Celebration of women in science North East
Chi Onwurah MP – Member of Parliament for Newcastle Central
Chi Onwurah is the MP for Newcastle upon Tyne and an Engineer. She chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) in Science Technology Engineering and Math. The group aims to promote the inclusion and progression of people from diverse backgrounds in STEM, and to encourage government, parliamentarians, academics, businesses, and other stakeholders to work towards a STEM sector that is representative of the population. The APPG D&I also want to consider and influence changes in policy that will lead to this outcome. (All-Party Parliamentary Group on Diversity & Inclusion in STEM | Home | British Science Association)
From Chi Onwurah MP – Member of Parliament for Newcastle Central “Newcastle’s great industrial past was my inspiration to become an engineer and I enjoyed a fulfilling career in engineering after I graduated from Imperial College in 1987. … I also studied for an MBA from Manchester Business School and gained Chartered Engineering status. As an engineer I specialised in building out infrastructure in new markets and standardising wholesale Ethernet access. My last role before entering parliament was as head of Telecoms Technology for Ofcom the Communications Regulator.”
“Empowering women to pursue STEM opportunities is essential for a thriving economy where women’s voices are heard and valued.
“Many of the challenges … are historic as well as systemic. As a Black, working-class, northern woman working as an engineer in the 1980s and 1990s I know too well the barriers that minoritised groups in STEM face. Being different in any profession or job is tiring, you face people’s stereotypes rather than being judged on your actual experiences and ability. Nearly 40 years later, it is saddening to know that many minoritised communities are still denied a sense of belonging in the STEM workforce.”
Celebration of women in science UK
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (1900 – 1979) was a British-born American astronomer and astrophysicist who proposed in her 1925 doctoral thesis that stars were composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. Her groundbreaking conclusion was rejected initially because it contradicted the scientific wisdom of the time. Independent observations proved eventually she was correct. Her work on the nature of variable stars was foundational to modern astrophysics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_Payne-Gaposchkin
Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910 – 1994), OM (Order of Merit), Honorary member of the Royal Society (née Crowfoot; 12 May 1910 – 29 July 1994). Dorothy Hodgkin was a Nobel Prize-winning English chemist who advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of biomolecules. She confirmed the structure of penicillin. Dorothy Hodgkin mapped the structure of vitamin B12, subsequently becoming the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964. In 1969 she revealed the structure of insulin, which took 35 years. This work with insulin was instrumental in paving the way for insulin to be mass-produced and used on a large scale for treatment of both type one and type two diabetes. Dorothy Hodkin was life-long Labour Party supporter, was married to a member of the communist party and in the 1940s, one of her students, who later became Prime Minister, hung a portrait of Dorothy Hodgkin in her Downing Street office. This was Margaret Roberts (later Margaret Thatcher).
Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake (1840 – 1912) was an English physician, teacher, and feminist. She led the campaign to secure women access to a university education with six other women (Edinburgh Seven) when studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1869. She was the first practising female doctor in Scotland, and one of the first in the wider United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. She was a leading campaigner for medical education for women, she was involved in founding two medical schools for women, in London and Edinburgh, at a time when no other medical schools were training women.
Dame Helen Charlotte Isabella Gwynne-Vaughan, GBE (née Fraser; 1879 – 1967) was a prominent English botanist and mycologist. She was appointed Professor of Botany, Birkbeck College in 1921. During the First World War, she served in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps and then as Commandant of the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) from 1918 to 1919. During the Second World War, from 1939 to 1941, she served as Chief Controller of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS).
When Gwynne-Vaughan was at Royal Holloway College she and Louisa Garrett Anderson co-founded the University of London Suffrage Society. In 1926 she spoke as part of a National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship meeting.
These are just some of the incredible women who were from the UK. There are many more incredible women in science and of course many outside the UK. Many, including the women outlined above, are not household names because they are women.
Life as a Scientist and an Educator
My career was a clinician and a scientist working at the Hospital for Sick Children Toronto and I was a professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Toronto. Previously I attended the University of California and University of Wales. I had some astoundingly good and some challenging experiences. I hadn’t thought that some of my challenges would be protecting my work, calling out sexism and biases. And it was hard advising female students about issues in some labs that could be very challenging for them as female students. Whilst writing these two articles I listened to the Guardian Book Club interview with Bonnie Garmus, author of Lessons in Chemistry. (Lessons in Chemistry is published by Doubleday (£14.99)).
In the words of Bonnie Garmus “I was in a meeting one time; it was a technology meeting, and like many technology meetings I was the only woman in the room. I was presenting my ideas my concepts for campaign and after I’d done so there was dead silence and then there’s a little murmuring between the other people and then a vice president suddenly said, “I know I’ve got some ideas,” and he presented my ideas that I just presented an hour ago, still up in a PowerPoint display as his own ideas. Everyone said “wow you are so smart” to him. I just couldn’t believe it. I was sitting there going seriously do you not see me sitting here. Anyway, I left the meeting pretty mad, and I went back to my desk. I was on a tight deadline, but instead of working, I wrote the first chapter of lessons in chemistry. I think this is a really good way to channel anger. I call it constructive anger now.”
