CHAPTER XII 



THE FUTURE OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE: 

 SUMMARY AND EPILOGUE 



Saint-Evremond, the first great master of the genteel 

 style in French literature, who was equally noted as a 

 brilliant courtier, a graceful wit, a professed Epicurean, 

 and who exerted so marked an influence on the writings 

 of Voltaire and the essayists of Queen Anne 's time, gives us 

 in one of his desultory productions an entertaining dis- 

 quisition on La femme qui ne se trouve point et ne se 

 trouvera jamais the woman who is not and never will be 

 found. The caption of this singular essay admirably ex- 

 presses the idea that the majority of mankind has, even 

 until the present day, held respecting woman in science. 

 For them she was non-existent. Nature, in their view, had 

 disqualified her for serious and, above all, for abstract 

 science. Never, therefore, in the opinion of these solemn 

 wiseacres, had been found or could be found a woman who 

 had achieved distinction in science. 



The foregoing chapters show how ill-founded is such a 

 view regarding woman in times past. For that half of 

 humanity which has produced such scientific luminaries as 

 Aspasia, Laura Bassi, Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Sophie Ger- 

 main, Mary Somerville, Caroline Herschel, Sonya Kova- 

 levsky, Agnes S. Lewis, Margaret Dunlop Gibson, Eleanor 

 Ormerod and Mme. Curie to mention no others is far 

 from exhibiting any evidence of intellectual disqualifica- 

 tion and still farther from warranting any one from de- 



