Quicksilver: The Life and Loss of Karen Wetterhahn

Quicksilver: The Life and Loss of Karen Wetterhahn

 

Hello friends, and welcome to episode #8. Today we have another riveting but tragic story for you.   

If you haven’t listened to episode 7 yet, it isn’t absolutely necessary, but it would do you well to hear the stories of early nuclear pioneers like Louis Sloten, Cecil Kelly, and Harry Daghlian, and the dangers that ended their lives. I think this is going to be an intriguing episode, with a fascinating scientist that most won’t be familiar with.  

Today is not so much in my wheelhouse - Nuclear history, toxic chemical history, safety history, and high velocity subatomic history. I’m not a scientist, and I didn’t stay recently at a Holiday Inn, but I am certainly a science hobbyist, and keep up with science news daily, and the fact that the last few topics are out of my milieu, so to speak, means I’ve had to research them more thoroughly, fact-check my assumptions, look up terms, and generally do the due-dilligance to get things right. I may miss something here or there, but I am trying hard to get it right. Just let me know where I whiff, and I can tell the DJ to fix it in the mix. 

You know the podcast things. Sharing the show, telling people about it, posting about it, and leaving Apple Podcast reviews all help…a lot. I appreciate those of you who do that. Thank you!
Some stories make you hold your breath. Some make you check your gloves. Today we’ll do both, and hopefully, when we do - we’ll be all the better for it. 

We begin with the story of Dr. Karen Elizabeth Wetterhahn, chemist, teacher, builder of programs, and teacher of  people, and of one “tiny glistening drop” that rewrote laboratory safety across the world . It’s a story I want to tell with reverence and a little warmth, because we are talking about a person who balanced world-class science with backyard pool parties and baby rabbits. We’re also going to talk frankly about a super-toxic compound, because Karen would have insisted that we learn everything we can. And I know what you might think when you hear the word Karen, but let’s be fair. Karen Wetterhahn was anything but, and the Karens I’ve known have all been lovely. Don’t judge people by their name - they had no say in it. 

Karen Wetterhahn was born October 16, 1948, in Plattsburgh, New York. She grew into a scholar of the highest order. “She earned her bachelor's degree from St. Lawrence University in 1970 and her doctorate from Columbia University in 1975,” and joined Dartmouth in 1976, publishing “more than 85 research papers” (Wikipedia). Dartmouth later remembered her as “the founding director of Dartmouth’s Toxic Metals Superfund Research Program,” an “expert in the mechanisms of metal toxicity,” and a scholar with “expertise in biochemistry and molecular toxicology” (Dartmouth Tribute). She rose to become Dartmouth’s Albert Bradley Third Century Professor in the Sciences (Dartmouth Tribute) and in 1990 helped establish the Women in Science Project, which “helped to raise the share of women science majors from 13 to 25 percent” … and has become a national model for recruiting more ladies into STEM careers. 

She didn’t just research metals; she organized people. She “played an integral role in the administration of the sciences at Dartmouth,” serving as Dean of Graduate Studies, Associate Dean of the Faculty for the Sciences, and Acting Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (Dartmouth Tribute). She “trained 14 postdoctoral research associates, 20 graduate students and over 50 undergraduate research students” (Dartmouth Tribute). And she did this while building programs that actively welcomed women into the lab. She was “co-founder of Dartmouth’s Women in Science Project … and was active in the Women in Cancer Research group” (Dartmouth Tribute).

Now bring in the home front—because Karen’s life was never just pipettes and publications. Neighbors remembered that “we never knew she was a world-famous scientist,” because, in Lyme, New Hampshire, “she was just Char and Leon’s mom” (The Tennessean/AP). She loved “rock music—heavy metal was her favorite,” she “tended her garden,” and she hosted some great neighborhood pool parties. (The Tennessean/AP). This is the paradox and the beauty: the same person who would lecture in Norway and Hawaii would also her drag family to the golf course and cheer at Ashley’s hockey game (The Tennessean/AP). A life in balance.

On a summer day in 1996, the story turns. Karen was “studying the way mercury ions interact with DNA repair proteins” and also investigating cadmium (Wikipedia). She was using an incredibly dangerous substance that we really don’t mess with much anymore called dimethylmercury—Hg(CH₃)₂

She did what a careful chemist does. She wore “safety glasses and latex gloves,” worked