The Exceptions

November 21, 2022
Journalist Zernike (Boiling Mad: Inside the Tea Party) paints an inspiring portrait of MIT molecular biologist Nancy Hopkins and 15 other female scientists who pushed the university to acknowledge in 1999 a long-standing pattern of discrimination against women on its science faculty. In 1973, when Hopkins arrived at MIT as an assistant professor, the institution flaunted its sole female full professor, physicist Millie Dresselhaus, “as the emblem for what all women could be at MIT, and in science.” Twenty-one years later, women made up less than 8% of the faculty in the School of Science. Zernike movingly details how Hopkins, after enduring years of slights and mistreatment while conducting important genetic research, began reaching out to her female colleagues, who were eager to share their own stories of discrimination. They persuaded the dean of science to back their case for a Committee on Women Faculty, which compiled a devastating report on how women in the science departments had been marginalized. Striking an expert balance between the big picture and intimate profiles of the women involved, Zernike offers an intriguing and often infuriating glimpse into the rarefied world of higher education. Readers will be fascinated. Agent: Elyse Cheney, Cheney Agency.