The Woman Chemist as Professors Wife

In the socially restricted world of academic research, university-educated women tended to marry university-educated men — particularly their supervisors or colleagues. Such a fate was mourned by Flora Garry, a graduate of the University of 

Aberdeen, in her poem, The Professor s Wife, in which the final stanza of the poem reads  

A small, but slowly increasing number of these women continued with their research after marriage, joining the ranks of the academic couples. 25 However, the women usually found themselves given secondary status and were overshadowed by their male partners. The writer Sharon McGrayne has commented on the prevalence of the spousal problem  

The academic countryside was littered with scientific couples studying botany, genetics, chemistry, and other sciences. Professor husbands and their low-ranking, low-paid [or unpaid] wives often worked together for decades. .. the women were generally low-level instructors, lecturers, or research 

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