Robert Martiennsen on Women in Science
  Robert Martiennsen     Biography    
Recorded: 20 Feb 2001

She was certainly extremely supportive of young women in science and had, I think, an important role, [as a] role model, if you will, for many of these people. But, at the same time, she really—where she got really excited about science—that sort of thing became less important. She wasn't beating the drum for one movement or another; she was much more concerned about individuals. She was always very excited when a young woman would go into science, and she would be very encouraging and supportive, and try to make sure that they developed their own individual sense of their own science, but really it was the science that excited her more than anything else. So, I don't know. It's hard to say. Historians have tended to interpret her as ... one of the first women to really promote women in science. I think that's probably an exaggeration. Although she was very enthusiastic about it, she wasn't really a sort of browbeating person who was trying to force anything to happen. So I don't know. That's how I felt about it, but that's just my opinion.

Dr. Robert Martiennsen is a plant biologist, Howard Hughes Medical Institute-Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation investigator, and professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Martiennsen attended Emmanuel College, Cambridge, completing his BA in 1982 and continuing on to his PhD in 1986 on the molecular genetics of alpha-amylase gene families in common wheat. He received an EMBO postdoctoral fellowship with University of California, Berkeley. In 1989, he was hired as a principal investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. As a young scientist, he worked closely with Barbara McClintock. His awards and honors include the Newcomb Cleveland Prize, McClintock Prize, and Science’s Breakthrough of the Year in 2002 and the Kumho International Science Award in Plant Biology and Biotechnology (2001).