Women in Microbiology

Sallie “Penny” Chisholm is a U.S. biological oceanographer and Institute Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). An expert in microbial ecology and evolution, she is known for discovering the marine bacterium Prochlorococcus, the tiniest and most abundant photosynthetic organism on the planet. Her work has been recognized with many honors and awards, including membership in the National Academy of Sciences in 2004 and a National Medal of Science awarded to her by President Barack Obama in 2011. Chisholm began as the only female biologist in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT. She has advocated for the equal employment of female professors in the sciences and has inspired women through her persistence and devotion to her research. New generations of aspiring biologists can engage with her work through her series of children’s books on photosynthesis. After decades of work, Chisholm has accumulated many individual accomplishments, but it is through her mentorship and the collective achievements of the scientists she has inspired that her character truly shines.

Johanna Döbereiner, a pioneer soil microbiologist and Brazil’s most-cited female scientist, was a model of leadership, ethics, and enthusiasm. Known for her rigorous science and strong personality, she provided a supportive work environment for those who passed through her lab. At a time in which it was uncommon for females to enter scientific fields and succeed, Johanna built an outstanding career that continues to inspire those whose lives she touched as well as a new generation of microbiologists. This chapter, written by Graciela Brelles-Mariño, covers Dr. Döbereiner’s early life, career, and scientific achievements and impacts, and it features numerous personal comments from former lab members and colleagues.

Nicole Dubilier is a marine biologist whose work with microbes and marine invertebrates explores symbiosis and the ecology of chemosynthetic environments. She is the head of the Department of Symbioses at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology and a professor at the University of Bremen. This chapter covers Dr. Dubilier’s life and career, from ballet to marine biology and everything in between, as well as personal reflections from the author, Elizabeth Wilbanks.

It can be stated that Alice C. Evans was the first professionally successful female microbiologist and that all succeeding female microbiologists “stand on her shoulders.” She was the first woman to hold a permanent appointment as a bacteriologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, she was the first woman to hold a senior appointment in the U.S. federal government, and she was the first female president of what is now known as the American Society for Microbiology. Her research and efforts resulted in the change of federal laws involving the pasteurization of milk. She is known as the Mother of Pasteurization in the United States. She accomplished all of this in the early decades of the 1900s, a time when science was intensely male dominated. However, Evans was not a laboratory recluse. She rode in an airplane just one year after Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic, and she was known to dress fashionably. At 89 years of age, Evans was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Science, and she was later placed in the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Evans was especially honored when she was depicted as one of the four “Mount Rushmore” faces of microbiology on the cover of the SGM Quarterly magazine of August 1995. She was renowned! She was worldly! She was trendy! Come meet Alice Evans!

Amalia Voureka was a physician, bacteriologist, and Greek Resistance activist who joined the laboratory of Sir Alexander Fleming in 1946 on a scholarship. She had nine research publications between May 1947 and August 1952, four of which were as the single author and three as the first author. Only three were coauthored with Sir Fleming. Her research focus was bacteria and antimicrobial agents. She demonstrated variable endpoints for the bacteriostatic power of streptomycin depending on media used, inoculum size, salt concentration, and atmospheric conditions. She worked on bacterial antibiotic resistance, demonstrating the induction of bacterial variants following chloramphenicol treatment. In another paper, she showed that penicillin-resistant bacteria can be made sensitive by coculture with other organisms that are either penicillin sensitive or insensitive. In a study of staphylococcal strains from the anterior nares of patients, she documented a low rate of penicillin resistance (7.6%). Elsewhere, she showed that toxin production by staphylococci is important for virulence. She determined that bacterial flagella can be critical for movement and not simply attachments resulting from cell distress. She refined and invented new laboratory techniques, improving on flagellar staining. Dr. Voureka married Sir Fleming in 1953, despite a 31-year age difference. Her marriage to Sir Fleming was brief (he died of a heart attack in 1955). She later returned to Greece but was exiled and stripped of her citizenship by the military junta for her political activities. After the junta fell, she returned to Greece and was elected to Parliament in 1977, 1981, and 1985. She died in 1986.

Elodie Ghedin is a scientist, innovator, and trendsetter in the field of genomics. Ghedin’s cutting-edge research has opened a world of opportunities for the detection, tracking, and monitoring of emerging infectious disease outbreaks in real time. In addition to her skills and talents, which enable her to be a true innovator in the field of genomics, she is also a committed mentor for the next generation of computational biologists. This chapter by Tamara Lewis Johnson covers this trailblazing scientist, her motivations and accomplishments, and how she has inspired those whose lives and trainings she has touched.

Despite the disapproval of her family and the criticisms of male faculty, Millicent “Mimi” Goldschmidt earned a Ph.D. in microbiology in 1953 and went on to have a profound impact on the U.S. Space Program, including the development of microbiology techniques that would be used on the moon. The Apollo Program helped Mimi recognize a severe lack of rapid diagnostic tests in microbiology, to which she would dedicate her research career. Along the way, Mimi became a pioneering advocate for women in microbiology and inspired generations of students to careers in microbiology.

Dr. Carlyn Halde was the epitome of a free spirit. She lived her life with curiosity and adventure. She was a groundbreaker for women in science, becoming one of the first Fulbright Scholar recipients. She dedicated her life to the pursuit of knowledge and helping others to pursue their dreams through her many philanthropic contributions. But how did she manage to sidestep the conventional limits of women in the 1940s and pursue the life she envisioned for herself? It is a story of having the self-confidence to follow your dreams, the foresight to plan for them, and the persistence to follow them through. It remains a blueprint for any woman trying to establish herself in science today.

Caroline Harwood is a microbiologist working to decipher pathways of biodegradation, signal transduction, and biofuel exploration at the biochemical and molecular levels. In addition to her research career, she is also an excellent writer and mentor whose enthusiasm for sciences fosters a truly collaborative atmosphere. This chapter by Rebecca E. Parales and Margaret McFall-Ngai covers Dr. Harwood’s career and personal reflections from the authors as well as a number of her mentees from over the years.

Carol D. Litchfield (1936–2012) was a pioneer as a woman in oceanographic microbiology and biochemistry and a professor at both Rutgers State University of New Jersey and George Mason University in Virginia. She spent time in bioremediation industrial work but is especially noted for her work in oceans and in halophilic (high-salt) environments. Working in salt production facilities, she characterized the microbiota of salterns and developed techniques for industrial microbiology. Carol also worked in natural hypersaline systems, such as Great Salt Lake. She relished in learning new techniques and using multiple approaches to explore a problem. Her body of work extends from studies of many of the Earth’s environments to discussions about the possibility of extreme life off our planet. Carol was also an amateur historian and amassed a collection of artifacts centered on the salt industry, which are now housed in a museum and available to researchers. This chapter, by Bonnie Baxter and Kendall Tate-Wright, covers Dr. Litchfield’s life and career and features interviews with former students and colleagues that reveal Carol’s talents and underscore her passion for mentoring, perhaps her most important contribution to science.

Nancy A. Moran is the Leslie Surginer Endowed Professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin; her work focuses on how biological complexity arises in associations of organisms, particularly between insects and microbes. This chapter, written by John P. McCutcheon, explores Dr. Moran’s career path, her well-known work on insect endosymbionts, and her approach towards science and mentoring, as well as personal reflections from the author.

This chapter explores the relationship between Dr. Felicitas Pfeifer and the author, Dr. Christa Schleper, whom Dr. Pfeifer helped train and mentor, with an emphasis on logical, creative problem solving. Dr. Schleper highlights the ways in which Dr. Pfeifer helped her develop her confidence as a scientist and help set her on the path to a fruitful career.

Abigail Salyers is arguably the mother of the microbiome: the revolutionary science that acknowledges the impact of our microbial ecosystems on human health. What inspired her to venture with indefatigable drive into the dark, inhospitable, anaerobic world of the human gut? To spend years of her life developing genetic tools for a nonmodel bacterium we now know makes up one-quarter of the cells in the human gut? To fight to make microbiology relevant and accessible in the medical curriculum? To “promote the cause of microbiology as THE biological discipline of the coming decades”? This chapter explores the life and career of Abigail and features reflections from some of the many individuals whom she mentored and inspired.

Marjory Stephenson was a biochemist who studied microbial metabolism from the 1920s through the 1940s at Cambridge University. She received a strong education in the sciences while attending Newnham College, affiliated with Cambridge. After service in World War I as a Red Cross dietitian, she joined the Biochemistry Institute at Cambridge, overseen by Sir F. G. Howland, a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist who supported many promising young scientists regardless of gender or origin. There she established a program studying the biochemistry of bacteria, especially anaerobes. Her research included naming and characterizing hydrogenase and formate hydrogen lyase enzyme complexes in Escherichia coli. She also studied the regulation of adaptive enzymes in bacteria, and her work was an early influence on Jacques Monod and his own studies on regulation of gene expression. Stephenson wrote three editions of an influential textbook on bacterial metabolism, renowned for its rigor and clarity. She was a founder of the Society for General Microbiology (now the Microbiology Society), served as its second president, and now has a biennial lecture/prize named in her honor. Finally, in 1945 Stephenson was one of the first two women (along with crystallographer Kathleen Lonsdale) elected into the Royal Society of London. Stephenson mentored several successful microbial physiologists, had a lively and critical intellect, and was fondly remembered by many who worked with her.

Patricia Ann Webb (1925–2005) left a rich legacy of work undertaken during a time when arbovirus and hemorrhagic fever virus studies were coming of age. She participated in the discovery and characterization of some of the most consequential infectious diseases of today. She had a role in the classification of the arenaviruses, including Machupo and Lassa viruses. She identified, by immunofluorescence, that Ebola virus was a new pathogen in 1976. She demonstrated that AIDS was unlikely to be transmitted by mosquitos or bed bugs. Patricia was a part of a legendary group of physicians, veterinarians, epidemiologists, microbiologists, entomologists, and ecologists whose findings and stories have inspired new generations of scientists. How they elucidated disease transmission, treatment, and control serves as the best examples of studies on emerging zoonotic diseases. Those who signed up had to have a yen for adventure, and Patricia thrived in exotic places. Colleagues fondly remember her as smart, sharp-witted, demanding, tenacious, detail-oriented, and crusty, but all knew that she could be counted on for support when needed. Her professional credentials and personal notes attest to her endeavors and achievements. In this chapter, by May Chu, some of those achievements are recounted, interspersed with personal recollections to give insight into a demanding and distinguished public health career. One can only imagine what she would have to say about today’s situation as the world is recovering from the largest-ever Ebola virus epidemic and as arboviruses like Chikungunya and Zika viruses are spreading from their natural habitats.

Esther Miriam Zimmer Lederberg (1922–2006) was an American microbiologist who did pioneering work with all of the ways bacteria transfer genetic information. She discovered bacteriophage λ in Escherichia coli and with Joshua Lederberg first observed transduction. She characterized Neurospora mutants to expand Beadle and Tatum’s “one gene, one protein” research, participated in early experiments in E. coli conjugation in the Lederberg lab at University of Wisconsin, and later worked on transformation of Salmonella with plasmid DNA at Stanford University. The 1958 Nobel Prize was awarded to Joshua Lederberg, George Wells Beadle, and Edward Lawrie Tatum, and the Lederbergs subsequently moved to Stanford, where Joshua became chair of the Department of Genetics and Esther an untenured researcher in the Department of Medical Microbiology. They divorced in 1966. Esther stayed at Stanford but was never tenured; she became director of the Plasmid Reference Center (PRC) in 1976, organizing registration of the world’s plasmids, transposons, and insertion sequences. Officially retiring from Stanford in 1985, she continued at the PRC through 1986. Esther enjoyed performing early music and was a founder of the Mid Peninsular Recorder Orchestra. In 1989, she met Matthew Simon, an engineer newly arrived at Stanford; drawn together by shared interests in early music, botany, and literature, they married in 1993 and were together for the rest of her life. Esther will be remembered as a creative and meticulous experimentalist who was an active participant in creating the science of molecular biology, and as someone who continued to advance science through kindness and generosity in helping others.