Exhibition to show August 11, 2023 — March 24, 2024, in Cecil H. Green Library 

Stanford Libraries presents Embodied Knowledge: Women and Science before Silicon Valley in the Peterson Gallery and Munger Rotunda, Cecil H. Green Library, Bing Wing. Register here for the reception. 

An extension of the Embodied Knowledge Exhibition entitled: Early Stanford Women in STEM will show from September 25 — December 15, 2023, in the Hohbach Hall Entrance Case, Silicon Valley Archives, Green Library.

Embodied Knowledge: Women and Science before Silicon Valley explores the long history of women pursuing scientific, medical, and technical knowledge from the Middle Ages through the mid-twentieth century. It showcases Stanford’s considerable holdings for this subject, including the role of our own university in this history. Our exhibition displays these materials from colonial Mexico, North America, Western Europe, Britain, Japan, Korea, South Asia, and the Middle East. We invite viewers to see them as building blocks in a global history of gender and knowledge. 

Many women participated in making knowledge. Long before the rise of the institutional laboratory, the body and the home were domestic laboratories. Largely denied access to institutions of research and learning, women improvised their own opportunities. We have looked for patterns rather than exceptions, documenting women’s scientific labor and the practical realities of earning a living. The variety of scientific and medical publications written by, for, and about women reminds us that this is a history of the many rather than the few. Every author has a reading public—the most successful ones reached large international audiences. Individual histories reveal larger networks and often exist in relationship to institutions. We explore the evolution of women’s scientific education, research, publications, and careers with these questions in mind.

Hypatia of Alexandria (355–415 CE) provides a symbolic point of departure for our exhibition. She was renowned for her lectures in Greek philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy in Alexandria and was brutally murdered by Christians; none of her writings survive, but her reputation endured. Our opening case also includes Maria Sibylla Merian’s gorgeous and insightful Metamorphosis of Surinamese Insects (1705). Merian (1647–1717) was a trained artist and self-educated naturalist who left her husband, collaborated with her daughters, and traveled all the way to Dutch Surinam to observe insects. There she learned about the medicinal uses of Caribbean plants from indigenous and enslaved women. Her life and career were their own metamorphosis. 

Bringing a long global story home, we end our exhibition by reflecting on women and science "before Silicon Valley." From its inception in 1891, Stanford educated and encouraged women of science. Focusing on the early decades, we have extracted interesting Stanford women scientists, engineers, and physicians from the archives, exploring their intellectual passions and pursuits. Louise Brown Nash’s portfolio of scientific illustrations in the opening case illuminates the kind of opportunity talented women unexpectedly discovered at Stanford, where Nash was the first "Artist of the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory." This pioneering generation of Stanford women found possibilities even as they confronted their limits.

The next generations of Stanford women bridge the gap between the growth of women’s higher education in the late nineteenth century, the era of women’s suffrage, and the postwar boom in American universities, scientific research, and technological innovation. A 1957 memo of one of the earliest meetings of Stanford women faculty records three women in science and engineering—Myra Keen (paleontology), Mary Sunseri (mathematics), and Irmgard Flügge-Lotz (aeronautical engineering). Keen and Flügge-Lotz also open this exhibition. Keen’s career as a curator and professor illuminates the end of an era when natural history was an important part of Stanford’s mission. Flügge-Lotz’s arrival at Stanford marks the growth of aeronautical engineering. Her work brought her great acclaim in Germany, where she headed a research institute, and led to a spousal lectureship at postwar Stanford. In 1957, Keen was in her third year as an assistant professor and Flügge-Lotz was still a lecturer—until 1960 when the conspicuous gap between her reputation and status became too uncomfortable. Both women help us to understand the importance of second careers, a subject explored with selections from two major Stanford archives in the exhibit case downstairs in the Silicon Valley Archive.

The renowned physicist and chemist Marie Curie would have surely enjoyed meeting the Stanford women we have encountered, had she been able to come as a visiting professor in the early 1930s. Every episode in this exhibition deserves further study, as do others we could not include. We invite you to explore these histories and their artifacts and get to know some very interesting scientific women.

The exhibition was curated by Stanford History Professor Paula Findlen with contributions from a diverse group of faculty, curators, and graduate students across the institution. Deardra Fuzzell, exhibits designer, managed the production and installation of the exhibition assisted by Elizabeth Fischbach, retired exhibits designer. 

NOTE: Exhibit cases in the Peterson Gallery and Munger Rotunda are illuminated from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. M-F, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sat, and 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sun. Visitors are encouraged to call 650-723-0931 or visit the Library Hours page to confirm hours and access.

The exhibition is free and open to the public. Learn about the Libraries' entry requirements and available services