Margaret W. Rossiter

Margaret W. Rossiter Margaret Walsh Rossiter (July 8, 1944 – August 3, 2025) was an American historian of science. She was awarded in 2022 the George Sarton Medal. Quotes I can still recall my astonishment when I discovered in 1972 some women's entries in the old American Men and Women of Science American Men [sic] of Science directories, and when I read biographies of several scientists in the then-new Notable American Women. Here were people who had been present at many of the familiar places and events, but were totally unknown even to those well versed in the history of American science. I felt like a modern Alice who had fallen down a rabbit hole into a wonderland of the history of science that was familiar in some respects but distorted and alien in many others. Learning more about these women and bringing their stories into closer connection with the rest of history of this period became a compelling and absorbing intellectual task.The initial stumbling block was locating material, since most of the women scientists bordered, for a variety of reasons, on the "invisible." Preface xi–xii Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 Volume 1 of Women Scientists in America, Margaret W. Rossiter illustrated, pbk Johns Hopkins University Press 1982 9780801825095 https://books.google.com/books?id=jJr6ZfkDbE4C&pg=PR11 (439 pages; quote from p. xi) Although by all accounts the period 1940–72 was a golden age for science in America, it has generally been considered a very dark age for women in the professions. ... How could this have been? Were not women an integral part of American science by 1940? Why, then, in a period of record growth in almost every aspect of American science that one could count—money spent, persons trained, jobs created, articles published, even Nobel Prize Nobel prizes won—were women so invisible? Women Scientists in America: Before Affirmative Action, 1940-1972 Volume 2 of Women Scientists in America, Margaret W. Rossiter Johns Hopkins University Press 1998 9780801857119 Introduction xv–xviii https://books.google.com/books?id=i7xDqk0_HTQC&pg=PR15 (584 pages; 1st edition 1995; quote from p. xv) We live in historic times. This is especially trued for American women in science and engineering. Opportunities have greatly expanded since the early 1970s because of a variety of factors, starting with but extending beyond Equal Rights Amendment#Congressional passage (1970–1972) two landmark laws passed in 1972—new expectations, new energy, a growing economy, new technical industries and opportunities, battles won and programs instituted. The women's liberation movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s inspired many women scientists and their supporters to new levels of activism, and legislators passed and President Richard M. Nixon signed significant legislation that greatly affected traditional patterns in academia. Introduction: The New Era Women Scientists in America: Forging a New World since 1972 Volume 3 of Women Scientists in America, Margaret W. Rossiter Johns Hopkins University Press 2022 9781421404769 https://books.google.com/books?id=6YQcEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT16 (683 pages; 1st edition 2012) Quotes about Margaret W. Rossiter Margaret W. Rossiter, a historian whose trilogy, “Women Scientists in America,” documented in sharp detail the ways women were excised from the annals of science — and who coined the term “Matilda effect the Matilda effect,” named for the 19th-century suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage, to describe the age-old practice of attributing scientific achievements of women to their male colleagues — died on Aug. 3 in Salem, Massachusetts Salem, Mass. ...Among the scientists Dr. Rossiter wrote about was Lise Meitner, who with the German chemist Otto Hahn developed the theory of nuclear fission. He won the Nobel Prize for that discovery; she did not. The “Matilda effect” was but one of the many career blows that were queasily familiar to female scientists. So was the “harem effect,” a term Dr. Rossiter coined to describe male scientists’ habit of surrounding themselves with, as she put it, a “bevy of competent female subordinates who would not be as threatening as an equal number of bright young men.” (And who would presumably stay put, because their opportunities were so limited.) Penelope Green, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/science/margaret-w-rossiter-dead.html Margaret W. Rossiter, 81, Dies; Wrote Women Scientists Into History August 29, 2025 The New York Times The economic history of History of agriculture in the United States American agriculture would have been a very different story had advances and applications in chemistry matched progress in Agricultural machinery farm machinery. As it was, there wre no "green revolutions," and chemical knowledge played a minor role until almost the end of the nineteenth century. Margaret W. Rossiter's interesting monograph on the influence of Justus von Liebig Justus Liebig shows that the indifference of farmers to the blandishments of science was as much a consequence of the meager fare offered by the scientists as of any ingrained anti-intellectualism on the part of cultivators. Eric E. Lampard, review of The Emergence of Agricultural Science: Justus Liebig and the Americans, 1840–1880 by Margaret W. Rossiter The American Historical Review 81 5 December 1976 1244–1245 p. 1244; p. 1245 External links Category:1944 births Category:2025 deaths Category:Women academics from the United States Category:Cornell University faculty Category:Educators from the United States Category:Historians from the United States Category:Historians of science Category:Non-fiction authors from the United States Category:Women authors from the United States Category:Women born in the 1940s Category:Yale University alumni