“Firsts”:ten women who changed environmental sciences

The contribution of women in the various fields of scientific and humanistic studies occupies an important part of public discourse through conferences, meetings and publications.The book should be placed in the context of this debate First.Ten scientists for the environment, published by Codice and edited by Mirella Orsi and Sergio Ferraris.Orsi is a chemist and expert in scientific dissemination, while Ferraris is a journalist specializing in science and technology.Enriched by a preface by Maurizio Melis, this overview of the main scientific discoveries made by women spans the entire modern and contemporary era.

The story of the ten scientists is entrusted to as many narrators with a scientific background, an absolutely equal number between women and men.This is a selection, as the editors underline in the preface, as the list of female scientists who have contributed to the development of human knowledge in the scientific field is naturally much longer.The selection followed a common criterion, namely how the discoveries of these scientists had a fundamental impact on environmentalism and ecology.True pioneers, forgotten or variously devalued, despite the attention that their discoveries had attracted from institutional science - that is, that led by male scientists included in academic circuits - today deserve to be recognized, and their stories told also to example title.As they are destined for oblivion, they are not studied in school books, nor do we know their stories, implications and even personal events, as instead happens with the lives of great scientists.

It is therefore a series of portraits sometimes taken from very deficient sources, as is the case of Maria Sibylla Merian - told by Giorgia Marino, journalist specializing in ecology and the environment - whose passionate research in the field of entomology demonstrates an approach which could be defined as ecological, although, as the author underlines, the birth of ecology as a science is traditionally dated to 1799 with Von Humboldt's departure for South America.The portrait instead sees the Swiss naturalized Dutch scientist dedicating herself since the second half of the seventeenth century to experiments that laid the foundations of the ecological mentality, and which for various reasons had already ended up forgotten in the nineteenth century.As Marino reminds us, the ecological approach to the study of nature is today at the center of academic interest.To this we could add that the same posture is currently also adopted in the vast field of human sciences, demonstrating how Merian's research can be useful today for understanding a world that seems to be slipping out of our hands.

The story of Jeanne Baret – told by the journalist and science communicator Giorgia Burzachechi – is particularly touching.Born in Burgundy, a forerunner in the study of botany, Baret developed a particular interest in the cultivation and properties of herbs.After moving to the Paris of LouisThat feat forced Baret to disguise herself as a man and try to go unnoticed by the crew following the Bouganville.As you can imagine, the story had dramatic implications;and yet, during this journey adventurous beyond all possible imagination, the French peasant, who left with the naturalist officially to take care of him, but in reality carrying out all the research work, discovered the plant that today adorns our summer terraces, especially in the seaside resort:there bougainvillea, so named in homage to the commander of the expedition.

Even the life of Eunice Newton Foote, told by Mirella Orsi, curator of the collection, tells us a lot about the conditions in which women scientists still worked in the second half of the nineteenth century.One of his studies dedicated to the heat of the sun was published in the prestigious scientific journal The American journal of science and arts in 1856.In the study, the scientist summarized eight months of research, spent examining the gases that make up the atmosphere and comparing them with ordinary air.To date, it is the first known publication by a woman in the field of physics.Cited in various places for a couple of years, it then fell into obscurity when, in 1859, the Irish physicist John Tyndall published his study that underpinned our knowledge of what we now call greenhouse gases.Within three years, Eunice Newton Foote was forgotten and her contribution was lost in the depths of the archives, only to be recovered recently.Newton Foote's story is exemplary of how the relevance of a research project is assessed based on means, social position and links with institutional academia, long reserved exclusively for men.

The fourth essay, by the journalist and environmentalist Davide Mazzocco, is dedicated to a character whose role in the history of ecology was of enormous importance:This is Rachel Carson, author of a masterful work, Silent spring, which kicked off the environmentalist struggles of the 1960s.Recently republished in Italy by Feltrinelli, Carson's study marked one of the great seasons of struggle against insecticides.The case of Rachel Carson differs from those previously illustrated, since the scientist was hired as a marine biologist by the American government, and her research attracted the interest of one of the most important American publishers, Simon & Schuster, who suggested her to transform one of her articles into book.

Scientific writing is therefore part of the professional life of the scientist, whose work was soon recognized as authoritative.The mammoth research work carried out by Carson between the 1950s and 1960s on contamination by pesticides and herbicides made his publication a milestone in the history of environmentalism.Of course, Carson paid the price for the extraordinary nature of her research when chemical companies unleashed a smear campaign against her, duly accusing her of being "a hysteric."Anyone who knows the history of women knows that the most common accusation leveled at the most revolutionary female figures is hysteria, together with a general agreement on the fact that women are ultimately affected by a natural inability to manage their emotions.Described by the then Minister of Agriculture as a "childless spinster" and probable communist, Carson gained greater popularity precisely because she was attacked in a particularly virulent way, but fortunately her book enjoyed the support of President Kennedy.

The chapter dedicated by Paola Bolaffio, a journalist expert in sustainable development, to the Hungarian chemist Mária Telkes is no less exciting.Naturalized American in 1937, Telkes was hired in the most important research center in the United States, MIT in Boston, an usually all-male environment, to collaborate with the Solar Energy Conversion Project, a large research project on solar energy.In 1950 we find her, with three other women out of ninety-eight speakers, at a symposium dedicated to heating with solar energy, where she presents her project for a house entirely heated by the sun.Despite the difficulties of his project, due to differences of views in the scientific environment in which he operated, Telkes' technologies for solar heating and ventilation are still used today.

Oceanography is currently a discipline of fundamental importance in protecting the environment, but few know that a legendary pioneer of the study of the ocean floor was Sylvia Earle, to whom Ivan Manzo, an environmental economist specializing in biodiversity, dedicated the sixth portrait of this collection.The damage caused by humans to the marine environment is at the heart of the initiative Mission Blue, which brings together leading global experts with the aim of inspiring public awareness that leads to the creation of marine protected areas.Every year around eight million tonnes of plastic waste ends up in the sea, which is ingested by fish and thus returns to our bodies.This phenomenon combined with overfishing is creating oceanic dead zones, which are at the center of Sylvis Earle's research work and activism, with the establishment of protected zones and the involvement of local and global institutions.The objective of the project is very ambitious, and consists of protecting at least 30% of the natural world by 2030.One of these areas is located in Italy, in the Aeolian Islands, so Earle's work involves us not only for its global reach but also for the survival of the marine environment that concerns us closely.

How can we fail to remember, in such a rich and significant collection of biographies, the extraordinary life of Dian Fossey, to whom the essay by the book's co-editor, Sergio Ferraris, is dedicated?Fossey is famous for his book Gorilla in the fog (from which a famous film with Sigourney Weaver was made) in which she describes her experience in Rwanda, where she was the first scholar to approach this species considered very dangerous at the time, and to decipher its social structure and behavior.Fossey is also known for her war on poachers, who captured females and cubs to sell to zoos, and this personal commitment cost her her life.Her story is intertwined with that of Rachel Carson, since in the very years in which the scientist identified the risks of the massive use of chemical substances in agriculture, Fossey was in the Virunga mountains, at the time besieged by the monoculture of the chrysanthemum variety from which Pyrethrum is extracted, considered a valid alternative to DDT whose toxic effect Carson himself observed.

But the biography of "she who lives alone in the forest", nylramacible, as the Rwandans called it, also meets that of Jane Goodall, to which the chapter written by Gabriele Vallarino, journalist and biologist expert in biodiversity, having both studied at Cambridge, is dedicated.Goodall is by far one of the best-known ethologists in the world, whose legacy has been collected by the institute of the same name, a non-profit active in twenty-one countries around the world that supports research projects for the protection of chimpanzees and various programs to raise awareness of chimpanzees. young people towards the environment.The scientist, now ninety years old, is still incredibly active and represents a model of woman who inspires young researchers around the world.

Women and science:stories to tell

Laura Conti's name is linked to the Seveso disaster, one of the darkest moments in national history.In July 1976, a failure in the cooling system of the chemical industry owned by the multinational La Roche dispersed large quantities of dioxin into the air, causing an environmental disaster of proportions never seen before.This is where Conti comes into the picture - whose story is told by Simona Falasca, journalist and environmentalist - who from the very first days after the catastrophe sides with the local population, breaking down the wall of silence in which the dynamics of the disaster were immediately shrouded. incident by the institutions and the media.Councilor of the Lombardy Region and secretary of the Health and Ecology Commission, Laura Conti plays a decisive role in making the public aware of the exact quantities of gas dispersed in the air.In his essay Seen from Seveso, published in 1976 by Feltrinelli and now out of print, all the circumstances in which the investigation into the affair took place are described.On the children whose faces were disfigured by the gas, Conti would later write a very touching novel, A hare with a baby face, published by Fandango.

The essay on Dana Meadows, by the physicist Matteo Martini, talks to us about the difficulty of having one's intellectual work recognized in the field of futuristic software development.This is the case of World3, a model that derives the evolution over time of a complex system such as the planet's ecosystem, considering the variables directly correlated with the anthropic impact.A project that is not only fundamental for understanding the environmental consequences of the excessive development of human activities, but which also proves to be exemplary for understanding the gender dynamics that underlie this type of work.From his project, Meadows created the volume in 1972 The limits of development, which was banned in the Soviet Union and sparked an equally adverse reaction from the Nixon administration.

As we clearly see from these stories, the context in which research is received and the role of those who conduct it influence the reputation of a study.The gender issue is central in the sciences, but the humanities does not differ in any way from what is told in this enlightening collection of essays.The situation will remain unchanged until the academic system decides to separate gender from the quality of research, and to abandon an academic career logic that is still too essentialist. First offers readers a very broad spectrum of women's contribution to scientific research, of the difficulties related to gender, and above all uncovers many issues that are still very current today.In fact, it offers the reader impressive case studies in which women's work has been hindered over the centuries by the patriarchal structure and by the lack of confidence in the ability and clarity expressed by women's work.An enlightening, flowing, informative and at the same time exciting read, First it is not only a story of women's intellectual work, it is also a useful tool for learning about issues that are little covered in the media yet vital in understanding the environmental issue.

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