
States conducted a test of a powerful hydrogen weapon at the Bikini Atoll in
the Pacific. The unfortunate contamination of Japanese fishermen aboard the
Lucky Dragon, with one death, drew the public’s attention to the danger of
radioactive fallout. To allay public fears, the AEC, as Robert Divine noted,
launched ‘‘an intensive public relations campaign designed to convince the
American people that the fear of fallout was groundless.’’ Conservative media
outlets downplayed the danger; indeed, ‘‘U.S. News claimed that ‘some
experts believe that mutations usually work out in the end to improve
-
for Their Detection, vol. 3, ed. Alexander Hollaender (New York and London: Plenum Press,
1973), 1–19, on 2.
34. Because Muller had prior knowledge about this work, she was able to communicate their
results to him in a letter of 7 June 1941 without violating the government’s secrecy strictures. He
responded with a cablegram on 21 June: ‘‘We are thrilled by your major discovery opening great
theoretical and practical field. Congratulations you and the Robsons. HJ and Thea Muller!’’
(HJMM/LLIU).
35. Auerbach’s future work focused on identifying other chemical mutagens, their properties,
and the ‘‘sensitive period’’ in development during which they acted. In 1947, Auerbach received
the Keith Prize of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and an honorary doctorate from Edinburgh
University. In 1949, she was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in 1957,
a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. Beale, ‘‘Charlotte Auerbach’’ (ref. 22). In 1948, Auerbach
was asked to present a major review of her work on chemical mutagenesis at the 8th International
Congress of Genetics held in Stockholm, Sweden. As she told Muller, her paper was well received,
which ‘‘was certainly very gratifying; . . . I feel a bit frightened now at the idea that from now on I
shall have a reputation to uphold’’ (Auerbach to Muller, 5 August 1948, HJMM/LLIU).
36. Carlson, Genes, Radiation, and Society (ref. 9), chap. 24. The British physician Alice Stewart
as well as the German geneticist Paula Hertwig campaigned against the ubiquitous use of X-rays.
See Gayle Greene, The Woman Who Knew Too Much: Alice Stewart and the Secrets of Radiation
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999); Schwerin, Strahlenforschung (ref. 11), 132–40;
and Sybille Gerstengarbe, Paula Hertwig—Genetikerin im 20. Jahrhundert. Eine Spurensuche, Acta
Historica Leopoldina, 58 (Stuttgart: Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, 2012), 103–15.
360 | RICHMOND
species.’’’37 In the face of the uproar, both the U.S. and British governments
agreed to commission reports by scientific experts, including geneticists, to
assess the biological effects of radiation, and the reports were released simultaneously in June 1956.38 Many leading geneticists, however, including some
who served on these panels, were not happy about the conclusions presented
and worried that the public was being misled or misinterpreting the information provided.39 Even before the reports were made public, several spoke out
about the genetic risks posed by cumulative exposure to low-dose radiation.
A. H. Sturtevant, current president of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, stated in 1954 that ‘‘there is, in fact, no clearly safe
dosage.’’40 Muller issued a revised assessment of the biological effects of radiation exposure in 1955; it was the text of the speech he planned to give at the
1955 Atoms for Peace conference in Geneva but was prevented from doing so
by Atomic Energy Commission officials.41 In 1956, Curt Stern told readers of
37. Divine, Blowing on the Wind (ref. 13), 43–44, quoting from ‘‘H-Bomb Tests—They’re
Safe: Atomic Energy Commission Reports Negligible Effect of Fall-Out on Food, Health,
Heredity in U.S.,’’ U.S. News and World Report, 25 Feb 1955, 134. See also John Beatty, ‘‘Genetics
in the Atomic Age: The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, 1947–1956,’’ in Expansion of
American Biology (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 284–324, esp. 292–98,
and Carolyn Kopp, ‘‘The Origins of the American Scientific Debate Over Fallout Hazards,’’
Social Studies of Science 9, no. 4 (1979): 403–22.
38. National Academy of Sciences, The Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation Summary Reports
(Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, 1956); James V.
Neel and William J. Schull, The Effect of Exposure to the Atomic Bombs on Pregnancy Termination
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, National Research
Council. 1956); and Medical Research Council, The Hazards to Man of Nuclear and Allied Radiations (London: HMSO, 1956).
39. As Jacob Hamblin notes, ‘‘the results of the report were used repeatedly by the AEC and
the Eisenhower administration to play down the risks of fallout by calling them minute additions
to the bath of natural radiation in which humans already lived.’’ Jacob D. Hamblin, ‘‘‘A Dispassionate and Objective Effort’: Negotiating the First Study on the Biological Effects of Atomic
Radiation,’’ Journal of the History of Biology 40, no. 1 (2007): 147–77, on 176. See also Beatty,
‘‘Genetics in the Atomic Age’’ (ref. 37); and James F. Crow, ‘‘Quarreling Geneticists and
a Diplomat,’’ Genetics 140, no. 2 (1995): 421–26.
40. A. H. Sturtevant, ‘‘Social Implications of the Genetics of Man,’’ Science 120 (1954):
405–07, on 407.
41. H. J. Muller, ‘‘How Radiation Changes the Genetic Constitution,’’ Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, 11 (Nov 1955), 329–32, on 352. See Divine, Blowing on the Wind (ref. 13), 55; Jolly,
‘‘Thresholds of Uncertainty’’ (ref. 11), chap. 3; Carlson, Genes, Radiation, and Society (ref. 9), 409;
Elof Axel Carlson, ‘‘Speaking Out About the Social Implications of Science: The Uneven Legacy
of H. J. Muller,’’ Genetics 187 (Jan 2011): 1–7, on 5; and Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and
War (ref. 10), 266–70.
WOMEN AS PUBLIC SCIENTISTS | 361
the Eugenics Quarterly: ‘‘What is the effect of fall-out on the hereditary material?
We must assume that it will add new mutations just as does the natural
background irradiation!’’42 American geneticists were clearly dismayed.
British geneticists responded similarly, although the sociopolitical context in
Britain was different from that in the United States. After the United States
halted working in partnership with its former allies on nuclear matters in 1946,
the British government debated whether to initiate its own atomic weapons
program. Although many scientists were opposed to developing an atomic
bomb, they initially restricted their efforts to launching a public educational
campaign about nuclear science and technology.43 However, after the first
British atomic bomb test in October 1952, coupled with tests of more powerful
weapons by the Soviets and Americans, Britons began to take notice. The
publication of a paper by the respected nuclear physicist Joseph Rotblat in
March 1955 set off an intense public debate over the country’s nuclear weapons
policy.44 Carefully analyzing data of the weapon tested at the Bikini Atoll,
Rotblat provided much higher estimates of the fallout produced and its
geographical extent than previously reported, and he specifically called into
question AEC figures on the genetic impact of radioactive fallout and introduced what he termed the ‘‘gonad dose,’’ drawing more focused attention to
the hereditary consequences. Widely picked up by the news media, Rotblat’s
paper prompted a debate in the British Parliament over the country’s nuclear
weapons policy in the spring of 1955, with several opposition Labour MPs
calling for a halt in weapons testing. The result, as Andrew Brown reports,
was that the ‘‘British public became consumed by H-bomb anxiety.’’45
Like their American colleagues, British geneticists faced considerable impediments in conveying complicated ideas and technical distinctions to the
public about the biological risks connected with radiation dosage.46 As C. H.
42. Stern, ‘‘Genetics in the Atomic Age’’ (ref. 6), 137.
43. Brown, Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience (ref. 11), chap. 5. See also Reiner Braun, ed., Joseph
Rotblat: Visionary for Peace (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2007), and Soraya de Chadarevian, ‘‘Mice and the Reactor: The ‘Genetics Experiment’ in 1950s Britain,’’ Journal of the
History of Biology 39 (2006): 707–35.
44. Joseph Rotblat, ‘‘The Hydrogen-Uranium Bomb,’’ Atomic Scientists Journal 4 (Mar 1955);
rpt. in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 11 (May 1955), 171–72, on 177.
45. Brown, Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience (ref. 11), 109.
46. Beatty, ‘‘Genetics in the Atomic Age’’ (ref. 37); and J. Samuel Walker, Permissible Dose:
A History of Radiation Protection in the Twentieth Century (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2000). On the response by British geneticists and government officials, see Chadarevian,
‘‘Mice and the Reactor’’ (ref. 43).
362 | RICHMOND
Waddington (1905–1975), new head of the Edinburgh Institute of Animal
Genetics, noted in a popular article of 1957 entitled ‘‘The Biological Effects
of Bomb Tests (What We Know and What We Do not Know)’’: ‘‘The subject
ramifies into so many fields that no one person is fully competent in all of
them. I am a geneticist; but in the other aspects of the problem I am scarcely
more knowledgeable than an interested layman, and my task will be to try to
summarise what the recognised authorities have written.’’ 47 For her
part, Auerbach was appalled by newspaper reports she believed misled the
public, and by the refusal of the venerable Manchester Guardian to correct
erroneous reports.48
The confusion was exacerbated by the public’s basic ignorance about important scientific issues at the heart of the debate. As Robert Divine reports, ‘‘A
Gallup poll taken in early March [1955] showed that only 17 per cent of those
asked could explain correctly what was meant by fallout; 9 per cent gave
confused answers and a staggering 74 per cent simply did not know.’’49 It is
likely that at least as many, if not more, were ignorant about the nature of
mutations—what they were, how they affected individuals, and their impact
on the population at large. As Muller told physicians in 1948, the public
primarily viewed mutations as producing ‘‘monstrosities or freaks.’’50 Thinking of radiation as damaging body cells rather than sex cells obscured the kind
of danger geneticists (and particularly population geneticists) warned about,
namely, an increase in the number of mutations (or ‘‘genetic load’’) carried in
the human gene pool, and its potential consequences for future generations.51
47. C. H. Waddington, ‘‘The Biological Effects of Bomb Tests (What We Know and What
We Do Not Know),’’ New Statesman and Nation (8 Jun 1957), 725–28, on 725.
48. In 1959, Auerbach wrote a letter to the editor of the Manchester Guardian that they did not
print. As she told Muller, ‘‘It has shaken my belief in the British press to see that even a reputedly
progressive and objective paper like the Manchester Guardian either does not, in principle, want
to correct optimistic views about radiation danger or has so little regard for scientific opinion that
it trusts their own correspondent more than an expert in a given field.’’ Auerbach to Muller, 2
Mar 1959, HJMM/LLIU.
49. Divine, Blowing on the Wind (ref. 13), 43.
50. Hermann J. Muller, ‘‘Mutational Prophylaxis,’’ Bulletin of the New York Academy of
Medicine 24 (7 Jul 1948): 447–69, on 467. Carlson, Genes, Radiation, and Society (ref. 9), 344. On
physicians’ general ignorance of human genetics, see Ruth Schwartz Cowan, Heredity and Hope:
The Case for Genetic Screening (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 21.
51. H. J. Muller, ‘‘Our Load of Mutations,’’ American Journal of Human Genetics 2, no. 2
(1950): 111–76. See John Beatty, ‘‘Weighing the Risks: Stalemate in the Classical/Balance Controversy,’’ Journal of the History of Biology 20 (1987): 289–319; and Diane B. Paul, ‘‘‘Our Load of
Mutations’ Revisited,’’ Journal of the History of Biology 20 (1987): 321–35.
WOMEN AS PUBLIC SCIENTISTS | 363
It was in response to this public confusion about the nature and hereditary
implications of mutations that Lotte Auerbach decided to act.
G E N E T I C S I N TH E AT O M I C AG E
By the spring of 1955, with the new ‘‘re-awakening of interest in radiationinduced mutations’’ among the public, Auerbach began work on a popular
genetics text written ‘‘from a practical point of view.’’52 In contrast to Muller’s
more direct (and sometimes acerbic) approach, Auerbach aimed simply to
educate the public. In Genetics in the Atomic Age, a little book of only 111 pages
published in 1956, she introduced laymen to basic principles of heredity few
had learned in school.53 Coming only three years after the publication of James
Watson and Francis Crick’s description of the structure of DNA, her book
explained in readily understandable terms what mutations are, how they could
be caused by exposure to radiation (and certain chemicals), and why changes in
the reproductive material were to be avoided.54 She fully recognized that
‘‘among non-biologists genetics is almost as little understood as quantum
mechanics or the theory of relativity,’’ but she nonetheless believed that ‘‘it
is possible to explain the essentials of genetics in words of everyday life and
without the use of checkerboard diagrams and Mendelian ratios.’’55 In this she
succeeded.
The text of Genetics in the Atomic Age was certainly couched in terms that
were easily understandable by laymen, but it was the illustrations that particularly made the book ‘‘more accessible to the non-expert public.’’56 An
especially charming illustration depicts the ‘‘dance of the chromosomes’’ in
body cell division (mitosis) and sex cell reproduction (meiosis), showing
chromosome stick-figures twirling arm-in-arm, reminiscent of a Scottish
52. Auerbach to Muller, 2 Jun 1955, HJMM/LLIU. Beale, ‘‘Discovery of Mustard Gas
Mutagenesis’’ (ref. 23), 396.
53. Auerbach, Genetics in the Atomic Age (ref. 19).
54. Ibid., v.
55. Ibid., v–vi. According to D. S. Falconer, in Britain in the 1940s ‘‘little or no genetics was
taught in undergraduate courses,’’ including zoology. Douglas S. Falconer, ‘‘Quantitative Genetics
in Edinburgh: 1947–1980,’’ Genetics 133, no. 2 (1993): 137–42, on 139.
56. As Auerbach told Muller, the illustrations ‘‘were made by a cousin of mine, mainly from
sketches which I gave her’’ (Auerbach to Muller, 12 October 1955, HJMM/LLIU). The artist was
a distant cousin, Inge Gudrun Auerbach. See Inge Gudrun Auerbach Linker to G. H. Beale, 24
Aug 1994, Papers of Geoffrey Beale relating to Charlotte Auerbach, Coll-1266/4, CAC/EUA.
364 | RICHMOND
FIG. 2.
I. G. Auerbach, ‘‘The Dance of the Chromosomes in an Organism
with Three Chromosome Pairs,’’ fig. 25, in Charlotte Auerbach, Genetics
in the Atomic Age, p. 34.
country dance. Less sanguine is the so-called ‘‘crying mice’’ figure, in which
an irradiated father and normal mother weep over the still-births of their
babies (Figs. 2, 3).57 Auerbach’s choice of mice rather than fruit flies—both
standard organisms in genetic study—to convey the idea of genetic lethality
may have been deliberate. Mice were more easily anthropomorphized than
insects, thus communicating a more powerful message to parents.
57. Karen A. Rader, Making Mice: Standardizing Animals for American Biomedical Research,
1900–1955 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 245.
WOMEN AS PUBLIC SCIENTISTS | 365
FIG. 3.
I. G. Auerbach, ‘‘The Production of Dominant Lethals,’’ fig.
45, in Charlotte Auerbach, Genetics in the Atomic Age, p. 81.
The book was surprisingly popular, running to two editions and translated
into German, Russian, Swedish, Polish, Italian, and Portuguese.58 It was,
moreover, particularly well received by specialists. In his review for Scientific
58. As reported in C. H. Waddington, ‘‘Research Report 1955–1957 of the Institute of Animal
Genetics,’’ Dossier 02434, Annual Reports of the Institute of Animal Genetics, EUA. The
German title was Weh’ Dir, Dass du ein Enkel Bist (Stuttgart: Kosmos, 1957), and in Russian,
Genetika v atomnom veke (1959).
366 | RICHMOND
Monthly, the geneticist Bentley Glass (1906–2005), himself a participant in this
debate, emphasized Auerbach’s ‘‘authority’’ in writing such a work.59 Other
reviewers likewise lavished praise on the work. The physicist Alexander
Langsdorf, Jr., who had worked on the Manhattan Project under Enrico Fermi
at the University of Chicago, told readers of the Bulletin of the Atomic Physicists:
‘‘Her book should be required reading by everyone capable of understanding
the simplest explanations of an inherently technical matter, for the matter here
is of the utmost importance to the long-term survival of our race.’’60 Such
approval by well-respected scientists provided critical affirmation that
Auerbach was a geneticist who could be trusted.
Although the impact the work had on readers is difficult to determine,
Auerbach was surprised to learn about how popular the book was in the Soviet
Union. During a lecture tour in 1960, following a talk at the Lysenkoist
Genetics Institute at the University of Moscow, as she related to Muller,
‘‘Several students came to me to have the Russian translation of ‘Genetics in
the Atomic Age’ autographed. This seems to be an absolute best-seller in
USSR. It somehow slipped through the censorship and seems to have the
attraction of a pornographic publication.’’61
Five years later Auerbach published a second popular genetics textbook, The
Science of Genetics (1961), this one intended for an intermediate audience.62
Although this work was focused on conveying scientific information rather
59. Bentley Glass, ‘‘Review of Genetics in the Atomic Age by Charlotte Auerbach,’’ Scientific
Monthly 83, no. 6 (1956): 311. On Glass’s prominence as public scientist, see Wolfe, Competing
with the Soviets (ref. 4); Audra J. Wolfe, ‘‘The Organization Man and the Archive: A Look at the
Bentley Glass Papers,’’ Journal of the History of Biology 44 (2012): 147–51; and Sarah Brady Siff,
‘‘Atomic Roaches and Test-Tube Babies: Bentley Glass and Science Communication,’’ Journalism and Communication Monographs 17, no. 2 (2015): 88–144.
60. Alexander Langsdorf, Jr., ‘‘Review of Genetics in the Atomic Age by Charlotte Auerbach,’’
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 12, no. 9 (Nov 1956): 349. The geneticist Irwin I. Oster, trained
under Muller, pursued a similar theme in his review in American Scientist 45 (Jun 1956), 216A–
218A: ‘‘Dr. Auerbach, as one of our leading geneticists and the discoverer of chemical mutagenesis, who has also published several papers in the field of radiation genetics, is very well
qualified to write on this topic. Much has been written on this subject from the alarmist point of
view predicting the occurrence of freaks and monstrosities amongst the immediate descendants of
irradiated individuals. While far from the truth as judged by available experimental evidence,
such writing serves as fuel for the arguments of those who try to minimize the risks involved in
subjecting the populace to radiation. This book, generalizing from the accumulation of experimental evidence, presents the facts and conclusions objectively.’’
61. Auerbach to Muller, 4 Apr 1960, HJMM/LLIU.
62. Charlotte Auerbach, The Science of Genetics (New York and London: Harper and
Brothers, 1961).
WOMEN AS PUBLIC SCIENTISTS | 367
than discussing current social issues, Auerbach did mention the hereditary
consequences of radiation exposure. Unlike the 1956 book, however, she explicitly included material on the role chemicals play in causing mutations. While
‘‘among the most widely discussed topics of our time,’’ she stated, ‘‘much less
attention is paid to the possibility that mutations may be produced by some of
the many chemicals that civilized man uses in his food, his drugs, his cosmetics, his industrial processes. There is a good reason for the lack of scientific
pronouncement on this question: our profound ignorance of the relevant
facts.’’63 One topic she covered was a recent report that caffeine might cause
mutations, which she used to illustrate scientific methodology. ‘‘Whether it
[caffeine] is a mutagen for people who imbibe it in coffee or tea cannot be
decided experimentally. Data on mice and other laboratory mammals can provide no more than presumptive evidence, which different geneticists will interpret differently according to their scientific caution and their degree of addiction
to coffee or tea. Yet, to obtain such data remains an urgent object for genetical
research in the near future.’’ Investigating ‘‘the manner in which radiation or
chemical mutagens produce their effects’’ (one of her current lines of work), she
noted, remained a problem geneticists were continuing to explore.64
The Science of Genetics was likewise well received by geneticists. L. C. Dunn
praised it highly, and Theodosius Dobzhansky called it a ‘‘tour de force.’’65
Nonetheless, Auerbach lamented the ‘‘incredible amount of work, very much
more than a scientific publication’’—required to write a work directed at the
‘‘intelligent layman.’’66 Still, she told Muller, she was willing to devote time to
such efforts: ‘‘I feel that the society which enables us to do scientific work has
a right to be informed about it.’’67
63. Ibid., 233. On the rise of chemical toxicology, see Scott Frickel, Chemical Consequences:
Environmental Mutagens, Scientist Activism, and the Rise of Genetic Toxicology (New Brunswick,
NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004).
64. Auerbach, The Science of Genetics (ref. 62), 234. Interestingly, Auerbach spoke publicly
about the danger of chemicals in food and cosmetics during a lecture tour in Canada in 1958,
noting that they ‘‘may be more dangerous to the human race’s reproduction than radioactive
fallout.’’ ‘‘Cosmetics: Dangerous as A-Bomb?,’’ Winnepeg Free Press, 18 Apr 1958, 4.
65. Leslie Dunn, ‘‘Review of The Science of Genetics by Charlotte Auerbach,’’ New York Times,
10 Sep 1961, 38. On Dunn’s activism, see Melinda Gormley, ‘‘Geneticist L. C. Dunn: Politics,
Activism, and Community’’ (PhD dissertation, Oregon State University, 2007). Theodosius
Dobzhansky, ‘‘Genetics, the Core Science of Biology [Review of Genetics in the Atomic Age by
Charlotte Auerbach and Two Other Books],’’ Science n.s. 134, 3496 (29 Dec 19): 2091–92.
66. Auerbach to Muller, 20 Feb 1961, HJMM/LLIU.
67. Auerbach to Muller, 5 Feb 1957, HJMM/LLIU.
368 | RICHMOND
Auerbach’s Scientific Activism
It is difficult to assess the degree to which Auerbach’s scientific activism was
expressed outside of her popular scientific works. Her extensive correspondence
with Muller is almost entirely devoid of political and social commentary.68 It is
clear, however, that she hoped to stimulate civic participation by a better
informed public. ‘‘The atomic age which we are about to enter,’’ she explained
in the introduction to Genetics in the Atomic Age, ‘‘will see an increase in the force
of Mutation. Our dignity as thinking beings, and our responsibility towards
future generations, require us to consider what effect this change will have on the
fate of mankind.’’ Although scientists were the ones who studied these processes
and prepared reports on their findings for the government, citizens should also
be involved in making decisions that fundamentally affected the future of
humanity, given that ‘‘governments in democratic countries are, in the last
resort, representatives of public opinion.’’ Her aim was ‘‘to help the reader in
this task by putting before him a brief and simple review of the biological
findings which must form the basis of any judgment.’’ Together, she concluded,
scientists and the public ‘‘thus have to face the fact that our use of atomic energy
and X-rays entails consequences for which posterity will hold us responsible.’’69
Auerbach seemingly believed that fostering scientifically literate ‘‘citizen activists’’ might put pressure on public officials to halt the pervasive irradiation of
the atmosphere as well as the public via nuclear testing and medical procedures.
As she told an audience of biomedical specialists in 1968: ‘‘There can be little
doubt that any increase in mutation frequency will eventually lead to an impairment of human health and happiness. It is our responsibility, especially that of
the geneticists and politicians, to see that future generations will not have to pay
too heavy a price for the security, health and comfort of the present one.’’70
In conveying her message, Auerbach implicitly evoked maternalist conventions by appealing to women as mothers. She also encouraged women as well
as men to act at a time when women in Britain were just beginning to
68. Auerbach’s archive contains few personal letters. As her biographer noted, ‘‘She left very
little written material about herself. Nearly all her personal letters had been thrown away
unfortunately. But in the end I found out many things about her, simply by writing round to her
many friends and colleagues, who are scattered all over the world.’’ Geoffrey Beale to Cornelia
Schröder, Berlin, 6 Feb 1996, Papers of Geoffrey Beale relating to Charlotte Auerbach, Coll-1266/
4, CAC/ EUA.
69. Auerbach, Genetics in the Atomic Age (ref. 19), 1–3, 106.
70. Charlotte Auerbach, ‘‘Mutation Research and Human Welfare,’’ Res Medica: Journal of
the Royal Medical Society 6, no. 4 (1969): 8–12.
WOMEN AS PUBLIC SCIENTISTS | 369
participate in the social protest movements against nuclear weapons. In the
1955 Parliamentary debate over British nuclear policy, the feminist physician
and socialist Labour MP Dr. Edith Summerskill (1901–1980) acknowledged
that previously this was an issue that women had been ‘‘only too ready to cede
to men.’’ In the words of historian Soraya de Chaderevian:
She [Summerskill] excused herself for intruding into what until then had been
a male sphere, but passionately argued that atomic weapons had broken down
the traditional division between ‘‘war as male past time’’ and ‘‘procreation as
female domain’’. The new weapons had properties that threatened ‘‘women’s
creative power’’ and would have an impact on generations to come.71
Women thus had a special role to play in this debate. This Auerbach publicized
by drawing attention to women’s responsibility to protect not only their
families but also future generations.
A telling glimpse of the passion Auerbach felt for this cause comes from an
anecdote told by someone who met her for the first time in 1957. At a party at
the home of C. H. Waddington, the young Tam Dalyall (future journalist and
Labour Party MP) recalled Waddington introducing him and his circle to
Auerbach as ‘‘our very own Madame Curie,’’ referring to Auerbach’s recent
election as Fellow of the Royal Society of London. Auerbach, however, would
have none of it. She admonished the young men, saying they should rather be
paying attention to a matter of more immediate urgency:
Firmly and without ado Auerbach suggested that we should be marching to
Aldermaston, kilts and all—and doing a great deal more to prevent nuclear
testing. She explained that she knew, from her work on mutation genetics,
that fine sand blown as dust in the wind, subjected to the explosion of atomic
weapons, could lead to leukaemia, cancer and other diseases—and reproductive problems. She railed against the test explosions and the idiocy of those
who watched them or had to watch them protected only by dark glasses.72
Aldermaston, of course, is home to Britain’s Atomic Weapons Establishment.
Since the founding of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in
April 1958, it has been the target of antinuclear protests each Easter.73
71. Chadarevian, ‘‘Mice and the Reactor’’ (ref. 43), 719.
72. Tam Dalyell, ‘‘Obituary: Professor Charlotte Auerbach,’’ The Independent, 21 Mar 1994.
Dalyell may have gotten the date of meeting Auerbach wrong, given that the first march to
Aldermasten took place in 1958, not 1957.
73. Frank Parkin, Middle Class Radicalism: The Social Bases of the British Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament (New York: F. A. Praeger, 1968), and Chadarevian, ‘‘Mice and the Reactor’’ (ref. 43).
370 | RICHMOND
Auerbach apparently did not shy away from expressing her opinions. However, she does not appear to have herself directly engaged in political activism.74
She published several popular articles in addition to her books on the topic of
radiation and gave talks before various groups in both Britain and the United
States, but this seems to be the extent of what she and Muller referred to as their
‘‘missionary work.’’ She was not a participant at any of the Pugwash meetings
on Science and World Affairs, first convened by Bertrand Russell in July 1955,
nor at other such gatherings Muller regularly attended.75 Yet he never chided
her about this but rather applauded her efforts. As he told her in 1957:
I am so glad to see the successful missionary work you are doing in the
subject of radiation damage. Your book continues to get excellent reviews.
I have to give an address on the subject before the New York dentists on
May 21 but I am tired of being practically the only one in this country to be
doing such work and cannot afford the time for nearly as much of it as I get
asked to do. I regard your talks in New York and at Rochester as being,
likewise, essentially educational, although before more technical groups of
people, people in fact who ought to know better.76
That Auerbach did not participate in public forums may not have been simply
a personal decision but rather reflected contemporary prejudices against and
strategies adopted by women. In April 1958, the group of scientists and women
activists who founded the Committee for Nuclear Information in St. Louis,
Missouri, explicitly stated their aim to create a citizens’ action group that did
‘‘not stand for or against particular policies’’ but rather ‘‘presents the known
facts for people to use in deciding where they stand on the moral and political
74. Although Brian Kilbey (Auerbach’s colleague in the MRC Mutagenesis Research Unit)
claimed that Auerbach was a member of the CND (Kilbey, ‘‘Auerbach, Charlotte’’ (ref. 25)), I
have been unable to confirm this. CND membership records go back only to 1991, and Auerbach
was not a member then (email from Kate Hudson, General Secretary of the Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament, 26 Jul 2016).
75. On the history of the Pugwash conferences, see Brown, Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience
(ref. 11), and Sandra Ionna Butcher, ‘‘The Origins of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto,’’ in Pugwash
History Series, ed. Jeffrey Boutwell (Fredericksburg, VA: Cardinal Press, 2005). None of the eleven
signatories of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto (all but two of whom were Nobel Prize recipients)
were women, nor were any women present at the first Pugwash Conference held in July 1957. See
Jeffrey Boutwell, ed., Participants in the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs Meetings, 1957–2007 (Pugwash, Oct 2007), https://pugwashconferences.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/
participants-and-meetings-1957-2007.pdf (accessed 22 Mar 2017).
76. Muller to Auerbach, 5 Feb 1957, HJMM/LLIU. Muller refers to talks Auerbach gave at
meetings of the New York Academy of Sciences and the Radiation Research Group in Rochester,
New York, in Spring 1957.
WOMEN AS PUBLIC SCIENTISTS | 371
questions of the nuclear age.’’77 Auerbach also chose to express her scientific
activism by educating the general public. As we shall see, Rachel Carson
adopted a similar approach at precisely the same time.
R AC H E L C A R S O N A ND T H E DA NG E R O F ‘ ‘ C HEM IC A L F ALLO UT’ ’
Rachel Carson is well known as a champion for restricting the ubiquitous use
of pesticides and founder of the modern environmental movement. Like
Auerbach, she drew on the public concern about the Atomic Age, but primarily focused attention on the harm caused by chemicals developed in wartime.78
Her scientific background particularly prepared her for this undertaking.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree from the Pennsylvania College for
Women (now Chatham University) and a master’s in zoology from Johns
Hopkins University, Carson was appointed staff biologist (later Editor-inChief for publications) for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1936. Carson
published several popular works on marine biology, including Under the Sea
Wind (1941) and the highly successful The Sea Around Us (1951) and The Edge of
the Sea (1955).79 In considering her next project, Carson’s attention was
directed to an alarming die-off of songbirds that occurred in February 1958
at a sanctuary recently sprayed with pesticide.
Carson began to think carefully about the impact the postwar introduction
of pesticides might be having, not just on birds but also on humans. This led to
the publication of Silent Spring in September 1962. Unlike her previous books,
this was not pleasurable reading but dealt with ‘‘unattractive’’ facts associated
with the ‘‘atomic age,’’ although ones the public was less familiar with.80 When
a preview of Carson’s argument appeared in a three-part series in The New
Yorker in June and July 1962, it was clear from the immediate outpouring of
articles, editorials, letters to the editor, and personal fan mail that the book was
going to be a best seller.81
77. Egan, Barry Commoner (ref. 15), 60–61.
78. Edmund Russell, War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from
World War I to Silent Spring (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
79. Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature (New York: Henry Holt, 1997).
80. Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, Always, Rachel, ed. Martha Freeman (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1994), 248–49. On Carson’s decision to write Silent Spring, see Frank Graham, Jr.,
Since Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), 13–14.
81. Rachel Carson, ‘‘Silent Spring,’’ The New Yorker, 16 Jun 1962, 35–99; 23 Jun 1962, 31–89; 30
Jun 1962, 35–64. Lear, Rachel Carson (ref. 79), 411. For an accounting tabulated in August 1962,
372 | RICHMOND
Among the extensive scholarship on Silent Spring, scant attention has been
paid to Carson’s graduate training in genetics, despite the central role the
discipline plays in the book’s argument (Fig. 4).82 As Carson told the medical
geneticist Klaus Patau (1908–1976), the discipline had a great impact on
her career:
Although I later went into marine biology, I had an early interest in genetics
which I have never lost. I was fortunate enough to study genetics and
development under Jennings at Johns Hopkins and did a little experimental
work with the Whitings on Habrobracon and with Raymond Pearl on
Drosophila. Recent developments in genetics, to the extent that I have been
able to keep up with them, make it seem to me one of the most fascinating of
the sciences.83
In fact, Carson studied under four of the most prominent geneticists in
the U.S.: Anna Rachel Whiting (1892–1981) and Phineas Wescott Whiting
(1887–1978) in Pittsburgh,84 and Herbert Spencer Jennings (1868–1947)
-
a month before the publication of Silent Spring, see [Marie Rodell], ‘‘Interim memo on responses
in The New Yorker’s publication of SILENT SPRING, as of August 17, 1962,’’ Box 61, 1075,
RCP/BLYU.
82. Lear, in Rachel Carson (ref. 79), mentions Carson’s training in genetics and that she read
works on chemistry, physiology, and genetics literature in preparing the book, but provides few
details (chaps. 2, 3, and 15). She draws attention to genetics in Linda J. Lear, ‘‘Rachel Carson’s
‘Silent Spring’,’’ Environmental History Review 17, no. 2 (1993): 23–48. See also Graham, Since
Silent Spring (ref. 80), 4.
83. Carson to Klaus Patau, 14 Apr 1962 [typed; carbon copy], Box 44, RCP/BLYU. Patau,
a German-born geneticist at the University of Wisconsin, provided guidance to Carson in matters
related to human chromosome abnormalities.
84. Marsha L. Richmond, ‘‘A Model Collaborative Couple in Genetics: Anna Rachel Whiting
and Phineas Westcott Whiting’s Study of Sex Determination in Habrobracon,’’ in For Better or for
Worse: Collaborative Couples in the Sciences, eds. Annette Lykknes, Donald Opitz, and Brigitte
Van Tiggelen (Basil: Birkhäuser Springer, 2012), 149–92. Although otherwise an excellent
biography, Lear’s Rachel Carson (ref. 79), 48–49, badly misrepresents Anna Rachel Whiting’s
educational background to paint a negative picture of her impact on Carson: ‘‘The product of the
science department of a state agricultural university, where she had worked in cattle breeding,
Whiting had little training in laboratory life sciences and had no interest in field study’’ (49). In
fact, Whiting was born in upstate New York and had a botany degree from Smith College; she
spent two summers at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory before graduating, and
received a PhD from the University of Iowa (not Iowa State), becoming one of the first American
women to receive a doctorate in genetics. As head of biology at the Pennsylvania College for
Women, she gave several students, including Carson, the opportunity to pursue research in
genetics in the lab she and her husband Phineas directed at the University of Pittsburgh. Lear’s
unfortunate misrepresentation of Whiting has been widely repeated in the scholarly literature on
Carson.
WOMEN AS PUBLIC SCIENTISTS | 373
FIG. 4.
Rachel Carson at microscope, 1951. Brooks Studio. (Permission of
the Rachel Carson Council, Inc.)
and Raymond Pearl (1879–1940) at Johns Hopkins. Thus, although
holding a master’s degree in marine biology, Carson was well trained in
genetics.
Scholars have well explored the impact contemporary debates over nuclear
fallout and the test-ban treaty had on Silent Spring, but few have noted Carson’s engagement with contemporary discourse in genetics.85 Her archive,
85. See, for example, Ralph Lutts, ‘‘Chemical Fallout: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring,
Radioactive Fallout, and the Environmental Movement,’’ Environmental Review: ER 9, no. 3
(1985): 210–25; Diana Newell, ‘‘Home Truths: Women Writing Science in the Nuclear Dawn,’’
European Journal of American Culture 22, no. 3 (2003): 193–203; Michael B. Smith, ‘‘‘Silence, Miss
Carson!’: Science, Gender, and the Reception of Silent Spring,’’ Feminist Studies 27, no. 3 (2001):
733–52.; David K. Hecht, ‘‘Constructing a Scientist: Expert Authority and Public Images of
374 | RICHMOND
however, well documents how closely she studied current genetics literature in
researching Silent Spring.
Carson was well familiar with Muller’s discovery that x-rays could cause
mutations and had indeed participated in the Whitings’ Habrobracon
research program, which irradiated wasps to induce mutations.86 In the
twenty-five years since Carson completed her graduate work, however,
genetics had undergone a revolution. After the announcement of the
structure of DNA in 1953, genetics transitioned from its early focus on
analyzing phenotypic and genotypic changes caused by mutations to one
based on molecular biology, analyzing nucleic acid base pairing, identifying DNA-RNA coding patterns, and exploring chromosomal aberrations.87
Faced with the daunting task of familiarizing herself with these new developments, Carson adopted a strategy of concentrating on literature connected to her present concerns, systematically reading articles related to the
mutagenic properties of chemicals and querying authors when she needed
further information.
Carson paid especially close attention to the new field of medical genetics.
Since 1955, when the human chromosome number was confirmed as 23,
medical genetics had undergone rapid development.88 Carson particularly
scrutinized the association of medical conditions with gross chromosomal
abnormalities such as trisomy, duplications, inversions, and deletions. This
paid off by enabling her to recognize a seeming connection between an individual’s exposure to pesticides and their developing cancer. Moreover, she
-
Rachel Carson,’’ Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 41, no. 3 (2011): 277–302; and Rome,
‘‘‘Political Hermaphrodites’’’ (ref. 14).
86. As Carson told her literary agent, Marie Rodell, ‘‘I remember Muller’s work on the effect
of radiation on germ cells was just being talked about when I first studied genetics,’’ cited in Lear,
‘‘Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’’’ (ref. 82), 43 n. 4.
87. Robert Olby, The Path to the Double Helix (London: Macmillan, 1974); Lily E. Kay, Who
Wrote the Book of Life? A History of the Genetic Code (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
2000); Soraya de Chadarevian, Designs for Life: Molecular Biology After World War II (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002); Matthew Cobb, Life’s Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the
Genetic Code (New York: Basic Books, 2015).
88. Chadarevian, Designs for Life (ref. 87); Soraya de Chadarevian, ‘‘Putting Human Genetics
on a Solid Basis: Human Chromosome Research, 1950s–1970s,’’ in Human Heredity in the
Twentieth Century, eds. Berndt Gausemeier, Staffan Müller-Wille, and Edmund Ramsden (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), 141–52; Nathaniel Comfort, The Science of Human Perfection:
How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2012); and M. Susan Lindee, ‘‘Genetic Disease in the 1960s: A Structural Revolution,’’ American
Journal of Medical Genetics 115 (2002): 75–82.
WOMEN AS PUBLIC SCIENTISTS | 375
even hypothesized that these chemicals caused harm by damaging the chromosomes. As she told her editor in 1959:
To tell the truth in the beginning I felt the link between pesticides and
cancer was tenuous and at best circumstantial; now I feel it is very strong
indeed. This is partly because I feel I shall be able to suggest the actual
mechanism by which these things transform a normal cell into a cancer cell.
This has taken very deep digging into the realms of physiology and biochemistry and genetics, to say nothing of chemistry. But now I feel that a lot
of isolated pieces of the jig-saw puzzle have suddenly fallen into place. It has
not, to my knowledge, been brought together by anyone else, and I think it
will make my case very strong indeed.89
The works she read provided clues about how DDT might act, but there was
to date no direct evidence of the mutagenic properties of pesticides.
An example of how Carson pursued this line of study comes from her
correspondence with the University of Wisconsin medical geneticist Klaus
Patau (1908–1976), who in 1960 discovered trisomy 13 (Patau’s Syndrome). In
October 1961, she wrote him asking for reprints of two of his articles. In January
1962, she requested additional offprints, indicating the basis for her enquiry:
‘‘My special interest is in certain chemicals which alter the chromosome number or bring about various types of chromosome damage and so could conceivably bring about effects such as those you have studied.’’ Because her book
would soon go to press, she requested a quick reply. Patau complied, informing
her: ‘‘There is, I believe, extremely little information about chemicals having
been found to alter the number or structure of chromosomes in man,’’ but
suggesting two sources she might consult. In April, Carson asked yet another
favor: ‘‘I wonder whether you would be willing to read about a half dozen pages
of manuscript from my forthcoming book? This is the section in which I have
referred to the recently discovered chromosome abnormalities and have called
attention to the fact that chromosome breakage and loss can be caused by many
of the chemicals in common use as pesticides.’’ Patau agreed, and in the cover
letter accompanying her manuscript, she described the aim of her book:
It will perhaps be difficult for you to read this out of context, so I should
perhaps say that this is a book intended for the reader who is not a specialist,
although I hope it will interest scientists as well. In it I view with concern
the widespread use of chemical pesticides, often by persons who have no
89. Carson to Paul Brooks, 3 Dec 1959; cited in Lear, Rachel Carson (ref. 79), 357.
376 | RICHMOND
conception of the dangers inherent in the materials they are using. I have
dealt with the resulting contamination of water, soil, and food, and with the
known and probable effects on life, including human life. I do not take the
extreme positions that no chemicals must ever be used, but I do contend
that our eyes must be opened to what we are doing, and that we must
urgently explore the many alternatives that even now are open to us. In one
of the chapters on man, I have dealt with the fact that many of these chemicals have the ability to interfere with vital processes in the physiology of
the cells, and also to produce genetic effects. These are described in the pages
I enclose.90
In Silent Spring, she included this material at the end of chapter 13, ‘‘Through
a Narrow Window.’’ After describing Patau’s work on chromosome abnormalities, she suggested that chemicals might be implicated in causing chromosome changes. Although few readers would have been familiar with
chromosome mutations, this did not prevent her from introducing the topic.
‘‘It would be foolish to assume that any single agent is responsible for damaging
the chromosomes or causing their erratic behavior during cell division. But can
we afford to ignore the fact that we are now filling the environment with
chemicals that have the power to strike directly at the chromosomes, affecting
them in the precise ways that could cause such conditions? Is this not too high
a price to pay for a sproutless potato or a mosquitoless patio?’’91 She strategically used the information she collected to draw a far-reaching conclusion,
expressed in a way that all could understand.
Because of the lack of direct evidence, Carson was compelled to develop an
analogical argument in Silent Spring. She presented data obtained from different lines of research to establish correlations that supported her contention that
pesticides posed a danger to the health of ecosystems, organisms, and human
health. Although not definitive, such evidence would be sufficient, she hoped,
to convince the public and ultimately policy makers to ‘‘use foresight rather
than hindsight’’ (a forerunner of the ‘‘precautionary principle’’) and begin to
regulate the use of DDT and other pesticides.92
90. Carson to Patau, 14 Apr 1962, Box 44, 44 818, RCP/BLYU.
91. Carson, Silent Spring (ref. 20), 215–16. On chromosomal mutations, see Campos, Radium
and the Secret of Life (ref. 7), and Luis Campos, ‘‘Genetics Without Genes: Blakeslee, Datura, and
‘Chromosomal Mutations’,’’ in A Cultural History of Heredity IV: Heredity in the Century of the
Gene, preprint (#343), eds. Staffan Müller-Wille and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (Berlin: Max Planck
Institute for the History of Science, 2008), 243–58.
92. The phrase was used in a speech Carson gave to the National Council of Women (11 Oct
1962), Box 101, 1885 [Typescript], RCP/BLYU. On Carson’s connection to the rise of toxicology,
WOMEN AS PUBLIC SCIENTISTS | 377
Genetics was a central component of Carson’s argument. Like Auerbach,
she began by explaining the basic processes of cell division and sexual reproduction—‘‘the basic drama of life as it is played on the stage of the living
cell.’’93 She mentioned the ‘‘exact and inescapable’’ parallel between the effect
of chemicals and radiation in causing mutations, noting the danger posed by
the ‘‘500 new chemicals to which the bodies of men and animals are required
somehow to adapt each year.’’ She pointed to the danger chemicals posed, not
just to individuals but most importantly to future generations, invoking evolutionary concerns. It was in this context that she referenced heredity and
alluded to ‘‘substances’’ that induced mutations:
Along with the possibility of the extinction of mankind by nuclear war, the
central problem of our age has therefore become the contamination of man’s
total environment with such substances of incredible potential for harm—
substances that accumulate in the tissues of plants and animals and even
penetrate the germ cells to shatter or alter the very material of heredity upon
which the shape of the future depends.94
In mentioning the contemporary debate over the biological effects of
radiation, Carson tapped into the same concerns that Auerbach addressed
in 1956.
Next, Carson referenced the discovery of chemical mutagenesis. Presuming
readers were familiar with the connection between radiation and mutation, she
drew their attention to the ‘‘far less noticed’’ discovery by Auerbach and
Robson that mustard gas ‘‘produces permanent chromosome abnormalities
that cannot be distinguished from those induced by radiation.’’ Mustard gas,
she noted, ‘‘has now been joined by a long list of other chemicals known to
alter genetic material in plants and animals.’’95 In this way she provided
a crucial link between mutations caused by physical agents and those produced
by harsh chemicals.96
Carson then cited two recent Scientific American articles by geneticists, one
by Muller on ‘‘Radiation and Human Mutation’’ (which included a section on
-
see Frederick Rowe Davis, Banned: A History of Pesticides and the Science of Toxicology (New
Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2014), esp. chaps. 6 and 7.
93. Carson, Silent Spring (ref. 20), 209.
94. Ibid., 7, 8.
95. Ibid., 209.
96. Carson read and annotated Auerbach’s 1949 paper, ‘‘Chemical Mutagenesis,’’ Biological
Reviews 24 (1949): 355–91, highlighting references to studies that linked chemicals with cancer as
well as mutation. See Box 34, 604–06, Genetics 1946–61, folder 604, RCP/BLYU.
378 | RICHMOND
‘‘chemical agents’’) and another by Peter Alexander on ‘‘Radiation-Imitating
Chemicals.’’97 These articles, she noted, were highly suggestive in adding to
the list of chemical mutagens, but they did not specifically include pesticides.
‘‘As yet there has been no comprehensive study aimed at testing the mutagenic
effects of pesticides as such. The facts cited above are the by-products of
research in cell physiology or genetics. What is urgently needed is a direct
attack on the problem.’’98 She continued to repeat this call on numerous
occasions after Silent Spring’s publication.99 With a preponderance of albeit
‘‘indirect’’ evidence to support her claims, Carson rested her case and called for
a more circumspect approach to pesticide use.
S I L E N T S P R I N G ’S AP PE A L TO W O M E N
Scholars have investigated Silent Spring from multiple perspectives, including trying to identify reasons for why the work attracted such an unprecedented public response.100 Carson, most agree, tapped into dominant
cultural concerns of the time. Craig Waddell indeed suggests that the
book’s success was in fact ‘‘overdetermined,’’ that is, ‘‘no one factor—either
within or outside the text—can adequately explain the success of Silent
Spring.’’101 The use of gender analysis has also been fruitful, especially in
97. H. J. Muller, ‘‘Radiation and Human Mutation,’’ Scientific American 193 (1955):
58–68. Peter Alexander, ‘‘Radiation-Imitating Chemicals,’’ Scientific American 202 (1960):
99–108. Highlighting current knowledge of how certain chemical agents might be carcinogens as well as mutagens, Alexander specifically mentioned Auerbach and Robson’s work on
mustard gas.
98. Carson, Silent Spring (ref. 20), 213. See also John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark, ‘‘Rachel
Carson’s Ecological Critique,’’ Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine 59, no. 9 (Feb
2008): 1–17.
99. Carson included this statement in speeches before the National Council of Women in
October 1962 and the Federation of Homemakers in November 1962, which were widely reported
in the press. See, for example, ‘‘Rachel Carson Urges Genetic Study of Pesticide Effects on
Heredity,’’ Arizona Republic, 6 Nov 1962, Box 101, folder 1916, RCP/BLYU. She was queried
about the point by Senator Jacob Ribicoff in June 1963, to which she responded that the Federal
Drug Administration ‘‘should have a department of genetics or at least a small staff of geneticists
to determine genetic effects’’ of pesticides. See Davis, Banned (ref. 92), 169–70.
100. See, for example, Gary Kroll, ‘‘The ‘Silent Springs’ of Rachel Carson: Mass Media and
the Origins of Modern Environmentalism,’’ Public Understanding of Science 10, no. 4 (2001):
403–20, and Hecht, ‘‘Constructing a Scientist’’ (ref. 85).
101. Craig Waddell, ‘‘The Reception of Silent Spring: An Introduction,’’ in And No Birds Sing
(ref. 20), 1–16, on 16.
WOMEN AS PUBLIC SCIENTISTS | 379
deconstructing the line of attack taken by her critics.102 Less well explored,
however, is the role gender played in the text itself as well as in the book’s
reception.
While Carson certainly sought to convince men of the validity of her views,
she consciously targeted middle-class, educated women.103 In the text, Carson
frequently used information provided by women and implicitly invoked
maternal responsibility in numerous references to the harm pesticides caused
children, including reports of death, cancer, or birth defects. In the opening
sentence of Chapter 3, ‘‘Elixirs of Death,’’ for example, Carson writes: ‘‘For the
first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to
contact with dangerous chemicals from the moment of conception until
death. . . . [T]hese chemicals are now stored in the bodies of the vast majority
of human beings, regardless of age. They occur in the mother’s milk, and
probably in the tissues of the unborn child.’’104 Drawing on the public’s
familiarity with the decade-long controversy over nuclear fallout, Carson also
seemingly alluded to the recently released results of the Baby Tooth Survey
undertaken by the Greater St. Louis Citizens’ Committee for Nuclear Information. The 1961 report written by the physician Dr. Louise Zibold Reiss
indicated that the preliminary analysis of children’s teeth showed a build-up
of strontium-90 in teeth (and hence bones) of those born before and after the
detonation of the first hydrogen bomb.105 This powerful statement was sure to
capture women’s attention. By contrast, when Carson refers to men in the text,
she generally points to those responsible for promoting the use of pesticides.106
102. Lear, Rachel Carson (ref. 79), chap. 18; Maril Hazlett, ‘‘‘Woman vs. Man vs. Bugs’:
Gender and Popular Ecology in Early Reactions to Silent Spring,’’ Environmental History 9, no. 4
(2004): 701–29; Smith, ‘‘‘Silence, Miss Carson!’’’ (ref. 85); Hecht, ‘‘Constructing a Scientist’’ (ref.
85); Linda J. Lear, ‘‘Bombshell in Beltsville: The USDA and the Challenge of ‘Silent Spring’,’’
Agricultural History 66, no. 2 (1992): 151–70; John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Waste is
Good for You! Lies, Damn Lies, and the Public Relations Industry (Monroe, ME: Common
Courage Press, 1995); and Priscilla Coit Murphy, What a Book Can Do: The Publication and
Reception of Silent Spring (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005).
103. See Vera Norwood, Made From This Earth: American Women and Nature (Chapel Hill
and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), chap. 5, ‘‘Nature’s Advocates: Rachel
Carson and her Colleagues.’’
104. Carson, Silent Spring (ref. 20), 15.
105. Louise Zibold Reiss, ‘‘Strontium-90 Absorption by Deciduous Teeth,’’ Science 134 (21
Nov 1961), 1669–73. See Egan, Barry Commoner (ref. 15), 66–72.
106. For example, in discussing the importance of insects within ecosystems, she states:
‘‘There is no dearth of men who understand these things, but these are not the men who order the
wholesale drenching of the landscape with chemicals’’ (74–75).
380 | RICHMOND
Carson also explicitly appealed to women after the book’s publication. As
she had done with her previous books, she launched a speaking tour immediately after Silent Spring’s publication. Many of these talks were before
women’s associations, including the National Council of Women of the
United States (October 11, 1962), the Federation of Homemakers (November
1962), and the Women’s National Press Club (December 5, 1962).107 In these
addresses, Carson frequently reached out to her audience, not only to convince
them about the dangers of pesticides, but also to enlist their assistance in
a campaign to control their use.108 As she told those attending the AllWomen Conference of the National Council of Women of the United States,
held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City in October 1962, ‘‘It is
truly inspiring to see so many of you assembled here to discuss the matter
of conscience. It is perhaps particularly appropriate for women to consider
this theme, for women are traditionally the custodians of family welfare, the
guardians of the health and happiness of their children. . . . To my mind
the word conscience implies not only an evaluation of what we are doing in
the present—it reaches out into the future to embrace the generations of the
unborn.’’ She continued with the theme of women’s responsibility, noting,
‘‘There is something more than mere feminine intuition behind my concern
about the possibility that our freewheeling use of pesticides may endanger
generations yet unborn.’’ She then laid out a program for action:
What, then can be done? In this specific field, I think we must require that
any pesticide, before approval for use, must be thoroughly tested for genetic
effect—using procedures outlined by geneticists. Second, we must see that
a geneticist is appointed to the staff of the FDA to evaluate these tests.
Third, we should work for legislation that would ban the use of mutationcausing or chromosome-damaging chemicals, or as a minimum precaution,
regulate their use in such a way that they cannot occur as residues on food. In
107. Lear, Rachel Carson (ref. 79), chap. 17.
108. Carson took a different approach, however, in her speech to the Women’s National
Press Club, where she pointed out to women journalists how to recognize what she viewed as
biased criticism of her book coming from the pesticide industry. Providing many examples, she
concluded: ‘‘It is clear that we are all to receive heavy doses of tranquilizing information, designed to lull the public into the sleep from which SILENT SPRING so rudely awakened it.
Some definite gains toward a saner policy of pest control have been made in recent months. The
important issue now is whether we are to hold and extend those gains.’’ ‘‘Women’s National
Press Club, December 5, 1962,’’ Box 101, folder 1907, RCP/BLYU. See also Lear, Rachel Carson
(ref. 79), 425–26.
WOMEN AS PUBLIC SCIENTISTS | 381
dealing with the pesticide problem as a whole, we must begin a determined
program of replacing dangerous chemicals with new and even more efficient
methods as rapidly as we can. It is not a question of abandoning all chemicals
tomorrow—that would be impossible. We cannot go back—we must go
forward.109
The well-educated, and well-heeled, audience included many who were
precisely in a position to help achieve these aims.
Carson made a more explicitly gendered appeal to the small group of
women at a meeting of the Federation of Homemakers in Bethesda, Maryland,
in November 1962. Although the text of the speech is not extant, it was
reported by the journalist Helen Colson:
Nine out of every ten women who read Rachel Carson’s best-selling book,
‘‘Silent Spring,’’ are ready to join her crusade against insecticides. But few
know where to get their swords or exactly whom to spear. Since the book
was published a month ago, concerned mothers and wives by the thousands
have written to Miss Carson at her Silver Spring home to ask what they
personally can do about the dangers.110
Carson, the reporter noted, did indeed advise her audience about how to
channel their efforts:
‘‘I am quite sure that democracy still works if we will allow it to,’’ she said in
a soft mild voice that belies her strength and determination. Pesticides
poison our soil, kill our wildlife and threaten to deform future generations, she continued. ‘‘But it is a threat that American women can
help to stop.’’ Miss Carson suggested that the ladies write letters to congressmen, senators, state and local government agencies and newspaper
editors. She suggested that women’s organizations appoint special committees to study the pesticide and insecticide problem, that they issue
resolutions and that they send them to Congress, medical societies and
109. Speech to the National Council of Women of the United States, 11 Oct 1962, Typescript,
Box 101, 1885, RCP/BLYU.
110. The piece concludes: ‘‘Several of the ladies who had been taking notes began to draft the
letters they were going to send.’’ See Helen A. Colson, ‘‘‘Democracy Still Works . . . ’ Rachel’s
Song Is Loud and Clear,’’ Washington, D.C. News, 6 Nov 1962, Box 101, folder 1916, RCP/BLYU.
The Federation ‘‘was started by four homemakers (deeply concerned with the chemical treatment
practically all foods now receive and disturbed by the weaknesses in our food laws) as a non-profit
organization under the laws of the District of Columbia, in April 1959.’’ See ‘‘A Brief History [of
the Federation of Homemakers] (1979),’’ University Libraries Special Collections & University
Archives, Wichita State University, http://cdm15942.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/
collection/p15942coll11/id/1182/rec/1 (accessed 22 Mar 2017).
382 | RICHMOND
newspapers. ‘‘Most important of all,’’ she concluded, ‘‘question any proposed spraying program in your community.’’ The homemakers vowed to
take this advice. Most of them had read her book or the excerpts from it that
appeared last June in the New Yorker magazine.111
If this report is any indication, women were particularly receptive to Carson’s
message and enthusiastic about joining her cause.
A good gauge of women’s response to Carson’s book comes from the
analysis of the letters she received following the publication of the New Yorker
series. Compiled by her literary agent Marie Rodell, the list indicates that
among the first 270 letters received in August 1962, 155 (57 percent) were from
men and 115 (43 percent) were from women. The content of the letters was
categorized as follows:
Letters asking what the writers can do about the situation in general: 18 þ 17
Letters reporting on what the writers have done or plan to do (write their
congressmen, address local clubs, distribute copies, etc.: 67 þ 11
Letters asking what alternate products to use: 3 or methods þ 4
Letters asking personal medical advice: 8 þ 1
Letters reporting alleged individual cases of poisoning: 7 þ 2
Letters asking about baby foods: 9 þ 6
Letters from food faddists: 11 þ 2
Letters from crackpots: 3 þ 1
Letters disagreeing: 3 þ 2
Clipping enclosed – 12
Letters of approval 67 þ 2
‘‘ of corrections 2
Chemical industry 1 112
Although the topics themselves are not broken down by gender in the list, it
suggests that women as well as men were convinced by Carson’s argument and
had already, or were planning to, contact representatives to advocate for
controlling pesticide use.113
111. Colson, ‘‘Democracy Still Works’’ (ref. 110; emphasis in the original).
112. [Rodell], ‘‘Interim memo’’ (ref. 81). The plus sign indicates data subsequently added in
ink to the typed text; the last four lines are later additions handwritten in ink. Rodell also
provided a geographic breakdown and the writer’s profession or business, when indicated.
113. Vera Norwood claims that ‘‘women’s voices were as instrumental in building support as
the male scientists and politicians who defended Carson’s findings.’’ Norwood, Made From This
Earth (ref. 103), 147.
WOMEN AS PUBLIC SCIENTISTS | 383
Carson also used gender to her advantage in her interactions with various
governmental bodies.114 In his study of President John F. Kennedy’s Science
Advisory Committee (PSAC), Zuoyue Wang describes the government
investigation of the case against pesticides. When Carson was invited to
address the appointed subcommittee in January 1963, it was ‘‘the first time
that a woman scientist was involved in a major PSAC investigation.’’115 The
subcommittee’s report, issued four months later, confirmed that ‘‘there
were inherent hazards in the current use of chemical pesticides, even in
their approved use’’ and admitted ‘‘that science was not equipped with the
knowledge at that time to assess accurately the full extent of those
hazards.’’116 Wang particularly emphasizes the political significance of
Carson’s book, which resulted in ‘‘a profound shift in the authority of
American public policy from government technocrats to a scientifically
informed public, and with it a new model of policymaking based on contested rationality.’’117 This new ‘‘scientifically informed public’’ consisted of
women as well as men.
Gender was an important element within the context of science politics. ‘‘It
was no accident,’’ Wang concludes, ‘‘that the first major PSAC report on
a topic other than the masculine military technology, space, and science policy,
was instigated by a woman scientist and science writer, belonging to a marginal
group in the hierarchical scientific community.’’118 This episode demonstrates
that the position of women in American society was beginning to change in the
postwar period. Carson thus epitomizes developments that were affecting
contemporary science as well as society. By encouraging women as well as
men to become ‘‘environmental citizens,’’ she indeed fostered a change in
public policy.
114. Graham, Since Silent Spring (ref. 80), 51. See also Davis, Banned (ref. 92), chap. 6, for
a description of Carson’s appearance before congressional hearings and the PSAC.
115. Zuoyue Wang, In Sputnik’s Shadow: The President’s Science Advisory Committee and Cold
War America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 204. See also Carson and
Freeman, Always, Rachel (ref. 80), 447–48.
116. Graham, Since Silent Spring (ref. 80), 77.
117. Wang, In Sputnik’s Shadow (ref. 115), 211. Wang concludes, ‘‘Ultimately, what made the
PSAC report a striking vindication of Rachel Carson was not only its confirmation of her specific
charges about pesticide abuse, but its sympathy for her philosophical critique of misguided
technological enthusiasm. Like Carson, the PSAC panel focused on the relationship between
science and technology in its appraisal of the excesses and deficiencies of pesticides’’ (212).
118. Ibid., 218.
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C O N CL U SI O N
Auerbach and Carson brought their scientific expertise to bear in an attempt
to educate and inform the public about scientific issues they believed were
of utmost concern. They spoke directly ‘‘to the people’’ at a time when male
scientists were having limited success influencing public opinion and
government policy.119 In terms of their message, both women reached out
to educate rather than to lecture the public. In so doing, they seemingly
reflected the advice Gerald Piel, publisher of Scientific American, gave biologists
in 1954. As he noted, ‘‘an article written for the general reader can have only
one purpose: to increase the reader’s understanding. Here the relationship of
the author and the reader is reversed. The general reader is not obliged to
listen. It is up to the writer to tune in on his reader, to find the reader’s level of
understanding and range of interest. The reader does not necessarily share
either the scientist’s interest in the work or the background of knowledge
which gives it meaning.’’120 Auerbach and Carson were particularly sensitive
to respecting the intelligence of their readers, even while guiding them toward
the conclusions they wanted them to draw. They approached their topics by
presenting information clearly and accurately (as apprised by reviewers) to
establish their scientific authority.
Both used gender to their advantage in the texts and subtexts of their books.
By referencing women’s customary responsibility for family security, they drew
on the long-familiar maternalist tradition. Lawrence Wittner argues that
women’s concern about the bomb primarily stemmed ‘‘from conventional
assumptions about women’s maternal nature’’ rather than from feminism.
Still, he concludes, even if participation in protests was provoked by maternalism, ‘‘large numbers of women were leaving hearth and home to become
involved in a previously males-only realm: the national security debate. And
they were doing it in an increasingly ‘unladylike’ way—by leafleting, picketing,
119. As Mark Lytle notes of Carson, ‘‘She made no secret of her contempt for the men in white
lab coats who hid the irresponsibility of their actions behind the prestige of their professions and
the authority of the government. Carson advocated ‘power to the people’ before radicals popularized the phrase in the 1960s.’’ Mark Hamilton Lytle, The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson,
Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement (New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007), 237.
120. Gerard Piel, ‘‘Biology for the General Reader,’’ AIBS Bulletin 4, no. 3 (Jul 1954): 17–19, on
17. See also Megan Barnhart Sethi, ‘‘Information, Education, and Indoctrination: The Federation
of American Scientists and Public Communication Strategies in the Atomic Age,’’ Historical
Studies in the Natural Sciences 42, no. 1 (2012): 1–29.
WOMEN AS PUBLIC SCIENTISTS | 385
and public speaking. Consequently, they began to undermine ‘the feminine
mystique’ and to develop a sense of women’s empowerment.’’121 In Britain,
a women’s-only demonstration representing ‘‘ordinary housewives and
mothers’’ was held in London in May 1957 to protest against nuclear weapons
tests, at which Dr. Summerskill issued the dire warning that ‘‘radiation from
the bombs would have the effect of rendering women sterile and it was the
maternal function which determined a woman’s whole approach to life.’’122
Women’s participation in protest movements in the late 1950s and early 1960s
can thus be viewed as a gateway between traditional maternalism and the new
activism of second-wave feminism.
Both Auerbach and Carson, for example, built on the traditional trope of
women’s maternal responsibility, but they reframed the notion in the process.
While referencing women’s traditional responsibility for the health of their
family or their community, they urged women to assume a broader mission:
that of protecting the well-being of all humanity (and of future generations).123 This appeal was not just academic but also personal; although
neither Auerbach or Carson ever married, they both adopted children.124 In
addition, they encouraged and empowered women to join with men in political activism. Women at the time, Nancy Unger notes, were thinking deeply
about the issue of nuclear testing and expressing their views through participating in protests. In November 1961, for example, ‘‘some 50,000 primarily
white, middle-class American women abandon their homemaker duties to
demonstrate in major cities and suburban communities’’ as part of the antinuclear protest carried out by the Women Strike for Peace (WSP) movement.
121. Wittner, ‘‘Gender Roles’’ (ref. 15). Applying gender analysis, Diana Jewell noted that
Carson and Judith Merril, a contemporary science fiction writer, ‘‘powerfully interrogated
domestic settings and, in the process, advanced somewhat new images of women, families, and
domesticity in the new post-war white, middle-class locale of suburbia.’’ Newell, ‘‘Home Truths’’
(ref. 85), 195.
122. Edith Summerskill, A Woman’s World (London: Heinemann, 1967), 44–45.
123. Norwood, Made From This Earth (ref. 103), observes that when Carson spoke to women’s
organizations, she regularly pointed out that ‘‘women’s responsibilities in the domestic sphere
attuned them to the health of the earth’’ (152).
124. Auerbach’s love of children was well known among her friends. Later in life she unofficially adopted two boys, helping fund their education. Beale, ‘‘Charlotte Auerbach’’ (ref. 22), 35–
36. She also published (under the pseudonym Charlotte Austen) a much beloved children’s book,
Adventures with Rosalind (London: Hutchinson’s Books for Young People, 1947), which she
wrote during the war. (I thank Helen Muller for sharing with me a photocopy of her autographed
copy of this rare book.) Carson legally adopted her grandnephew Roger Christie, the orphaned
son of her niece Marjorie. Lear, Rachel Carson (ref. 79).
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Speaking before the crowd, Dagmar Wilson, co-founder of WSP along with
Congresswoman Bella Abzug, reiterated a sentiment earlier voiced by Summerskill: ‘‘‘In the face of male ‘logic’, which seemed to us utterly illogical, it
was time for women to speak out.’’’125 Auerbach and Carson certainly also
encouraged women to speak out, but they did even more. By inspiring mass
political activism, they helped to create a new kind of civic participation—
‘‘environmental citizenship’’—that advocated both new policies as well as
a fundamental change in the political process.126
Their position as outliers within the male-dominated scientific community
of the time may also have aided their causes. Although difficult to document,
the public may have been more receptive to their messages precisely because
both were women who were attempting to educate, not indoctrinate, in promoting their agendas. Their marginality also served to insulate them from
political fallout—either anti-Communism or ‘‘pesticide McCarthyism,’’
respectively—that male scientists engaged in activism could suffer.127 Neither
had to fear losing their job. Carson was an independent scholar when she
published Silent Spring, supported by a government pension and royalties from
her writings. Auerbach was shielded by her scientific standing, the greater
latitude for academic expression in Britain, as well as by the support she
received at Edinburgh from Waddington. Both women were thus afforded
a more extensive ‘‘protest space’’ than their male colleagues.128
Finally, training in genetics no doubt encouraged Auerbach and Carson (as
it did other biologists) to think about the impact of nuclear weapons and
poisonous chemicals on future generations. In Carson’s case genetics provided
both critical evidence as well as analysis that significantly advanced her
125. Nancy C. Unger, Beyond Nature’s Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental
History (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 147.
126. Norwood, Made From This Earth (ref. 103), 171: ‘‘Rachel Carson formed the center of
a web of women from various walks of life who shared among themselves not only a moral
understanding of their relationship to nature but also a political commitment to assuring that
male professionals incorporated their values into environmental policy. That preservation of the
health and diversity of the natural landscape gained national prominence in the 1960s and 1970s
was due in large measure to their effort.’’
127. Ellen W. Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1986). On ‘‘pesticide ‘McCarthyism,’’’ see Harrison Wellford, Sowing
the Wind (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1972), 333, cited in H. Patricia Hynes, The Recurring
Silent Spring (New York: Pergamon Press, 1989), 17, 153.
128. I thank an anonymous reviewer for this important insight. This line of argument may also
help explain why only a few biologists and almost no ecologists (who, as members of a new
discipline, were institutionally insecure) publicly supported Carson’s position on pesticides.
WOMEN AS PUBLIC SCIENTISTS | 387
argument. Genetics as a discipline, moreover, provides yet another touchstone
for this case study, namely, a gauge by which to calibrate change in the status of
women in science. Both Auerbach’s and Carson’s career trajectories, for example, illustrate that by the 1950s, women were beginning to emerge as authorities
in science. Although Margaret Rossiter has well documented that the situation
for women in science was still far from ideal in the 1950s and 1960s, Auerbach
had ascended from the tenuous position of personal assistant in the late 1930s
to being appointed director of the Medical Research Council’s Mutagenesis
Research Unit in 1958. She had also been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
of London and invited to carry out research at both Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory and the Biological Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
in the United States. She had a successful career in science. Although not an
academic biologist, Carson also enjoyed considerable success in her career.129
As this article suggests, including women in studies of public science, and
indeed, of science in general, adds new depth and understanding to the historical record. It also better reflects the actual composition of and dynamics
within contemporary scientific communities.130 In this particular case, ‘‘following the women’’ offers key insights into critical aspects of postwar science
and scientific activism that would otherwise simply have remained hidden.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I take this opportunity to offer my gratitude to Mary Jo Nye for being an ideal role
model, mentor, and friend throughout my career. Her teaching at the University of
Oklahoma helped me decide to pursue graduate work in the history of science, and
her meticulous scholarship continues to inspire me and so many others. I also thank
Bob Nye, who introduced me to intellectual history and always provokes new insights.
Anita Guerrini substantially encouraged this project and helped tighten my argument,
129. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America (ref. 16), and Lear, Rachel Carson (ref. 79), chap. 18.
A similar disciplinary profile is evident in the careers of other contemporary geneticists, including
Barbara McClintock and Ruth Sager in the United States, and Elisabeth Schiemann, Paula
Hertwig, and Marguerite Vogt in Germany, for example.
130. On the value of including women in histories of science, see Caroline Merchant, ‘‘Gender
and Environmental History,’’ The Journal of American History 76, no. 4: 1117–21. As a cautionary
reminder of exclusion, Auerbach is not mentioned in the otherwise encyclopedic treatment of the
disarmament movement: Lawrence S. Wittner, The Struggle Against the Bomb, vol. 2: Resisting the
Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954–1970 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997).
388 | RICHMOND
and thanks too to Michael Osborne. Clare Button, archivist of the ‘‘Towards Dolly:
Edinburgh, Roslin and the Birth of Modern Genetics’’ Project, Centre for Research
Collections, University of Edinburgh Library, provided invaluable assistance in accessing the Auerbach collection. Helga Satzinger, Luis Campos, Helen Juliette Muller,
and an anonymous reviewer greatly strengthened the article. Finally, I gratefully
acknowledge the financial assistance provided by Walter Edwards, director of the
Humanities Center, and by Marc Kruman, former chair, and Elizabeth Faue, current
chair of the History Department at Wayne State University.