“My idea is that the American man gives over to the woman all the things he is profoundly disinterested in, and keeps business and politics to himself.” Alice Hamilton made that observation when she was in her sixties, after a career in the male worlds of factories, laboratories, and as the first woman professor at Harvard University. One of the amazing women I wrote about in “Adventurous Women: Eight True Stories About Women Who Made a Difference,” Hamilton was a pioneering scientist who exposed disease-causing toxic substances, including lead, TNT, and benzene.
The photo is of her at age ninety. “Life is interesting,” she wrote when she was eighty-eight. “I should hate to leave it and not know what will happen next. Maybe we can sit on a cloud and watch.”
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