WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



CHAPTER I 



WOMAN'S LONG STEUGGLE FOB THINGS OF THE MIND 

 WOMAN AND EDUCATION IN ANCIENT GREECE 



I purpose to review the progress and achievements of 

 woman in science from her earliest efforts in ancient Greece 

 down to the present time. I shall relate how, in every de- 

 partment of natural knowledge, when not inhibited by her 

 environment, she has been the colleague and the emulatress, 

 if not the peer, of the most illustrious men who have con- 

 tributed to the increase and diffusion of human learning. 

 But a proper understanding of this subject seems to re- 

 quire some preliminary survey of the many and diverse 

 obstacles which, in every age of the world's history, have 

 opposed woman's advancement in general knowledge. 

 Without such preliminary survey it is impossible to realize 

 the intensity of her age-long struggle for freedom and 

 justice in things of the mind or fully to appreciate the 

 comparative liberty and advantages she now enjoys in al- 

 most every department of intellectual activity. Neither 

 could one understand why woman 's achievements in science, 

 compared with those of men, have been so few and of so 

 small import, especially in times past, or why it is that, 

 as a student of nature or as an investigator in the various 

 realms of pure and applied science, we hear so little of 

 her before the second half of the nineteenth century. 



To exhibit the nature of the difficulties woman has had 

 to contend with in every age and in every land, in order 



1 



