Women Achievements Stripped by Men
From the beginning of history, women have had their rightful achievements stripped away by men whose contributions were minimal or nonexistent. Many women, especially in the medical field, have faced this injustice with little to no recognition for their advancements.
Alice Ball not only paved the way but created the cure for leprosy during her time working in Hawaii. She worked as a chemist at Kalihi Hospital, where she developed the cure. Ball was able to create it by injecting chaulmoogra oil into the bloodstream, finding a way to produce a water-soluble solution of the oil’s active compounds that would be able to inject safely with minimal side effects. Sadly, Ball died in 1916 at the age of 24, while Arthur Dean took over her research. She soon became a forgotten figure, her achievements overlooked, until the method was later referred to and deemed the “Ball Method.” Her cure was used for over two decades around the world to treat this disease. Though this was not Ball’s only achievement, she was also the first woman and first African American to earn a master’s degree at the College of Hawaii.
Another woman whose credit was taken by men for her work was Esther Lederberg. Lederberg majored in biochemistry and later earned her master’s degree in genetics at Stanford University. She was able to determine not only how genes are regulated but also the process of making RNA and DNA. She was assisted by her husband, Joshua Lederberg, with her work on microbial genetics. However, it was Esther Lederberg who discovered the lambda phage (a virus that infects E. coli bacteria) in 1950. Her development of new techniques for growing bacterial colonies provided crucial evidence that bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics spontaneously and revolutionized our understanding of viruses as a whole. Sadly, it was her husband, Joshua Lederberg, who claimed the 1958 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discoveries on bacteria mating, without giving any credit to Esther, who made the most significant contributions to the discoveries.
Rosalind Franklin, chemist and X-ray crystallographer who studied at King’s College London, was the person who discovered the true structure of molecules as a double helix through her X-ray photographs. This theory of the double helix was initially denounced by James Watson and Francis Crick, two scientists of the time. However, her published data helped pave the way for Watson and Crick’s breakthrough; without her contributions, they would’ve gotten nowhere. Watson and Crick stole her data and photograph without her even knowing, later claiming the Nobel Prize for “their” research. Franklin died of ovarian cancer in 1958 at the age of 37. Later, in Watson’s book The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA, he discredited Franklin and her achievements.
Nettie Stevens attended Stanford University, earning a B.A. in 1899 and an M.A. in 1900. She then began her doctoral studies in biology at Bryn Mawr College and received a Ph.D. from the same university in 1903. She stayed at Bryn Mawr to conduct research as a fellow in biology for a year in experimental morphology, followed by another year as an associate in experimental morphology from 1905 until her death in 1912. Stevens discovered the connection between chromosomes and sex determination, which helped resolve debates over whether sex was a matter of heredity or embryonic environmental influence. She announced her findings for the first time about a particular combination of the chromosomes X and Y that determine the sex of an individual. Unfortunately, later that year, Edmund Beecher Wilson of Columbia University independently announced similar findings, and he is often credited with the discovery, while Stevens’ contributions fade into obscurity. She continued her research on the chromosomal makeup of various insects after making this discovery.
Although these women’s discoveries were credited to men and never acknowledged at the time, history remembers them and gives them the overdue credit they deserve. Despite women being seen as inferior or less capable than men in the past, these women—and many others—have proven that such notions were completely untrue. Women paved the way for men to succeed, and that is certainly true for the women mentioned here.
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