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Cargando... Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Sciencepor Catherine McNeur
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Historian McNeur rescues two nineteenth-century women scientists from undeserved obscurity. Sisters Elizabeth and Margaretta Morris spent most of their lives in their mother’s home in Germantown, on the outskirts of Philadelphia. The family was prosperous enough that Elizabeth and Margaretta were able to pursue their interests in the natural world, with Elizabeth focused on botany and Margaretta on entomology. The women’s social circle included prominent names in the sciences such as Asa Gray, Louis Agassiz, William Darlington, and Thaddeus William Harris. The sisters regularly published in scientific journals, although often anonymously or using initials to disguise their sex. Margaretta Morris was among the first women elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Both women made discoveries in their fields only to have doubts raised by male scientists who questioned the accuracy of their observations, and usually with credit for their discoveries given to male scientists. This is a particularly timely read for me since one of Margarette Hare Morris’s discoveries is a species of seventeen-year cicada. I live in a county where Brood XIX of the 13-year cicadas are expected to emerge this spring. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
"The nineteenth century was a transformative period in the history of American science, as scientific study, once the domain of armchair enthusiasts and amateurs, became the purview of professional experts and institutions. In Mischievous Creatures, historian Catherine McNeur shows that women were central to the development of the natural sciences during this critical time. She does so by uncovering the forgotten lives of entomologist Margaretta Hare Morris and botanist Elizabeth Morris-sister scientistswhose essential contributions to their respective fields, and to the professionalization of science as a whole, have been largely erased. Margaretta was famous within antebellum scientific circles for her work with seventeen-year cicadas and for her discoveries of previously undocumented insect species and the threats they posed to agriculture. Unusually for her time, she published under her own name, and eventually became one of the first women elected to both the American Association for the Advancementof Science and the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Margaretta's older sister Elizabeth preferred anonymity to accolades, but she nevertheless became a trusted expert on Philadelphia's flora, created illustrations for major reference books, and published numerous articles in popular science journals. The sisters corresponded and collaborated with many of the male scientific eminences of their day, including Asa Gray and Louis Agassiz, although they also faced condescension and outright misogyny: no less a figure than Charles Darwin dismissed Margaretta's (correct) assertion that water beetles help to move fish eggs from lake to lake, and the sisters long suspected that an arsonist who twice targeted their property was motivated by misogynistresentment. Alongside the lives of the Morris sisters, McNeur traces the larger story of American science's professionalization, a process that began, she shows, earlier in the nineteenth century than is traditionally thought. She reveals an early Republic hungry to define itself and eager to keep pace with the scientific culture of Europe, as the sciences transformed from hobbies into careers, with more government and university support, professional journals and organizations. Ironically, while women like the Morris sisters were central to the growth and development of their fields, this very transformation would ultimately wrest opportunities from women in the generations that followed, confining women in science to underpaid and underappreciated positions. Mischievous Creatures is not only an overdue portrait of two pioneering women scientists, but also a vital and revelatory new history of the birth of modern American science"-- No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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I enjoyed this book. I learned a lot. I had never heard of these sisters. Elizabeth was involved with plants and how they were distributed in the neighborhood and beyond it. She may have been the first to recognize how birds and insects can spread seeds further than expected. Margaretta was involved with bugs and how they infected plants. She had a theory then observed how one bug could destroy a farmer's crops. She wrote of how it did its damage and how to get rid of the pest. Male scientists did not believe her but the farmers that took her advice (published in a agricultural magazine) found their crops thrived rather than died.
I found their contacts amazing. They had the preeminent scholars of the time as their correspondents who would ask for specimens and theories as well as what they learned. These women were amazing with their studies. Unfortunately, because they were women, they were not given the accolades that were given to men they proved wrong. They weren't given any public accolades. They were not taken seriously. It was a shame because they learned a lot that was useful in both botany and entomology.
I was glad I read this book. There was so much I did not learn. I have a new appreciation for what was done by these sisters. ( )