Ruth Hubbard was a professor of biology at Harvard University, where she was the first woman to hold a tenured professorship in biology. From the 1940s to the 1960s, she made important contributions to the understanding of the biochemistry and photochemistry of vision in vertebrates and invertebrates. In 1967, she and George Wald shared the Paul Karrer Gold Medal for their work in this field. In the late 1960s, Hubbard shifted her focus to activism. In her book The Politics of Women’s Biology (1990), she wrote that the Vietnam War and the women’s liberation movement led her to change her priorities. Around the same time, in preparation for an invited talk on the experience of being a woman in science, Hubbard realized that her and her fellow female scientists all lacked job security. This realization led Hubbard and others to petition Harvard to re-evaluate the job statuses of its female faculty. As a result, Hubbard herself was the first woman offered a tenured professorship in the biology department in 1974. In addition to her scientific publications, Hubbard’s publications include Exploding the Gene Myth: How Genetic Information Is Produced and Manipulated by Scientists, Physicians, Employers, Insurance Companies, Educators, and Law Enforcers (1993). At Harvard, she taught a course examining the absence of women in science and medicine and its consequences. She devoted herself to mentoring young women pursuing careers in science.
The lecture was followed by a conference on “Gender, ‘Race,’ and Science” at Queen’s from October 12-15, 1995.
