European Women in Chemistry E-Book

• Herausgeber: Wiley-VCH
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 403

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

"I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one, please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory", said Marie Curie about her wedding dress. According to her lecture notes, Gertrude B. Elion is quoted a few decades later: "Don't be afraid of hard work. Don't let others discourage you, or tell you that you can't do it. In my day I was told women didn't go into chemistry. I saw no reason why we couldn't." These two quotations from famous, Nobel Prize winning chemists amply demonstrate the challenges that female scientists in the past centuries have had to overcome; challenges that are still sometimes faced by the current generation. They "must have the noblest courage, quite extraordinary talents and superior genius" wrote Carl Friedrich Gauss 1807 in a letter to mathematician Sophie Germain. For the official book to celebrate the International Year of Chemistry, the European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences (EuCheMS) has chosen one of the central goals of the International Year: the contribution and role of women in chemistry. This celebration, which is the focus of European Women in Chemistry, takes us on a journey through centuries of chemical research, focusing on the lives of those amazing women from ancient times to the current day who dared to study this subject, often against advice or societal expectations. These portraits emphasize the extraordinary path and personality of these fascinating women, their major contribution to chemistry, but all in the context of their time and social environment. Some of these women, like Marie Curie and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, are famous and still well-known today. Others have contributed significantly to the development of science and lived an exceptional life, but are nowadays almost forgotten. This book is a tribute to all of them and a motivation for new generations to come to tread new paths, fight for unusual ideas and control one?s own destiny.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Half Title page

Related Titles

Title page

Copyright page

Foreword

Preface

About the Editors

List of Contributors

Maria the Jewess

Cleopatra the Alchemist

Perenelle

Anna, Princess of Denmark and Norway, Electress of Saxony (1532–1585)

Marie Meurdrac (1600s)

Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet (1706–1749)

Marie Lavoisier (1758–1836)

Jane Haldimand Marcet (1769–1858)

Julia Lermontova (1846–1919)

Martha Annie Whiteley (1866–1956)

Agnes Pockels (1862–1935)

Marie Skłodowska-Curie (1867–1934)

Clara Immerwahr (1870–1915)

Maria Bakunin (1873–1960)

Margarethe von Wrangell, Fürstin Andronikow (1876–1932)

Lina Solomonovna Shtern (also Stern, Schtern) (1878–1968)

Gertrud Johanna Woker (1878–1968)

Lise Meitner (1878–1968)

Stephanie Horovitz (1887–1942)

Irén Júlia Götz-Dienes (1889–1941)

Erzsébet (Elizabeth) Róna (1890–1981)

Gertrud Kornfeld (1891–1955)

Dorothy Maud Wrinch (1894–1976)

Hertha (Herta) Sponer (1895–1968)

Gerty Theresa Cori (1896–1957)

Ida Noddack-Tacke (1896–1978)

Ilona Kelp-Kabay (1897–1970)

Irène Joliot-Curie (1897–1956)

Maria Kobel (1897–1996)

Katharine Burr Blodgett (1898–1979)

Antonia Elizabeth (Toos) Korvezee (1899–1978)

Mária de Telkes (1900–1995)

Erika Cremer (1900–1996)

Elisa Ghigi (1902–1987)

Kathleen Lonsdale (née Yardley) (1903–1971)

Marthe Louise Vogt (1903–2003)

Carolina Henriette MacGillavry (1904–1993)

Lucia de Brouckère (1904–1982)

Berta Karlik (1904–1990)

Elsie May Widdowson (1906–2000)

Bogusława Jeowska-Trzebiatowska (1908–1991)

Yvette Cauchois (1908–1999)

Marguerite Catherine Perey (1909–1975)

Filomena Nitti Bovet (1909–1994)

Bianka Tchoubar (1910–1990)

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910–1994)

Ulla Hamberg (1918–1985)

Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958)

Jacqueline Ficini (19231988)

Andrée Marquet (1934–)

Anna Laura Segre (1938–2008)

Ada Yonath (1939–)

Helga Rübsamen-Schaeff (1949–)

Katharina Landfester (1969–)

Index

European Women in Chemistry

Edited byJan Apotheker andLivia Simon Sarkadi

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The Editors

Dr. Jan Apotheker University of Groningen Department for Chemistry Education Nijenborgh 4 9747 AG Groningen The Netherlands

Dr.habil. Livia Simon Sarkadi Budapest University of Food Technology and Economics Department of Applied Biotechnology and Food Science Muegyetem rkp. 3 1111 Budapest Hungary

Cover

The cover idea and material was kindly provided by Rita Tömösközi Farkas.

All books published by Wiley-VCH are carefully produced. Nevertheless, authors, editors, and publisher do not warrant the information contained in these books, including this book, to be free of errors. Readers are advised to keep in mind that statements, data, illustrations, procedural details or other items may inadvertently be inaccurate.

Library of Congress Card No.: applied for

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at <HYPERLINK “http://dnb.d-nb.dehttp://dnb.d-nb.de>.

© 2011 Wiley-VCH Verlag & Co. KGaA, Boschstr. 12, 69469 Weinheim, Germany

All rights reserved (including those of translation into other languages). No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by photoprinting, microfilm, or any other means nor transmitted or translated into a machine language without written permission from the publishers. Registered names, trademarks, etc. used in this book, even when not specifically marked as such, are not to be considered unprotected by law.

Composition Typodesign Hecker, Leimen

Cover Design Adam Design, Weinheim

ISBN: 978-3-527-32956-4

Foreword

“A book about Women in Chemistry, what a strange project: how could so few women bring something to chemistry?” I anticipate that this will not be an uncommon reaction to the publication of the book “European Women in Chemistry”. It is true that there are not many world-famous women chemists. To look at the place given to women in science, let us have a look at Nobel laureates, who are among the most prominent scientists: between 1901 and 2010, the Nobel Prizes for Sciences and the Prize in Economic Sciences were awarded to 612 laureates, of which 17 were women. And if we now consider the chemistry Nobel laureates, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to 159 laureates, among which 4 were women (1911, Marie Curie, field of nuclear chemistry, “in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element;” 1935, Irène Joliot-Curie, field of nuclear chemistry, “in recognition of their synthesis of new radioactive elements;” 1964, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, field of biochemistry, structural chemistry “for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances;” 2009, Ada Yonath, biochemistry, structural chemistry, “for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome”.

Why so few? First, because people were convinced that Science was rigorous and rational and women were supposed to be weak and irrational. As a consequence, women scientists have been systematically excluded from doing serious science; they generally encountered their family’s - mostly father’s - resistance to their studying. “apprenez-leur qu’il doit y avoir, pour leur sexe, une pudeur sur la science presqu’aussi délicate que celle qu’inspire l’horreur du vice” (tell them that their sex must have for science as much a sense of decency as that inspired by the horror of vice) (Fénelon, traité de l’éducation des filles, 1687). Furthermore, as women were excluded from the high schools that prepared men for university, if they wanted to learn science, they had to hire tutors. This explains why the few scientifically educated women were, for a long time, encountered mainly in the rich and intellectual classes of society.

Anyway, as far as chemistry is concerned, men can do chemistry, but women do the cooking. With regard to chemistry-like activities performed by women, they were often associated with perfumes, ointments, poisons and, as a consequence, with witchcraft. Consequently, we can assume that many women who knew the properties of plants (the first natural product chemists), were often victims of obscurantism and burned as witches…

A look at the destiny of women chemists shows that their lives were seldom plain ones, and that most of them had difficult or extraordinary fates. This is probably one of the reasons for the great influence these women had, and still have, for example as models for young people - and not only girls. Indeed, it is much more exciting to try to identify oneself with an out-of-the-ordinary-person, than with one having an uneventful story; and as, at least some years ago, most women chemists had uncommon stories, it is not surprising that they are considered by students as better models than male chemists. They campaigned for more vocational opportunities such as the right to vote and a state-supported secondary and higher education for girls. They certainly succeeded in the latter cause and, thanks to their struggle and determination, by the beginning of the 20th century women in several countries were finally accepted into Universities. Now, even if some discrimination against women in science still exists, women chemists must cope with this and understand that their future depends more on what they want to do themselves than on what others want. By doing this, they will show once more their determination and how strong-willed they can be.

Nicole Moreau

Charenton, France

Preface

One of the reasons for 2011 being chosen as the International Year of Chemistry is the centennial commemoration of the Nobel Prize awarded to Maria Skłodowska-Curie. This centenary led to the idea of a book to show the range of female chemists active across Europe in what many would suggest is still a male-dominated profession.

The chapters cover women from alchemical times up to the 19 and 20th centuries when women gained access to higher education. The individual subjects were suggested by EuCheMS member societies and a final decision was taken by the editors; as in any such selection there are other subjects who might have been included. Indeed it is hoped that the book will initiate discussion and debate about this.

The stories demonstrate both the range of activities of female chemists and just how difficult it was for them, and female scientists in general, to develop rewarding careers. Unfortunately, in most European countries this situation only began to change after 1960. Until this date the vast majority of women chemists experienced great problems in securing an academic career despite their excellent quality.

In this book we have focused on academic careers. Other careers of women that have a chemical background have not been included. Otherwise Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel and other politicians with a chemical background would certainly have been included.

Nowadays there are several scholarship pograms to encourage female scientists, both at European and national levels. There are also networks for women scientists to share experiences and offer support to students and young scientists starting out on their career paths.

The editors hope that you will enjoy reading the different stories about female chemists from different countries, with different backgrounds. It is not intended to be a book to finish in one reading, rather it is a book to inspire young women to consider a career in chemistry. It should, however, not only be read by women; male chemists should ask themselves how their careers would have developed had they been faced with the same obstacles. Teachers of chemistry in secondary and tertiary education would also benefit from reading this book so that they can ensure that the opportunities for a career in science are not inadvertently directed at their male students.

We would like to acknowledge the various people from Wiley who helped so much in getting this book together. The EuCheMS Presidency, who initially suggested a book on this topic, and all the authors who contributed to this book, are to be thanked. Without their support, encouragement and enthusiasm the project would not have been possible. Particular thanks are due to Professor Nicole Moreau (President of IUPAC) who has written a foreword to the book.

Jan Apotheker

Livia Simon Sarkadi

About the Editors

Jan Apotheker is a lecturer in Chemistry Education at the University of Groningen. After obtaining his academic degrees from the University of Groningen in Biochemistry, he taught chemistry at a local secondary school for 25 years. One of his prime responsibilities as lecturer is the training of teachers in all levels of education. He is also involved in the organization of outreach activities both from the university and on a national scale. He is a member of the steering committee ‘New Chemistry’ that is currently developing a new chemistry curriculum for secondary education in the Netherlands. Jan is the Royal Dutch Chemical Society board member for education, an IUPAC Committee Member for chemistry education, and a member of the EUCHEMS division for chemistry education.

Livia Simon Sarkadi is a Professor of Applied Biotechnology and Food Science at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary. Since 1980, she has taught biochemistry, food chemistry, and food analysis. She has supervised a number of PhD, BSc and MSc students. Besides being an author and co-author of many scientific papers, she wrote a textbook on Biochemistry. She is a member of the Editorial Board of International Journals (European Food Research and Technology, Food and Nutrition Research). She has been the Chair of the Food Protein Working Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences since 1996 and is currently the Chair of the EuCheMS Food Chemistry Division, and an elected member of the EuCheMS Executive Board.

List of Contributors

Jean-Pierre Adloff

Société chimique de France

250, Rue Saint-Jacques

75014 Paris

France

Katharina Al-Shamery

University of Oldenburg

Fak. V, IRAC

Postfach 2503

26111 Oldenburg

Germany

Didier Astruc

Société chimique de France

250, Rue Saint-Jacques

75014 Paris

France

Susanne Bartel

University of Oldenburg

Fak. V, IRAC

Postfach 2503

26111 Oldenburg

Germany

Christiane Bonnelle

Société chimique de France

250, Rue Saint-Jacques

75014 Paris

France

C.W. Mineke Bosch

University of Groningen

Faculty of Arts, Modern Hist.

Postbus 716

9700 AS Groningen

The Netherlands

Marco Ciardi

University of Bologna

Department of Philosophy

Via Zamboni 38

40126 Bologna

Italy

Danielle M.E. Fauque

Société chimique de France

250, Rue Saint-Jacques

75014 Paris

France

Miriam Focaccia

University of Bologna

Department of Philosophy

Via Zamboni 38

40126 Bologna

Italy

Carl G. Gahmberg

University of Helsinki

Dept. of Chemistry

A.I. Virtasen aukio 1

00014 Helsinki

Finland

Jean-Pierre Genet

Société chimique de France

250, Rue Saint-Jacques

75014 Paris

France

Sally Horrocks

University of Leicester

School of Historical Studies

University Road

Leicester, LE1 7RH

United Kingdom

Henryk Kozlowski

University of Wroclaw

Faculty of Chemistry

F. Joliot-Curie 14

50–383 Wroclaw

Poland

Katalin Nyári-Varga

Hungarian Museum for Science

and Technology Budapest

Kaposvár u. 13–15

1117 Budapest

Hungary

Marianne Offereins

Jodichemdreef 40

3984 JT ODIJK

The Netherlands

István Próder

Hungarian Museum for Science

and Technology Budapest

Kaposvár u. 13–15

1117 Budapest

Hungary

Pekka Pyykko

University of Helsinki

Dept. of Chemistry

A.I. Virtasen aukio 1

00014 Helsinki

Finland

Maria Rentetzi

MPI for the History of

Science

Boltzmannstr. 22

14195 Berlin

Germany

Renate Strohmeier

Uni-Klinik Frankfurt

Gynäkologie und Geburtshilfe

Theodor-Stern-Kai 7

60590 Frankfurt am Main

Germany

Brigitte van Tiggelen

Voie du Vieux Quartier 18

1348 Louvain-la-Neuve

Belgium

Éva Vámos

Hungarian Museum for Science

and Technology Budapest

Kaposvár u. 13–15

1117 Budapest

Hungary

Annette B. Vogt

MPI für Wissenschaftsgeschichte

Boltzmannstr. 22

14195 Berlin

Germany

Maria the Jewess

Marianne Offereins

Maria the Jewess was an alchemist who probably lived in Alexandria, Egypt, in the first or the third century. Although no facts are known about her life, there are many references to Maria in ancient texts. Because alchemy was a secretive science, perhaps to protect its practitioners from persecution, it was not uncommon for alchemists to write under the name of a deity or a famous person. Maria wrote under the name of Miriam the Prophetess, sister of Moses.

Fragments of her work, including one called the Maria Practica, are extant in ancient alchemical collections. She also may have been the author of The Letter of the Crown and the Nature of the Creation by Mary the Copt of Egypt which was found in a volume of Arabic alchemical manuscripts, translated from the Greek. In this work the major theories of Alexandrian alchemy are summarized and several chemical processes described including the manufacture of colored glass. Maria was often quoted by other early alchemists, particularly the Egyptian encyclopedist and alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis (third or fourth century), the alchemist and writer Olympiodoros (fifth or sixth century) and Michael Maier (seventeenth century). Zosimos states that Maria was the first to prepare copper burnt with sulfur, the ‘raw material’ for the preparation of gold. She taught that the ‘Great Work’ could only be prepared in the early spring and that God had given its secret exclusively to the Hebrews. Maria believed that all matter is basically one, and that success in making gold will come when parts are joined: “One becomes two, two becomes three, and by means of the third the fourth achieves unity, thus two are but one”. In her writings there is an analogy between humankind and the metals: “Join the male and the female, and you will find that which is sought after”.

Maria the Jewess

Kerotakis (www.alchemywebsite.com).

Her theoretical contributions remained influential into the Middle Ages and beyond, but Maria was even more famous for her designs of laboratory apparatus. Maria invented, and improved on, techniques and tools that remain basic to laboratory science today and in her writings she described her designs for laboratory apparatus in great detail. Distillation was essential to experimental alchemy, so Maria invented a still or alembic and a three-armed still called the tribikos. The liquid to be distilled was heated in an earthenware vessel on a furnace. The vapor condensed in the ambix, which was cooled with sponges, and a rim on the inside of the ambix collected the distillate and carried it to three copper delivery spouts fitted with receiving vessels.

For her experiments she invented the kerotakis, her most important contribution to alchemical science: a cylinder or sphere with a hemispherical cover, placed on a fire. Suspended from the cover at the top of the cylinder was a triangular palette, used by artists to heat their mixtures of pigment and wax, and containing a copper-lead alloy or some other metal. Solutions of sulfur, mercury, or arsenic sulfide were heated in a pan near the bottom of the cylinder. The sulfur or mercury vapors condensed in the cover and the liquid condensate flowed back down, attacking the metal to yield a black sulfide called ‘Mary’s Black’. This was believed to be the first step of transmutation. A sieve separated impurities from the black sulfide and continuous refluxing produced a gold-like alloy. Plant oils such as attar of roses were also extracted using the kerotakis.

Balneum mariae (www.alchemywebsite.com).

Her water bath, the balneum mariae, was similar to a double-boiler and was used to maintain a constant temperature, or to slowly heat a substance. Two thousand years later, the water bath remains an essential component of the laboratory. One should not confuse the balneum mariae, where the inner vessel is heated with steam to get a temperature above 100 °C and the ‘bain marie’ in which the temperature remains under 100 °C.

Maria the Jewess was one of the first chemists to combine the theories of alchemical science with the practical chemistry of the craft traditions, and, therefore, can be considered as one of the founders of western chemistry.

Literature

Alic, M. (1986) Hypatia’s Heritage. A History of Women in Science from Antiquity to the Late Nineteenth Century, The Women’s Press, London.

Kass-Simon, G. (1993) Women of Science. Righting the Record, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis.

Lennep, J. van (1984) Alchemie, Gemeen-tekrediet België, Brussels.

Ogilvie, M. (2000). The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science. Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century, Vol 2, Routledge, London and New York.

Cleopatra the Alchemist

Marianne Offereins and Renate Strohmeier

Like Maria the Jewess, Cleopatra the alchemist, also known as Cleopatra the Gold-maker, probably lived in the third century and is associated with the school of Maria the Jewess.

Like Maria the Jewess ‘Cleopatra’ is most probably a pseudonym.

Cleopatra was a philosopher and a practical experimentalist and is often confused with Cleopatra the physician, who lived at approximately the same time and who is mentioned in the work of Hippocrates.

What remains of Cleopatra’s work are a discourse and a single surviving papyrus sheet with symbols and diagrams. A copy is in the library of the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. In the discourse, which is written as a dialogue, she compares the philosopher-alchemist who contemplates his work to a loving mother who thinks about her child and feeds it. According to Lindsay in his book The Origins of Alchemy in Graeco-Roman Egypt this discourse was “the most imaginative and deeply-felt document left by the alchemists”.

The papyrus, the Chrysopoeia (Gold-making), pictures the archetypical symbol of the Ouroboros, a serpent eating its tail (symbol of infinity), and a double ring on which is the inscription: “One is the Serpent which has its poison according to two compositions, and One is All and through it is All, and by it is All, and if you have not All, All is Nothing”.

Within the ring are the symbols for gold, silver and mercury. In other parts of the papyrus are a dibikos (a two-armed still) and a kerotakis-like apparatus. The drawings on the right-hand side could be representing the transformation of lead into silver.

Cleopatra investigated weights and measures, attempting to quantify the experimental side of alchemy. Her texts were used until the late Middle Ages, with many alchemists referring to her work.

Like Maria she also used the sun and dung as laboratory heat sources. So, if we are busy developing ways to use the sun and dung as energy sources, we have very important predecessors.

The chrysopeia (gold-making) of Cleopatra (http://library.du.ac.in/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1/788/Ch8%20Alchemy.pdf?sequence=14).

Literature

Alic, M. (1986) Hypatia’s Heritage. A History of Women in Science from Antiquity to the Late Nineteenth Century, The Women’s Press, London.

Kass-Simon, G. (1993) Women of Science. Righting the Record, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis.

Lennep, J. van (1984) Alchemie, Gemeentekrediet België, Brussels.

Lindsay, J. (1970) The Origins of Alchemy in Graeco-Roman Egypt, Muller, London.

Rebière, A. (1897) Les Femmes dans la Science, Notes Recueillies, Librairie Nony & Cie, Paris.

Strohmeier, R. (1998) Lexicon der Naturforscherinnen und Naturkundigen Frauen Europas. Von der Antike bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, Harri Deutsch Verlag, Thun und Frankfurt am Main.

Perenelle

Marianne Offereins

The date of birth of Perenelle (1320 (or 1340)–1402 (1412)) and her origins are still not very well known. She lived in fourteenth century Paris, where she - after being widowed twice - married Nicolas Flamel, a well-to-do scribe in 1355. They lived in the Rue des Écrivains, near the church Saint-Jaques-de-la-Boucherie.

They have become famous through the books of J.K. Rowling and Michael Scott, where they are described as alchemists who found the philosophers stone and consequently found the source of eternal life.

In 1357 Flamel bought for two florins the manuscript that would change their lives. Flamel writes about it: “(…) a gilded Book, very old and large. It was not of Paper, nor of Parchment, as other Books be, but was only made of delicate rinds (as it seemed unto me) of tender young trees. The cover of it was of brass, well bound, all engraved with letters, or strange figures; and for my part I think they might well be Greek Characters, or some-such-like ancient language. Sure I am, I could not read them, and I know well they were not notes nor letters of the Latin nor of the Gaul for of them we understand a little. As for that which was within it, the leaves of bark or rind were engraved, and written with admirable diligence, with a point of Iron, in fair and neat Latin letters, coloured. It contained thrice-seven leaves, for so were they counted in the top of the leaves, and always every seventh leaf was without any writing; but, instead thereof, upon the first seventh leaf, there was painted a Rod and Serpents swallowing it up”.

The title was written in big gilded letters: Abraham Eleazar le Juif, prince lévite, astrologue et philosophe, à la gent des Juifs par l’ire de Dieu dispersé aux Gaules, Salut.

During the next twenty-one years Flamel and Perenelle worked on the translation of the book, which should contain the secret of the transmutation and the philosophers stone. They consulted many people and attempted many experiments themselves - but to no avail. Finally, Flamel travelled to Spain, where he met a Jewish physician who explained to him the meaning of the text and the figures. After that they worked for three years and, finally, on Monday 17 January, 1382 Flamel wrote in his book, Livre des Figures, that Perenelle and he transformed half a pound of mercury into ‘pure silver’. And on April 25 they made from “the red stone” “almost as much pure gold”. As a commemoration he had “(…) painted in the fourth Arch of the Church-yard of the Innocents, as you enter in by the great gate in St. Dennis-street, and taking the way on the right hand, the most true and essential marks of the Art, yet under veils, and Hieroglyphical covertures, in imitation of those which are in the gilded Book of Abraham the Jew (…)”.

(a) Portal of the Cimitière des Innocents, Uit. (b) P. Arnauld (1612) Le Livre des figures hiéroglifiques, Paris. (c) Woodcut of Nicolas Flamel and his wife Perenelle.

Perenelle died in 1397 on September 11, and left her husband a fortune of 5300 pounds.

The problem with Flamel and Perenelle is that there are no contemporary sources. The earliest sources date from the sixteenth century. It is said that because they found the philosophers stone they are still living…

Literature

http://www.levity.com/alchemy/testment.htm l (accessed 24 December 2009).

Alic, M. (1986) Hypatia’s Heritage, a History of Women in Science from Antiquity to the Late Nineteenth Century, The Women’s Press, London.

Federmann, R. (1964) Die Königliche Kunst. Eine Geschichte der Alchemie, Paul Neff, Wien.

Lennep, J. van (1984) Alchemie. Bijdrage Tot de Geschiedenis van de Alchemistische Kunst, Gemeentekrediet België, Brussels.

Rebière, A. (1897) Les Femmes dans la Science. Notes Recueillies, Librairie Nony & Cie, Paris.

Anna, Princess of Denmark and Norway, Electress of Saxony (1532–1585)

Renate Strohmeier

Owner of the largest and finest chemical laboratory established in sixteenth century Germany, Anna is one of the few female chemists/alchemists of the sixteenth century of whom we know. Since she has some importance in the history of Saxony, the historians of the nineteenth century wrote her biography and evaluated her extensive correspondence. In her letters she describes her interests and activities, often to other women who were engaged in the same field of knowledge. There is not much available data on other sixteenth century women alchemists, like Isabella Cortese (?-1561) or Marie Meurdrac (seventeenth century?), whom we only know of because they published treatises on chemistry. The occult science of alchemy was dangerous - even life threatening - and could carry women quickly to the stake.

In the sixteenth century, when chemistry was rather alchemy, Paracelsus (1493–1541) established medical treatment with chemical substances based on the healing power of plants and minerals. Newly awakened scientific curiosity in combination with astrology, Hermetic ideas and traditional superstitious beliefs, led to the development of iatrochemistry (pharmacy), the field of Anna’s scientific activities. A lot of new laboratory equipment and procedures were invented in the early sixteenth century, and she applied these in her laboratories. Most important of these were the improved distillation apparatus for her well known Aqua vitae.

In Annaburg, Saxony, a town that was named after her, she established a kind of “plant site” for the production of pharmaceuticals. The 200 square steps facility with walls and moats, sheltered distillation houses and laboratories of amazing size. One of the houses was as big as a church, had self-supporting vaults and many chimneys. A visitor reports: “he saw a laboratory with sixteen chimneys which contained furnaces in the shape and height of horses, lions and apes and one in the shape of an eagle with outspread gold-plated wings”. In these laboratories alls kinds of ingredients were processed into medical products. Herbal ingredients came from her own gardens or were collected in the woods and fields of the neighborhood by local herb-collecting women. Large amounts of leaves, fruits, roots and flowers were dried and stored. However, not only plants, but also remedies from the animal kingdom, such as pulverized human leg bones, moss grown on human skulls, human lard, ox bile, dog fat, horse and donkey milk, deer and goat blood, and, not to be forgotten, the highly coveted Unicorn, were mixed into ointments, syrups, electuaries and medical aquavits. After her death 181 ingredients for her healing waters were found in the storerooms and laboratories of Annaburg. These remedies seem rather quaint today, however, these drug components are described in many dispensaries of the sixteenth century.

Anna, Princess of Denmark and Norway, Electress of Saxony.

As Anna knew no Latin, one can assume that she received no higher education. Her knowledge and lively interest in medicine and its production was probably awakened in her childhood by her mother, because later on it became the main subject of the correspondence between mother and daughter. Her early teacher of the art of Aqua vitae distillation was countess Anna von Mannsfeld. Advanced contemporary knowledge and the new procedures of her time mostly came from the medical attendants of the court. Dr. Paul Luther (1533–1593) a doctor and alchemist, may have been her most significant teacher. Letters of inquiry to all important doctors and alchemists of their time were found in Anna’s and August’s correspondence. For example they asked doctor Ch. Pithopoeus to teach them “the foundations of his new science and medicine, which effects by extraction of the main powers and things (active substances) in the fire”. Learned doctors were not the only source of her medical knowledge. Anna collected formulas of all kinds of contemporary healers like herbal women, quack doctors, shepherds and barbers. Her large collection of recipes and medical cures were ordered and supplemented by pharmacists and doctors in her pharmacopoeia.

The castle of Annaburg, built by Anna and August I of Saxony (1572–1575).

Together with her husband she was also engaged in alchemistic experiments. With the help of the Swiss chemist Sebald they created “three ounces of gold out of six ounces of silver within six days” in 1578. In 1585 they gave some “acranum, made by their own hands”, to the count of Brandenburg, who gratefully accepted the “lapidi de rebus”. These activities were rather dangerous for women of her time. Anna’s high social status as a Princess may have saved her from being suspected of witchcraft and being sentenced to the stake.

Literature

Carl von Weber (1865) Anna, Churfürstin von Sachsen, Tauchniz, Leipzig

Harless, J.C.F. (1830) Die Verdienste der Frauen um Naturwissenschaft, Gesundheitsund Heilkunde, so wie auch um Laender-, Voelker- und Menschenkunde, von der ael-testen Zeit bis auf die neueste: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und geistiger Cultur, und der Natur- und Heilkunde insbesondere, Vanden-hoeck-Rupprecht, Goettingen

Keller, K. (2007) Anna von Dänemark, in Sächsische Biografie, ed. Institut für Sächsische Geschichte und Volkskunde e.V., revised by Martina Schattkowsky, Online: http://www.isgv.de/saebi/

Marie Meurdrac (1600s)

Marianne Offereins und Renate Strohmeier

Author of one of the first treatises on chemistry by a woman.

Biographical data about Marie Meurdrac’s life are difficult to obtain. Proof of her existence is her treatise on chemistry, which was first published in 1666 in Paris. La Chymie Charitable et Facile, en Faveur des Dames is considered the first treatise on chemistry by a woman since the works of Maria the Jewess about 1600 years earlier. Marie Meurdrac may have known of this early colleague of hers because she writes concerning the Bain-marie Distillation: “This Distillation is called by the name of the woman who invented it, who was the sister of Moses, Marie, called the Prophetess, who wrote the Book entitled The Three Words”.

Marie Meurdrac describes the content of her book as follows: “I have divided this Book into Six Parts: in the first, I treat principles and operations, vessels, lutes, furnaces, fires, characteristics and weights: in the second, I speak of the properties of simples (medical herbs or medicines made from such plants), of their preparation and of the method of extracting their salts, tinctures, fluid and essences: the third treats Animals, the fourth Metals: the fifth treats the method of making compound medicines, with several tested remedies: the sixth is for Ladies, in which there is a discussion of everything capable of preserving and increasing beauty. I have done my best to explain myself well and to facilitate the operations: I have been very careful not to go beyond my knowledge, and I can assure that everything I teach is true, and that all my remedies have been tested; for which I praise and glorify God”. (Translation by Bishop and DeLoach, 1970).

Sixteenth century chemistry laboratory, engraving after a drawing of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1560.

The book contains a table of 106 alchemistical symbols and a table of weights used in medicine. According to the alchemical tradition she assumed that substances were formed on three principles: salt, sulfur and mercury. Some passages of the book suggest that she was not only an alchemist/chemist but also a medical doctor. She assures for instance “I have used it (essence of rosemary) with good results and have affected some admirable cures with it”.

In her introduction Marie Meurdrac describes the “inner struggle” between the traditional concept of a woman, which she claimed “remain silent, listen and learn, without displaying … knowledge” and “…on the other hand, I flattered myself that I am not the first lady to have had something published”. She describes her motivation to “let the book leave my hands”… “that it would be a sin against Charity to hide the knowledge that God has given me, which may be of benefit to the whole world”.

Her anticipation that the book would not achieve success because “men always scorn and blame the products of a woman’s wit” did not come true. It had two more French editions (1680 and 1711) and was translated into German (editions in 1673, 1676, 1689 and 1712) and Italian.

Literature

Bishop, L.O. and DeLoach, W.S. (1970) Marie Meurdrac–First Lady of Chemistry? J. Chem. Educ., 47 (6), 448–449.

Meurdrac, M. (1680) La Chymie Charitable et Facile, en Faveur des Dames, 2nd ed., Chez Jean Baptiste Deville, Lyon.

Tosi, L. (2001) Marie Meurdrac: Paracelsian chemist and feminist. Ambix, 48 (2), 69–82.

Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet (1706–1749)

Marianne Offereins

She was one of the most famous Femmes savantes and had a great influence on Voltaire and his work. Because of her translation of Newton’s Principia Mathematica into French and the addition of her own commentary, her influence on the introduction of the ideas of Newton in France was great.

Gabrielle Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil was born in Paris in 1706. Her father, Nicolas Breteuil Le Tonnelier baron de Preuilly, was chief of protocol at the royal court, where in his youth he had caused quite a lot of scandals. When he was 45 years old, he married Gabrielle Anne de Froulay, about whom not much more is known other than that she came from the higher nobility and was educated in a convent. The education they gave to their children, consisted mainly of advice such as: “Blow your nose in your napkin” and “Never comb your hair in church”.

Portrait of la marquise du Châtelet (1740) by Nicolas de Largillière (1656–1746), documentation du Louvre.

As a child Emilie impressed her father enough with her intelligence to convince him that some education would not be wasted on her. Moreover, because she did not meet the beauty standards of her time - she was tall for her age and was said to have “a skin as a grater” - so as a “born old maid” she needed a good education. From the time she was about six years old, she was taken into the care of the best available governesses and teachers. She had a natural sense of language and soon mastered English, Latin and Italian. She studied Milton, Virgil, and Tasso, and translated the Aeneid. At the age of 19 she married the 34 years old Marquis du Châtelet. As he was a colonel in the Guard regiment, he often was away from home for a long time. During his absence Emilie did not have time to be bored, she amused herself with a series of lovers.

About her appearance, opinions varied: the ladies found her ugly, the men thought her extremely attractive.

In the first two years of their marriage the couple had two children, a girl and a boy. When Emilie was 27 years old, another boy was born. After his birth she began, on the advice of the Duc de Richelieu (grandnephew of the Cardinal), to seriously study mathematics and natural philosophy. Neither her husband nor her children could prevent her from having a busy social life at court as well, where she moved in the intimate circle of the Queen.

Here she made two ‘unforgivable errors’: she refused to finish her study, which for a woman was regarded as highly inappropriate; and, even worse, in the spring of 1733 she started a relationship with Voltaire, who would remain her regular companion for the rest of her life, even when, later, both had fallen in love with someone else. As for Voltaire, after the publication of his Lettres Philosophiques1 (also called Lettres Anglaises), Paris became increasingly dangerous for him, therefore Emily persuaded her husband to provide shelter for Voltaire on their estate at Cirey sur Blaise in Lorraine, at a safe distance from the court. Together they took care of the restoration of the dilapidated castle. There was an extensive library and a fully equipped laboratory, with ovens, air pumps, a telescope, and a microscope, where Emilie could work on her experiments. Here, she was visited by the important scholars of her time, including Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, one of the leading mathematicians and astronomers of his time, his pupil, mathematician Johann Samuel König, Alexis Claude Clairault, and the Bernoulli brothers. The contact with these scientists was so important to Emilie that she dressed as a man in order to be admitted into the coffee-houses where the men had their discussions.

Emilie was strongly influenced by Maupertuis, who accompanied her in her studies. König also helped her for a short time with her studies, but after a difference of opinion that collaboration ended.

Life on Cirey was definitely not exclusively devoted to study. Because Voltaire was a lover of theater, ‘la belle Emilie’ regularly organized entire theater performances. She studied very much, it was said of her that she did not need more than one or two hours sleep each night and that she was spectacularly healthy.

Her first publication, Sur la Nature du Feu (1738), she wrote because she disagreed with Voltaire on the subject. She wrote this work at night in secret. Whenever she felt she was sleepy, she dipped her hands into ice water to stay awake.

From the moment Voltaire could show himself again in Paris, Emilie and he divided their time between Paris and Cirey.

Both Voltaire and Maupertuis were great admirers of Newton’s ideas and eager to spread ‘Newtonian’ ideas in France. Maupertuis made the ideas of Newton a fashionable topic for the Salons, and Voltaire encouraged Emilie du Châtelet to translate Newton’s work. This time Emilie wrote Institutions de Physique (1740), for use in the education of her son. The usual books on physics education were now about 80 years old and Emilie wanted a book in which the modern ideas of Leibnitz and Newton were mentioned. Samuel König took his revenge by telling everyone in Paris that the work was simply a repetition of his lectures. After that she translated the Principia Mathematica by Newton and added her own algebraic comments. There is no doubt that these books influenced Voltaire and therefore Emilie can be placed among known scholars such as Clairault, the Bernoullis, Mairan and Maupertuis.

In 1748 Emilie began a relationship with the Marquis of Saint-Lambert, a courtier and second-rate poet. When she discovered she was pregnant by her lover, Voltaire helped her organize a visit by her husband to Cirey. Three weeks later he left, believing that he would be a father again. The baby was born in early September 1749. Voltaire wrote that the girl was born while her mother worked at her desk on her notes on Newton. The newborn baby was placed on a geometry book, while Emilie placed her papers together and was taken to bed. For a few days everything went well until suddenly Emilie died, probably of puerperal fever or, as other sources say, of a pulmonary embolism, a few days later she was followed by her daughter.

In France Emilie du Châtelet is best known for the letters she left and for her Discours sur le Bonheur.

Her intelligence and character are undisputed.

Frederick II of Prussia wrote about her to Voltaire: “That Emilie reminds me, is very flattering to me. Be so kind as to assure her that I have very high opinion of her, for Europe she belongs to the great men”(!).

Literature

Alic, M. (1986) Hypatia’s Heritage, a History of Women in Science from Antiquity to the Late Nineteenth Century, The Women’s Press, London.

Ehrman, E. (1986) Mme Du Châtelet, Scientist, Philosopher and Feminist of the Enlightenment, Berg Publishers, Oxford.

Mozans, H.J. (1974) Woman in Science, with an introductory chapter on woman’s long struggle for things of the mind, facsimile of the 1913 edn, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Mozans, H.J. (1913/1991) Women in Science, University of Notre Dame Press, New York, Notre Dame, Indiana/London.

Ogilvie, M.B. and Harvey, J. (eds) (2000) The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science. Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century. Routledge, Cambridge, MA/London.

Osen, L.M. (1974) Women in Mathematics, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Phillips, P. (1990) The Scientific Lady, a Social History of Woman’s Scientific Interests 1520-1918, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London.

Schiebinger, L. (1989) The Mind Has No Sex? Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

1 In this book he announced the rationalist ideas of the Enlightenment.

Marie Lavoisier (1758–1836)

Marianne Offereins

For many people, Lavoisier’s Law will be familiar. However, there will be fewer who know that Antoine Lavoisier was helped by his wife Marie in doing his experiments. She made a significant contribution to her husband’s work.

On January 20, 1758, Marie Anne Pierette Paulze was born in Montbrison, in the province Loire, in France. Her father, Jacques Paulze, worked primarily as a parliamentary lawyer and financier. Most of his income, however, came from running the Ferme Générale (The General Farm) which was a private consortium of financiers who paid the French monarchy for the privilege of collecting taxes. Marie had two brothers, and when she was three years old her mother died. Marie proved to be a smart girl, who was educated in a convent, as befitted a French girl of her social class.

Marie Lavoisier and her husband, by Jacques Louis David (1788).

When she was thirteen, the Count d’Amerval proposed to marry Marie but, as he was nearly three times her age, her father tried to object to the marriage. This proved to be rather difficult and he was threatened with losing his job with the Ferme Générale. Therefore he proposed to his colleague Antoine Lavoisier that he should ask for his daughter’s hand instead. Lavoisier, a French nobleman, who had already achieved fame as a chemist and had been elected to the Academy of Sciences in 1768, accepted the proposition, and he and Marie-Anne were married on 16 December 1771. By that time Lavoisier was already about 28 years old.

Marie soon became interested in his scientific research and began to actively participate in his laboratory work. Antoine continued her education, but now the lessons centered around the use of balances, burning lenses, and reduction vessels, and German and Latin, the languages of the scientific community. To help her husband with his investigation of the physical nature of fire and heat, she taught herself English, so she could translate the American and British articles he needed into French. She also took art lessons from the French painter Jacques-Louis David, the one who painted the famous portrait of the Lavoisier couple, and began illustrating Antoine’s articles.

The Lavoisiers spent most of their time together in the laboratory, working as a team conducting research on many fronts. In fact, most of the research in the laboratory was actually a joint effort between Antoine and Marie. She helped him with his experiments, made all the notes, kept the laboratory reports and carried out their scientific correspondence. Especially, Marie’s particular drawing gift came in handy, because she made sketches of the experiments and the experimental tools. Lavoisier’s treatise Traité élémentaire de Chimie (1789), which must be regarded as the first modern chemistry text, in which he describes 23 elements which are the basis of all chemical reactions, contains engravings in her hand.

Another major contribution to science was made by her translation of the works of English authors into French. She translated the chemical treatises of Henry Cavendish, Joseph Priestley and other important British scientific researchers. Her translation of Essay on Phlogiston by Richard Kirwan, with comments by Lavoisier and his colleagues, was of the utmost importance: the until then widely held theories of combustion, which maintained that the element phlogiston was essential to combustion, proved untenable. In their experiments the Lavoisier couple showed that Phlogiston did not exist.

Most important to science, Antoine formulated the law of conservation of matter, which established that there is no gain or loss of weight in the elements of a chemical reaction, a theory that bound chemistry to physical and mathematical laws. As a team, they established modern chemistry by separating its scientific aspects from alchemy and by evolving an updated scientific glossary. They coined the term “oxygen”, identified it as an elemental gas, described the oxidation process that changes iron to rust, and analyzed the products of normal human respiration as water and carbon dioxide.

During the early years of their marriage their home became a gathering place for members of the French intellectual community.

When the fury of the Revolution overtook the country, the position of Lavoisier, who like Marie’s father was a member of the Ferme Générale, was particularly vulnerable. Pretty soon he was arrested and put in prison, in addition, all his possessions were confiscated. During his captivity, Marie worked tirelessly, but unsuccessfully, for his release. On May 8, 1794, at the end of Robespierre’s ‘Reign of Terror’, Antoine Lavoisier was guillotined (as well as Marie’s father and many of their friends). Marie was arrested too, based on certain incriminating documents, but she was released after 65 days in the Bastille. She came out penniless as a consequence of the confiscation of her land. She had to take refuge in the care of a former servant. About a year later, most of Lavoisier’s possessions were returned to her. Most important for science was the confiscated scientific library, which she intended to keep for the future. In 1792 Lavoisier had started to make detailed notes of his experiments for publication. At the time of his death only a part of it was ready. Marie finished his work, and in 1805 she published the Mémoires de Chimie, (Memoirs of Chemistry) under the name of her deceased husband. She published the work in two volumes along with her original introduction. She distributed free copies to known French scientists.

During the Directory, and later under the reign of Napoleon, as matters became less violent in Paris, again she could welcome visitors to her salon. Several well known scientists courted her, one of her suitors was chemical magnate Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, but she preferred the American physicist, Benjamin Thompson, better known as Count Rumford of Bavaria, founder of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, whom she married in 1805 after a four year courtship. After her marriage, she insisted on being called Countess Lavoisier-Rumford. The marriage was not a success and after four years it ended in divorce. After her divorce from Rumford she worked as a successful businesswoman and she was also known for her charitable work. As the years went by, continuing her chemist’s work became increasingly difficult for her, but for many years she received in her salon well known scientists, including Cuvier, Berthollet, Humboldt and others. She died in Paris at the age of 77.

Title page of the first volume of Mémoires de Chimie.

As Marie Lavoisier’s scientific work was so closely intertwined with the work of her husband, it is difficult to specify exactly what can be attributed to her. Together they brought a fundamental change, replacing the mysterious practices of the alchemists with systematic chemical principles.

Through her drawings, translations, explanations of notes, and arranging the publication of Lavoisier’s ‘Memoirs of Chemistry’, she made an important contribution to scientific knowledge.

Literature

Alic, M. (1986) Hypatia’s Heritage, a History of Women in Science from Antiquity to the Late Nineteenth Century, The Women’s Press, London.

Offereins, M. I.C. (1996) Vrouwen Miniaturen uit de exacte vakken, VeEX, Utrecht.

Ogilvie, M. and Harvey, J. (eds) (2000) The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science. Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century, Routledge, Cambridge MA / London.

Schiebinger, L. (1991) The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA / London.

Thijsse, W.H. (1985) Rokoko, Democratie in Wording, De Walburg Pers., Zutphen.

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