Pnina Abir-Am

This book is composed of biographies of scientific couples, written by a variety of different authors. Subjects include: Pierre and Marie Curie, Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie, Carl and Gerty Cori, John and Elizabeth Gould, Margaret and William Huggins, Anna and John Comstock, Grace and William Young, Edith and Cyril Berkeley, Helen and Frank Hogg, Frieda and Frank Blanchard, Kathleen and Thomas Lonsdale, Mary and Abraham Jacobi, Emily and Charles Whitman, Albert Einstein and Mileva Maric, Helen and Everett Hughes, Elizabeth and Nathaniel Britton, Edith and Frederic Clements, Kate and T. S. Brandegee, Forrest and Edith Shreve, Evelyn Hutchinson and Grace Pickford, Elizabeth and Wallace Campbell, Annie and Walter Maunder, Dora and Bertrand Russell, Alva and Gunnar Myrdal, and Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson.

The works are grouped according to the type of relationship shared by the partners. The first section is devoted to three couples whose professional collaboration resulted in the Nobel Prize. The second section includes the stories of four couples whose relationship began as that of student and teacher. Part Three discusses three mutually supportive couples. Part Four is entitled "Couples Devolving from Creative Potential to Dissonance." The fifth and final section is a comparison of several couples who shared scientific disciplines.

As the focus of the book is on the history of women in science, much space is devoted to the biographies of the female partners. Their education, research interests, and scientific contributions are examined along with those of their (usually better-known) male partners.

I found the book captivating especially because I had not known of most of the subjects before, whether male or female. Their fields ranged from biology to astronomy to sociology. It was interesting to contrast the success of one couple with the failure of another. Some men supported their wives' work, published jointly with them, and helped to equalize the gender roles. Other men did not. Some of the women gave up science entirely after marriage, or acted as skilled assistants to their husbands. Although most of the couples here worked in the late 1800s or early 1900s, a few were active in the mid 1900s, when established norms were beginning to change. It would be fun to have a second volume, containing more recent examples of scientific couples, and comparing their lives to those of the earlier ones.… (mehr)