04
四月 2018

The women of LGC

March was Women’s History Month, which also saw the celebration of International Women’s Day on 8 March. Diversity and equal opportunity have become, rightfully, hot topics throughout various industries, but specifically in science and technology as well. Science organisations should really be at the forefront of the fight, because scientists of all people know that just because something is the way it is doesn’t mean that’s how it should be.

LGC’s own history is full of brave and brilliant women, trailblazing the way forward for others like them. On 18 July 1916, in the wake of World War I, the Government Laboratory hired its first female scientist, Miss E.M. Chatt¹. PW Hammond and Harold Egan, authors of Weighed in the Balance, state that this was “part of a general move to place women in the lower ranks of the civil service to replace men being drafted” in the war effort.

Staff of the Tobacco Department, 1917. (Weighed in the Balance, 1992.)

They also recounted how Miss Chatt was silently watched by her new all-male coworkers as she was first brought in to the laboratory. Described as a ‘bachelor of science’ by the poet Richard Church, she paved the way for all of the other female scientists who joined the Laboratory during this wave of incoming women. By the end of the war in 1920, more than half of the junior analytical staff were women.

LGC’s senior scientist Marcela Soruco describes how this very same trailblazing spirit is what attracts her about science to begin with. “To me, science is the art of revealing the unknown. As scientists, we can either uncover something that was previously unknown or create something that did not exist before. Both of these discoveries have the potential to change the course of human history, which is incredibly powerful and rewarding.”

If you want to read more about the women of LGC, head on over to the Biosearch Technologies blog, where Marcela, senior scientist Dusty Vyas, and application scientist Erin Steer share which scientists inspire them, how they found their passion for science, and what science means to them.

¹Weighed in the Balance, by PW Hammond and Harold Egan, 1992, pg 179-180.