WEBVTT - Short Stuff: Ellen Richards 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.280 Hey there, Hi there, How they're welcome to short Stuff, 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:12.319 the shorter stuffed version of stuff you should know, starring Chuck, 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:18.800 Jerry and me Josh. This is short stuff on short 0:00:18.840 --> 0:00:25.239 stuff I do, which is why I despise it. Oh 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:29.280 you doing well? I am doing well. I love talking science. 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:32.760 I also love talking history, and I really love talking 0:00:33.920 --> 0:00:38.000 hissed sigh as it's called. And I love talking about 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:44.120 um undersung women in history and science. For sure. Chuck 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:47.640 kicks all those boxes. And what's sad is you could 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:52.960 have just said women in science because almost across the board, um, 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:57.680 women in science are are undersong or completely unsung. What 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:02.760 about Mary Curie? I mean she's such an outlier, Yeah, 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:04.760 because like that's the first name that pops into your 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:07.480 head for a reason, right, and it's like, oh, well, 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:09.720 she must have been the only woman scientists in the 0:01:09.840 --> 0:01:12.759 in the world. No, that's not the case. Supposedly, there 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:16.240 is a longstanding tradition in science of the men in 0:01:16.280 --> 0:01:20.120 science taking credit for the work of the women. Whether 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:24.040 it's something is like outright fraudulent, is like just basically 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:27.640 taking someone's work and not giving them credit because you 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:29.280 can get away with it because you're a man and 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:32.160 the other person was a woman or just not giving 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:36.080 due credit. And over time, with history favoring men, typically 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:42.640 at least Western history, Um, the original person who laid 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:45.880 the foundation for the woman, um will just kind of 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:48.560 be lost to time. And this is what's called something 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:51.800 something called the Matilda effect. Yeah, and this is very 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:55.560 evident in science. There's a couple of sort of horrifying 0:01:55.920 --> 0:01:59.520 UM statistics that they found here. One is that there 0:01:59.560 --> 0:02:03.040 was a science of big journal that changed their review process, 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:05.280 you know, reviewing things. Are we going to publish it? 0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:08.120 Are we not? And they switched there's to leave out 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:09.600 the names of the author, so you don't even know 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:13.280 who it is, male or female. And just doing that, uh, 0:02:13.320 --> 0:02:18.120 the acceptance rate for women's reports rose almost eight percent. 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:22.639 And Uh. Then a study in two thousand thirteen showed 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:25.600 that the abstracts you know when you google online and 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:28.560 you read like the abstract of a science science paper, 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:31.680 it's like sort of like a summary. I guess, Um, 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:35.600 they were seen as uh being of a higher quality 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:39.440 if the author was male and wrote about things stereotypically 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:42.200 you would think of as male subjects like physics or 0:02:42.240 --> 0:02:45.280 math or something. Yeah, and this is in two tho. Right, 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:48.919 so it's clearly still going on. And like I said, also, 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:51.839 it's a long standing tradition. And um, it was kind 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:55.600 of given this name, the Matilda effect, back in by 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:58.680 end a storian of science from Cornell named Margaret Rossiter, 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:01.720 and she named it Matilda Effect after a woman named 0:03:01.720 --> 0:03:05.720 Matilda Jostle Engage who was an abolitionist and suffragists. And 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:09.040 she had written an essay in eightee called Women as 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:12.560 an Inventor, which is basically like it is straight up 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:15.919 b s the way that women scientists are just being 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:18.600 completely left out of history. She had a lot of 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:22.120 foresight at the time, um, and and called this out 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:25.600 and it didn't really get anywhere with it, but at 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:28.280 least documented it as far back as before the turn 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:31.000 of the last century that this was a problem in 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:34.000 an issue. And so this this um, this a hundred 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:36.840 years later, Margaret Rossiter kind of came up with this 0:03:36.880 --> 0:03:39.920 thing called the Matilda effect. And there's a lot a 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:43.520 lot of instances in history. It's not sporadic, it's not 0:03:43.960 --> 0:03:46.800 you know, kind of scatter shot like, there are a 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:50.120 lot of instances in history of women not getting due 0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:53.800 credit for the work that they did. That um established 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:58.560 a field that created multiple fields UM or that their 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:02.280 their work grew to be misunderstood and almost kind of scorned. 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:05.720 And that last one in particular, is very much embodied 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:11.720 by a woman named Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards. That's right. Uh. 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:14.680 She was a woman who UM. She was the first 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:18.640 woman accepted into a school of science, which at the time, 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:22.520 the m I T. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was male only, 0:04:23.080 --> 0:04:25.800 and they said, we'll do a little test and see 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:29.120 if this lady can handle m I T. And she 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:32.400 was like great, I handled it. UM. She was one 0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:37.000 of the first female chemists in the US. UM. She well, 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:40.440 her her largest contribution. I guess what she's remembered most 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:45.679 for is her contribution to domestic science a k a. Homeck, 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:49.920 which just saying that some people still might dismiss that 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:53.120 as a soft science or non science, but it's not 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:58.039 true because that encompasses everything from hygienic standards in the 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:01.520 home to um the you know, the clothes we wear 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:05.000 being safe and the food we eat being healthy. And 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:08.120 before she came along, not a lot of people were 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:12.720 doing this, and it took her going to Vassar College, UM, 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:16.800 which is it still an all female college, Vassar I 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:19.599 think actually is yeah? Is it? Uh? She got a 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:21.920 degree in chemistry in eighteen seventy and then that's when 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:24.479 m I. T said let me just see if she 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:27.040 can handle this, and she got a Bachelor of Science 0:05:27.040 --> 0:05:30.000 and chemistry from there in eighteen seventy three, and then 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:36.599 immediately started working like studying pollution and sanitary chemistry and 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:38.440 things like that, which not a lot of people were 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:41.320 doing it at the time. No, she was almost the first, 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:44.719 if not the first person to say, Okay, we're all 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:48.680 like eating food and drinking water and um. Has anybody 0:05:48.680 --> 0:05:50.880 stopped and asked, like, is the food we're eating in 0:05:50.880 --> 0:05:54.880 the water we're drinking healthy and impure? Is that toxic? H? 0:05:55.000 --> 0:05:59.320 What's the relation to um pollution? What's the relation to 0:05:59.600 --> 0:06:03.520 indus tree? Um? She started asking questions and then in 0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:06.600 addition to asking questions, you started doing research and study. 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:09.680 And she came up with this field called o ecology 0:06:09.720 --> 0:06:14.000 o e k ology, and it was the basis for 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:17.760 what we recognized now as ecology or the study of 0:06:17.760 --> 0:06:20.680 the environment UM. And she was the first one to 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:23.120 to to think about this back in I believe the 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:26.559 eighteen seventies UM and it went along for five years 0:06:26.560 --> 0:06:29.440 and m I T by this time she was a 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:33.400 um UH an instructor at m I T. And m 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:36.320 I T said, this sounds crack pot and whack stopped 0:06:36.360 --> 0:06:39.279 talking about this. We we They literally forbade her to 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:43.279 talk about oh ecology for a year and so her 0:06:43.640 --> 0:06:46.920 her this discipline that she launched lasted for all of 0:06:47.000 --> 0:06:49.839 five years and just kind of frustrated by that, she 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:53.719 turned her attention instead to home economics, which was basically 0:06:54.120 --> 0:06:57.520 taking this idea rather than studying like the water in 0:06:57.560 --> 0:07:01.480 the air and all of that, studying the um the 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:03.719 results of the water in the air, like the food 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:07.120 we put in, and like the surroundings we live in 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:09.880 UM and how they impact our health and how they 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:12.000 can be made better. All Right, we're gonna take a 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:14.680 break and we're gonna come back and talk a little 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:17.800 bit more about She about how she managed to bring 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:41.600 science into the household right after this. Alright, so bringing 0:07:41.680 --> 0:07:45.400 science into the home environment was very different on the 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:47.680 household level. To do that at the time, it was 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:50.720 it was an unusual thing that she knew was important. 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:53.960 It was a big passion of hers. Uh. She also 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:58.080 you know, homeck also is cooking and cleaning and sewing 0:07:58.160 --> 0:08:00.400 and and things like that. And it's not like she 0:08:00.480 --> 0:08:03.800 issued those things, but she was like, you know, women 0:08:03.840 --> 0:08:06.320 are already in the home doing these things, so why 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:09.239 don't I bring some science to it and talk about 0:08:09.360 --> 0:08:14.120 having sanitary conditions and organizing the household and raising a 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:19.760 healthy family with science based techniques. Because, like I said, 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:21.240 it was at the time, and this is in the 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:25.240 you know, late I guess, uh, late nineteenth century, right 0:08:25.840 --> 0:08:28.600 when she started out right at the turn. Yeah yeah, 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:31.960 so uh. I mean she has gotten some pushback over 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:35.400 the years from feminists, but I think they got it wrong, 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:37.840 you know, man, from what I saw it, they got 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:41.400 it really wrong. Any And like, if you criticize um 0:08:41.400 --> 0:08:45.960 Ellen Richards as anti feminists by creating home MEC, it 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:49.240 seems like you just haven't really dug in very deeply 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:53.720 to researcher, because she was a proto feminist to the 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:56.720 first degree. Yeah, Like it would have been really easy 0:08:56.760 --> 0:09:00.000 at the time to say, as a as a progressive 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:03.400 of to say, well, you know, women ditch the household 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:05.440 and get out there and try and take the man's job. 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:08.280 But she she knew the reality of things. I think 0:09:08.640 --> 0:09:12.400 and she wanted to uplift UH, what women were doing 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:15.199 in the household instead of saying, no, ditch all that 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:17.000 and leave it behind to go take a quote unquote 0:09:17.040 --> 0:09:20.360 man's job, Like what you're doing is important, and I 0:09:20.400 --> 0:09:22.960 want to uplift that and bring science to it. Well. 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:25.800 And not only did did was it important? She also 0:09:25.840 --> 0:09:28.440 realized that that was the reality of the situation, right 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:32.560 like you, I think something like nineties seven percent of 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:36.040 women at the time UM didn't go to college. They 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:39.560 just they they got married and they became homemakers. So 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:41.880 that's what she had to work with. So she was 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:45.160 trying to UM, like you said, uplift women in that sense, 0:09:45.320 --> 0:09:48.280 not necessarily because you know she was. She was saying, 0:09:48.320 --> 0:09:50.600 this is a woman's lot. It was, this is what 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:52.280 we're working with, so I'm going to try to make 0:09:52.280 --> 0:09:56.600 it better. She also very strongly advocated for women to 0:09:56.720 --> 0:09:59.160 be college educated. She thought that that should just be 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:03.000 standard practice UM. And she actually set up a lab, 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:07.000 a woman's lab at m I T to teach chemistry 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:11.360 to UM young women who were coming into college UM. 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:13.439 And the lab was only open for a few years 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:16.920 because from her efforts, m I T started to accept 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:20.440 women into the general the general population. It wasn't like 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:22.880 a special track any longer. But she set up a 0:10:22.920 --> 0:10:26.120 lab to teach women chemistry and she did it free. 0:10:26.360 --> 0:10:28.520 She didn't get any money from it. She and she 0:10:28.640 --> 0:10:32.280 taught chemistry for years for for no charge, so that 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:35.800 these um young women could learn chemistry. Yeah. And you know, 0:10:35.880 --> 0:10:39.439 despite all this, she's um, I don't know about forgotten, 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:43.600 but largely forgotten in history, especially in science as a 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:48.840 real pioneer, uh and validating the home economic movement and 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:53.720 bringing women into more traditionally male fields of science. And 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:57.679 she doesn't get nearly enough recognition. So uh no, especially also, 0:10:57.720 --> 0:11:00.120 I mean like she was she was a pioneer the 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:03.760 concept in the study of water quality and like that's 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:06.840 that's huge she was. She had a really deep and 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:10.040 broad scientific career, so I know, she definitely doesn't get 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:12.280 her to you. Yeah, like today she would be on 0:11:12.320 --> 0:11:15.800 the front lines in Flint, Michigan, in in newspapers and 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:19.000 on TV shows, but back then she was discounted because 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:23.880 it was kitchen stuff. Yep. So hats off to Ellen 0:11:24.000 --> 0:11:28.200 Richards for being just a total top notch scientist. Absolutely, 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:30.400 and uh, if you want to know more about her. 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:32.760 Go check out this article on how stuff Works. How 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:37.040 about that agreed? Uh, well, that's short stuff. Send us 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:39.360 an email if you like, send it off to Stuff 0:11:39.400 --> 0:11:57.320 Podcast at how stuff works dot com.