Today is Ada Lovelace Day. In common with a veritable ejaculation of bloggers, I have pledged to commemorate it by celebrating a female scientist I admire, given that women continue to be under-represented in science and technology (you can find a list of posts so far collated here ).
Found Object Symbolizing, As If By The Kerygma Of Its Paradigm, The Under-Representation Of Women In Science And Technology. Possibly.
There are so many female scientists I know and respect, and I hesitate to name any for fear of embarrassing them. However, I remember a particularly remarkable specimen who has, sadly, died – and when she lived, was a holy terror. In fact, as soon as I heard of Ada Lovelace Day, my candidate shot to the top of the list and started hurling abuse at me.
I refer, of course, to the inimitable Jane Gray (see her obituary in Nature 405, 34, 2000), palaeobotanist, stock-market speculator and all-round foul-mouthed hellraiser.
No, not her, you Great ’Airy Fool, the other one
That’s better. Professor Jane Gray (1929-2000). Some time ago, clearly
I came across Professor Gray as a kind of curse. Palaeobotanists submitting papers to Nature routinely asked me begged me, please, not to send their manuscripts to her to review. So, naturally, the first likely manuscript that came in without this imprecation got sent without delay to Professor Gray’s lab at the University of Oregon. Soon after, I found out why authors feared her.
Her reviews were what might be called direct.
So direct, in fact, that they could have stripped paint off an aircraft carrier a mile off. Tact and diplomacy were as foreign to Gray as girrafes are to unicycles, and on several occasions I had to send her reviews back to her to be toned down. At least, so she could take out anything potentially actionable. Along the way, however, we became regular correspondents, and, I like to think, friends – although I never met her in person. I had wanted her to write a review article on one of her pet theories – that the Earth was home to land plants very much earlier than most palaeobotanists were happy with, perhaps as early as the Cambrian. Back in the ‘90s, this idea was seen as, to be charitable, flakily heterodox: and what with Gray’s fiery delivery, a little loopy. But what palaeobotanists feared even more than her tone, I think, was that she was usually right, and the idea of the early greening of the planet is not now seen to be as far-out as it once was. Sadly, the review article never materialized.
In Jane Gray was combined all the things that will practically guarantee that no-one will fund you, ever. She
- worked in a deeply unfashionable discipline;
- was female;
- was extremely rude;
- was fond of rather way-out ideas;
- was right more often than her male peers.
None of which deterred Professor Gray one jot. One thing I didn’t know until after she had died was that she compensated for her lack of funding by playing the stock market. In that way she became independently wealthy and was able to work on whatever research she wanted. Now, if that isn’t sisters doing it by themselves, I don’t know what is.
Last updated:
Tuesday, 24 Mar
2009 - 10:29 UTC
Nice post, Henry! I wish I had met her – er, I think.
Underneath the spiny exterior she was a sweetie. I can say that now she’s dead, of course.
What a fantastic lady – I can’t believe the stock market thing!!!
Fascinating Henry. In your correspondence, did she happen to give you any of her stock tips? If so, pass them along! I don’t want to write anymore grants:)
Ah, Caryn, I think the market can go down as well as …. well, down some more. When you hear the bump, you’ve reached the bottom.
I have to disagree with your last comment, Henry. At our current rate of descent, the only “bump” you can hear is OTHER people reaching the bottom.
… except that we’re all roped together, being dragged down by the people who’ve already gone the furthest, such as the Rt Hon Gordon ‘The Moron’ McBroon and his Legions of the Existentially Challenged.
If we are going to have an Ada Lovelace day, can’t we be accurate? Lovelace isn’t a surname, it’s a title. So it should be something like Ada King, Countess of Lovelace Day. Someone’s going to tell me it was Mary Shelley who wrote Frankenstein next…
Good choice, Henry. I too have blogged for Ada, but my pick was Mary Phelps Jacob, the inventor of the brassiere.
@ Brian: Mary Shelley didn’t write Frankenstein. It was Christopher Marlowe, as any fule kno.
@ Angela – I salute you for your choice: novel, inspiring, and – er – uplifting: I’ve left a
depositcomemnt on your blog.Thanks Henry! My first reaction was to think more about the stockbroking than the science, and my second response was to feel disconcerted that I did so – but I’m not alone in reacting to her financial acumen. Maybe she would be the kind of banker we ought to have, rather than the ones we seem to have got… her list of attributes sounds pretty suited to banking. How fantastic that she could be an independent palaeobotanist.
At UKRC we have Ada’s great great great niece as our guest blogger till 6 April, also in maths and computing.
http://www.ukrc4setwomen.org/html/women-and-girls/getsetwomen-blog/