The Exceptions by Kate Zernike

 

Title:  The Exceptions:  Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science

Author:  Kate Zernike

Narrated by:  Kathe Mazur

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 14 hours and 31 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster Audio.  Thank you @simonandschuster #BookClubFavorites for the free books!

What book have you read lately that really spoke to you?

As a female engineer, The Exceptions by Kate Zernike really spoke to me.  In this non-fiction book, the life of Nancy Hopkins is detailed as she starts her career in science in the 1970’s and then slowly realized that her career was impacted by discrimination based on her sex.  She put together a group of fellow female professors at MIT and together they put together facts and figures to point out the difference in their treatment as compared to their male counterparts.  In 1999, MIT admitted to this discrimination. 

This occurred while I was in college, and I had no idea. Experiences in this book were very familiar to me as a female engineer, particularly early in my career. I started to write out my experiences and it took over this review, so I eliminated them.  This book resonated with me.  This book is a great non-fiction counterpart to my favorite book of 2022, Lessons in Chemistry.

I thought Nancy Hopkins’ life was intriguing.  I like how she slowly realized that the deck was stacked against her no matter how much work she put in. The final straw was when a class she had developed was taken away from her and assigned to a male professor who was going to use it to write a textbook based on the class for one million dollars.  I also really liked the descriptions of the different science projects that she was working on in biology.  I thought it was fascinating.  I liked the history of her working with Crick of Watson and Crick DNA fame.  I couldn’t believe Crick grabbed her breasts the first time he met her.  It was so strange and awkward!  I also thought it was interesting that Hopkins didn’t think much of the treatment of Rosemary Franklin until she got further in her career and realized what happened.

The book also talked about MIT and its history.  I liked that Ellen Swallow Richards was mentioned.  She was the first woman admitted to MIT.  She was an unpaid chemistry lecturer and also an instructor of “sanitary chemistry.”  This was basically the start of both home economics and also the water quality chemistry that I use as an environmental engineer.  Finally in the 1970s, MIT expanded more female professors across campus in science and engineering.  Unfortunately, those numbers stalled through the 1990s even as the number of female students increased.

Kathe Mazur was a great narrator, and this was a fascinating book to listen to. I highly recommend it to anyone that is interested in science and in equality in science and engineering related fields.