Women in Science - Discovering Dorothea

By: David Bradley

Ask the woman, or man, in the street to name a female scientist and you are likely to be met with a blank stare, or if you're lucky, Marie Curie will be mentioned, occasionally you might get the reply "Rosalind Franklin", but only because she got a vague media mention in dispatches during the DNA 50th anniversary celebrations, ask a chemist, and Dorothy Crowfoot-Hodgkin will be the name that springs to the lips. But, aside from those three, even educated members of the public will not place another name.

This fascinating book - Discovering Dorothea: The life of the pioneering fossil-hunter Dorothea Bate - however, should set the record straight. As trailblazing a woman as any that chained herself to Downing Street railings, Bate, at the age of just nineteen years, demanded a job of the National History Museum. At the time, 1898, no women worked as scientists in these hallowed South Kensington Halls. Bate changed all that and unearthed some of the greatest discoveries in palaeontology.