Women Analytical Chemists

Analytical chemistry was an area favoured by some women chemists during the interwar period. In fact, a remarkable number of women chemists who graduated from UL chose this direction. We have chosen three individuals to exemplify this Dorothy Baylis, Muriel Roberts, and Gertrude Andrew. 

Whereas Baylis led a peripatetic life, Muriel Roberts45 remained in one position for most of her career. Roberts was bom in 1894 and completed her B.Sc. at UL in 1915. She became a member of the Society for Chemical Industry in 1924 and of the Analytical Society in 1931. Her name appears as Senior Analyst of the Liverpool City Corporation in 1932, and she still held this post at her retirement. She died on 29 June 1985, aged 91 years. 

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Rosalyn Yalow, coinventor with Solomon Berson of the sensitive radioimmunoassay analytical procedure used in medicine and biology, passed away during the writing of this book. In 1977, she became only the second woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Berson should have shared that prize, but he died in 1972 and the prize is not awarded posthumously. Radioimmunoassay is an example of a tremendously important contribution to chemical analysis made by someone other than an analytical chemist. ... 

I was the chemist in the department, we had a center grant, and I was part of the investigators in the center grant as the director of the Core Facility for Analytical Chemistry. But I was not in the tenure track, and it is difficult for a woman in one of these universities to get in the tenure track. If you are a chemist in a department of a medical school it is even more difficult. 

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