Customer Reviews

Dignifying Science: Stories About Women Scientists

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Ottaviani's DIGNIFYING SCIENCE is a well illustrated and well written work. It does what a lot of good nonfiction has done recently - it focuses on those often forgotten people and events that were important and influential on the better known ideas and forces that shape our world today. In this instance, Ottaviani has centered his attention on women scientists, inventors and researchers who discovered, researched, and supported major scientific achievements in the last century. He and the women artists who illustrate the book do a superb job of introducing us to the contributions of these people who we never knew or knew little, but to whom we owe a collective, and enormous, debt.

A single writer partnered with 12 different artists in stories about 6 different women scientists. Some stories obviously succeed better than others.

For young people who like graphic novels and have some interest in science, I recommend it highly. But as a women's history buff and a comic book fan I find it a little disappointing. The comic format is ideal for high drama stories but is not always used at it's full potential here.

For example, in the life of Barbara McClintock, two pages cover the time period from 1951 to 1983. They show her lecturing to men in business suits with their hands over their ears. The crowd thins out in the 60's and then begins to swell with more casually dressed people, both male and female, who don't have their hands over their ears. Then she gets the Nobel prize. The faces in the crowds are consistently expressionless. I think this misses the real drama of McClintock's life. She was so brilliant that her theory was not understood when she first presented it. She chose to continue her research even when it was not reaching a receptive audience and because she documented it for decades, when other researchers later repeated her experiments and discovered her documentation, she received the recognition she deserved.

This was seldom the case with earlier women scientists, for example, Rosalind Franklin. Franklin's fascinating story, unfortunately, is difficult to follow through time and four different artists' styles.

And, in an interesting bit of reverse sexism, Birute Galdikas' story is told without once mentioning (or picturing) her first husband who worked beside her daily for 20 years. OK, so her whole life story had to be told in only 21 pages, but the ghosts of all the women scientists whose husbands' got credit for all their work recognize a kindred spirit when they see one.

In a format that's known for pounding points home, the drama here is often implied and understated. Perhaps less would be missed if the format was full color instead of black and white. Better yet, read some biographies of these women and discuss with your children how you would tell their stories to preserve the real drama.

This is a good introduction to some fascinating women for those who like the graphic novel format. Use it as a starting point.

As someone who has taught a college course on women in science several times, I have found this book a nice switch from all of the more ponderous (and sometimes depressing) sources that I use--and yes, I do assign one reading from it. Is the book perfect? No. But I don't find much perfect on this planet.
The story-telling is good, the art is compelling, and a curious person can use the internet or a library if they want to find out more about any of the stories.
I personally found the use of multiple artists for Rosalind Franklin's segment to be rather brilliant, given that she herself was not able to tell her own story. Everything we know about her is from her colleagues or her family, since she died so young. And of course James Watson's hatchet job on her in 'The Double Helix' is often the first contact that many have with a very vibrant woman and excellent scientist. I found the art reflected the varied portrayals quite nicely.

This well-meant companion volume to the author's _Two Fisted Science_ is, unfortunately, not nearly as successful as graphic fiction. This time, five women artists tell the stories of five women scientists. While trying to focus on lesser-known people, Ottaviani finally broke down and included a fore-and-aft pair of shorts on Marie Curie. If you've read Watson's _The Double Helix,_ you may already have heard of Rosalind Franklin, who came very close to discovering the essential shape of DNA before Crick and Watson -- had she only not moved in the wrong direction on a couple of minor points (and possessed a less abrasive personality). Barbara McClintock picked up a Nobel for her work on the corn genome, you'd really never know what her field was from the badly written story (though the art is okay). Biruté Galdikas has become the world's leading authority on orangutans (yes, she's still out there in the jungles of Borneo) and you'll learn a lot about them -- and her -- from Anne Timmons's nicely done piece. But the story of mathematician Lise Meitner is also pretty indistinct. The best of the collection, actually, is Carl Speed McNeil's very well told and drawn story of the scientific side of Hedy Lamarr, of all people. Hedy (not Heddy) actually held some wartime patents in electronics (which became a crucial part of cell phone technology), but still was treated like a bimbo both by her first husband and by Louis B. Mayer after she escaped to the U.S. This book could have been much, much better.

As a male I was utterly oblivious to the the challenges that women scientists face in their academic careers until attending a conference on women in physics opened my eyes to how both small and large aspects of academic life can make the experience of a woman who aspires to an academic career totally different from that of a man in the same position.

"Dignifying Science", a graphic novel that narrates the biographies of 5 women who made substantial scientific contributions, fills a niche that needs much more attention: Hedy Lamarr, a socialite-turned-actress whose idea of frequency hopping even underlies some of today's communications technologies; Lise Meitner, who co-discovered nuclear fission but was not recognized for her contribution by the Nobel prize committee; Rosalind Franklin, whose work set the stage for the discovery of the structure of DNA; Barbara McClintock, whose research in the genetics of corn led her to the idea of "jumping genes" and went unrecognized for about half a century; and Birute Galdikas, the leading researcher of Orang Utans in their native habitats. The stories are framed by two vignettes in the life of Marie Curie, a prologue giving a glimpse of her life before she was recognized, and an epilogue, recounting her reflections 14 years after she won her second Nobel prize. There are endnotes which provide some insight into the author's intentions in conveying the stories as well as further biographical references for each person.

While all stories are engaging and bring attention to an issue that needs much more than it gets, I did find the biographies uneven. The best are those of Hedy Lamarr and of Rosalind Franklin. Not only do their stories convey an idea about the nature of their contributions but they also give a definite sense of what they were like as real persons. Consequently, the difficulties they faced in a male-dominated world pack that much more of an emotional punch.

The biographies are very short, but the biographical resources listed in the endnotes can give the interested reader a more detailed picture of the lives of these extraordinary persons.

A graphic novel about little known female scientists should be a welcome treat, but "Dignifying Science" was a potpourri of good storytelling mixed with bad. The stories of Marie Curie, Heddy Lammar, Rosalyn Franklyn and others are penned by different artists. And the results are wildly mixed. Marie Curies story is told by showing her as a young woman freezing in a Polish apartment and as an older woman signing photos to raise money for her lab. Nothing about her research into radium. Rosalind Franklin, who inadvertently tipped off Watson and Crick about the double-helical nature of DNA, is supposed to be mad-bitchy, but comes across as cute, blithe and hardworking. The impression laid down in the artwork - that W&C cribbed the structure of DNA from her work - is contradicted in the notes section. The story of Birute Galdikas, one of the first to study orangutan behavior in the wild, comes across as an excuse to draw a hot young lass in the jungle.

I have developed a love-hate relationship with Jim Ottaviani and his artistic collaborators. He chooses such great stories, and then proceeds to massacre them with inept art and storytelling. But between his half-assed drawings and his rich notes, there is a lot to learn about these heroines of the search for knowledge. I just can't quit him.