 Interior of the Balfour Laboratory | |
| Active | 1884–1914 |
|---|---|
| Affiliation | University of Cambridge |
The Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women was a laboratory attached to the University of Cambridge from 1884 to 1914. Established to expand the laboratory capacity and provide a separate space for women's practical work, it served as an important source of academic posts and opportunities for networking and discussion for women at Cambridge until laboratories began being shared by men and women in 1914.
In March 1881, the month after women students received the right to sit the Natural Sciences Tripos at the University of Cambridge, twenty-two natural sciences students at Newnham College, Cambridge presented a memorial to the college's governing body outlining the need for more laboratory space. Newnham, one of two women's colleges at Cambridge, had had a purpose-built laboratory on its grounds since 1879. This laboratory was mostly set up for chemistry, and more space was needed because the natural sciences tripos included a two-day examination in practical laboratory techniques. [1] All laboratory space at Cambridge was becoming oversubscribed due to the increase in students wanting to study natural sciences, but it was also thought appropriate that women, who attended lectures alongside men, should have a separate laboratory facility rather than a shared one. [2]
In April 1881, the Newnham College council appointed a subcommittee consisting of Principal Anne Clough, Vice-Principal Eleanor Sidgwick, her brother Francis Maitland Balfour, and Trinity College's Coutts Trotter, to investigate the possibility of establishing a laboratory. The committee selected a site that month, and Eleanor Sidgwick began legal proceedings for purchasing the building in May. [3]
Newnham College raised over £2000 towards the laboratory over the next three years. The other women's college at Cambridge, Girton College, also contributed to the equipping of the laboratory but was not involved in its establishment because it took the position that the laboratory should be established by the University of Cambridge itself, whereas Newnham was willing to proceed independently. [4] Renovations and equipment were also donated by Coutts Trotter and Walter Holbrook Gaskell. [5]
The laboratory opened for teaching in the spring of 1884, funded largely by Eleanor Sidgwick, Vice-Principal of Newnham College, and her sister Alice Blanche Balfour. [6] It was named in memory of their brother Francis Maitland Balfour, a biologist who had been a supporter of Newnham College and a member of the committee negotiating to secure the building. Francis had died in a climbing accident on Mont Blanc in 1882 a few months after becoming lecturer in morphology at Cambridge. [7] A bust of him was gifted to the laboratory by his former students. [8] The premises for the laboratory was an abandoned chapel at Downing Place, in the centre of Cambridge and a five-minute walk away from the men's laboratory. [2]
The laboratory drew most of its staff and funding from Newnham College, and was also open to students at Girton College, the only other Cambridge college accepting women students at the time. Resources were at first limited, but staff wrote of the sense of excitement at overcoming the obstacles in the early days. At first, the staff consisted only of director Alice Johnson, who had taken the Part I examination in Morphology, and Marion Greenwood, who taught physiology. [9] Physiology student Florence Eves collaborated with Johnson on a prospectus as to how the laboratory should be run. [10] There was also a "young untrained boy" to assist with setting up experiments, so the demonstrators did most of the work preparing specimens and reagents themselves. [11] Greenwood also taught botany, because women were excluded from the botany laboratory by Sydney Howard Vines. As botany became more popular, the Balfour appointed two more staff to teach it in 1886, Lilian Sheldon and Anna Bateson. [12]
Demonstrators supervised experiments and tutored students as well as carrying out their own research, and they also offered lectures when women students' access to university lectures was temporarily withdrawn in 1897. [12] An average of forty students per year used the Balfour Laboratory in the 1880s, increasing to about sixty from 1896 when morphology, physics and geology were added to the programme. [13]
The laboratory was refurbished in 1892. [14] By 1910, it had acquired two neighbouring buildings. It contained two floors of laboratories, a lecture room, a greenhouse, and bench space for independent research. [12]
The Balfour laboratory closed for teaching in 1914, by which time women were being admitted to share practical facilities with men, and student numbers were declining due to World War I. The building remained open for women's scientific research until 1927. [15] [16] It also hosted the Department of Biochemistry from 1919 to 1923. [17]
The Balfour Laboratory provided academic posts for women which would have been harder to come by otherwise because, being a designated laboratory for women, it needed to appoint women as demonstrators. This led to several women scientists advancing their careers and completing the research necessary to make publications.
Source: [20]
Newnham College is a women's constituent college of the University of Cambridge.
Sir Sidney Frederic Harmer, KBE, FRS was a British zoologist. He was President of the Linnean Society 1927–1931 and was awarded the Linnean Medal in 1934.
Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick was a physics researcher assisting Lord Rayleigh, an activist for the higher education of women, Principal of Newnham College of the University of Cambridge, and a leading figure in the Society for Psychical Research.
Agnes Arber FRS was a British plant morphologist and anatomist, historian of botany and philosopher of biology. She was born in London but lived most of her life in Cambridge, including the last 51 years of her life. She was the first woman botanist to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society and the third woman overall. She was the first woman to receive the Gold Medal of the Linnean Society of London.
Sir James Walker FRS FRSE FCS LLD was a Scottish chemist. He worked mainly on inorganic and physical chemistry. His major contribution was in the study of chemical reaction kinetics based on a study of the reactions converting ammonium cyanate to urea which was published in 1895 along with Frederick J. Hambly (1878-1960).
Edith Rebecca Saunders FLS was a British geneticist and plant anatomist. Described by J. B. S. Haldane as the "Mother of British Plant Genetics", she played an active role in the re-discovery of Mendel's laws of heredity, the understanding of trait inheritance in plants, and was the first collaborator of the geneticist William Bateson. She also developed extensive work on flower anatomy, particularly focusing on the gynoecia, the female reproductive organs of flowers.
Ida Maclean was an English biochemist and the first woman admitted to the London Chemical Society.
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Rachel Alcock was an English physiologist and academic.
Alice Johnson was an English zoologist. She also edited the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research from 1899 to 1916.
Walter Heape FRS was a British zoologist and embryologist, famous for the first successful mammalian embryo transfer.
Edith Sharpley (1859–1940) was a Classical Lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge from 1884 to 1910.
Elizabeth Dale was a British botanist, paleobotanist, plant pathologist, and author.
Annie Homer was a biochemist at Newnham College, Cambridge, University of Toronto and the Lister Institute. She developed improved methods for large-scale production of antitoxin sera during World War I.
Mary Gladys Thoday, sometimes known as Gladys or Gwladys Thoday, was a Welsh botanist, suffragist, and peace activist in Britain and South Africa.
Anna Bateson was an English botanist, market gardener, and suffragist. After working as an assistant in botany at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she and her mother campaigned for women's suffrage, she moved to New Milton, Hampshire and set up a pioneering market gardening business.
Elinor Mary Beatrice Philipps was an English science educator and missionary.
Sibille Ormston Ford was an English botanist and zoologist.
Florence Elizabeth Eves was an English physiologist noted as the first woman to receive a degree in physiology.
The Bathurst studentship was a fund for graduates of the natural science tripos at the women's colleges at the University of Cambridge to continue their scientific research.