Laura L. Mays Hoopes was attracted to a career in science during the Eisenhower years, enticed by special activities begun in response to Sputnik. But, she arrived in the field before the establishment was ready for women scientists. It wasn't illegal back then to ask a woman if she was married or if she intended to have children, and there were no rules against sexual harassment at all. It was expected that women would stay home and have kids; only later in the Baby Boom generation were the molds broken and all assumptions overturned.
This memoir follows Laura from her early days in an ecology workshop in the mountains of North Carolina through her education at a women's college (Goucher College in Baltimore), her summers in Woods Hole, her graduate education at Yale University, postdoctoral fellowships at Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation and University of Colorado Medical School, and her faculty position at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Then, she moved to Pomona College in Claremont, CA to become the academic Vice President, and after a bout with cancer, finally returned to the faculty there.
Along the way, Laura found satisfaction in both research and teaching, as well as marrying twice and having two children. She was one of those women who refused to become a workaholic for science, but still was driven to continue revealing the secrets of molecular biology. Unlike other memoirs of women in science, this memoir is about someone with a relatively "normal" life who still enjoyed the thrill of the DNA chase. Laura believes once she could have become the missing Harvard science professor that Lawrence Summers didn't have in 2005, but she made other choices and went in a different direction. This memoir chronicles her difficulties and crises along with her joys and commitment to science. |
Laura clowns around at TIGR
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