Charlie Rose

marthatrescott  03/17/2009 08:10 AM Report

I just watched the conversation with Shirley Tilghman and found it most interesting. In particular, I am also a woman in science and technology and initiated the founding of Women in Technological History, as well as Women in Business and Economic History and was a founding member of the Committee of Women in the Humanities and Social Sciences and various other organizations from the 1960s on. I have a degree in chemistry snd masters work in inorganic chemistry in the 1960s, when few women were in the field. I have also worked in chemical engineering-related work. I wrote the first book by a historian on women and technology, Dynamos and Virgins Revisited and also a history of the U. S. electrochemical industry, the first of its kind. I included a chapter on women in that book. In 1996, I published New Images, New Paths: A History of Women in Engineering in the U. S., 1850-1980, for which I obtained a U. S. copyright from the Patent Office. It is based on research into primary resources, both written and oral, especially my interviews with over 100 pioneering, early women engineers. It is also the first of its kind. I have written many articles and essays on women in engineering history and other topics, both in history and in science. I was employed at UT Southwestern Medical School for a few years after graduation in chemistry. The Dynamos book is in its second printing. If Princeton doesn't hold these books, I would be glad to donate them to their library. They are held at various universities in the U. S. and elsewhere. I had a research associate at Princeton who helped me with a part of the New Images book and I also had a best friend who attended Princeton to perpare for her work in the ministry. I also attended seminary--Perkins--and was in the ministry, when women in both engineering and the ministry were less than 1% of the total.

I have taught history of technology and other history at the university level and chemistry, physics and math in secondary school earlier. I particularly identified with Dr. Tilghman's comments about Princeton and how important it is to really believe in a university where one is employed, as I just sent President Obama a similar comment about the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where the wonderful deans in engineering administration hired me to pursue my book on women in engineering earlier. I'm happy to send her and Princeton a copy. It is considered a rare book, has lengthy excetps of my many interviews and is an archival resource of over 600 pages. My own firm published that one to retain copyright and to protect aspects of my interviewees' comments. I am currently working on possible digitization of the taped interviews in the women's own words.

I also am doing research on matters w. r. t. energy and was most interested in Dr. Chu's interview recently with Charlie Rose, as one can imagine, with his UIUC connection. I am back in Champaign-Urbana, where I owned a home for nearly 30 years, to pursue these matters and also a project on Lincoln. UIUC and Central Illinois are great. I love them both, and I can understand Dr. Tilghman's love of Princeton, altough she said she didn't attend there. I myself sat in on classes in chem engineering at UIUC and got two post-doctoal fellowships with the help of faculty in economics, business history and history of technology there before working on the women in engineering book. I wanted to tell her also that, in relation to her discussion of the "plateau" we now find ourselves in w, r, t, enrollments of women in the sciences, my ninth and last chapter in the book deals with policy issues and how to increase enrollments of women in engineering.

Thanks so much. I really love your show and have for a long time! I hope you can share these remarks with Dr. Tilghman and Dr. Chu.

Martha M. Tresoctt