Marie Curie – the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the first person to win two — is undoubtedly the best known female scientist in a field that is full of male researchers, inventors, mathematicians, chemists, physicists, biologists, doctors, discoverers and explorers. Most people could rattle off names of a dozen men of science off the top of their heads, but would strain to remember any more women scientists besides Madame Curie.
There were, of course, female scientists before Curie, but they were mostly self-taught, or started working with males in the family and quietly entered the field that had not yet officially welcomed them, or rather, actively shut them out. Marya Sklodowska, later to be known as Marie Curie, was born in Poland in 1867, when women were not allowed access to higher education, or, for that matter any formal education at all. She and her sister, Briona, had to educate themselves in secret, in schools that had to keep shifting location to escape detection.
This denial of higher education to girls was the case everywhere. In the US, Harvard was the first to admit women in 1920, and accepted the first females to its medical school as late as 1945. In the UK, Oxford enrolled women by 1878, but offered them degrees only in 1920. Marie Curie studied at the Sorbonne in France in 1891, but to get the lab space to carry out her research she had to take the help of fellow scientist Pierre Curie, whom she eventually married, after turning down his proposal thrice.
All this comes to mind because Marie Curie is obviously the inspiration for Elizabeth Zott, the protagonist of bestselling book Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus—46 weeks on the top sellers list of The New York Times, and counting, Sunday Times Bestseller, BBC Book Club Pick, among other markers of a book’s success. The girlie cover does not give a sense of the content of the book, and the word ‘chemistry’ has taken on a non-scientific colloquial meaning, which has not stopped the book from becoming so popular that Hollywood has taken notice, and a screen project is in the works, starring Brie Larson.
Zott, who is a combination of Curie and celebrity cookery show host Julia Child, is a strong, no-nonsense kind of woman, who suffers with as much equanimity as possible, the injustices she has to face as a female scientist in the 1950s, when she has a tough time getting the education she deserves and is deprived of her doctorate after she complains of sexual assault by her professor. The man faces no repercussion for his act; the cop supposedly investigating her case, is openly dismissive of Zott in the he said-she said situation.
She gets a job in a research institute, but is given tasks much below her abilities, because she is a woman. She is mistaken for a secretary or nurse, because these were jobs women could aspire to, if they wanted to be more than homemakers. There was no need to even disguise this blatant sexism in the pre ‘woke’ era.
Zott perseveres with her research, even though she has to depend on the help of the institute’s star scientist, Calvin Evans, who falls in love with her. She accepts his offer of using his lab, and later moves in with him, but refuses to marry him, afraid that she will be seen as just as his assistant, rather than a scientist in her own right. When he dies in a freak accident, and she finds herself pregnant out of wedlock, she is fired from her job by her nasty boss, who shamelessly steals her research and publishes it under his name.
A woman with talent, ambition and drive did not have to face misogyny just from men, but was also regarded with suspicion by other women, threatened by her independence. Before she ends up as an ally, her institute’s human resources staffer plots against Zott out of jealousy.
Zott turns her kitchen into a lab, and carries on her work, but resources run out, and to make a living, she has to accept the unlikely assignment of hosting Supper At Six, an afternoon cookery show for women, in the early days of television. She is striking looking, a great cook and also rebellious. She breaks all the rules of television shows of the day that used to talk down at women viewers, and resists the use of her slot to peddle unhealthy food products.
She throws out all the set decorations and frills, trashes the script handed to her and addresses her viewers with respect. She talks of recipes, but also nutrition and the science behind each dish; much to the surprise of the producers, the show becomes a big hit with viewers. She ends each episode with the line, “Children, set the table. Your mother needs a moment to herself,” which delights women who watch the show, because it recognizes that housewives could also do with some help with domestic chores. At a time when feminism was still a nascent concept, women felt inspired and empowered by Zott’s words, attitude and refusal to be pushed into a mould made by men. The conservatives are up in arms against Zott, who is not in the least perturbed by protestors. Her daughter, Maddy, looked after by a friendly neighbour while her mother is away, turns out to be just as tough and unsentimental.
Even today, the ratio of men to women in scientific and engineering institutes is skewed; things are changing, but much too slow. Elizabeth Zott is a fictional character, but she stands for all women who have waited too long for a level playing field.
Garmus has said that her book is a love letter to scientists and the scientific mind, which it is, but it is also funny, romantic and enjoyable. When a book has a pretty female protagonist, there is always the danger of the novel being relegated to the ‘chick lit’ section (no offence intended towards writers or readers of this genre), but Lessons In Chemistry falls quite neatly into feminist territory, with a determined woman going on to subvert what generations of females have been told is their domain—the kitchen.
(This piece first appeared in The Free Press Journal dated April 6, 2023)
