dal Blog di Angela Siani: nothing shocks me, I'm a scientist
L'eredità di Frederick Hopkins, premio Nobel nel 1929 per la Fisiologia per gli studi sulle vitamine, gli amminoacidi essenziali (scoprì il triptofano) ed i fattori essenziali nella dieta (studiò la composizione delle cellule muscolari).
Gli anni intorno al 1920 videro l'ammissione delle prime donne alla ricerca (la figlia Barbara Hopkins fu tra le prime). Nel 1921 venne istituito il diploma per le donne laureate.
Due settimane fa sono stati ricordati i 150 anni dalla sua nascita...
- The picture above is of the faculty of the Biochemistry Department at Cambridge University in 1916. Anything strike you as unusual? Yes, there are almost as many women scientists in the picture as men. And the reason for this extraordinary balance of the sexes, years before Cambridge even awarded degrees to women, is Frederick Gowland Hopkins, the head of the department, sitting in the centre of the photo. He wasn't only a groundbreaking scientist (he won a Nobel Prize for his work on vitamins), he believed strongly in equal rights for men and women. And even though many people at the time thought this was weird, he was vindicated by the fact that many of the women he worked with became important researchers in their own right.
Dal sito web dell'Università di Cambridge: An
Outline of the History of Cambridge Biochemistry:
- The years between 1914 and 1924 saw soaring numbers of students (towards 500/term) and much debate over the inclusion of Biochemistry as a Tripos subject. The 1920/21 class included Malcolm Dixon and also Barbara Hopkins, one of the Professor’s two daughters. Joseph Needham was one of the class of 1921/22.
- In 1921 the University introduced degrees for women, encouraged no doubt by Hopkins who had always been a keen supporter of women in science and had taken many women on in the department by the early 1920s.
- Huia Onslow and Muriel Wheldale establishing the field of plant biochemistry, working particularly on chloroplasts. In 1919 they became husband and wife, the first, but by no means the last, intra-departmental marriage.
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