The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science

Traditionally, women who succeeded in science or medicine were considered "exceptional. " They were exceptional, however, not because they had the requisite intelligence and talent to master science but because they possessed the extraordinary tenacity, dedication, and determination necessary to overcome formidable external barriers. The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins and the Fight for Women in Science by Kate Zernike, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, is an excellent, consequential, and immersive book that expands on the front-page story she wrote for The Boston Globe in March 1999, 1 exposing that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts had admitted long-standing sex discrimination. This acknowledgment from MIT, which was also detailed shortly thereafter in The New York Times, 2 resulted from the systematic and comprehensive report, composed over the course of almost five years, by 16 female MIT scientists, led by the eminent molecular biologist, cancer researcher, and "reluctant" activist, Dr. Nancy Hopkins. Ms. Zernike's manuscript features the numerous cringe-worthy experiences of Dr. Hopkins, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as she worked 15-h days to establish her rightful place in the rigid hierarchy of elite science. In 1963, 19-yr-old Nancy Doe (later, Hopkins) was a Radcliffe College (Cambridge, Massachusetts) student who attended a biology lecture delivered by Nobel Laureate and tenured Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts) Professor James D. Watson, Ph. D. , (1928–) of double helix fame. She became immediately mesmerized by the promise of genetics and changed her major from mathematics to biology, believing rather naively that science was an unadulterated meritocracy. She next worked in Watson's Harvard laboratory and had the good fortune to be effectively mentored by him, enjoying a cordial, lengthy, and productive collaboration and friendship with the opinionated and outspoken maverick. Nancy went on to graduate from Radcliffe in 1964 and received a Ph. D. degree in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Harvard in 1971. Postdoctoral work at the prestigious Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (Laurel Hollow, Long Island, New York) with Watson further burnished her stellar credentials, facilitating her appointment as an assistant professor of biology (and the only woman faculty member in the department) at MIT in 1973. No doubt Dr. Watson's steadfast support of Dr. Hopkins carried substantial weight since he was no feminist. Indeed, he was notorious for his dismissive comments in his 1968 best-selling book, titled The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of DNA, deriding the brilliant crystallographer Rosalind Franklin's (1920 to 1958) purported lack of femininity. The unfiltered Watson further remarked that "The thought could not be avoided that the best home for a feminist was in another person's lab. "3 In fact, aided by the unauthorized use of Dr. Franklin's seminal "photograph 51, " an X-ray diffraction image indicating that DNA was two strands in a helical shape, Watson and Crick were provided with one more piece to the DNA structural puzzle, enabling them to beat the competition and capture, along with Franklin's colleague Maurice Wilkins, Ph. D. (1916 to 2004), the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Tragically, Rosalind Franklin died years earlier of ovarian cancer at age 37. During the next two decades, even as affirmative action was promulgated and then legislated, Nancy endured innumerable instances of microaggression and occasional macroaggression. The book provides blistering accounts of pervasive, but often subtle, discrimination as well as examples of blatantly abhorrent behavior by respected male scientists. Although overt physical sexual harassment sporadically happened (Watson's collaborator Francis Crick, Ph. D. 1916 to 2004 groped Nancy when she was an undergraduate, and a MIT colleague sexually assaulted her later in her career), the most commonly reported problems were "the minutiae of sexism, " the casual slights and demeaning comments that women tended to ignore. Mary Rowe, Ph. D. (1936–), Special Assistant for Women and Work to MIT then-President Jerome B. Wiesner, Ph. D. (1915 to 1994), called these microaggressions "The Saturn's Rings Phenomenon, " indicating that like the dust and ice around Saturn, although small and scattered, these minor slights cumulatively constitute daunting obstacles. As she gained growing international recognition, Nancy began to feel increasingly isolated, marginalized, and "invisible" in the intensely competitive local environment where struggles over ideas and appropriate credit for discoveries were commonplace, as were petty altercations about laboratory space. Her despair turned to indignation. In 1994, finally realizing that the inequities she experienced were widespread among virtually all the senior female faculty, Nancy joined forces with 15 other senior women on the MIT science faculty and meticulously documented and quantified, among other parameters, the laboratory square footage (using a tape measure now on display at the MIT Museum), equipment, and salaries allotted to male faculty versus female faculty. The coeducational Committee on Women Faculty was formed in 1995, and convincingly demonstrated systemic gender discrimination with regard to space, pay and other resources, granting of tenure, teaching assignments, and leadership opportunities. A summary of the findings was endorsed by then-MIT President Charles Vest, Ph. D. (1941 to 2013) and then-Dean of the School of Science Robert Birgeneau, Ph. D. (1942–), who resolved to do better in the realm of gender equity. Decisively, President Vest wrote a brief preamble to the report noting, "I have always believed that contemporary gender discrimination within universities is part reality and part perception. True, but I now understand that reality is by far the greater part of the balance. " Eventually, nine prestigious research universities, including MIT, Stanford (Stanford, California), University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), Harvard, and Yale (New Haven, Connecticut), forged an ongoing collaboration to rigorously investigate and address issues of gender equity. Twenty-five years later, considerable progress has been made at MIT, but much remains to be accomplished in a wider sphere. Ensuing measures at MIT since 1999 have included the establishment of committees to recruit more women to faculty and administrative leadership positions, as well as incorporation of active surveillance that tracks gender disparities in hiring, teaching assignments, and resource allotment. Notably, women currently serve as president, provost, and chancellor at MIT. Closer to home and not specifically discussed in Zernike's book, it is important to acknowledge that women's representation in medicine has steadily increased since the turn of the millennium. Nonetheless, although women currently constitute at least 50% of medical students in the United States, they are under-represented in leadership positions in medicine. According to a 2018 study in the Harvard Business Review that discusses gender disparities in medicine and potential solutions, 4 women comprise only 18% of hospital chief executive officers and 16% of deans and department chairs in U. S. medical schools. Moreover, a recent national study of gender differences in compensation documented that a significant gender-related pay gap (almost 33, 000 per year) among anesthesiologists persists, even after adjusting for differences in age, hours worked, geographic practice region, and other variables. 5 Also concerning is the fact that, in 2021, a settlement was reached in a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by six female anesthesiologists at Yale University School of Medicine accusing a male anesthesiologist in their department of repeated instances of forced and unwanted kissing, groping, and retaliation. 6 Are these other pitiful examples of "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose? "The Exceptions is not a perfect book. Arguably, the tome would have benefitted from more critical editing. The multiple allusions to the aggressive, competitive, and occasionally ruthless behavior of MIT professor and Nobel Laureate David Baltimore, Ph. D. (1938–), seem repetitive; two or three anecdotes would have sufficed to convey the situation. Moreover, the tone of the information presented occasionally deteriorates to "gossipy. " I, for one, would have preferred fewer details about the vicissitudes of Dr. Hopkins's roller-coaster first marriage to her college sweetheart. In addition, the transitions (or lack thereof) between paragraphs and chapters are sometimes puzzling from a chronological perspective, and the flow of the narrative is, on rare instances, marred by prolixity. These cavils aside, the book has multiple major strengths and is definitely worth reading. The author successfully captures the zeitgeist of the 1960s and 1970s, an era characterized by angry conflict over the Vietnam war, considerable racial tension and violence, and economic instability, as well as nascent feminism and affirmative action. Kate Zernike's description of the growth and evolution of MIT from its inception in 1861 as a small school with 15 students studying in a rented downtown Boston building to its current exalted international status is fascinating. In addition, the author's exploration of the dynamics of discrimination in the workplace is compelling. Most importantly, however, the author accurately and convincingly conveys the stress, angst, and demoralization experienced by capable women in virtually all fields of science when they encounter substantive, albeit perhaps unconscious, discrimination. I highly recommend The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins and the Fight for Women in Science to an extensive audience, especially to men who may be largely unaware of the special challenges, including crushing social and economic burdens, confronted by talented women who wish to make meaningful contributions to society. The book brilliantly delivers the message that disenfranchisement results in an incredible waste of talent that ultimately harms not only women, but humankind.