This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of core areas of investigation and theory relating to the history of women and science. Bringing together new research with syntheses of pivotal scholarship, The Palgrave Handbook of Women and Science since 1660 acknowledges and integrates history, theory and practice across a range of disciplines and periods. While the handbook's primary focus is on women's experiences, chapters also reflect more broadly on gender, including issues of femininity and masculinity as related to scientific practice and representation. Spanning the period from the birth of modern science in the late seventeenth century to current challenges facing women in STEM, it takes a thematic and comparative approach to unpack the central issues relating to women in science across different regions and cultures. Topics covered include scientific networks; institutions and archives; cultures of science; science communication; and access and diversity. With its breadth of coverage, this handbook will be the go-to resource for undergraduates taking courses on the history and philosophy of science and gender history, while at the same time providing the foundation for more advanced scholars to undertake further historical and theoretical investigation.
Part I Introduction
1. Women in the History of Science: Frameworks, Themes and Contested Perspectives / Claire G. Jones, Alison E. Martin and Alexis Wolf
Part II Strategies and Networks
2. The Natural Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle: Nature, Self-Knowing Matter, and the Dialogic Universe / Brandie R. Siegfried
3. Navigating Enlightenment Science: The Case of Marie Genevieve-Charlotte Darlus Thiroux D'Arconville and Gabrielle Emilie Le Tonnelier De Breteuil and the Republic of Letters / Leigh Whaley
4. 'A Valuable Gift': The Medical Life of Margaret Mason, Lady Mount Cashell / Alexis Wolf
5. Janet Taylor (1804-1870): Mathematical Instrument Maker and Teacher of Navigation / John S. Croucher
6. Early Female Geologists: The Importance of Professional and Educational Societies during the Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Centuries / Cynthia V. Burek
Part III Making Women Visible: Institutions, Archives, and Inclusion
7. Where are the Women? How Archives can Reveal Hidden Women in Science / Anne Barrett
8. 'A Very Worthy Lady': Women Lecturing at the Royal Geographical Society, 1913 - C.1940 / Sarah L. Evans
9. Women at the Royal Society Soiree Before the Great War / Claire G. Jones
10. Career Paths Dependent and Supported: The Role of Women's Universities in Ensuring Access to STEM Education and Research Careers in Japan / Naonori Kodate and Kashiko Kodate
11. Internationalism and Women Mathematicians at the University of Goettingen / Renate Tobies
Part IV Cultures of Science
12. Astronomy, Education and the Herschel Family: From Caroline to Constance / Emily Winterburn
13. Domestic Astronomy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries / Gabriella Bernardi
14. Darwin and the Feminists: Nineteenth-Century Debates about Female Inferiority / Amanda M. Caleb
15. Women, Gender and Computing: The Social Shaping of a Technical Field from Ada Lovelace's Algorithm to Anita Borg's 'Systers' / Corinna Schlombs
16. The Cultural Context of Gendered Science: India / Carol C. Mukhopadhyay
17. A Seat at the Table: Women and the Periodic System / Annette Lykknes and Brigitte Van Tiggelen
Part V Science Communication
18. Mediating Knowledge: Women Translating Science / Alison E. Martin
19. Queen Lovisa Ulrika of Sweden (1720-1782): Philosophe and Collector / Anne E. Harbers and Andrea M. Galdy
20. Marianne North and Scientific Illustration / Philip Kerrigan
21. The Cycle of Credit and Phatic Communication in Science: The Case of Catherine Henley / Jordynn Jack
22. Rachel Carson: Scientist, Public Educator and Environmentalist / Ruth Watts
23. Representing Women Scientists in Science-Based Film and Television / Amy Chambers
Part VI Access, Diversity and Practice
24. Catalysts, Compilers and Expositors: Rethinking Women's Pivotal Contributions to Nineteenth Century 'Physical Sciences' / Mary Orr
25. 'The Question is One of Extreme Difficulty': The Admission of Women to the British and Irish Medical Profession, C. 1850-1920 / Laura Kelly
26. The Work of British Women Mathematicians during the First World War / June Barrow-Green and Tony Royle
27. More than Pioneers - How Women became Professional Engineers before the Mid-Twentieth Century / Nina Baker
28. Women and Surgery after the Great War / Claire Brock
29. Technology Users vs. Technology Inventors and Why We Should Care / Wendy M. Dubow
Claire G. Jones is a Senior Lecturer in History and Philosophy at the University of Liverpool. Her principal area of research is gender and science in the nineteenth century in Britain. She is the author of Femininity, Mathematics and Science, 1880-1914 (2009) and co-editor of Women and Science: Special Issue of Notes and Records of the Royal Society (2015).
Alison E. Martin is a Professor of British Studies at the Germersheim faculty of the Johannes Gutenberg Universität-Mainz, Germany, which specialises in Translation Studies and Interpreting. She has published widely on translation studies, travel literature, scientific writing and gender. Her most recent monograph is Nature Translated: Alexander von Humboldt’s Works in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Edinburgh University Press, 2018).
Alexis Wolf is a Research Associate in the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing at Lancaster University. Her research focuses on women's writing of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, including in the areas of medicine and antiquarianism. She is currently working on her first book, which examines manuscript circulation within women’s transnational networks in the Romantic period.