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Of the three books presented here, the one that highlights 13 women from the Natural History Museum (NHM) is the most colorful, diverse and shrill. The art historian Stefanie Jovanovic-Kruspel, the science communicator Brigitta Schmid and Andrea Krapf as deputy publishing director have dared to embark on a "creative adventure" (page 10) with a mixture of graphic novel and specialist book, which - this much can be said in advance - has been a success. The challenge was to introduce women from the history of the Natural History Museum from the 18th century to the year 2041 [sic!], in addition to renowned women who were largely unknown to the broader public. The twelve portraits of real women are supplemented by a 13th story by the fictional Ava Babacan, curator in the Herpetological Collection, from the year 2041 (page 130ff). The women are described with short biographies, historical images, object photographs and biographical materials. There are also poetic texts by Brigitta Schmid and two-page comics by twelve young illustrators from the Vienna Art School. Thanks to Josef Muhsil-Schamall's layout ("inexhaustible creativity", page 10), this colorful potpourri of genres has become a very pleasing book. You can feel that everyone enjoyed this project.
The book is divided into three sections, which are supplemented by digressions such as "The Faceless Ones" (page 60ff), which deals with cleaners and typists. In “Exceptional Women” (Section 1), aristocratic women are introduced, especially Maria Theresia. The comic artist Alena Boucher captured the moment when she presented her husband with the famous bouquet of gemstones (room 4) with the fictitious words, "Happy name day, my dear Franz!" (page 33). This is followed by "The Unknown Girl", a six-year-old black African girl who no longer exists today and who came into the imperial collections in 1798 as a stuffed exhibition object (!). She is acknowledged on pages 36 to 41. Of course, world traveler Ida Pfeiffer is also represented.
Section 2 is dedicated to “Women in the Shadow of the World Wars.” Mentioned here are the busy secretary Lotte Adametz and the geologist Martha Cornelius-Furlani. Part 3 is about "Women in Boardrooms", where well-known scientists such as Elisabeth Ruttkay (prehistory and early history) and the ornithologist Anita Gamauf are introduced. The women portrayed - according to the concept - are exclusively deceased people. Thus, the General Director of the NHM, Katrin Vohland, is not represented with a portrait, but "only" as the author of the foreword (page 4) and sponsor of the book.
Anna Reser and Leila McNeill, two renowned American science historians, whose book "Forces of Nature: The Women who Changed Science" (2021) was translated into German (2022) by Wiebke Krabbe, fall with the introductory dedication "For all scientists and doctors, mathematicians, wives, sisters, household technicians and science educators who have at all times played an essential role in natural sciences, research and “Discovery played”. Reser and McNeill span the spectrum from antiquity (“Antiquity to the Middle Ages”) to the present (“The 20th Century – After the Second World War”) and divide their richly illustrated book into five sections in chronological order. The titles of the 21 chapters alone underline the broad approach and give an idea of the highly informative, well-researched and well-written content of the 272-page work. At the beginning (from page 17) the chapter "Doctors, Midwives and Grandmothers" deals with the role of women working in medicine in ancient Egypt and China. Another chapter, "Wives and Sisters in Scientific Partnerships" (from page 47), should be mentioned, as well as "Science Authors and Popular Science Writers" (from page 77), in order to outline the thematic diversity over the centuries.
In a word, it is less the individual outstanding female scientists who are honored in color-coded excursions like Hildegard von Bingen (page 32f) than the coherent presentation of little-known women in science and research that make up this book. Who knows that Ellen Ochoa was the first woman of Latin American descent to fly into space aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1993? In any case, NASA honored her with numerous medals (page 225).
So you always come across women who - based on their achievements - were not recognized or were recognized far too little. Jocelyn Bell Burnell should be mentioned here, who discovered the first pulsars in 1967 as a young doctoral student at the age of 24. She made a breakthrough in astronomy, but was passed over for the Nobel Prize. On page 243 she has an explanation for this: "My student status and perhaps also my gender were probably my undoing in relation to the Nobel Prize, which was awarded to Professor Antony Hewish and Professor Martin Ryle." The same thing happened to the Austrian nuclear physicist Lise Meitner, who was also denied this prize - despite countless nominations. She is briefly acknowledged in the appendix under “Other notable women” (page 248).
Lars Jäger, born in 1969, is, according to his own definition on his website, "a Swiss-German entrepreneur, scientist, writer, financial theorist, alternative investment manager." Given this colorful biography, it is hardly surprising that he also wrote a book about brilliant women in science. Specifically, there are 18 portraits of women that he published in the renowned Springer-Verlag in 2023. The ranking is done chronologically according to their date of birth. In addition to 15 greats of science who have already died, he portrays "The great lady of primate research" (Jane Goodall, from page 187), "The guide to a new universe" (Jocelyn Bell Burnell, from page 201) and "The high-flyer in current theoretical physics" (Lisa Randall, from page 215). On page 215, the last of the 18 people portrayed was Maryam Mirzakhani (1962–2017) from Iran, who died much too early. She was the first woman to receive the prestigious Fields Medal, the highest honor in the field of mathematics.
The individual portraits, which do not require any illustrations, are grippingly written. Interspersed quotes from the lives of the scientists are authentic moments of their dazzling personalities. Lise Meitner once said to Otto Hahn, with whom she conducted research together for many years and got along very well: "Hühnchen, let me do it, you don't know anything about physics" (page 125). Sentences like this replace any image.
Jäger not only knows how to describe the biographies of outstanding women, such as Hildegard von Bingen, Laura Bassi, who succeeded as a university professor (physics) in the world of men in 18th century Bologna, or Marie Curie, to name just a few, but also vividly portrays the respective environment in which they worked.
Conclusion: “13 Women – from the History of the NHM Vienna” acknowledges the far too little-recognized importance of women at the Natural History Museum in Vienna. Women Who Changed Science is a global history of science as written by women. "Brilliant Women in Science - Hidden Contributions that Changed the World" uses the example of 18 women to illustrate their outstanding importance in the respective context. (Thomas Hofmann, April 18, 2025)