She had invited Victor too, but he had responded with a breezy postcard: “Congratulations, college graduate! Would love to see you at Hancock, but we’re working on a coast-to-coast flight. We’re aiming for the sky, both of us, Emma. Fondly, Vic.” It was not a surprise, but it stung a little. Where was Victor now? Happily flying in the clouds in a noisy aeroplane? In some woman’s bed?
Hannah and Piet Oosterfeld surprised Emma by accepting her invitation. They closed their grocery store for three days and came by train to Hancock. Emma greeted them at the station, more warmly than she would have greeted her parents. In a way, they had become her parents, glowing with pride, gamely walking all over the campus as Emma excitedly showed them every building and insisted on a tour of the biology lab and introducing them to Dr. Weatherbee, who was gracious and slightly regal.
On the day of graduation ceremonies they sat in the audience smiling when she marched in black robe and cap with the small band of graduates to the stage. On her white blouse beneath the robe, Emma wore a pin bearing a coiled golden snake with a minuscule ruby eye mounted on a shield embossed with three capital Greek betas. She had been elected to the Beta Beta Beta national honorary society for biologists and surrendered to the sin of pride by wearing it. Most astonishing of all, the Oosterfled’s graduation gift to Emma was the forgiveness of her college loans, nearly five hundred dollars! Emma had pleaded with them not to be so generous, then wept with gratitude, exacting a promise that they not tell her parents, who she knew would be humiliated if they learned of the gift.
Then followed Emma’s two years as a biology and Latin teacher at a high school not far from Hancock. She had been admitted to Cornell University and even was awarded a tuition waiver, but she had to earn the cost of her transportation to Ithaca, room and board, books, and—as she was about to learn—graduate students were required to pay all of the research expenses incurred while working on their doctoral theses.
She persuaded the university to delay admission until she could afford to begin post-graduate studies. Emma heard that Mr. Witherspoon had retired from Stanton Mills High School because of health problems. She hoped for the opportunity to return to her hometown and to be near her family. The Oosterfelds invited her to live with them and work in their store as she had from 1912 to 1916, but the principal, Mr. Ramsey, who had the memory of an elephant for their disagreement about Emma’s valedictory address, refused to even consider her application for the position.
When Emma announced her decision to accept a teaching position far from home, Mama fretted. “You are turning your back on your family, Emma. Couldn’t you find a job closer to home?”
“Mama, I have to take a job where I can find one. Why is it so terrible for me to leave home and make my own way? Kristin did it.”
“That’s different. She got married. She has to go with her husband. Your place is with your family until you get married.”
The small town where Emma taught was close enough to Hancock College that she could spend some of her weekends and most of her summers working in Dr. Weatherbee’s tiny laboratory. She continued her studies of the perplexing genetics of paramecium. Why on earth did they need multiple nuclei, when other organisms managed their business of heredity with just one nucleus per cell?
She wasn’t able to solve that problem, but she did demonstrate that the number of micronuclei was correlated with nutritional conditions, which in turn determined how frequently the cells divided. Since it was generally agreed that the determinants of inheritance—genes, whatever they were—were carried in nuclei, her observations suggested that more copies of genes were needed to drive rapid cell division. Her paper on this work was published in the summer of 1924.
But they were lonely years. Was this to be the price of her single-minded pursuit of science?
SINGLE FEMALE STUDENTS at Cornell were required to live in women’s dormitories, although “single” and “female” were largely redundant terms because married women were not admitted, and those co-eds who married while in college were expected to drop out. As a graduate student Emma was allowed a single room, and she settled into an intense, but socially isolated routine. On the strength of her teaching experience and prior laboratory work she had been able to persuade the reluctant head of the Biology Department to award her an assistantship to teach freshman biology laboratory—mostly dissections. She intended to introduce work with microbes in the future if the objections of the faculty could be overcome.
The assistantship greatly relieved Emma’s financial worries, but when her teaching duties were added to her heavy load of advanced biology courses, little free time remained to her. She was regarded as an oddity by the other women in her dorm, not only because she worked so hard and was so professionally ambitious, but because she was a few years older and she came from a rural Midwestern background.
Nearly all the women—girls, really—were undergraduates from northeastern cities and towns who were much more interested in Cornell’s lively social scene and finding a husband than in their studies. A few planned to become teachers, but Emma’s determination to become a college professor and research scientist struck them as unrealistic and absurd.
“I wouldn’t want to spend my life cutting up frogs and staring into a microscope,” one co-ed scoffed.
“You’ll scare off all the boys and end up an old maid,” another giggled. “You’re already twenty-four.”
Emma shrugged it off. The last thing she needed just now was a husband, who would surely expect her to cook, keep house, and do his laundry, not to mention begin having babies. Good God, no.
What she did long for, if she allowed her mind to dwell on it, was a boyfriend, a man who would understand and support her goals in life the way Henrik had before the Great War destroyed his spirit, a man who would offer affectionate companionship and gratification of the physical desires Victor had awakened. Perhaps one such might be found among her fellow graduate students, but the prospects so far had not been promising. The men either failed to take her seriously or seemed put off by her obvious intelligence and outspoken questions. What they respected among themselves they saw as odd and slightly repellent in a woman.
An exception to the undergraduate women who struck Emma as superficial was Rosa Levin, a young woman to whom she was drawn because of her seriousness, passion, and obvious intelligence. They were an unlikely pair of friends because they had so little in common.
Rosa was the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Russia and had lived all her life in Brooklyn—which Emma had to be told was part of New York City—before coming to Cornell. She had never been on a farm and admitted that she found upstate New York to be dull and empty. Emma was tall, fair and blonde; Rosa was small and dark with hair like reddish black sheep’s wool. Her speech was strangely accented and nasal with th’s elided to d’s and oddly distorted vowels. Furthermore, she had no interest in science.
Rosa was majoring in history and economics, but her true passion was political philosophy. She was an outspoken Marxist-Leninist and keen to persuade Emma to adopt her point of view. Emma had little interest in politics beyond her youthful pacifism, which had been intensified by her revulsion at the aftermath of the Great War. Their discussions were lively, but seldom ended in agreement. They also enjoyed exploring the great differences in their prior lives. Emma preferred those conversations to their political debates.
“You’re a smart woman, Emma,” Rosa said one evening. “I just don’t see how you can devote all your mind and energy to your bugs and skeletons, and embryos and all that when there are great revolutionary changes sweeping over the world. The Bolshevik Revolution and the new Soviet Union are leading the way, can’t you see that?”
“No, I can’t. I’m against violence, and you keep saying that capitalist governments have to be overthrown by force—like in Russia.”
“They do. You don’t expect the capitalists to surrender power willingly do you?”
“Well, maybe in Russia where they h
ad to get rid of the czar and the nobility, but not here in America. We have a democracy. We can vote for changes if we need them.”
“Oh, you are so naïve about political power,” Rosa retorted. “Look, how about things you care about? You say you’re a pacifist. Don’t you see how the armaments manufacturers, the industrialists, the steel magnates, they all profit from war? And they control the politicians. You have to break that.”
“Hmmm.”
Rosa’s intensity glowed in her eyes. “And the farmers. You come from a farm family. I’ve read there’s a big depression on American farms.”
“There is. But that’s because demand was so great during the War, and they produced too much, so prices went down.”
“Hah! Don’t you know that the big meatpackers and stockyards conspire to keep prices down? The farmers have nowhere else to sell their produce. And the banks and the railroads, they all combine against the little farmers. In the Soviet Union the farmers are forming big collective farms, farms where everyone owns the land and shares in the labor and the crops.”
“Oh, Rosa, now you’re being naïve. You don’t know farmers like I do. They all want to own their own land and be their own boss. They’d never go for that. They’re not former serfs like in Russia. Have you ever even been on a farm?”
“Well, no. Maybe it would be interesting to visit your family’s farm some day.”
Emma flushed with embarrassment. Her family hardly knew how to react to her these days. What would they think of this radical city girl? What would Rosa think when she saw how primitive the farm was, that she had to go to an outhouse? No electricity, no running water, no central heat, the stink of the barn everywhere?
“Oh, I don’t think you’d find it very comfortable.”
Rosa’s boyfriend, Herschel Greenspan, occasionally joined them. Herschel shared Rosa’s left-wing opinions, but he was less passionate, more light humored. And—this was awkward—he fascinated Emma. Short and stocky, with dark curly hair, large blue eyes and a full mouth, he carried himself with confidence and a virile energy that attracted her almost involuntarily.
Herschel and Rosa broke into an argument in Yiddish one evening, and while Emma couldn’t understand what they were contending, she deduced from one or two glances toward her that Herschel’s flirtations with her were the cause. She decided to distance herself somewhat from them after that, which was easy to do because, in addition to her teaching and coursework, she had decided to join Professor Hutchison’s laboratory as a research student.
CHAPTER 8
1925
MORE IMPORTANT TO Emma than her friendship with Rosa Levin was the friendship she formed during her first year at Cornell with Barbara McClintock, although perhaps it couldn’t be called a friendship—Barbara was too solitary and preoccupied for that. When Professor Hutchison learned of her interest in genetics, he suggested that Emma should talk to Barbara.
“She’s very, very bright,” he said, “but a bit eccentric, can be short with people. Don’t be put off.”
“Oh, Barbara McClintock,” a grad student said when Emma asked about her. “She’s the one that wears pants like a man.”
Although she was two years younger than Emma, Barbara had already graduated from Cornell two years ago and was well into her Ph.D. research. Emma wondered whether she had been advised to seek out Barbara because of her scientific ability or because she was the only other female graduate student in genetics. She fought feelings of intimidation as she approached the corner of the lab where she found Barbara peering intently into a microscope, and she stood quietly waiting for her to look up. When she did so, Emma was confronted with a small young woman with intense brown eyes behind round dark-rimmed glasses. Her dark hair had been cut unfashionably short.
“Yes, may I help you?”
“Excuse me. Miss McClintock?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt your work. I’m Emma Hansen, a new grad student. I’m interested in genetics, and Professor Hutichson . . .”
“ . . . told you to talk to me.”
“Yes. If you don’t mind.”
“What sort of genetics are you interested in?”
“Well, I’m not sure yet. I did some work with paramecium at . . . my undergraduate school.”
“Hmmm. Paramecium. Not much to work with there. Look, I can’t tell you what to work on, but I can tell you what I’m excited about and what I think are some important questions.”
“I’ve heard that you work on corn genetics . . . uh, maize.”
“Yes, a lot has been done with the genetics of maize already. A lot to build on. What I’m trying to do is identify the chromosomes of maize by specific staining, so genetic markers can be mapped to linkage groups on specific chromosomes, the way Morgan is doing with the fruit fly Drosophila. Are you familiar with Morgan’s work?”
“Um, yes, somewhat.”
“Well, read his papers. Study them until you understand them completely.”
“I will.”
Barbara’s eyes shone, and for the first time since Emma had approached her, she smiled. “What I’m doing is called cytogenetics. I’ve been working out modifications of Belling’s method with carmine dye to stain the maize chromosomes. See, maize has ten chromosomes, and in metaphase they have distinctive sizes and shapes. I’m getting the staining good enough to tell reproducibly which is which. Once you can do that, you can begin to observe crossing over and map some of the genetic markers that are already known. The plant breeders out in the field don’t yet understand why that’s important, but they will. They will.”
Emma was silent, awed by Barbara’s intensity and unwilling to admit that she didn’t understand why her work was important either.
“Maize is a good choice for study,” Barbara continued. “Look here.”
She pulled a dried ear of corn from the shelf above her workbench. The ear carried neat rows of mature kernels, but unlike the field corn that Emma had seen at home, the kernels were not all yellow; they were a mosaic of colors: red, blue, yellow, and white.
“You see this single ear of corn is a whole collection of genetic crosses. When a pollen cell fertilizes each kernel embryo, the kernel expresses the phenotype of the resultant cross. Each kernel is a different cross. And the color of the kernel is far from the only phenotype one can observe. You have to look at the plants for most of those. And, of course, you have to do the crosses out in the field. I can show you next summer, if you like.” She shrugged. “You’ve probably been told that I wear pants. But that’s when I go out into the fields—practical, don’t you agree?”
“Of course. I grew up on a farm, Miss McClintock.”
“Barbara, please.” She turned the ear of corn over and over. “See these kernels with streaks of different colors in them? Each kernel results from a single cross when a pollen grain contacts the silk and fertilizes the embryo. Why don’t all of the cells in a given kernel express the same phenotype? There’s something interesting going on there. I want to understand that.”
“I’m still trying to decide whether I want to work with . . . maize. I really liked working with paramecium because they’re so easy to grow and reproduce so fast. Practical, you know, if you have to work in some small college, as I will probably have to.”
“Cornell is a wonderful place for maize genetics. Maybe you should start with that, then switch systems later.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Come back and talk to me when you decide. A bit of advice, though. Don’t bother with a Master’s. Just go straight for the Ph.D. They’ll take you more seriously that way. But you’ll have to take it in botany or biology, because women aren’t accepted into the genetics program.”
“I wanted to ask you about that. Has it . . . been . . . more difficult for you because you’re a woman? Some faculty and students have been, well, hostile.”
“Oh, you just have to overcome that. Cornell is pretty good that way. If you’re smart and you d
o good work, there are people who will listen to you.”
“Not a problem, then?”
“I wouldn’t quite say that. Look, my mother didn’t want me to go to college. She was afraid no one would want to marry me if I did. Fortunately, my father came home from the War and persuaded her. You just have to do what you love and work, work, work.”
“You don’t think about getting married, then?”
“No. Don’t see the need for it. Marry your work. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to look at the rest of these chromosome smears.”
EMMA REFLECTED ON her conversation with Barbara McClintock. It had frightened her. Did she have Barbara’s high intelligence and single-mindedness, her capacity to focus so acutely on her experimental work, her confidence that she was on a productive line of research? Could she earn the respect of her professors as Barbara had? She certainly had not acquired Barbara’s intimidating mastery of genetics.
And “marry your work”? Was that the price of success for women in science? Was she willing to pay that price? It seemed that her mentor at Hancock College, Professor Weatherbee, had. But perhaps she had never been interested in marrying, as Barbara did not seem to be. Probably Emma was willing to forego marriage, but she longed for the intimate companionship of a man who understood and supported her scientific ambitions. The chances of finding such a man did not seem good.
PROFESSOR SUMNER BENT over the large beaker of cloudy fluid, which was suspended in a water bath, withdrew a thermometer, tilted it to read the temperature, then added a couple of ice cubes to the water bath.
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