Chemistry in the family

Abstract

As a girl with no brothers growing up in the 1960s, I got to participate in both traditional boy and girl chores and activities: Mow the lawn and weed the garden, clean and cook the fish from a fishing expedition, and play with Barbies® and with Lego®. My father worked as a synthetic chemist and frequently came home smelling like organic chemicals, or more frighteningly now, the diborane gas that was piped into one of his labs for research on rocket fuel formulations. He sometimes took me to work with him on weekends. I delighted in one display of brightly colored inorganic compounds and another of the more pastel hues of the displayed rare earth compounds. By the time I was in high school, I was often one of just a few girls in my chemistry, physics, and advanced math classes. Yet not one person told me that the study of science was not for girls. So when I enrolled in college, I selected biochemistry as my major at Oklahoma State University.