Dr. Helene Hill was a research scientist who did excellent work. What was working against her though was that she was doing her work at a time when men dominated the field and discriminated against women.
Now at the age of 95 and working on writing her second book, Dr. Hill plans to release her memoir titled The Crying Window, to tell her story of purpose and persistence in the face of prejudice. Already a published author, Helene released a book (available on Amazon) titled Hidden Data: The Blind Eye of Science, telling the story of becoming a whistle-blower when she noticed falsified data in government-funded research
This is a story that can inspire women in science to stay the course, and a wake-up call to men to recognize the significant contributions to science that women make every day.
Within this conversation are stories of idealistic naivete, fond remembrance of teachers who inspired and life experiences that altered the course of Helene's career. Hers was a life of a dedicated love of science, a high sense of justice and a pursuit of truth within research.
This is a reminder of the special privilege we have to listen to the wisdom that can only come from experience. And in this case, it was the experience of doing what was right in the massive face of opposition.
Read more about Dr. Helene Hill's story at http://www.helenezhill.com/
Now at the age of 95 and working on writing her second book, Dr. Hill plans to release her memoir titled The Crying Window, to tell her story of purpose and persistence in the face of prejudice. Already a published author, Helene released a book (available on Amazon) titled Hidden Data: The Blind Eye of Science, telling the story of becoming a whistle-blower when she noticed falsified data in government-funded research
This is a story that can inspire women in science to stay the course, and a wake-up call to men to recognize the significant contributions to science that women make every day.
Within this conversation are stories of idealistic naivete, fond remembrance of teachers who inspired and life experiences that altered the course of Helene's career. Hers was a life of a dedicated love of science, a high sense of justice and a pursuit of truth within research.
This is a reminder of the special privilege we have to listen to the wisdom that can only come from experience. And in this case, it was the experience of doing what was right in the massive face of opposition.
Read more about Dr. Helene Hill's story at http://www.helenezhill.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
We worked together to tabulate what wasgoing on with the women, and we
found that the women were not beingpromoted. There were only about six of
them who were on the tenure track, and there were cast several hundred men,
and their salaries were terrible and soforth. And so I sent a
(00:21):
memo to the Dean, thinking Iwas very naive. I had gone to
a girls schools. I didn't haveany idea what the world was like out
there. And so I sent thismemo to the dean and he brought it
up at the next meeting of hisfaculty council. And I thought that they
(00:45):
would say, oh, we didn'tknow we were treating the women so bad.
We we'll do something about this.It is something about this. I
was called into my chairman's office andhe said, you're not going to get
tenure. You have to leave.Welcome back to another episode of Science three
sixty. This is Tim Stevenson,your host, and on this episode I
(01:07):
have Helena Hill, now the oldestguest I've ever had on the show.
Helene is ninety five years old andhad a career in the sciences at a
time when being a woman in thesciences was not a friendly place to be.
However, she pushed back, foughta little bit, stood up for
her own rights, and has agreat story to tell. And there's some
(01:29):
lessons here for all of us.This podcast is a proud member of the
Teach Better Podcast Network, Better Today, Better Tomorrow, and the podcast to
get you there. Explore more podcastsat www dot Teach Beetter Podcastnetwork dot com.
Now let's get onto the episode.This is a very interesting story because
(01:55):
doctor Helena Hill is ninety five yearsold. First of all, I love
that because here's somebody who still seesherself as relevant and has a meaning towards
the world around her. And whata great lesson stop right there, you
know, shouldn't that be what weall aspire to that even in our later
(02:16):
years, we're still contributing. HelenaHill graduated from Smith College in nineteen fifty
and she received a PhD in biologyfrom Vandey's University in nineteen sixty four.
She's held Postdog fellowships at Harvard MedicalSchool and at the University of Colorado Medical
Center. She even rose to theranks from assistant professor to professor at the
(02:39):
University of Colorado Medical Center. Alsoat Washington University Medical School, and at
the Marshall University Medical School and eventuallyat Reiker's New Jersey Medical School. She's
co authored more than seventy scientific publicationsand was awarded the Smith College Medal in
nineteen ninety seven. Whilena Hill,doctor Hill has jam. She's got her
(03:04):
street critages, no question about it, but she faced time and time again
in her career the obstacle created bythe men in authority at all of these
places. She wanted to tell herstory of what was it like to be
a woman in science during a timewhen women in science were basically held back.
(03:32):
You know, you think of ina high school classroom, if you
were to ask your students, nameme of women in science. Nine times
out of ten, maybe higher thanthat, they're going to say Madame Curry.
Murray Curry was obviously a very significantscientist, but seems to be the
(03:52):
go to whenever we talk about womenin science. Why is that? Surely
there's been others who have contributed.Fortunately, I teach astronomy, and astronomy
is rife with women who have mademajor discoveries. Do you know that almost
everything that we know about stars waslearned and discovered by women. In fact,
(04:17):
if you go back to the eighteenseventies, there was a man named
Edward Pickering who worked at the HarvardObservatory and at first came across a woman
named Wilhelmina Fleming and hired her asa maid. I suspect he realized that
(04:40):
she had some particular academic ability,perhaps she was a good communicator, and
needing some extra help at the labto analyze copious amounts of data that was
recorded on glass plates from the telescopestaking pictures of the stars in the galaxies,
he thought he could hire her becauseshe'd be a cheaper wage. Well,
(05:01):
little did he know, Wilhelmina Flemingwould become one of the greatest contributors
to really all of science. So, for example, Wilhelmina Fleming was the
one to first note that stars hada certain variability to them. Their light
intensity would grow and subside in verypredictable ways, and that eventually came to
(05:29):
be used as a tool for determiningdistance, a distance often being described as
the most difficult thing to measure inthe universe. Another one who was hired
along with her at the Harvard Observatorywas Ani Jump Cannon. Any Jump Cannon
was the one who came up withthe stellar classification, the one that today
(05:50):
we know as class OBAFGKM, whichis, for example, our star the
Sun is a Class G star.Beetlejuice, this great big star in the
constellation O Ryan is a Class Mstar. I believe that Rigel, also
in the constellation Ryan, is aclass O or a B star. What
(06:15):
this is showing is their light intensityis related to their temperature. OBA FGKM
can be remembered this way, OBa fine girl kiss me. It could
be OB a fine guy kiss meas well, but that's the that was
a classification system was put forth byAnti Jump Cannon. Then, of course
(06:40):
Henrietta Swan Levitt, she discovered thisrelationship further about luminosity, and these stars
became known as Sepia variables, andthe luminosity and the period of growth and
drop of luminosity was used to measuredistance. So this became the tool that
(07:01):
Edwin Hubble used to determine the distanceto the galaxies that he discovered during the
nineteen twenties. Then there was CeciliaPain. She made this great contribution to
our understanding of the stars by discoveringwhat they're made of, predominantly hydrogen and
secondly helium. And then in moremodern times, probably around the same time
(07:27):
that Helena Hill was doing her work, the work was being done by Vera
Rubin, another great female astronomer.Vera noticed that the velocity of stars at
the perimeter of the galaxy were movingat the same rate as the stars nearer
the center of the galaxy, andthis kind of flew in the face of
(07:48):
the way we expected things to orbit. So, for example, Mercury,
being closer to the Sun, needsto orbit the Sun at a higher velocity
then Neptune does. Neptune, beingmultiple times further away, doesn't feel the
gravity of the Sun the same waythat Mercury does, therefore it doesn't have
(08:11):
to move as fast. The expectationwas that the stars would behave the same
way, and Vera Ruben was doingthis kind of research, actually measuring the
velocity of stars at different parts ofthe galaxy and found that the stars at
the perimeter of the galaxy were movingjust as fast as the stars near the
center of the galaxy. This didn'tmake any sense because motion in the universe
(08:35):
is really the result of gravity,and gravity is the result of mass,
but there didn't seem to be anymatter out there with the mass capable of
generating the gravity to cause the starsto move the way they were. So
Vera Ruben named it dark batter.Dark matter was not received well by her
(08:58):
male counterparts at first, but withfurther study and analysis, the conclusion was
made that there must be something outthere that we can't yet see. We
can't yet put a telescope on.It doesn't seem to interact well with anything
in the electromagnetic spectrum, but there'ssomething there generating the gravity that's moving those
(09:24):
stars along at a much higher ratethan we expected. It's dark batter.
Vera Rubin, a woman in science, discovered dark matter. And that's something
that doesn't get celebrated and talked aboutin a high school classroom nearly enough.
When I say that what we knowabout the stars really was the result of
(09:46):
the work of the women of Harvardis no exaggeration. And if you wanted
to know more about this, therewas a book titled The Glass Universe,
How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatorytook the measure of the Stars. It's
written by David Sobel, who I'veheard on another podcast speak about this this
(10:11):
glass universe, referring to the glassplates on which all this information was stored.
She wrote about a position that washeld by Wilhelmina Fleming, Curator of
astronomical Photographs, and that position wascreated for Wilhelmina Fleming, and for decades
(10:33):
after that position was held strictly bya woman, out of respect for the
legacy that these original women of Harvardcreated. So I bring this up in
my class all the time, thatthere are great contributions of women in science,
(10:56):
and I use the story of thesewomen from Harvard in my astronomy class
as an example. I don't wantto leave my students going through all of
high school thinking that Mary Carey wasthe only woman scientist. And I guess
I could add to that list nowHelena Hill a researcher who worked at many
(11:18):
universities and did great science and upheldthe integrity of the scientific process even at
times when others around her were kindof breaking the rules fudging the data.
Okay, so this is the storyof Helena Hill. And you can find
the book that I'm referring to thatis already available on Amazon is called hidden
(11:45):
Data, The blind Eye of Science. And now Helena is working on a
second book that's titled The Crying Window, and that book is not yet published,
but is in the world works andwill soon be available. And so
that this is the story that Helenatells this in this podcast episode. So
(12:09):
let's get right into it now andget on with our discussion and hear the
story of Helena Hill and how sheovercame the odds of working in a very
male dominated field we call science.Well, it's it's a pretty interesting medium,
podcasting, and we you know,it's interesting how people will write books
(12:35):
and people will have interesting experiences.And now the average person can listen in
to everyday people or celebrities. Andit's pretty neat to think, how we
just put this information online and youcan click on it and listen for free
to all kinds of interesting people.And I think I listen to podcasts all
the time, amazing things. MaybeI'll start, Yeah, be sure there's
(13:01):
this. There's not a topic that'snot covered by somebody somewhere. So it's
very fascinating. I quite like thewhole process. And therefore I have science
three sixty. So tell me yourbackground. Are you Are you a scientist
or are you a reporter? OrI'm I'm a science teacher, science teacher,
(13:22):
Okay, So I teach in ahigh school. I teach senior chemistry,
and I teach astronomy and junior scienceand and the you know, honestly,
when when it comes up to youknow your theme. I you ask
an average student, name a womanin science, and the name will always
(13:43):
be Mary Curry. That's the onlyname people's And it's kind of a shame.
So when I heard about your yourmemoir that you'd written, I actually
have the the name of that youyou say that to me, and it
was it was an intriguing title,Crime, Hidden Data, the Blind Eye
(14:05):
of Sight. Oh actually, actuallythat's that book has already been published.
The book that I'm writing now,the memoir that I'm writing, is called
the Crying Window. Crying Window.Yeah, And what will be the theme
of that book? What's what's thecrying window all about? What's the grind
(14:28):
window? Very very sad, I'dlove to know what you refer what you're
referring to. Well, the crimeWindow was born when we moved to Colorado
and we thought that we had theworld in our hands. My husband was
(14:50):
a doctor, a medical doctor,a surgeon, and he was it was
his first academic job in the Departmentof Surgery at the University of Colorado Medical
Center. And it was my firstacademic job in the Biophysics and Genetics department
at the University of Colorado Medical Center. And you know, we thought this
(15:11):
was the beginning of a wonderful life, and in many ways it was,
but then in many ways it wasn't. And as far as I was concerned,
I did wonderfully to start off with. And then I discovered that women
that I was I was, Iwas written up in the Denver Post,
(15:35):
and uh. I discovered then thatthere were very few women. I'd never
even questioned that, very few womenon the faculty at the medical school.
And the ones that were there werenot being promoted, they were getting very
low salaries, and they were,you know, being created like minor people.
(16:00):
What ye would this have been?This was the sixties, in the
sixties, probably sixty nine seventy,something like that. And so I wrote
another woman, and I because Ihad been written up in the Denver Post,
I was given I was given accessto the faculty reports, UH file
(16:27):
in the in the Dean's office.And so this other woman who was who
was? She was in a clinicaldepartment and I was in a basic science
department. We worked together to tabulatewhat was going on with the women,
and we found that the women werenot being promoted. There were only about
six of them who were on thetenure track, and there were cast several
(16:51):
hundred men, and their salaries wereterrible and so forth. And so I
sent a memo to the dean,thinking naive. I had gone to a
girls schools. I didn't have anyidea what the world was like out there.
And so I sent this memo tothe dean and he brought it up
(17:12):
at the next meeting of his facultycouncil. And I thought that they would
say, oh, we didn't knowwe were treating the women so bad.
We we'll do something about this.It is something about this. I was
called into my chairman's office and hesaid, you're not going to get tenure.
You have to leave. Because thatwas the beginning. He started to
(17:34):
stir up a sort of beehive,and he didn't like the attention, negative
attention, absolutely absolutely. But thenyou know, then other women, a
few women that there were there werea few medical students and there were a
few other women on the faculty.We got together and we formed a women's
(17:56):
organization. I did have to leave, but we formed a women's organization.
And after I left, they gotpretty strong and they filed a class action
suit and they won, and Iwas a member of the class and I
got an award because my salary hadbeen I mean, we were hired at
the lowest salary they could possibly hireat. Uh when when we were hired,
(18:21):
and so that was, uh,you know, that was in a
way a win for the women atthe medical school. And then I went
downhill from there. Okay, Ican imagine get into that. What maybe
to get some perspective you you obviouslygot into green science. Go back to
(18:42):
your school days, even prior touniversity or high school days. What was
it in what was your feeling towardsscience classes back in those days, and
what sort of what do you likebest about going to science classes? Well,
I came from a kind of ascience family. My paternal grandfather had
(19:04):
been an inventor. He was animmigrant from Germany and he was a weaver,
and uh he was spotted as avery talented person on the streets of
Philadelphia when he was we we wheelinga cart to sell his his carpets,
and he revolutionized the carpet industry becausecarpets with a pattern had been manufactured by
(19:33):
putting a needle up and then bringingit down back again, lupy, lupy,
luopy, back and forth. Andhe said, well, put two
bags together a most slice in between. So he got two carpets for the
price of one. And uh sohe got he got very wealthy. And
so that was kind of uh myfamily beginning. And my grandfather on the
(19:56):
other side was was a very wellknown enthomologist in Philadelphia. So I had
a very good science background and somethingto admire in my in my ancestry,
and so I always, I alwaysloved science. The rest of my siblings
(20:18):
were studying history and English and thatsort of thing, but I was I
really loved science. The idea ofhaving a role model is pretty important.
Isn't someone that will sort of goa path and you look at it and
think, oh, that's very interesting. I'm inspired by that. Right,
That's what you had, isn't it. I really did, I really did.
(20:40):
I have those two grandfathers to lookup to. Yeah, that's a
pretty important part of anyone's experience.Without that, you're left to chance,
almost. But you had this interestingopportunity to have these people in your life
that made you think that's that's thedirection. Maybe I would want to go,
(21:02):
but there wouldn't have definitely was.And then my mother and I had
a very difficult time, and wedidn't get along at all. However,
somehow or other, there were thesebooks in the library in our house that
were about doctors on horseback, MadameCurie, and and I was reading those
(21:27):
books when I was eleven or twelveyears old, and I knew that that's
what I wanted to be. Iwanted to be a doctor. I wanted
to be a scientist. Do youever think yourself that in your class you
were the only girl in the classthat was thinking that way? Were there
others? I At the schools thatI went to, you know, they
were wonderful, wonderful schools, Ithink most of the girls because that was
(21:52):
the way we were brought up.I'm talking. We're talking about the nineteen
thirties. We were brought up tobe society girls, you know, to
marry the Philadelphia society man and behousewives and so forth, And I just
couldn't see myself doing that. Soyou're a bit of a renegade among your
(22:14):
classmates. Probably I was there,really, when I'm looking back on it,
there were no other girls, butI didn't see myself as I did.
Actually, I wanted to be aMadame Curry, I really did.
(22:36):
What was a science class like inthe thirties, Oh god, I can't
even hardly remember the teacher. Wehad a bride science teacher. I really
don't remember what we did in science, Maybe not what you did, but
what was it like? Were yousitting in rows? Were their textbooks where
(22:57):
they're kind of a there were textbooks, you know. It was a biology
textbook, and it was very rudimentary, I think as I look back,
but uh, we we learned prettygood science back in those days. It
wasn't It wasn't. Yeah, itwasn't backward, no, no, of
(23:19):
course not. Of course there's beenthings discovered since, but it's always going
to be the case where you wherewould you be in in classes where you'd
have to study for final exams andprepare for a big tests before the summer
vacation. Oh absolutely, I meanit was a it was a very strict
school. They they really beat ourbrains out. And so when you graduated,
(23:47):
our math teacher, the math teacherthat we had, we had her
all the way from fourth grade throughtenth grade, and then I went away
to boarding school. She was wonderful. She just as totally inspired me.
So without her, I don't knowthat I would have been as turned on
to math and science. Well whatdid you do that was so inspiring?
(24:10):
How did she act in class?We know in tenth grade we were studying
plain geometry, and she said,we're not going to have a textbook.
I'm going to give you these axiomsand you are going to create plain geometry.
Oh my gosh, I mean wehad to write all these proofs.
(24:33):
Remember the square on the hypot newsis equal to the sum of the commons
of squares on the other two sides. We had to prove that, and
you know, it went on pagesafter page after page with all these I
forget what you call them, butthat was so exciting, incredible. Yeah,
(24:55):
And so it was her that wouldbe out of her, out of
the norm I suspect in those daysto say that we're not going to use
a textbook absolutely, and the schoolletter, Oh that's good. That meant
the uh the head master was willingto no head master. It was an
old girls school, Okay, okay, yeah, I think there was a
(25:18):
man around, thank god. Thenyou graduated from grade twelve and you looked
at going on to university straight away. I went to college, Smith College,
which was also a pretty liberal women'scollege, a wonderful college. Yeah
in what city? In Northampton,Massachusetts? Okay? Yeah. And you
(25:41):
attended that school for four years andgot a degree for four years, and
then I majored in pre mad Ireally was inspired by my grandfather, my
maternal grandfather, because he was anenthalmologist, and I thought I would go
to medical school. But then Ihave the uppera tunity to go to France
for my junior year. And thatyear nos science. It was music and
(26:08):
art and history and so forth,and so that was that year was just
and it was it was nineteen fortyeight forty nine, so it was right
after the Second World War, andit was an incredible inspiring year. I
just had an incredible education. Ireally did. Interesting how the year off
(26:33):
of science studying kind of the oppositethe arts, music history culture was the
inspiring year. I'm a big,big believer in that. In my astronomy
class, in my chemistry class,obviously science courses, but I'm always asking
the students to create something where ifyou don't understand it this way, how
(26:55):
could you draw? What does itlook like in your mind and express that?
Yeah, because you know we knowthis to be true. But the
common practice is no, we gotto stick with the books, We got
to stick with the science. Butlook at you say that your most inspiring
year was the year you didn't doscience, but then he came back to
it the year after, right,Oh yeah, right, yeah, travel
(27:18):
Not only that, I wanted togo to medical school and I and I
actually the first two years in scienceI did very well. My other graduate
were terrible. But I took organicchemistry in my sophomore year and I got
(27:38):
you won't believe this. I gota D sixty. First semester. We
had an awful teacher. I did. That woman to the classroom and she'd
start writing on the blackboard. She'dfill the blackboard and it was in two
parts. She'd fill the first partand then she'd go over to the second,
(28:00):
and then she'd take her eraser andshe'd start erasing where she just finished
writing. I got a D sixtyon my report card. It was the
first D I had ever gotten,actually the only D I ever got,
and it served me right. Well, how did it serve you? Rate?
(28:21):
Well? Because I learned that eventhough you hate the teacher, you
sed totill got to study the books. There's a good lesson right there.
But the teacher didn't make any effortto connect with the students. By the
sounds of things, I don't thinkso. And then when I came back
from Paris, I wanted to takean advanced chemistry course and I'll do some
(28:41):
research, and she turned me down. The professor who was teaching the course
would have said okay, but shesaid no. And what if I spent
my life doing since then research?I hope that we meet in the afterlife.
(29:03):
I'll show you look at her experienceI had. So you now now
you that that would have been thelate forties. You graduated from your undergrad
Did you go to graduate school afterthat? You know, I wanted to
go to medical school and I wasexit, but I had had enough.
You know, none of my friendswere doing that. They were all well
(29:27):
thinking about getting married basically, andso I went to New York and I
worked for Sloan Kettering for a year, and so I didn't go to medical
school. And I met my firsthusband, and I got married and we
moved to the Boston area, andI had two sons, and it wasn't
(29:48):
working out, and so I anotherfriend of mine and I discovered the Brandeis
University was two and a half milesaway from where I was living. And
I thought, well, I wantto go to graduate school. And so
I tried, you know, Itried Radcliffe, and I tried Northeastern and
so forth. No one would takeanyone part time except Brandeis, which was
(30:12):
only that started in nineteen forty eight, and this was nineteen fifty six and
so, and they had just takentheir first graduate students in the biology department.
So they interviewed me, and theytold me later they were sure I
was going to wash out right away. I was the best student. You
(30:37):
not. It was unfair because Iwas only taking one course and the rest
of them were taking you know,two or three pieces. But anyway,
oh, I loved it. Ijust loved it. You love the education
piece and learning learned what you werelearning about the whole scientific life. Yeah.
(31:00):
Yeah, Now, so you decided, then, after living this career,
that you know, you need totell this story about what it was
like for women in science. Butwhy did you feel that it was necessary
to tell this story to the generalpublic. Oh, you haven't heard the
next chapter. Okay. So yeah, so I was, you know,
(31:26):
I did. I did extremely wellin graduate school. It saved my life.
I met my now husband and we'vebeen married for sixty three years something
like that. He's a physician,he was finishing he was doing a residency
at the Harvard Medical School, andwe immediately fell in love. I got
(31:49):
a divorce and we got married.So, you know, the things were
looking really wonderful. And I dida post doc at a Harvard medical school
after I finished at Frandise, andso you know, everything was unkie dory
rosie. And we moved out toColorado, and again I was favored by
(32:14):
the guy who was head of thedepartment that I was in, and so
forth, and then the Denver Postwanted to interview me because I was a
woman in science, and so theydid, and as a result of that,
I was asked to investigate the womenat the medical school, and that
was my downfall. Were my afall? I don't know, And in
(32:37):
what way? What were you investigating? Well? What their salaries were?
How many there were in every department? Turns out there were, I forget
how many, to say, adozen departments, one woman in each department.
Of the departments that had women,most of them didn't. My department,
I was the only woman. Andthe salaries were terrible. Women weren't
(33:00):
getting promoted. The men were,uh, you know, going from assistant
professor to associate professor to professor.The women were stuck without There were only
like six of them that were onthe tenure track, and you know,
there were a couple of hundred menand so forth. And so I sent
a memo to the dean. Ihad another woman who was working with me.
(33:22):
She was a She was a inthe pathology department, and she was
an empty now as a PhD.And we worked together to investigate the women.
And I sent a memo to thedean, thinking naive, naive,
fleet that he that he would thinkand that the rest of his committee would
(33:45):
think, Oh, we didn't knowwe were treating the women so badly.
We'll take care of that immediately.They took care of that immediately. I
was going into my chairman's office andhe said, you're not going to get
tenure. Get out. Well,well, how do you know there?
(34:05):
What's the what is it within youthat says, well, tomorrow, I'm
going to go back to work.Given this situation, like, how do
you how did you push yourself forward? No, that's a really good question.
I'm not sure how I can answerthat. I just don't. I
don't give up. And I reallyloved science. I love doing research.
(34:31):
I do it today. If Ihad any any nothing but noodles left in
my brain. Okay, So itwas really the love of the field and
the joy of the satisfaction of theresearch that you said, Yeah, just
designing experiments I had, you know, I had people working for me and
(34:52):
so forth. But I really reallyloved doing the experiments myself. I did
a really good job. I'm I'vegot a very good pair of hands.
Yeah, that's awesome. I suspect. Then moving forward, after that took
place, did you stay in thatjob for the rest of your career?
Did you eventually? Oh? No, because I was fired. You know,
(35:14):
I mean, you're not going toget tenured, so you've got to
leave. And things weren't going verywell for my husband either in the department
of surgery. So it was easyto move because he was very desirable Harvard
Medical School, graduate surgery and soforth, and so he wasn't Things weren't
(35:37):
good for him at Colorado. Sohe got an offer in Saint Louis,
who went to Washington University, andthey managed to find a place for me.
And now I'm in the radiology department. And there were five other guys,
all guys in the radiology department.And as soon as I got in
there, it was very plain tosee that the department was split, and
(36:02):
there were two guys, the headof the head of the group and his
friend, and then there were threeguys who were I didn't like the way
things were going, and unfortunately Iput my barend with the three renegades,
(36:23):
which you seem to be tending todo well. I didn't like the way
the boss was dictating things. Soyeah, and so I crossed him and
again got golden. You're not goingto get tenure. But things are really
(36:45):
bad for my husband. Also,not not his his doing, but the
chairman of surgery was really off therails and there was a woman who she
was kind of an administrative assistant orsomething like that. She had her own
(37:06):
dog lab, you know, desurgeons like to operate on dogs to test
out procedures and so forth, andshe had her own dog farm, and
so she was stealing food from themedical school to feed her dogs, and
then she sold the dogs back tothe medical school and she finally got caught
(37:28):
and the chairman was backing her up, and so he was in hot water
also, so you know, thingswere really not going well, and it
seemed like a good idea to getout of there. And George got an
offer at Marshall University Medical School tobe the associate dean and the chairman of
(37:52):
surgery in Huntington, West Virginia.And it was the new medical school that
was being started and affiliated with theVeterans Administration Hospital and it's and I was
going to be in the biochemistry department, and I was really excited about that
because I'm a basic scientist and I'myou know, I was being in a
(38:14):
in a radiology department and that Iwould rather be in a biochemistry department.
So we moved to Huntington, WestVirginia, and I did okay. You
know, I had a chairman inbiochemistry who made fun of me every time
I walked in the room because yousay, oh, here's Lenie. Uh,
(38:37):
she's a woman. She can tellus. What wouldn't get away with
that today? I hope not right. So I was, but I was
doing well otherwise. But poor George, I mean he was and the surgeons
in town just loved him. Hehad he had turned them in to academicians
(39:00):
as well as as well as surgeons, and he had a wonderful department.
But there was this dean who wasstealing, actually, we found out later,
stealing the money from the department ofsurgery, because the only department that
was really making money. And itwould have if he'd been upfront about it,
(39:22):
it would have been okay, Butthey were. They were cooking the
books. And the next the guythat was the dean left after we left
and George went back to give somelectures or something like that, and the
new chairman of surgery said, sureenough, the dean was stealing from surgery
(39:44):
so that he could pay the restof the department. You know, it
wasn't a bad thing for him todo, but he had to be upfront.
About it, and he wasn't themedical school politics for you. So
we moved to New Jersey and alot of it adaptations here. Yeah,
right, and well things didn't gowell right at the beginning, but they
(40:08):
eventually were okay. And uh oh, I saw a guy fabricating data.
I couldn't accept that, and soI reported it and we had a campus
(40:30):
committee on Research Integrity and they reviewedmy evidence and they thought, well,
they ruled against me. They thoughtI was, you know, some uppity
woman or something like that, andso I lost that. Well, I
don't give up. So I appealedto the NIH the oor I, the
(40:58):
Office of Reacharch Research Integrity. Thewoman there who was on my case,
she believed in me, and shebelieved in what I was finding. And
we were finding new data all thetime all along here, and so she
was supporting me. But then shepresented it to her committee and they turned
it down. And so I wentback to the campus Committee on Research Integrity
(41:22):
with new information that I had gotten, and again I got slammed in the
face. Three times. I wentto them twice. I went to the
RI and lost every single time.But and then there's a court case called
(41:44):
que tam q U, I ta M. And that is I am
a relater, and I am accusingsomebody else, my actual colleague and his
postdoctoral uh, of fabricating data,of of false false information that had been
(42:07):
supported by the government. And soI had a lawsuit, and I had
a wonderful lawyer who definitely was onmy side, and we and we accumulated
more and more and more data againstthis guy. I think his boss was
(42:31):
looking the other way because he didn'twant to believe that his postdoctor was fabricating
data. But I have, youknow, miles of of information of the
falsification of data. And that wasmy first book, UH, Hidden Data,
(42:52):
The Blind Eye of Science. Ilost everybody. I mean I never
I never want to want anything exceptmy own integrity. Yeah, exactly,
You're on. You stood up forit. Seemed like everywhere you went there
was somebody doing something just a littlebit underhanded or unethical, and you recognized
(43:14):
it. And in each instance yousaid, all right, while I'm out
and you went somewhere else, andthen what happened again? Right? And
uh, and there you are.What what are you supposed to do about
that? Everywhere you went? Writea book? So you write a book
about it, that's right, calledThe Crime Window Memoirs of Women and Science
(43:37):
Elena Hill, PhD. Right,you're telling the story that people need to
hear for on the one hand,on the mail side, like come on,
guys, like smart enough, being, operate with integrity, operate with
(43:58):
fairness, yes, be honest,And to the women, keep persevering because
you're going to run into these clownsalong the way, and hopefully there's few
of them. Maybe you'd have acomment on that if there's few of them
now than there was in those days. But keep pushing forward because everywhere you
went, even though you ran intomore obstacles, you still found a certain
(44:19):
degree of success, and you didend up having a long and seemingly happy
career. On ninety five. Youknow, I've lived that long, and
I hope I make it to onehundred. I don't know, hope so
too. And you've had a lotof a happy You probably had a lot
of successful moments in your career,scientific successes as well. Well. It
isn't called the crime Window for nothing. So if you're devoting your life to
(44:51):
science and to your job and soforth, something's got to do, and
it did, and that's why it'scalled window. And I don't I don't
tell what the crime window is allabout. And I'm not going to tell,
Yeah that because that remains your personalstory that is just for you.
(45:14):
Mm hmm. That that is.So it's really then could serve as inspirational
two young girls in pursuit of ascience career, right, I would,
I would hope, So, Ireally would hope. So I really I
(45:34):
really identify with with girls who wantto get ahead, and you know,
and the societies that I belong toand so forth, there were always women
who would come and talk to youand ask for your help and so forth,
and I have to keep encouraging them. Of course, things things I
(45:59):
think overall are a whole lot better. In medical school, I think there
are more women than men uh asmedical students. I think that's just wonderful.
I'm really really happy about that.So, you know, I mean
the world will change mm hmm.If you walked into a high school today,
(46:22):
if you walked into a high schoolclassroom, what would be the words
you'd say to the girls in theirin theirs, their pursuit of education and
perhaps sciences you have follow. Yeah, you can put Yeah, and even
(46:45):
if you're going to run into obstacles, the takeaway is keep pushing and and
get stronger with each situation, right, yeah, yeah, don't ever give
up. Uh huh, which iswhat you did, isn't it. Uh?
And and then now as you asyou approached the end of your working
(47:07):
career, it's all over. It'sover, I mean eventually. So at
what point did did you say,Okay, it's time to hang up the
lab jacket and put down the testtube racre. I retired on December thirty
(47:28):
first of twenty sixteen. Well,that's not that long ago, that's right.
You worked, You worked well pastsixty five. Oh yeah, I'm
ninety five. No, yeah,A lot of people are saying I've done
at sixty But you kept going.Is it because you just continued to love
it that you kept working? Itwas it was that as well as still
(47:52):
wanting to win, wanting to havesome say. But you know, I
just couldn't. I couldn't go onworking anymore. I really couldn't. I'm
just too old. You forget wellby And by twenty sixteen, did you
feel that you had a sense ofvictory? That's a good question. I
(48:20):
don't feel now that I have asense of victory. I just feel that
my story is one that has tobe told. M It has to be
that you never never give up.Yeah, this is a message that has
to get out to the girls enteringa field of science now right. And
(48:44):
the message, as I was sayingearlier, has to go to anyone in
authoritative positions to treat people with respectand honor them for what they're capable of
doing, not or not for genderor ethnic background, but for the just
(49:04):
the qualities that the person brings tothe table. But you know what I
really want to see, I thinkthe system of grants, the competition for
grants, I think that is justwrong. You spend you know, you
(49:24):
break your back writing grant applications andnot getting the grants. And you know,
the lucky people or the really smartpeople, they get grants, but
the little people they don't get grants. And I think everybody should have given
a small pot of or maybe amedium sized pot for them to do research
(49:47):
so that they don't have to bebreaking their necks to be in this awful
competition for grants. I think thatthat is just killing science. I think
that my colleague at the New JerseyMedical School, who I don't think he
ever made updated himself, but hispostdoc was doing it for him, and
(50:13):
he had to know that that washappening. I don't think. I don't
think he would have had to dothat if he didn't have to be in
this war against everybody else who wastrying to get grants. He's almost driven
to it. Yeah, I thinkso mm hm that that would be my
(50:35):
message. For my real message andwhat I'm saying is that we have to
change the system. Everybody should havean opportunity to do the research that they
want to do. They shouldn't haveto compete with everybody else who sits on
the grant committees. Oh that theyhave study sections in each area has a
(51:00):
study section, so there's several difference. In my field as radiology, there
are several study sections for radiation research, and so you send in your application
and your application is maybe one ofI don't know, fifty something like that,
and maybe only ten of them aregoing to get funded. Well,
(51:21):
I think probably most of them shouldget some money so that they can go
on working. And then if youdon't get grants in medical schools like the
New Jersey Medical School. If youdon't get a grant, you're not going
to get tenure. If you don'tget tenure, you're going to lose your
job. Then you know, whatare you going to do? You're going
(51:45):
to give up and go teach inhigh school, which actually one of my
friends has done that, and she'sa wonderful teacher. She's a wonderful teacher,
so her students are lucky. Yeah. I mean, the strength of
a teacher in a junior high schoolscience classroom is so important because it's them
(52:09):
who are going to inspire kids towant to stay in science. That's right.
I mean when I walk into ascience classroom, in a great nine
science classroom, I've got to thinkall the time about where is the most
interesting and fascinating research, What arethe global issues that people are grappling with,
and what are the inspirational people whoare doing interesting things that kids are
(52:30):
gonna go Wow, Can I getinvolved in that somehow? Yeah? You
just stick around school a little bitlonger and get into the sciences, study
your math and get your physics andyour chemistry and go on and do great
things. That inspiration at the juniorlevels is so important. In fact,
I see it often in schools whereas teachers get more seniority, they then
(52:51):
want to take just the senior courses. But those are the teachers with the
great experiences that need to be doingthe junior sciences. Oh yeah, yeah
right. Well, my greatest inspirationwas that that math teacher in uh in
day school, the one that threwaway the textbook yes right, and innovated,
(53:13):
yes, created lessons that they thoughtthat she thought the students, that
students would be inspired by or motivatedby. I think I turn some students
off because they were frightened by it. But the but the really good students.
So it was a challenge. EvenAlbert Einstein hated school until his grade
(53:37):
twelve year when he switched schools toa more free thinking school where they're allowed
to sort of create and innovate,and finally he liked school. Uh huh,
you know why is that? Whyis it people have these stories that
when I'm allowed to think on myown and create on my own and be
inspired by an interesting story, thatall of a sudden, I like school.
Mmhmm. You have a story likethat. Albert Einstein has a story
(54:00):
like that. You see it allthe time. Yeah, I think so.
Do you have one book that's publishedalready. The first one is called
Hidden Data The Blind Eye of Science. And I take this this postdoc carrying
(54:23):
out eight experiments and everything, everysingle one of them has some statistical problems.
But if you add up all ofhis data, the probability that everything
is the numbers are supposed to berandom. These are using a counting machine
(54:46):
called a coulter, and cells passedthrough an orifice and they create a block,
and the electrical signals going across theorifice, and it's like the thing
that counts the gas that's going intoyour car, and the last digits don't
(55:09):
matter, so they're going to berandom. The probability that his stuff was
random is two point three times tenof the minus thirty eight. Everyone else
in the lab the probability that doingthe same thing, doing the same experiment,
their probability was one. And therewas an outside lab that donated numbers
(55:30):
to me, and their probability waspoint two. So we have two point
three times ten of the minus thirtyeight versus one. Yeah, not a
comparison. Yeah, nobody fabricated data. Yeah right, he fabricated That's what
he did very interesting and he gotaway with it, but no one would
(55:53):
believe it. It's really something,and you wouldn't. You wouldn't let that
go. You wouldn't know that.That wouldn't be good science. Truth.
Truth to me is really really important. Yeah. Absolutely. And then the
(56:13):
second one is the memoir that you'rejust working on right now, right you're
not quite finished or yeah, CryingWindow? Is that one available on Amazon
as well? Or not quite yet? No, it hasn't been published yet.
I actually have a coach who's helpingme get it published, and actually
(56:36):
i'm talking to you tonight as aresult of his requirement that I start getting
podcasts and interviews and stuff like thatso that I can get an agent.
Yeah, it's a wonderful. Hereally is incredible. You're on the book
(56:58):
tour now, getting just and you'rethe first one. Hopefully I'm not the
last. You know, there's alot of people with bigger audiences than me,
but this is a starting point.I would love to talk to you.
Are there students that are listening tothis? Well, there likely are.
I mean it's one of those thingswith podcasting, I don't necessarily know
(57:20):
who all listens. If someone's listeningto this and wants to, you know,
email me or message me and say, hey, I really enjoy that
conversation with Helena Hill. Please doso. But you know, like podcasting
is a passive sport, but it'sone that I think everybody should be taking
part in because there's just so muchinformation to be had on any and every
(57:43):
topic, and so ours is kindof along the lines of science education,
and we're trying to inspire teachers withour conversation, who then will in turn
hopefully inspire their students and in thiscase, encourage their young girls in class
to to stay in the science isThere is a career to be had.
It's a rewarding career. It's afun career. There's excitement and challenge,
(58:07):
and but there may well be obstacles. In spite of all the bad things
that I've had to tell you about, one thing that we got to do
is we went to meetings. AndI was a member of the American Society
for Photobiology, and that was justthe most wonderful group of people and I
(58:30):
had so many good friends there.I was the secretary of that society for
six years, and you know,that was just one of the greatest pleasures
is the interactions that you have withwith colleagues and the fun things that you
do when you go to meetings andso forth. That was that was a
benefit that I had never anticipated whenI first decided to, you know,
(58:53):
keep on going with science. Well, even in my experience at university,
I recall this. Some of myfavorite times were during the lab, the
experiments. You know, you wouldtake the time to wash your glassware and
you'd be talking with the people aroundyou. Maybe you hear across the lab
somebody dropped an early fire flask.Oh no, you're not going to take
(59:15):
mine, minor, and you knowthat you can. Or then then you
get your experiments set up and it'srunning, and now you have time to
stand around and talk with this person. And so the lab experience was a
very social time where we're coming ohyeah, yeah, right, I love
I love doing the lab work.Was mm hmm. Well, I have
to say, Helena, thank youvery much for this conversation, and best
(59:37):
of luck with your book that you'vealready published, the one that you're now
working on, and that your publicistis forcing you into these podcast situations.
I hope you enjoy those opportunities andget onto some really good conversations on these
podcasts. It's a fun thing todo, it really is. Yeah.
Right, I'm looking forward to thenext one. Yeah. You connect with
(59:57):
people at different parts of the countryand it's a good experience part of the
world. I have one coming up. The person that I'm going to be
talking to is in Singapore, oh, for twelve hours twelve hours different,
So she's coming on at six amand I'm going on at six pm or
something like that. Now you're apublished author and you're gonna be wanted worldwide.
(01:00:22):
That's good, right, And it'sa good story to get out two
people. Inspires everybody the better behaviorand to a better pursuit of knowledge.
So I think it's a great thingyou're doing well. Science has to be
true. Doing things honestly and correctlyis so important. Yeah. And oh
(01:00:43):
you, oh you you're interested inthe stars and all of that. Remember
the rocket that got sent off andthat they had done the calculations and interest
and meet or something like that insteadof meters, So it went off in
the wrong direction, disappeared into thenight. The reason why it went off
(01:01:06):
was that we're using the wrong metric. But that was completely a scientific error.
A lack of understanding of units ofmeasurement. Yeah, happens. I
mean it's important that we get ourscience education, that's for sure. So
well, thanks again Helena for beingwith me today and best wishes for all
that you do with your books.Well, thank you so much for interviewing
(01:01:29):
me. I just wanted to followup and say thank you for listening to
this great story the life and timesof Helena Hill and all the sort of
ridiculous things that she had to putup with as a female scientist during her
time working in universities across the US. But what a great story of resilience
and perseverance, certainly at a timewhen many would have given up and said
(01:01:53):
forget it, I'm out. Theworking environment is just against me, is
too many obstacles, there's unfair treatmentof women. So fine, I'm done.
But is it it sort of refreshingto see at a time when probably
(01:02:15):
discrimination was at its peak, HelenaHill persevered and continued on and fought back.
And it should be you know,rewarded or honored for that that legacy.
So thanks Helena for what really isa very great and inspirational story.
(01:02:36):
Let's encourage our female students in ourscience classes to pursue sciences, to stay
in the field, to take thehigh level math and the high level sciences,
the physics and the chemistry, theAP courses, the IB courses,
and take the roles in, youknow, in the science field and become
(01:03:00):
leaders that they are. And let'ssee if we can swing the balance from
a sort of a male dominated fieldto one that's more balanced. And by
the way, the story of therocket that Helena was talking about, I
actually had to look it up.It was nineteen ninety nine, the Mars
(01:03:21):
Climate Orbiter. It was built byLockheed Martin but operated by the Jet Propulsion
Lab, which is, you know, one's a private rocket construction company and
the other is a NASA funded teamof scientists. And anything that's in space
is generally operated and managed once isin the air and in space by the
(01:03:43):
Jet Propulsion Lab. And the JetPropulsion Lab worked in metric and for some
reason, Lockheed Martin built it inImperial and it had to do with the
thrust of the engines and because ofthe discrepancy in units. When the Mars
Climate Orbiter finally arrived at Mars,it came in at the wrong angle and
(01:04:06):
skipped off of the atmosphere, theupper atmosphere of Mars and was lost.
And that was that. So kindof oops. By the way, that
particular event was never pegged, youknow, one person's fault. It was
a systemic error, and since thenthey've cleaned up their you know, their
(01:04:30):
use of measurements and their communication betweendepartments. So all is well, that
ends well, but you know,lesson learned. Thanks again for listening everybody.
I hope you enjoyed this message andwe'll bring it to your classes and
we'll talk to you soon on thenext episode. Until then, have a
great day.
We worked together to tabulate what wasgoing on with the women, and we
found that the women were not beingpromoted. There were only about six of
them who were on the tenure track, and there were cast several hundred men,
and their salaries were terrible and soforth. And so I sent a
(00:21):
memo to the Dean, thinking Iwas very naive. I had gone to
a girls schools. I didn't haveany idea what the world was like out
there. And so I sent thismemo to the dean and he brought it
up at the next meeting of hisfaculty council. And I thought that they
(00:45):
would say, oh, we didn'tknow we were treating the women so bad.
We we'll do something about this.It is something about this. I
was called into my chairman's office andhe said, you're not going to get
tenure. You have to leave.Welcome back to another episode of Science three
sixty. This is Tim Stevenson,your host, and on this episode I
(01:07):
have Helena Hill, now the oldestguest I've ever had on the show.
Helene is ninety five years old andhad a career in the sciences at a
time when being a woman in thesciences was not a friendly place to be.
However, she pushed back, foughta little bit, stood up for
her own rights, and has agreat story to tell. And there's some
(01:29):
lessons here for all of us.This podcast is a proud member of the
Teach Better Podcast Network, Better Today, Better Tomorrow, and the podcast to
get you there. Explore more podcastsat www dot Teach Beetter Podcastnetwork dot com.
Now let's get onto the episode.This is a very interesting story because
(01:55):
doctor Helena Hill is ninety five yearsold. First of all, I love
that because here's somebody who still seesherself as relevant and has a meaning towards
the world around her. And whata great lesson stop right there, you
know, shouldn't that be what weall aspire to that even in our later
(02:16):
years, we're still contributing. HelenaHill graduated from Smith College in nineteen fifty
and she received a PhD in biologyfrom Vandey's University in nineteen sixty four.
She's held Postdog fellowships at Harvard MedicalSchool and at the University of Colorado Medical
Center. She even rose to theranks from assistant professor to professor at the
(02:39):
University of Colorado Medical Center. Alsoat Washington University Medical School, and at
the Marshall University Medical School and eventuallyat Reiker's New Jersey Medical School. She's
co authored more than seventy scientific publicationsand was awarded the Smith College Medal in
nineteen ninety seven. Whilena Hill,doctor Hill has jam. She's got her
(03:04):
street critages, no question about it, but she faced time and time again
in her career the obstacle created bythe men in authority at all of these
places. She wanted to tell herstory of what was it like to be
a woman in science during a timewhen women in science were basically held back.
(03:32):
You know, you think of ina high school classroom, if you
were to ask your students, nameme of women in science. Nine times
out of ten, maybe higher thanthat, they're going to say Madame Curry.
Murray Curry was obviously a very significantscientist, but seems to be the
(03:52):
go to whenever we talk about womenin science. Why is that? Surely
there's been others who have contributed.Fortunately, I teach astronomy, and astronomy
is rife with women who have mademajor discoveries. Do you know that almost
everything that we know about stars waslearned and discovered by women. In fact,
(04:17):
if you go back to the eighteenseventies, there was a man named
Edward Pickering who worked at the HarvardObservatory and at first came across a woman
named Wilhelmina Fleming and hired her asa maid. I suspect he realized that
(04:40):
she had some particular academic ability,perhaps she was a good communicator, and
needing some extra help at the labto analyze copious amounts of data that was
recorded on glass plates from the telescopestaking pictures of the stars in the galaxies,
he thought he could hire her becauseshe'd be a cheaper wage. Well,
(05:01):
little did he know, Wilhelmina Flemingwould become one of the greatest contributors
to really all of science. So, for example, Wilhelmina Fleming was the
one to first note that stars hada certain variability to them. Their light
intensity would grow and subside in verypredictable ways, and that eventually came to
(05:29):
be used as a tool for determiningdistance, a distance often being described as
the most difficult thing to measure inthe universe. Another one who was hired
along with her at the Harvard Observatorywas Ani Jump Cannon. Any Jump Cannon
was the one who came up withthe stellar classification, the one that today
(05:50):
we know as class OBAFGKM, whichis, for example, our star the
Sun is a Class G star.Beetlejuice, this great big star in the
constellation O Ryan is a Class Mstar. I believe that Rigel, also
in the constellation Ryan, is aclass O or a B star. What
(06:15):
this is showing is their light intensityis related to their temperature. OBA FGKM
can be remembered this way, OBa fine girl kiss me. It could
be OB a fine guy kiss meas well, but that's the that was
a classification system was put forth byAnti Jump Cannon. Then, of course
(06:40):
Henrietta Swan Levitt, she discovered thisrelationship further about luminosity, and these stars
became known as Sepia variables, andthe luminosity and the period of growth and
drop of luminosity was used to measuredistance. So this became the tool that
(07:01):
Edwin Hubble used to determine the distanceto the galaxies that he discovered during the
nineteen twenties. Then there was CeciliaPain. She made this great contribution to
our understanding of the stars by discoveringwhat they're made of, predominantly hydrogen and
secondly helium. And then in moremodern times, probably around the same time
(07:27):
that Helena Hill was doing her work, the work was being done by Vera
Rubin, another great female astronomer.Vera noticed that the velocity of stars at
the perimeter of the galaxy were movingat the same rate as the stars nearer
the center of the galaxy, andthis kind of flew in the face of
(07:48):
the way we expected things to orbit. So, for example, Mercury,
being closer to the Sun, needsto orbit the Sun at a higher velocity
then Neptune does. Neptune, beingmultiple times further away, doesn't feel the
gravity of the Sun the same waythat Mercury does, therefore it doesn't have
(08:11):
to move as fast. The expectationwas that the stars would behave the same
way, and Vera Ruben was doingthis kind of research, actually measuring the
velocity of stars at different parts ofthe galaxy and found that the stars at
the perimeter of the galaxy were movingjust as fast as the stars near the
center of the galaxy. This didn'tmake any sense because motion in the universe
(08:35):
is really the result of gravity,and gravity is the result of mass,
but there didn't seem to be anymatter out there with the mass capable of
generating the gravity to cause the starsto move the way they were. So
Vera Ruben named it dark batter.Dark matter was not received well by her
(08:58):
male counterparts at first, but withfurther study and analysis, the conclusion was
made that there must be something outthere that we can't yet see. We
can't yet put a telescope on.It doesn't seem to interact well with anything
in the electromagnetic spectrum, but there'ssomething there generating the gravity that's moving those
(09:24):
stars along at a much higher ratethan we expected. It's dark batter.
Vera Rubin, a woman in science, discovered dark matter. And that's something
that doesn't get celebrated and talked aboutin a high school classroom nearly enough.
When I say that what we knowabout the stars really was the result of
(09:46):
the work of the women of Harvardis no exaggeration. And if you wanted
to know more about this, therewas a book titled The Glass Universe,
How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatorytook the measure of the Stars. It's
written by David Sobel, who I'veheard on another podcast speak about this this
(10:11):
glass universe, referring to the glassplates on which all this information was stored.
She wrote about a position that washeld by Wilhelmina Fleming, Curator of
astronomical Photographs, and that position wascreated for Wilhelmina Fleming, and for decades
(10:33):
after that position was held strictly bya woman, out of respect for the
legacy that these original women of Harvardcreated. So I bring this up in
my class all the time, thatthere are great contributions of women in science,
(10:56):
and I use the story of thesewomen from Harvard in my astronomy class
as an example. I don't wantto leave my students going through all of
high school thinking that Mary Carey wasthe only woman scientist. And I guess
I could add to that list nowHelena Hill a researcher who worked at many
(11:18):
universities and did great science and upheldthe integrity of the scientific process even at
times when others around her were kindof breaking the rules fudging the data.
Okay, so this is the storyof Helena Hill. And you can find
the book that I'm referring to thatis already available on Amazon is called hidden
(11:45):
Data, The blind Eye of Science. And now Helena is working on a
second book that's titled The Crying Window, and that book is not yet published,
but is in the world works andwill soon be available. And so
that this is the story that Helenatells this in this podcast episode. So
(12:09):
let's get right into it now andget on with our discussion and hear the
story of Helena Hill and how sheovercame the odds of working in a very
male dominated field we call science.Well, it's it's a pretty interesting medium,
podcasting, and we you know,it's interesting how people will write books
(12:35):
and people will have interesting experiences.And now the average person can listen in
to everyday people or celebrities. Andit's pretty neat to think, how we
just put this information online and youcan click on it and listen for free
to all kinds of interesting people.And I think I listen to podcasts all
the time, amazing things. MaybeI'll start, Yeah, be sure there's
(13:01):
this. There's not a topic that'snot covered by somebody somewhere. So it's
very fascinating. I quite like thewhole process. And therefore I have science
three sixty. So tell me yourbackground. Are you Are you a scientist
or are you a reporter? OrI'm I'm a science teacher, science teacher,
(13:22):
Okay, So I teach in ahigh school. I teach senior chemistry,
and I teach astronomy and junior scienceand and the you know, honestly,
when when it comes up to youknow your theme. I you ask
an average student, name a womanin science, and the name will always
(13:43):
be Mary Curry. That's the onlyname people's And it's kind of a shame.
So when I heard about your yourmemoir that you'd written, I actually
have the the name of that youyou say that to me, and it
was it was an intriguing title,Crime, Hidden Data, the Blind Eye
(14:05):
of Sight. Oh actually, actuallythat's that book has already been published.
The book that I'm writing now,the memoir that I'm writing, is called
the Crying Window. Crying Window.Yeah, And what will be the theme
of that book? What's what's thecrying window all about? What's the grind
(14:28):
window? Very very sad, I'dlove to know what you refer what you're
referring to. Well, the crimeWindow was born when we moved to Colorado
and we thought that we had theworld in our hands. My husband was
(14:50):
a doctor, a medical doctor,a surgeon, and he was it was
his first academic job in the Departmentof Surgery at the University of Colorado Medical
Center. And it was my firstacademic job in the Biophysics and Genetics department
at the University of Colorado Medical Center. And you know, we thought this
(15:11):
was the beginning of a wonderful life, and in many ways it was,
but then in many ways it wasn't. And as far as I was concerned,
I did wonderfully to start off with. And then I discovered that women
that I was I was, Iwas written up in the Denver Post,
(15:35):
and uh. I discovered then thatthere were very few women. I'd never
even questioned that, very few womenon the faculty at the medical school.
And the ones that were there werenot being promoted, they were getting very
low salaries, and they were,you know, being created like minor people.
(16:00):
What ye would this have been?This was the sixties, in the
sixties, probably sixty nine seventy,something like that. And so I wrote
another woman, and I because Ihad been written up in the Denver Post,
I was given I was given accessto the faculty reports, UH file
(16:27):
in the in the Dean's office.And so this other woman who was who
was? She was in a clinicaldepartment and I was in a basic science
department. We worked together to tabulatewhat was going on with the women,
and we found that the women werenot being promoted. There were only about
six of them who were on thetenure track, and there were cast several
(16:51):
hundred men, and their salaries wereterrible and so forth. And so I
sent a memo to the dean,thinking naive. I had gone to a
girls schools. I didn't have anyidea what the world was like out there.
And so I sent this memo tothe dean and he brought it up
(17:12):
at the next meeting of his facultycouncil. And I thought that they would
say, oh, we didn't knowwe were treating the women so bad.
We we'll do something about this.It is something about this. I was
called into my chairman's office and hesaid, you're not going to get tenure.
You have to leave. Because thatwas the beginning. He started to
(17:34):
stir up a sort of beehive,and he didn't like the attention, negative
attention, absolutely absolutely. But thenyou know, then other women, a
few women that there were there werea few medical students and there were a
few other women on the faculty.We got together and we formed a women's
(17:56):
organization. I did have to leave, but we formed a women's organization.
And after I left, they gotpretty strong and they filed a class action
suit and they won, and Iwas a member of the class and I
got an award because my salary hadbeen I mean, we were hired at
the lowest salary they could possibly hireat. Uh when when we were hired,
(18:21):
and so that was, uh,you know, that was in a
way a win for the women atthe medical school. And then I went
downhill from there. Okay, Ican imagine get into that. What maybe
to get some perspective you you obviouslygot into green science. Go back to
(18:42):
your school days, even prior touniversity or high school days. What was
it in what was your feeling towardsscience classes back in those days, and
what sort of what do you likebest about going to science classes? Well,
I came from a kind of ascience family. My paternal grandfather had
(19:04):
been an inventor. He was animmigrant from Germany and he was a weaver,
and uh he was spotted as avery talented person on the streets of
Philadelphia when he was we we wheelinga cart to sell his his carpets,
and he revolutionized the carpet industry becausecarpets with a pattern had been manufactured by
(19:33):
putting a needle up and then bringingit down back again, lupy, lupy,
luopy, back and forth. Andhe said, well, put two
bags together a most slice in between. So he got two carpets for the
price of one. And uh sohe got he got very wealthy. And
so that was kind of uh myfamily beginning. And my grandfather on the
(19:56):
other side was was a very wellknown enthomologist in Philadelphia. So I had
a very good science background and somethingto admire in my in my ancestry,
and so I always, I alwaysloved science. The rest of my siblings
(20:18):
were studying history and English and thatsort of thing, but I was I
really loved science. The idea ofhaving a role model is pretty important.
Isn't someone that will sort of goa path and you look at it and
think, oh, that's very interesting. I'm inspired by that. Right,
That's what you had, isn't it. I really did, I really did.
(20:40):
I have those two grandfathers to lookup to. Yeah, that's a
pretty important part of anyone's experience.Without that, you're left to chance,
almost. But you had this interestingopportunity to have these people in your life
that made you think that's that's thedirection. Maybe I would want to go,
(21:02):
but there wouldn't have definitely was.And then my mother and I had
a very difficult time, and wedidn't get along at all. However,
somehow or other, there were thesebooks in the library in our house that
were about doctors on horseback, MadameCurie, and and I was reading those
(21:27):
books when I was eleven or twelveyears old, and I knew that that's
what I wanted to be. Iwanted to be a doctor. I wanted
to be a scientist. Do youever think yourself that in your class you
were the only girl in the classthat was thinking that way? Were there
others? I At the schools thatI went to, you know, they
were wonderful, wonderful schools, Ithink most of the girls because that was
(21:52):
the way we were brought up.I'm talking. We're talking about the nineteen
thirties. We were brought up tobe society girls, you know, to
marry the Philadelphia society man and behousewives and so forth, And I just
couldn't see myself doing that. Soyou're a bit of a renegade among your
(22:14):
classmates. Probably I was there,really, when I'm looking back on it,
there were no other girls, butI didn't see myself as I did.
Actually, I wanted to be aMadame Curry, I really did.
(22:36):
What was a science class like inthe thirties, Oh god, I can't
even hardly remember the teacher. Wehad a bride science teacher. I really
don't remember what we did in science, Maybe not what you did, but
what was it like? Were yousitting in rows? Were their textbooks where
(22:57):
they're kind of a there were textbooks, you know. It was a biology
textbook, and it was very rudimentary, I think as I look back,
but uh, we we learned prettygood science back in those days. It
wasn't It wasn't. Yeah, itwasn't backward, no, no, of
(23:19):
course not. Of course there's beenthings discovered since, but it's always going
to be the case where you wherewould you be in in classes where you'd
have to study for final exams andprepare for a big tests before the summer
vacation. Oh absolutely, I meanit was a it was a very strict
school. They they really beat ourbrains out. And so when you graduated,
(23:47):
our math teacher, the math teacherthat we had, we had her
all the way from fourth grade throughtenth grade, and then I went away
to boarding school. She was wonderful. She just as totally inspired me.
So without her, I don't knowthat I would have been as turned on
to math and science. Well whatdid you do that was so inspiring?
(24:10):
How did she act in class?We know in tenth grade we were studying
plain geometry, and she said,we're not going to have a textbook.
I'm going to give you these axiomsand you are going to create plain geometry.
Oh my gosh, I mean wehad to write all these proofs.
(24:33):
Remember the square on the hypot newsis equal to the sum of the commons
of squares on the other two sides. We had to prove that, and
you know, it went on pagesafter page after page with all these I
forget what you call them, butthat was so exciting, incredible. Yeah,
(24:55):
And so it was her that wouldbe out of her, out of
the norm I suspect in those daysto say that we're not going to use
a textbook absolutely, and the schoolletter, Oh that's good. That meant
the uh the head master was willingto no head master. It was an
old girls school, Okay, okay, yeah, I think there was a
(25:18):
man around, thank god. Thenyou graduated from grade twelve and you looked
at going on to university straight away. I went to college, Smith College,
which was also a pretty liberal women'scollege, a wonderful college. Yeah
in what city? In Northampton,Massachusetts? Okay? Yeah. And you
(25:41):
attended that school for four years andgot a degree for four years, and
then I majored in pre mad Ireally was inspired by my grandfather, my
maternal grandfather, because he was anenthalmologist, and I thought I would go
to medical school. But then Ihave the uppera tunity to go to France
for my junior year. And thatyear nos science. It was music and
(26:08):
art and history and so forth,and so that was that year was just
and it was it was nineteen fortyeight forty nine, so it was right
after the Second World War, andit was an incredible inspiring year. I
just had an incredible education. Ireally did. Interesting how the year off
(26:33):
of science studying kind of the oppositethe arts, music history culture was the
inspiring year. I'm a big,big believer in that. In my astronomy
class, in my chemistry class,obviously science courses, but I'm always asking
the students to create something where ifyou don't understand it this way, how
(26:55):
could you draw? What does itlook like in your mind and express that?
Yeah, because you know we knowthis to be true. But the
common practice is no, we gotto stick with the books, We got
to stick with the science. Butlook at you say that your most inspiring
year was the year you didn't doscience, but then he came back to
it the year after, right,Oh yeah, right, yeah, travel
(27:18):
Not only that, I wanted togo to medical school and I and I
actually the first two years in scienceI did very well. My other graduate
were terrible. But I took organicchemistry in my sophomore year and I got
(27:38):
you won't believe this. I gota D sixty. First semester. We
had an awful teacher. I did. That woman to the classroom and she'd
start writing on the blackboard. She'dfill the blackboard and it was in two
parts. She'd fill the first partand then she'd go over to the second,
(28:00):
and then she'd take her eraser andshe'd start erasing where she just finished
writing. I got a D sixtyon my report card. It was the
first D I had ever gotten,actually the only D I ever got,
and it served me right. Well, how did it serve you? Rate?
(28:21):
Well? Because I learned that eventhough you hate the teacher, you
sed totill got to study the books. There's a good lesson right there.
But the teacher didn't make any effortto connect with the students. By the
sounds of things, I don't thinkso. And then when I came back
from Paris, I wanted to takean advanced chemistry course and I'll do some
(28:41):
research, and she turned me down. The professor who was teaching the course
would have said okay, but shesaid no. And what if I spent
my life doing since then research?I hope that we meet in the afterlife.
(29:03):
I'll show you look at her experienceI had. So you now now
you that that would have been thelate forties. You graduated from your undergrad
Did you go to graduate school afterthat? You know, I wanted to
go to medical school and I wasexit, but I had had enough.
You know, none of my friendswere doing that. They were all well
(29:27):
thinking about getting married basically, andso I went to New York and I
worked for Sloan Kettering for a year, and so I didn't go to medical
school. And I met my firsthusband, and I got married and we
moved to the Boston area, andI had two sons, and it wasn't
(29:48):
working out, and so I anotherfriend of mine and I discovered the Brandeis
University was two and a half milesaway from where I was living. And
I thought, well, I wantto go to graduate school. And so
I tried, you know, Itried Radcliffe, and I tried Northeastern and
so forth. No one would takeanyone part time except Brandeis, which was
(30:12):
only that started in nineteen forty eight, and this was nineteen fifty six and
so, and they had just takentheir first graduate students in the biology department.
So they interviewed me, and theytold me later they were sure I
was going to wash out right away. I was the best student. You
(30:37):
not. It was unfair because Iwas only taking one course and the rest
of them were taking you know,two or three pieces. But anyway,
oh, I loved it. Ijust loved it. You love the education
piece and learning learned what you werelearning about the whole scientific life. Yeah.
(31:00):
Yeah, Now, so you decided, then, after living this career,
that you know, you need totell this story about what it was
like for women in science. Butwhy did you feel that it was necessary
to tell this story to the generalpublic. Oh, you haven't heard the
next chapter. Okay. So yeah, so I was, you know,
(31:26):
I did. I did extremely wellin graduate school. It saved my life.
I met my now husband and we'vebeen married for sixty three years something
like that. He's a physician,he was finishing he was doing a residency
at the Harvard Medical School, andwe immediately fell in love. I got
(31:49):
a divorce and we got married.So, you know, the things were
looking really wonderful. And I dida post doc at a Harvard medical school
after I finished at Frandise, andso you know, everything was unkie dory
rosie. And we moved out toColorado, and again I was favored by
(32:14):
the guy who was head of thedepartment that I was in, and so
forth, and then the Denver Postwanted to interview me because I was a
woman in science, and so theydid, and as a result of that,
I was asked to investigate the womenat the medical school, and that
was my downfall. Were my afall? I don't know, And in
(32:37):
what way? What were you investigating? Well? What their salaries were?
How many there were in every department? Turns out there were, I forget
how many, to say, adozen departments, one woman in each department.
Of the departments that had women,most of them didn't. My department,
I was the only woman. Andthe salaries were terrible. Women weren't
(33:00):
getting promoted. The men were,uh, you know, going from assistant
professor to associate professor to professor.The women were stuck without There were only
like six of them that were onthe tenure track, and you know,
there were a couple of hundred menand so forth. And so I sent
a memo to the dean. Ihad another woman who was working with me.
(33:22):
She was a She was a inthe pathology department, and she was
an empty now as a PhD.And we worked together to investigate the women.
And I sent a memo to thedean, thinking naive, naive,
fleet that he that he would thinkand that the rest of his committee would
(33:45):
think, Oh, we didn't knowwe were treating the women so badly.
We'll take care of that immediately.They took care of that immediately. I
was going into my chairman's office andhe said, you're not going to get
tenure. Get out. Well,well, how do you know there?
(34:05):
What's the what is it within youthat says, well, tomorrow, I'm
going to go back to work.Given this situation, like, how do
you how did you push yourself forward? No, that's a really good question.
I'm not sure how I can answerthat. I just don't. I
don't give up. And I reallyloved science. I love doing research.
(34:31):
I do it today. If Ihad any any nothing but noodles left in
my brain. Okay, So itwas really the love of the field and
the joy of the satisfaction of theresearch that you said, Yeah, just
designing experiments I had, you know, I had people working for me and
(34:52):
so forth. But I really reallyloved doing the experiments myself. I did
a really good job. I'm I'vegot a very good pair of hands.
Yeah, that's awesome. I suspect. Then moving forward, after that took
place, did you stay in thatjob for the rest of your career?
Did you eventually? Oh? No, because I was fired. You know,
(35:14):
I mean, you're not going toget tenured, so you've got to
leave. And things weren't going verywell for my husband either in the department
of surgery. So it was easyto move because he was very desirable Harvard
Medical School, graduate surgery and soforth, and so he wasn't Things weren't
(35:37):
good for him at Colorado. Sohe got an offer in Saint Louis,
who went to Washington University, andthey managed to find a place for me.
And now I'm in the radiology department. And there were five other guys,
all guys in the radiology department.And as soon as I got in
there, it was very plain tosee that the department was split, and
(36:02):
there were two guys, the headof the head of the group and his
friend, and then there were threeguys who were I didn't like the way
things were going, and unfortunately Iput my barend with the three renegades,
(36:23):
which you seem to be tending todo well. I didn't like the way
the boss was dictating things. Soyeah, and so I crossed him and
again got golden. You're not goingto get tenure. But things are really
(36:45):
bad for my husband. Also,not not his his doing, but the
chairman of surgery was really off therails and there was a woman who she
was kind of an administrative assistant orsomething like that. She had her own
(37:06):
dog lab, you know, desurgeons like to operate on dogs to test
out procedures and so forth, andshe had her own dog farm, and
so she was stealing food from themedical school to feed her dogs, and
then she sold the dogs back tothe medical school and she finally got caught
(37:28):
and the chairman was backing her up, and so he was in hot water
also, so you know, thingswere really not going well, and it
seemed like a good idea to getout of there. And George got an
offer at Marshall University Medical School tobe the associate dean and the chairman of
(37:52):
surgery in Huntington, West Virginia.And it was the new medical school that
was being started and affiliated with theVeterans Administration Hospital and it's and I was
going to be in the biochemistry department, and I was really excited about that
because I'm a basic scientist and I'myou know, I was being in a
(38:14):
in a radiology department and that Iwould rather be in a biochemistry department.
So we moved to Huntington, WestVirginia, and I did okay. You
know, I had a chairman inbiochemistry who made fun of me every time
I walked in the room because yousay, oh, here's Lenie. Uh,
(38:37):
she's a woman. She can tellus. What wouldn't get away with
that today? I hope not right. So I was, but I was
doing well otherwise. But poor George, I mean he was and the surgeons
in town just loved him. Hehad he had turned them in to academicians
(39:00):
as well as as well as surgeons, and he had a wonderful department.
But there was this dean who wasstealing, actually, we found out later,
stealing the money from the department ofsurgery, because the only department that
was really making money. And itwould have if he'd been upfront about it,
(39:22):
it would have been okay, Butthey were. They were cooking the
books. And the next the guythat was the dean left after we left
and George went back to give somelectures or something like that, and the
new chairman of surgery said, sureenough, the dean was stealing from surgery
(39:44):
so that he could pay the restof the department. You know, it
wasn't a bad thing for him todo, but he had to be upfront.
About it, and he wasn't themedical school politics for you. So
we moved to New Jersey and alot of it adaptations here. Yeah,
right, and well things didn't gowell right at the beginning, but they
(40:08):
eventually were okay. And uh oh, I saw a guy fabricating data.
I couldn't accept that, and soI reported it and we had a campus
(40:30):
committee on Research Integrity and they reviewedmy evidence and they thought, well,
they ruled against me. They thoughtI was, you know, some uppity
woman or something like that, andso I lost that. Well, I
don't give up. So I appealedto the NIH the oor I, the
(40:58):
Office of Reacharch Research Integrity. Thewoman there who was on my case,
she believed in me, and shebelieved in what I was finding. And
we were finding new data all thetime all along here, and so she
was supporting me. But then shepresented it to her committee and they turned
it down. And so I wentback to the campus Committee on Research Integrity
(41:22):
with new information that I had gotten, and again I got slammed in the
face. Three times. I wentto them twice. I went to the
RI and lost every single time.But and then there's a court case called
(41:44):
que tam q U, I ta M. And that is I am
a relater, and I am accusingsomebody else, my actual colleague and his
postdoctoral uh, of fabricating data,of of false false information that had been
(42:07):
supported by the government. And soI had a lawsuit, and I had
a wonderful lawyer who definitely was onmy side, and we and we accumulated
more and more and more data againstthis guy. I think his boss was
(42:31):
looking the other way because he didn'twant to believe that his postdoctor was fabricating
data. But I have, youknow, miles of of information of the
falsification of data. And that wasmy first book, UH, Hidden Data,
(42:52):
The Blind Eye of Science. Ilost everybody. I mean I never
I never want to want anything exceptmy own integrity. Yeah, exactly,
You're on. You stood up forit. Seemed like everywhere you went there
was somebody doing something just a littlebit underhanded or unethical, and you recognized
(43:14):
it. And in each instance yousaid, all right, while I'm out
and you went somewhere else, andthen what happened again? Right? And
uh, and there you are.What what are you supposed to do about
that? Everywhere you went? Writea book? So you write a book
about it, that's right, calledThe Crime Window Memoirs of Women and Science
(43:37):
Elena Hill, PhD. Right,you're telling the story that people need to
hear for on the one hand,on the mail side, like come on,
guys, like smart enough, being, operate with integrity, operate with
(43:58):
fairness, yes, be honest,And to the women, keep persevering because
you're going to run into these clownsalong the way, and hopefully there's few
of them. Maybe you'd have acomment on that if there's few of them
now than there was in those days. But keep pushing forward because everywhere you
went, even though you ran intomore obstacles, you still found a certain
(44:19):
degree of success, and you didend up having a long and seemingly happy
career. On ninety five. Youknow, I've lived that long, and
I hope I make it to onehundred. I don't know, hope so
too. And you've had a lotof a happy You probably had a lot
of successful moments in your career,scientific successes as well. Well. It
isn't called the crime Window for nothing. So if you're devoting your life to
(44:51):
science and to your job and soforth, something's got to do, and
it did, and that's why it'scalled window. And I don't I don't
tell what the crime window is allabout. And I'm not going to tell,
Yeah that because that remains your personalstory that is just for you.
(45:14):
Mm hmm. That that is.So it's really then could serve as inspirational
two young girls in pursuit of ascience career, right, I would,
I would hope, So, Ireally would hope. So I really I
(45:34):
really identify with with girls who wantto get ahead, and you know,
and the societies that I belong toand so forth, there were always women
who would come and talk to youand ask for your help and so forth,
and I have to keep encouraging them. Of course, things things I
(45:59):
think overall are a whole lot better. In medical school, I think there
are more women than men uh asmedical students. I think that's just wonderful.
I'm really really happy about that.So, you know, I mean
the world will change mm hmm.If you walked into a high school today,
(46:22):
if you walked into a high schoolclassroom, what would be the words
you'd say to the girls in theirin theirs, their pursuit of education and
perhaps sciences you have follow. Yeah, you can put Yeah, and even
(46:45):
if you're going to run into obstacles, the takeaway is keep pushing and and
get stronger with each situation, right, yeah, yeah, don't ever give
up. Uh huh, which iswhat you did, isn't it. Uh?
And and then now as you asyou approached the end of your working
(47:07):
career, it's all over. It'sover, I mean eventually. So at
what point did did you say,Okay, it's time to hang up the
lab jacket and put down the testtube racre. I retired on December thirty
(47:28):
first of twenty sixteen. Well,that's not that long ago, that's right.
You worked, You worked well pastsixty five. Oh yeah, I'm
ninety five. No, yeah,A lot of people are saying I've done
at sixty But you kept going.Is it because you just continued to love
it that you kept working? Itwas it was that as well as still
(47:52):
wanting to win, wanting to havesome say. But you know, I
just couldn't. I couldn't go onworking anymore. I really couldn't. I'm
just too old. You forget wellby And by twenty sixteen, did you
feel that you had a sense ofvictory? That's a good question. I
(48:20):
don't feel now that I have asense of victory. I just feel that
my story is one that has tobe told. M It has to be
that you never never give up.Yeah, this is a message that has
to get out to the girls enteringa field of science now right. And
(48:44):
the message, as I was sayingearlier, has to go to anyone in
authoritative positions to treat people with respectand honor them for what they're capable of
doing, not or not for genderor ethnic background, but for the just
(49:04):
the qualities that the person brings tothe table. But you know what I
really want to see, I thinkthe system of grants, the competition for
grants, I think that is justwrong. You spend you know, you
(49:24):
break your back writing grant applications andnot getting the grants. And you know,
the lucky people or the really smartpeople, they get grants, but
the little people they don't get grants. And I think everybody should have given
a small pot of or maybe amedium sized pot for them to do research
(49:47):
so that they don't have to bebreaking their necks to be in this awful
competition for grants. I think thatthat is just killing science. I think
that my colleague at the New JerseyMedical School, who I don't think he
ever made updated himself, but hispostdoc was doing it for him, and
(50:13):
he had to know that that washappening. I don't think. I don't
think he would have had to dothat if he didn't have to be in
this war against everybody else who wastrying to get grants. He's almost driven
to it. Yeah, I thinkso mm hm that that would be my
(50:35):
message. For my real message andwhat I'm saying is that we have to
change the system. Everybody should havean opportunity to do the research that they
want to do. They shouldn't haveto compete with everybody else who sits on
the grant committees. Oh that theyhave study sections in each area has a
(51:00):
study section, so there's several difference. In my field as radiology, there
are several study sections for radiation research, and so you send in your application
and your application is maybe one ofI don't know, fifty something like that,
and maybe only ten of them aregoing to get funded. Well,
(51:21):
I think probably most of them shouldget some money so that they can go
on working. And then if youdon't get grants in medical schools like the
New Jersey Medical School. If youdon't get a grant, you're not going
to get tenure. If you don'tget tenure, you're going to lose your
job. Then you know, whatare you going to do? You're going
(51:45):
to give up and go teach inhigh school, which actually one of my
friends has done that, and she'sa wonderful teacher. She's a wonderful teacher,
so her students are lucky. Yeah. I mean, the strength of
a teacher in a junior high schoolscience classroom is so important because it's them
(52:09):
who are going to inspire kids towant to stay in science. That's right.
I mean when I walk into ascience classroom, in a great nine
science classroom, I've got to thinkall the time about where is the most
interesting and fascinating research, What arethe global issues that people are grappling with,
and what are the inspirational people whoare doing interesting things that kids are
(52:30):
gonna go Wow, Can I getinvolved in that somehow? Yeah? You
just stick around school a little bitlonger and get into the sciences, study
your math and get your physics andyour chemistry and go on and do great
things. That inspiration at the juniorlevels is so important. In fact,
I see it often in schools whereas teachers get more seniority, they then
(52:51):
want to take just the senior courses. But those are the teachers with the
great experiences that need to be doingthe junior sciences. Oh yeah, yeah
right. Well, my greatest inspirationwas that that math teacher in uh in
day school, the one that threwaway the textbook yes right, and innovated,
(53:13):
yes, created lessons that they thoughtthat she thought the students, that
students would be inspired by or motivatedby. I think I turn some students
off because they were frightened by it. But the but the really good students.
So it was a challenge. EvenAlbert Einstein hated school until his grade
(53:37):
twelve year when he switched schools toa more free thinking school where they're allowed
to sort of create and innovate,and finally he liked school. Uh huh,
you know why is that? Whyis it people have these stories that
when I'm allowed to think on myown and create on my own and be
inspired by an interesting story, thatall of a sudden, I like school.
Mmhmm. You have a story likethat. Albert Einstein has a story
(54:00):
like that. You see it allthe time. Yeah, I think so.
Do you have one book that's publishedalready. The first one is called
Hidden Data The Blind Eye of Science. And I take this this postdoc carrying
(54:23):
out eight experiments and everything, everysingle one of them has some statistical problems.
But if you add up all ofhis data, the probability that everything
is the numbers are supposed to berandom. These are using a counting machine
(54:46):
called a coulter, and cells passedthrough an orifice and they create a block,
and the electrical signals going across theorifice, and it's like the thing
that counts the gas that's going intoyour car, and the last digits don't
(55:09):
matter, so they're going to berandom. The probability that his stuff was
random is two point three times tenof the minus thirty eight. Everyone else
in the lab the probability that doingthe same thing, doing the same experiment,
their probability was one. And therewas an outside lab that donated numbers
(55:30):
to me, and their probability waspoint two. So we have two point
three times ten of the minus thirtyeight versus one. Yeah, not a
comparison. Yeah, nobody fabricated data. Yeah right, he fabricated That's what
he did very interesting and he gotaway with it, but no one would
(55:53):
believe it. It's really something,and you wouldn't. You wouldn't let that
go. You wouldn't know that.That wouldn't be good science. Truth.
Truth to me is really really important. Yeah. Absolutely. And then the
(56:13):
second one is the memoir that you'rejust working on right now, right you're
not quite finished or yeah, CryingWindow? Is that one available on Amazon
as well? Or not quite yet? No, it hasn't been published yet.
I actually have a coach who's helpingme get it published, and actually
(56:36):
i'm talking to you tonight as aresult of his requirement that I start getting
podcasts and interviews and stuff like thatso that I can get an agent.
Yeah, it's a wonderful. Hereally is incredible. You're on the book
(56:58):
tour now, getting just and you'rethe first one. Hopefully I'm not the
last. You know, there's alot of people with bigger audiences than me,
but this is a starting point.I would love to talk to you.
Are there students that are listening tothis? Well, there likely are.
I mean it's one of those thingswith podcasting, I don't necessarily know
(57:20):
who all listens. If someone's listeningto this and wants to, you know,
email me or message me and say, hey, I really enjoy that
conversation with Helena Hill. Please doso. But you know, like podcasting
is a passive sport, but it'sone that I think everybody should be taking
part in because there's just so muchinformation to be had on any and every
(57:43):
topic, and so ours is kindof along the lines of science education,
and we're trying to inspire teachers withour conversation, who then will in turn
hopefully inspire their students and in thiscase, encourage their young girls in class
to to stay in the science isThere is a career to be had.
It's a rewarding career. It's afun career. There's excitement and challenge,
(58:07):
and but there may well be obstacles. In spite of all the bad things
that I've had to tell you about, one thing that we got to do
is we went to meetings. AndI was a member of the American Society
for Photobiology, and that was justthe most wonderful group of people and I
(58:30):
had so many good friends there.I was the secretary of that society for
six years, and you know,that was just one of the greatest pleasures
is the interactions that you have withwith colleagues and the fun things that you
do when you go to meetings andso forth. That was that was a
benefit that I had never anticipated whenI first decided to, you know,
(58:53):
keep on going with science. Well, even in my experience at university,
I recall this. Some of myfavorite times were during the lab, the
experiments. You know, you wouldtake the time to wash your glassware and
you'd be talking with the people aroundyou. Maybe you hear across the lab
somebody dropped an early fire flask.Oh no, you're not going to take
(59:15):
mine, minor, and you knowthat you can. Or then then you
get your experiments set up and it'srunning, and now you have time to
stand around and talk with this person. And so the lab experience was a
very social time where we're coming ohyeah, yeah, right, I love
I love doing the lab work.Was mm hmm. Well, I have
to say, Helena, thank youvery much for this conversation, and best
(59:37):
of luck with your book that you'vealready published, the one that you're now
working on, and that your publicistis forcing you into these podcast situations.
I hope you enjoy those opportunities andget onto some really good conversations on these
podcasts. It's a fun thing todo, it really is. Yeah.
Right, I'm looking forward to thenext one. Yeah. You connect with
(59:57):
people at different parts of the countryand it's a good experience part of the
world. I have one coming up. The person that I'm going to be
talking to is in Singapore, oh, for twelve hours twelve hours different,
So she's coming on at six amand I'm going on at six pm or
something like that. Now you're apublished author and you're gonna be wanted worldwide.
(01:00:22):
That's good, right, And it'sa good story to get out two
people. Inspires everybody the better behaviorand to a better pursuit of knowledge.
So I think it's a great thingyou're doing well. Science has to be
true. Doing things honestly and correctlyis so important. Yeah. And oh
(01:00:43):
you, oh you you're interested inthe stars and all of that. Remember
the rocket that got sent off andthat they had done the calculations and interest
and meet or something like that insteadof meters, So it went off in
the wrong direction, disappeared into thenight. The reason why it went off
(01:01:06):
was that we're using the wrong metric. But that was completely a scientific error.
A lack of understanding of units ofmeasurement. Yeah, happens. I
mean it's important that we get ourscience education, that's for sure. So
well, thanks again Helena for beingwith me today and best wishes for all
that you do with your books.Well, thank you so much for interviewing
(01:01:29):
me. I just wanted to followup and say thank you for listening to
this great story the life and timesof Helena Hill and all the sort of
ridiculous things that she had to putup with as a female scientist during her
time working in universities across the US. But what a great story of resilience
and perseverance, certainly at a timewhen many would have given up and said
(01:01:53):
forget it, I'm out. Theworking environment is just against me, is
too many obstacles, there's unfair treatmentof women. So fine, I'm done.
But is it it sort of refreshingto see at a time when probably
(01:02:15):
discrimination was at its peak, HelenaHill persevered and continued on and fought back.
And it should be you know,rewarded or honored for that that legacy.
So thanks Helena for what really isa very great and inspirational story.
(01:02:36):
Let's encourage our female students in ourscience classes to pursue sciences, to stay
in the field, to take thehigh level math and the high level sciences,
the physics and the chemistry, theAP courses, the IB courses,
and take the roles in, youknow, in the science field and become
(01:03:00):
leaders that they are. And let'ssee if we can swing the balance from
a sort of a male dominated fieldto one that's more balanced. And by
the way, the story of therocket that Helena was talking about, I
actually had to look it up.It was nineteen ninety nine, the Mars
(01:03:21):
Climate Orbiter. It was built byLockheed Martin but operated by the Jet Propulsion
Lab, which is, you know, one's a private rocket construction company and
the other is a NASA funded teamof scientists. And anything that's in space
is generally operated and managed once isin the air and in space by the
(01:03:43):
Jet Propulsion Lab. And the JetPropulsion Lab worked in metric and for some
reason, Lockheed Martin built it inImperial and it had to do with the
thrust of the engines and because ofthe discrepancy in units. When the Mars
Climate Orbiter finally arrived at Mars,it came in at the wrong angle and
(01:04:06):
skipped off of the atmosphere, theupper atmosphere of Mars and was lost.
And that was that. So kindof oops. By the way, that
particular event was never pegged, youknow, one person's fault. It was
a systemic error, and since thenthey've cleaned up their you know, their
(01:04:30):
use of measurements and their communication betweendepartments. So all is well, that
ends well, but you know,lesson learned. Thanks again for listening everybody.
I hope you enjoyed this message andwe'll bring it to your classes and
we'll talk to you soon on thenext episode. Until then, have a
great day.
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