A Contrast in Women Organic Chemists

For much of their later lives, the organic chemists Robert Robinson48 of Oxford and Christopher Ingold49 of UCL were in professional competition. The dispute, and the resulting enmity between them, has been described elsewhere50 what is usually overlooked is that they each had a wife who continued research after marriage. 

however, faced the common problem for married women chemists at the time that of being perceived as appendages of their husbands with no opportunity or expectation of an independent scientific career. It was their shared love of organic chemistry that allowed them to spend countless hours at the research bench, unpaid for their efforts, while each raising a family. 

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