Scholars Award: Women in the Early History of Genetics

这是一项为科学与社会(S和S)提供研究资金的建议，旨在系统地研究美国和英国女性如何为遗传学作为一门科学学科的发展做出贡献。该项目的长期目标是将这些数据与对欧洲、斯堪的纳维亚半岛和俄罗斯妇女的类似研究结合在一本名为《遗传学早期历史中的妇女》一书中，该书由首席调查员与Ida Stamhuis(Vrije大学，阿姆斯特丹)和Elena Aronova(俄罗斯科学院，莫斯科)合作撰写。目前的目标是进行广泛的档案研究，收集美国和英国从事遗传学工作的女性的个人和集体数据，主要集中在主要的大学项目和两个领先的私人遗传学研究实验室，分别是冷泉港遗传学部门(纽约长岛)和约翰·英尼斯园艺研究所(英国默顿和诺维奇)。具体目标有三：(1)历史：提供有关女性参与遗传学研究和实践的新数据和分析，从而扩大遗传学和女性科学史的范围；(2)社会学：提供(A)性别在组织遗传学研究方案和实验室生活中所起作用的更复杂的图景，以及这如何影响该学科所产生的工作，以及(B)一个关键的案例研究，以测试解释妇女更多地参与新学科的前提--即，当很少有男性被吸引到这些尚未得到证实的研究领域时，这些领域最初是否欢迎女性，或者新兴分支学科的跨学科特征是否通过提供未来的替代工作来吸引女性；以及(3)跨国科学趋势：比较和对比不同国家背景下女性在遗传学方面面临的机遇和挑战，从而提供关于各种文化、社会政治、组织和偶然因素如何不仅影响科学“风格”而且影响科学“机会”的一般知识。这项研究的理由在于，低估女性对遗传史的贡献具有重要的史学意义，它对该学科的发展描绘了一种过于男性化和精英化的描述。此外，在实验室实践中探索女性的工作将提供一幅更复杂的遗传学社会学图景，揭示学科结构的性别本质--包括机构支持、培训、晋升和实验制度中的隔离模式。它的学术价值在于，它将首次全面评估从1900年重新发现孟德尔遗传定律到1935年左右遗传学经典时期结束之间，女性对遗传学研究的贡献。这个项目的更广泛的影响将是大大扩大我们对促进妇女参与科学的关键的社会学、制度、智力和跨国因素的理解，并为建立一门彻底改变现代生物学的科学学科提供一个独特的比较背景。由于它的双重重点--遗传学和妇女与性别研究--该项目的成果将理所当然地成为对遗传史、遗传学的社会研究、科学史中的妇女和性别研究作出贡献的地方，绘制出以前未曾探索过的具有战略意义的智力领域。

This is a proposal for Science and Society (S&S) research funding to study systematically how American and British women contributed to the development of genetics as a scientific discipline. The long-range goal of this project is to combine this data with similar studies of women in Europe, Scandinavia, and Russia in a book entitled, Women in the Early History of Genetics, written by the Principle Investigator in collaboration with Ida Stamhuis (Vrije University, Amsterdam) and Elena Aronova (Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow). The immediate objective is to conduct extensive archival research to collect data on women, both singly and collectively, who worked in genetics in the United States and Britain, primarily focusing on major university programs and the two leading private genetics research laboratories, the Cold Spring Harbor Department of Genetics (Long Island, New York), and the John Innes Horticultural Institute (Merton and Norwich, England). The specific aims are threefold: (1) Historical: to provide new data and analysis concerning women's participation in genetics research and practice, thereby expanding the historiography of genetics and of women in science; (2) Sociological: to provide (a) a more complex picture of the role gender played in the organization of research programs and laboratory life in genetics and how this affected the work produced in the discipline, and (b) a key case study to test premises explaining women's greater participation in new disciplines--that is, whether such fields are initially welcoming to women when few men are attracted to such as-yet unproven areas of research, or whether the interdisciplinary character of emerging sub-disciplines attracts women by offering future alternative job; and (3) Cross-National Trends in Science: to compare and contrast the opportunities and challenges faced by women in genetics in different national contexts, by which to provide general knowledge about how various cultural, sociopolitical, organizational, and contingent factors may influence not simply "styles" but also "opportunities" in science. The rationale for this research lies in the fact that underestimating women's contributions to the history of genetics has important historiographic implications, portraying an overly masculine and elitist account of the development of the discipline. Moreover, exploring women's work within laboratory practices will provide a more sophisticated sociological picture of genetics, revealing the gendered nature of disciplinary structure--including patterns of institutional support, training, advancement, and segregation within experimental regimes. The intellectual merit lies in the fact that it will provide the first comprehensive assessment of the contributions of women to the study of genetics between the rediscovery of Mendel's laws of heredity in 1900 and the end of the classical period of genetics circa 1935. The broader impacts of this project will be to substantially expand our understanding of critical sociological, institutional, intellectual, and transnational factors contributing to women's participation in science and provide a unique comparative context of the establishment of a scientific discipline that revolutionized modern biology. As a result of its dual focus--on genetics and on women and gender studies--the project results will rightfully claim a place as contributing to the history of genetics, social studies of genetics, women in the history of science, and gender studies, mapping previously unexplored and strategic intellectual terrain.