Elizabeth Wagner Reed

Last updated

Elizabeth Wagner Reed
Elizabeth Cleland Wagner from Makio 1933.jpg
Wagner from Makio, the Ohio State University 1933 yearbook
Born
Elizabeth Cleland Wagner

(1912-08-27)August 27, 1912
Baguio, Philippine Islands
DiedJuly 14, 1996(1996-07-14) (aged 83)
Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Other namesE. W. Beasley, Elizabeth Wagner Beasley, E. W. Reed, E. C. Wagner
Occupation(s)Scientist and academic
Years active1932–1992

Elizabeth Wagner Reed (August 27, 1912 – July 14, 1996) was an American geneticist and one of the first scientists to work on Drosophila speciation. She taught women's studies courses and had a particular interest in research aimed at recovering the history of nineteenth-century women scientists. Born in the Philippines to a Northern Irish nurse and an American civil servant, she grew up in Carroll, Ohio. After earning bachelor's, master's, and PhD degrees from Ohio State University, she became a teacher with an interest in genetics. In the 1940s, she worked with her husband on plant genetics at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station. After he was killed in action during World War II, she returned to Ohio and conducted studies on penicillin at the Ohio State Research Foundation.

Contents

After a second marriage to Sheldon C. Reed, the couple became research partners, first at Harvard University and from 1947 at the Dight Institute for Human Genetics at the University of Minnesota. As her husband directed the institute which had rules against nepotism, although she had a work station at the institute, Reed was not listed as staff until the 1970s. She was one of the few women who performed pioneering work in genetics. Her studies first focused on species evolution, for which she undertook statistical analysis and comparison of minute differences in the Drosophila genus of flies. Later, as the couple's interest shifted to human genetics, the Reeds published works on congenital disorders and diseases. They were in favor of genetic counseling based on an understanding of how such disorders occurred, especially in connection with family planning.

In addition to her genetic work, Reed wrote about sexism toward women scientists. An active women's rights advocate, she not only strove to mentor other women in the profession, but to recover the histories of women scientists. Her book American Women in Science before the Civil War (1992), reclaimed the contributions and biographies of twenty-two women who published in science before the American Civil War. Among them were Eunice Newton Foote and Mary Amelia Swift. Reed's own legacy was obscured by her husband's prominence, until her contributions were recovered by Marta Velasco Martín in 2020.

Early life and education

Map of Luzon Island Map of Luzon Island.svg
Map of Luzon Island

Elizabeth Cleland Wagner was born on August 27, 1912, in Baguio, on the island of Luzon, in the Philippines to Catherine (née Cleland) and John O. Wagner. [1] [2] [3] Her mother was from Killyleagh, Northern Ireland, but was working as a nurse and nurse trainer in the Philippines when she met her husband. [1] [4] Her father served in the Spanish-American War and afterwards worked in various civil service positions during the period when the Philippines was an unincorporated territory of the United States, including as a court interpreter and secretary to the Governor of the Mountain Province on Luzon. [1] [5] Her only sibling died in infancy. [5] In 1917, the family returned to Wagner's home state of Ohio and settled in Fairfield County, where her father operated a fruit orchard. [1]

Wagner grew up near Carroll, Ohio, and graduated from Canal Winchester High School. [6] From 1930, she furthered her studies at Ohio State University, majoring in botany. [5] [6] She excelled in her studies and in her second year had the highest marks in her class. [7] She graduated with honors and was elected to the academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa, in 1933. [8] With support from the Ohio State Graduate School, Wagner earned her master's degree in 1934 and a PhD in 1936. [5] [9] [10] After graduation, she did further studies in 1937 in plant research, with funding provided by the Sherwin-Williams Paint Company. [3] [5] Because of biases against women, Wagner was told she should publish her research using only her initials. Thus, her thesis, Effects of Certain Insecticides and Inert Materials upon the Transpiration Rate of Bean Plants, published in 1939, appeared in the name of E. C. Wagner. [5]

Career

Early teaching career (1938–1943)

After completing her studies, Wagner was hired as a biology and chemistry instructor at Atlantic Christian College in Wilson, North Carolina. [3] [11] In 1938, she was promoted to head the school's biology department and worked there until her marriage in 1940. [12] [11] Wagner married James O. Beasley, a pioneering plant geneticist, on September 17, 1940. After their marriage, the couple moved to College Station, Texas, where both were employed at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station. [3] [13] Beasley was drafted to fight in World War II in 1942 shortly after Wagner published her second paper and just prior to the birth of their son John in April. [14] Soon after, Beasley went missing in action and Wagner contacted his friend, Sheldon C. Reed, to see if he had any information. [15] She returned to Ohio with their son and lived with her parents during this time, while working on penicillin studies at the Ohio State Research Foundation. [15] [16] Wagner was notified in November 1943, that Beasley had been in killed in action, in September 1943 in Italy. [16] He was subsequently awarded a Purple Heart. [17]

Genetics work (1944–1966)

Drosophila melanogaster Drosophila melanogaster Proboscis.jpg
Drosophila melanogaster

In 1944, Wagner took a post at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, as an assistant professor in plant sciences. In 1945, she relocated to Delaware, Ohio, and taught botany at Ohio Wesleyan University. [15] On August 20, 1946, she and Sheldon Reed, who had remained in touch, married. He was at the time an assistant professor at Harvard University, teaching biology. [18] After their marriage, the couple lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and both worked at Harvard. [15] [18] They began collaborating on research at that time and thereafter jointly published works. Their first project concerned the speciation of flies, which was published as Morphological Differences and Problems of Speciation in Drosophila in March 1948. Reed gave birth to their daughter, Catherine, that same month. [15] By the time the paper was published, the family had moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Sheldon had become the director of the Dight Institute for Human Genetics at the University of Minnesota in 1947. [15] [19]

Although Reed had a desk at the Dight Institute from 1947 to 1966, she never held an academic position with the institute because of nepotism rules. Her nominal tie was to the University of Minnesota. [20] She nevertheless continued to work with Sheldon and publish works on genetics. Their next two papers, Natural Selection in Laboratory Populations of Drosophila (1948) and Natural Selection in Laboratory Populations of Drosophila II: Competition between a White Eye Gene and Its Wild Type Allele (1950), focused on Drosophila melanogaster and natural selection. [21] These studies were important in the development of new theoretical and methodological approaches, using statistical analysis and comparison of minute differences, to studying the process of speciation. As a pioneer in the work on Drosophila genetics, Reed was one of the women who contributed to establishing and standardizing processes to study species evolution. [22]

From 1950, the Reeds changed from studying flies to human genetics and published works together on intellectual disability. In June 1951, their son William was born. [20] Many of their works, like a 1958 follow-up study of former residents from the turn-of-the-century at the Minnesota Experimental School for the Feeble Minded in Faribault, and a 1962 study on intelligence, focused on families and attempted to determine whether certain traits were genetic. [23] [24] They became proponents of genetic counseling, studying parental genes to determine the probable source of children's congenital disorders or diseases, in an effort to mitigate and understand how they occurred. [25] [26] Their best known joint book, which gave Reed lead author position, was Mental Retardation: A Family Study, published in 1965. [20]

Women's studies (1950–1992)

From 1950, Reed was interested in writing about women and studying sexism in science. Having been a member of Sigma Delta Epsilon, an organization dedicated to fostering women in their scientific endeavors, she recognized that issues of self-esteem, family obligations, and sexual discrimination they faced were largely responsible for women leaving the profession. That year, she published Productivity and Attitudes of Seventy Scientific Women, [27] [Notes 1] which analyzed the impact of marriage and childbirth on scientific careers. She noted that of the women in her sample four-fifths regardless of marital status indicated working was a necessity for financial reasons. She concluded that in her study group marriage and children were the primary reason women abandoned scientific careers. Aware of the difficulties, Reed tried to encourage members of Sigma Delta Epsilon to continue working and to know their rights. [27] She was a committed women's rights activist, supporter of the National Abortion Rights Action League, and served on the board of Planned Parenthood. [2] [28]

The push of activists in the Women's Liberation Movement in the 1970s brought about the advent of women's studies courses. A central role of the new field was to recover the histories of women's participation and contributions to society. In 1992, Reed published American Women in Science before the Civil War, which recovered the histories of twenty-two American women scientists who had published prior to the American Civil War. [29] [30] [Notes 2] The book, along with Ladies in the Laboratory by Mary R. S. Creese, was acknowledged by Tina Gianquitto, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines, whose work focuses in on nineteenth-century women scientists, as being one of two sources that gave extensive historical and biographical information on women scientists of that era. [32] [33] Historian William P. Palmer noted in 2011 that Reed had been "the most thorough biographer of Mary Amelia Swift". [34] In a different chapter of the book, about Eunice Newton Foote, Reed wrote that Foote's experiments confirmed that when subjected to sunlight, carbon dioxide became warmer than air "thereby demonstrating what we call the greenhouse effect today". [35] [Notes 3]

Later career (1966–1980)

In 1966, Reed was officially hired by the University of Minnesota to develop the Minnesota Mathematics and Science Teaching project, known as Minnemast. The program was funded by the National Science Foundation and aimed to focus on better science and math education for kindergarten and primary school children. Reed worked on the project through 1970. [42] The project developed twenty-nine teaching plans, six of which were created by Reed. [30] She was still working at the Dight Institute and was part of the staff in the 1970s, as well as serving as co-director of research for the Minnesota Genetics League. [25] [43] She taught courses at the University of Minnesota and gave courses on women's contributions throughout history at the university's Continuing Education and Extension Department. [44] [45]

Death and legacy

Reed died on July 14, 1996, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. [2] Her legacy in genetics was obscured and according to scholar Marta Velasco Martín, the academic record omitted the involvement of Reed and other women scientists from the historic record of early genetic research. Reed's work was hidden behind that of her more prominent husband, although he acknowledged their partnership. [46] [47] This same fate befell women scientists like Foote, whose biography was "recovered" by Reed. [29] [48] Foote had told Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1868 that women's work was often claimed by men for self-serving reasons. [49] Reed's legacy, along with that of Natasha Sivertzeva-Dobzhansk and María Monclús, was recovered in the paper Women and Partnership Genealogies in Drosophila Population Genetics, written by Velasco Martín in 2020, to confirm that women were pioneers in genetics, although leading historians tended to ignore their contributions. [50] On 22 April 2023, The New York Times feature "Overlooked No More" honored Reed. [51]

Selected publications

Notes

  1. ↑ Reed published her works on women using her full name rather than initials. [5]
  2. ↑ Besides Foote and Swift, the other scientists recovered by Reed included: Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Catharine Esther Beecher, Jane Colden, Eunice Powers Cutter, Dorothea Lynde Dix, Foote, Lydia Folger Fowler, Sophia Bledsoe Herrick, Mary Putnam Jacobi, Laura H. Johnson, Frances Green McDougall, Maria Mitchell, Margaretta Hare Morris, Hannah Bouvier Peterson, Almira Lincoln Phelps, Mary Amelia Swift, Charlotte de Bernier Taylor, Jane Taylor, Mary Townsend, Ellen Smith Tupper, Jane Kilby Welsh, and Emma Hart Willard. [31]
  3. ↑ Twenty-first century authors have tended to credit retired petroleum geologist Ray Sorenson, who came across Foote's work in The Annual of Scientific Discovery and published about her in 2011, [36] with Foote's recovery as the woman who first recognized the greenhouse effect. [36] [37] [38] Reed's recognition in 1992, of Foote's accomplishment [35] preceded Sorenson's work by almost two decades, [36] but Sorenson's work recognized that Foote had preceded John Tyndall's work, [39] who had up to that time been considered as the person who had discovered the greenhouse effect. [40] [41]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edith Taliaferro</span> American actress (1894–1958)

Edith Taliaferro was an American stage and film actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was active on the stage until 1935 and had roles in three silent films. She is best known for portraying the role of Rebecca in the 1910 stage production of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charla Doherty</span> American actress (1946–1988)

Charla Sue Doherty was an American film and television actress who appeared on the first season of the long-running soap opera Days of Our Lives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Cady Stanton House (Seneca Falls, New York)</span> Historic house in New York, United States

The Elizabeth Cady Stanton House is a historic house at 32 Washington Street in the village of Seneca Falls, New York. Built before 1830, it was the home of suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) from 1847 to 1862. It is now a historic house museum as part of Women's Rights National Historical Park. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elisha Foote</span> American judge

Elisha Foote was an American judge, inventor, and mathematician. He served as the eleventh United States Commissioner of Patents from 1868 to 1869 and was responsible for launching an investigation into previous mismanagement of the post. He was married to the scientist and women's rights campaigner Eunice Newton Foote.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mid-American Conference Men's Basketball Player of the Year</span> Mens college basketball award

The Mid-American Conference Men's Basketball Player of the Year is an award given to the most outstanding men's basketball player in the Mid-American Conference (MAC). The award was first given following the 1967–68 season. Four players have won the award multiple times: Tom Kozelko, Ron Harper, Gary Trent and Bonzi Wells. Trent is the only player to have been honored as player of the year three times (1993–95). There have been no ties, nor has any player from the MAC ever won any of the national player of the year awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Redfield</span> American geneticist

Helen Redfield, was an American geneticist. Redfield graduated from Rice University in 1920, followed by earning her Ph.D. in zoology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1921. While at Rice, she worked in the mathematics department. She joined the faculty of Stanford University in 1925 and that same year she became a National Research Fellow at Columbia University. In 1926 she married Jack Schultz, the couple had two children. Redfield retained her maiden name upon her marriage. In 1929 she worked as a teaching fellow at New York University. Ten years later she worked as a geneticist in the Kerckhoff Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. Starting in 1942, during World War II, she worked as a lab scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory during the summer. From 1951 until 1961 she served as a research associate at the Institute for Cancer Research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Josephine Tilden</span> American phycologist

Josephine Elizabeth Tilden was an American expert on pacific algae. She was the first woman scientist employed by the University of Minnesota. Tilden established a research station in British Columbia which lasted only until 1906. When Tilden became an assistant Professor in 1903, she was the first female scientist employed by the University of Minnesota. In 1910, despite not having a doctorate, Tilden was promoted to full professor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eunice Newton Foote</span> American scientist and activist (1819–1888)

Eunice Newton Foote was an American scientist, inventor, and women's rights campaigner. She was the first scientist to confirm that certain gases warm when exposed to sunlight, and that therefore rising carbon dioxide levels could increase atmospheric temperature and affect climate, a phenomenon now referred to as the Greenhouse effect. Born in Connecticut, Foote was raised in New York at the center of social and political movements of her day, such as the abolition of slavery, anti-alcohol activism, and women's rights. She attended the Troy Female Seminary and the Rensselaer School from age 17–19, gaining a broad education in scientific theory and practice.

Sheldon Clark Reed was an American biologist and geneticist who coined the term genetic counseling and advocated for the wider use of genetic counseling as a means to educate the public.

Susan E. Celniker is an American biologist, a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and an adjunct professor Comparative Biochemistry department at UC Berkeley. She is the co-director of the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project.

Bill Byrne was a sports entrepreneur who founded the first women's professional basketball league in the United States. Byrne was born in Stoutsville, Ohio and founded the National Scouting Association (NSA) which represented student-athletes from the collegiate and amateur ranks to seek professional football opportunities. He then founded the Columbus Bucks, a semi-professional football team, playing in the Midwest Football League (MFL) and served as commissioner. Byrne was hired by the Chicago Fire of the start-up World Football League in 1974 as the Player Personnel Director. When that team folded toward the end of the season, Byrne then went to the Shreveport Steamer for the 1975 WFL season in a similar role. The World Football League folded toward the end of the season.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy Houston Jacobson</span> American political scientist and educator (1907–1985)

Dorothy Houston Jacobson was an American political scientist and educator. She was a co-founder and chair of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, and served as Assistant Secretary for International Affairs at the United States Department of Agriculture from 1964 to 1969, during the Johnson administration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irene Miguel-Aliaga</span> Spanish-British physiologist

Irene Miguel-Aliaga is a Spanish-British physiologist who is Professor of Genetics and Physiology at Imperial College London. Her research investigates the plasticity of adult organs, and why certain organs change shape in response to environmental changes. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Mowery</span> American actress (1922–2008)

Helen Emily Inkster was a former Miss Wyoming who acted on the stage, in films, and on television.

Eunice Powers Cutter was an American teacher, who was active in the Abolistionist movement, and wrote one of the most popular children's textbooks on anatomy in the Antebellum period. She was born in Massachusetts and educated there and in Connecticut before becoming a teacher in 1843. After her marriage, she assisted her husband in writing university-level anatomy textbooks. She presented lectures on hygiene to women's groups and community gatherings through the mid-1850s and published textbooks on anatomy aimed at grammar school children. In 1856 or 1857, the family moved to Kansas and participated with John Brown in the efforts to ensure that Kansas Territory entered the union as a free state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Townsend (entomologist)</span> American entomologist and author (1814–1851)

Mary Townsend was an early American science writer and abolitionist. Born into a prominent Philadelphia Quaker family, she, her parents, and her siblings were educated at the Westtown School. From childhood, Townsend had an interest in insects. She conducted various studies and experiments, examining specimens under a microscope and evaluating their habits. Because illness and the loss of her sight kept her confined to her bed, Townsend taught herself how to write with a braille-like card. In 1844, she published Life in the Insect World: or, Conversations upon Insects, between an Aunt and Her Nieces, which became popular and influential, particularly in influencing other women to pursue science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Esther Allen Gaw</span> American college dean

Esther Tuckerman Allen Gaw was an American psychologist and college administrator. She was Dean of Women at Ohio State University from 1927 to 1944.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laura Rosamond White</span> American author and editor

Laura Rosamond White was an American author and editor whose work was affiliated with the Woman's Relief Corps, Woman's Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.), and the Non-Partisan National Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She was also regarded as the poet of Geneva, Ohio, and served as city editor of the Geneva Times.

Vera Radaslava Dyson-Hudson was an American anthropologist. Originally interested in Drosophila genetics and a winner of the 1947 Westinghouse Science Talent Search, she switched towards anthropology after meeting her husband Neville Dyson-Hudson. A 1955 Guggenheim Fellow, she did two field studies in east Africa, focusing on the Karamojong people and Turkana people. She was co-author of Rethinking Human Adaptation: Biological And Cultural Models (1983) and HRAFlex (1985). Originally a lecturer at the University of Khartoum, she worked at Johns Hopkins University, Binghamton University, and Cornell University as a professor, retiring in the last school as a professor emeritus.

References

Citations

  1. 1 2 3 4 Lancaster Eagle-Gazette 1959, p. 2.
  2. 1 2 3 Star Tribune 1996, p. 12.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Lancaster Eagle-Gazette 1940, p. 4.
  4. ↑ Velasco Martín 2020, p. 292.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Velasco Martín 2020, p. 293.
  6. 1 2 Lancaster Eagle-Gazette 1933a, p. 3.
  7. ↑ Lancaster Eagle-Gazette 1932, p. 6.
  8. ↑ Lancaster Eagle-Gazette 1933b, p. 1.
  9. ↑ Lancaster Eagle-Gazette 1934, p. 8.
  10. ↑ Lancaster Eagle-Gazette 1936, p. 18.
  11. 1 2 The News & Observer 1938, p. 5.
  12. ↑ Velasco Martín 2020, pp. 293–294.
  13. ↑ Velasco Martín 2020, p. 294.
  14. ↑ Velasco Martín 2020, pp. 294–295.
  15. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Velasco Martín 2020, p. 295.
  16. 1 2 Lancaster Eagle-Gazette 1943, p. 1.
  17. ↑ Lancaster Eagle-Gazette 1944, p. 8.
  18. 1 2 Lancaster Eagle-Gazette 1946, p. 3.
  19. ↑ James 1949, p. F1.
  20. 1 2 3 Velasco Martín 2020, p. 296.
  21. ↑ Velasco Martín 2020, pp. 295, 314.
  22. ↑ Velasco Martín 2020, p. 308.
  23. ↑ Cohn 1962, p. 34.
  24. ↑ Thomson 1958, p. 54.
  25. 1 2 The Journal Times 1974, p. 12.
  26. ↑ Reed 1958, p. 56.
  27. 1 2 Velasco Martín 2020, pp. 295–296.
  28. ↑ Star Tribune 1960, p. 12.
  29. 1 2 Sheffield 2004, pp. 88–89.
  30. 1 2 Velasco Martín 2020, p. 298.
  31. ↑ Reed 1992, p. 1.
  32. ↑ Gianquitto 2007, p. 182.
  33. ↑ Von Glahn 2013, p. 327.
  34. ↑ Palmer 2011, p. 170.
  35. 1 2 Reed 1992, p. 66.
  36. 1 2 3 Sorenson 2011.
  37. ↑ Mandel 2018.
  38. ↑ Brazil 2020.
  39. ↑ Sorenson 2018.
  40. ↑ McNeill 2016.
  41. ↑ Hecht 2020.
  42. ↑ Velasco Martín 2020, p. 297.
  43. ↑ Winona Daily News 1974, p. 30.
  44. ↑ Star Tribune 1976a, p. 5E.
  45. ↑ Star Tribune 1976b, p. 2E.
  46. ↑ Velasco Martín 2020, p. 278.
  47. ↑ Reed 1958, p. 55.
  48. ↑ Reed 1992, pp. 65–68.
  49. ↑ Stanton 1868, p. 226.
  50. ↑ Velasco Martín 2020, pp. 277–278.
  51. ↑ May 2023.

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.