The Modern Chemist: The Origin Story of Chemistry, Episode 3

For centuries, chemistry in the United States was for one kind of a person: The white man. But now, after decades of progress, chemistry is more inclusive than ever.

Historian Laura Puaca reveals how wars, feminist movements, and shifting societal expectations opened long‑closed doors for women in science. As feminism changed women's role in chemistry, other social movements were advancing the causes of minority scientists. Chemist and educator Sibrina Collins highlights the stories of early Black chemists, the vital role of HBCUs, and the creation of NOBCChE to provide community and opportunity amid systemic exclusion. And chemistry lecturer Barbara Belmont recounts the fight for LGBTQ+ visibility in chemistry, leading to the creation of Out to Innovate and ACS’s LGBTQ+ Chemists and Allies Subdivision. Together, their stories show how representation, advocacy, and community continue to reshape the chemical enterprise.

Transcripts and episode sources at acs.org/chainreaction

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

This is Chain Reaction, a podcast from the American Chemical Society, where we link chemistry's past to its future. I'm your host, Margo Wall. And I'm Sam Jones. Sam, who do you picture when you think of a scientist?

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Well, Margo, we were both scientists in our past lives. So when I hear the word scientist, I picture us. But, you know, when I was younger, I probably was picturing what a lot of people picture: Einstein in a lab coat with crazy hair, or, you know, Doc from Back to the Future with equally crazy hair.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Yes. Well, Sam, there's actually been research on this. Since the 1950s, researchers have asked kids to draw a picture of a scientist to study the gender stereotypes in science. I think I've actually seen this study. Yeah, so although most students still draw a man when they hear that question, that percentage keeps shrinking.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

And I guess based on our first two episodes, our listeners might not find that surprising. In the past, most chemists were men, white men.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

Yeah, historically, chemistry hasn't been the most welcoming place for women, people of color, or LGBTQ people.

SPEAKER_05 1:20

What are you doing, Janice? I'm trying to figure out what courses to take next term. And I want to take home economics. Home economics? Why in the world do you want to take home ec? If I'm gonna be a homemaker the rest of my life, I want to know what I'm doing. So do I.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Make that three, Margot.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

This is from a 1950s educational film that doesn't at all pigeonhole women into certain professions.

SPEAKER_07 1:46

The home ec courses you've taken in high school will provide a good foundation for the more advanced work in college. You'll see the relationship of your homec training and the many other courses you will take in college. For instance, the relationship between a college chemistry course and what you've already studied about the chemical composition of new fabrics. If you have scientific interests or technical skills, there's a demand for laboratory technicians in nutrition, foods, and textile research.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Uh yes. Fabrics and food. The only technical subjects a woman could ever have interest in. Don't forget cosmetics. Okay, obviously a lot has shifted socially throughout the past couple decades. And I know we're blatantly poking fun at this video, but it was made 70 years ago. It's important to remember that this was progress at the time. Progress always has to start somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

And that's what today's episode is all about. How chemistry evolved from a field centered around one identity to the one we know it as today, where people of all backgrounds can pursue chemical knowledge.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Right. Because eventually chemistry and STEM evolved to the point where you and I could get our PhDs. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Things really started to change first for white women in the 1900s, thanks to war again.

SPEAKER_06 3:10

American women are alert to the dangers which threaten our democracy today. Women trained in science. What can I do to help? Every woman has an important place in the national defense program.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

War was or is a pretty important driving factor for chemistry. I think we made that clear in the last episode as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

But obviously, war is not the only reason for shifts in the inclusion of women in chemistry. To learn more, I chatted with Lara Pwaca. She's science historian and gender studies professor at Christopher Newport University. And she wrote a book on this topic called Searching for Scientific Woman Power. We started with the state of chemistry education for women way back in the 1800s.

SPEAKER_04 4:01

Interestingly, we know that at the pre-collegiate level, girls were actually more likely than boys to study chemistry. Really? And most other sciences, for that matter, boys were expected first and foremost to study subjects like Greek and Latin. For many boys, the sciences were actually seen as like an add-on to their education.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

Huh. That's so strange. Like why would that be?

SPEAKER_04 4:23

There were a couple of reasons. So for starters, the classics were often required for things like college entrance exams, but science wasn't. We also know that up until like the early 1800s, there just weren't a lot of profitable careers that required formal training in chemistry. And so again, the the field ended up being more of like an add-on for boys.

SPEAKER_02 4:47

So then why were even like women getting taught it?

SPEAKER_04 4:51

So, in a lot of ways, chemistry and also other sciences, for that matter, they were often considered alternatives to the classics. And so the classics were considered masculine. You know, some educators even believed that women weren't even capable of studying things like Greek and Latin. But they could study chemistry. Right, right. Many, for example, at the time believed that you could learn about God by studying the natural world. And so one sort of result of that chemistry was often viewed and sort of talked about as a kind of tool for spiritual guidance and moral instruction as something that was very much in line with dominant gender roles.

SPEAKER_02 5:31

Huh. So then how and why did this change?

SPEAKER_04 5:36

So just to zoom out for a moment, I should say that starting in the mid-1800s or so, institutions of higher education started to expand. And by this point, the sciences had also become more prestigious. This was sort of connected to new career possibilities. And so this made the study of things like chemistry seem financially worthwhile for men at least. Right. Not for women. Not for women.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

So then for women who did get to study chemistry around this time, what were they expected to do with their degrees? Because I know some women were getting degrees.

SPEAKER_04 6:14

Right. Women who studied chemistry ended up generally taking jobs where they helped men who were, you know, in higher positions. So women might be technicians or laboratory assistants, these both being the kinds of jobs that were relatively low pay, relatively low prestige. And a number of women with chemical backgrounds entered home economics. Actually, it was initially called domestic science. They basically used um sort of the principles of chemistry and applied them to things like cooking and sanitation and hygiene. Women's work.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

Right, women's work. Yeah. And did they do any teaching? I feel like that's what women used to do back in the day when they would get degrees. It's like, well, you can't practice it, but you can teach it to others.

SPEAKER_04 7:02

Right, right. Absolutely. So teaching was definitely one of the more popular professions for women at this time. And women who did have chemistry degrees, they might have taught at the secondary level or in women's colleges. They were much less likely to teach at co-educational schools. Um, there were a few exceptions. Rachel Holloway Lloyd, for example, she was actually the first American woman to earn a PhD in chemistry, and she would end up joining the faculty at the University of Nebraska in 1887.

SPEAKER_02 7:33

Oh wow, that's that's early. Can you tell me more about her?

SPEAKER_04 7:37

Yeah, sure. So she went to a boarding school near Philadelphia. She married a man, Franklin Lloyd, who worked as a chemist in the city and had a laboratory in their home. And that's how she later said she became interested in the field. And so he ends up passing away. And then after his death, she decides to go on with her own education. And in 1875, she enrolls in summer school at Harvard. And over the course of the next several years, she tries to and learns how to do chemical research. At first, she tried to get a teaching job at Brynmarr, which is near Philly. She ends up being turned down because she didn't have a degree. So Harvard did not grant degrees to women at this time, nor did most graduate schools for that matter. Okay. So she ends up at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, earning her PhD in chemistry there. And shortly afterwards, she goes back to the States. She's hired by the University of Nebraska. She makes a name for herself by studying beats. And she's actually like credited with having helped to establish Nebraska's beat industry.

SPEAKER_02 8:41

Wow. Can't beat that. Can't beat that. Um so I would be remiss if I didn't mention that she was a member, right, of the American Chemical Society, a very early woman member.

SPEAKER_04 8:56

Yes, absolutely. So she was the second woman to join the American Chemical Society. She was elected in 1891. Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_02 9:05

Do you know who was the first member?

SPEAKER_04 9:07

Yeah. So the first woman member was another Rachel, uh Rachel Bodley. She was a professor of chemistry. She was later dean at the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania. Go birds. I guess Philly was really the spot. Right? Yeah. And in 1874, the journal American Chemists sort of raised this question of how should we celebrate the discovery of oxygen? She came up with this suggestion that to make a long story short, ended up being a meeting that brought together a group that ultimately would vote to establish an American chemical society as soon as possible.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Oh, yeah. Cause like I heard about the story. It was like they were going to Joseph Priestley's grave. He was the one that uh discovered oxygen. But that's cool that she was kind of the impetus for the start of this.

SPEAKER_04 9:54

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And the group would even elect her as one of the interim committee's 13 honorary vice presidents, presumably, to thank her for putting this idea forward in the first place. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

So what was it like to be one of the first women that was part of ACS?

SPEAKER_04 10:11

Women were not really made all that welcome. Probably the best example from this period was the quote-unquote misogynist dinner that took place in 1880. The dinner was organized by two of the founding members, like male members, of the American Chemical Society. Only men were allowed to attend. And when some members like did actually bring their wives, the women were turned away at the door. And the evening itself was filled with like these songs and poems and toasts that were very clearly and explicitly and blatantly anti-woman. Right. But instead of being like a private thing or a secret thing, the proceedings were actually printed up and actually sent out or distributed to ACS members. Right. It was actually, it became a pamphlet that was titled The Misogynist Dinner of the American Chemical Society. And so then not surprisingly, Bodley, who was the only woman member at the time, she ends up resigning from the society not that long afterwards.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

Yeah, it wouldn't seem like a good place to stay for a woman. That must have really sucked. And it's probably, I'm sure it's an example of many of the difficulties that women faced around that time. So what did women do to kind of get by in this environment and find resources to support each other and themselves?

SPEAKER_04 11:34

Yeah, so women's institutions were one women's colleges, for example. Um also women's scientific societies. And so these started popping up in sort of the early 20th century. And these sort of various groups, they came together and they actually merged to form Iota Sigma Pie, which then became sort of this National Honor Society for women chemists. And as you likely know, like it still exists today.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

Wow. That's yeah, over a hundred years old. That's pretty cool. We think about war as a way in which women entered multiple industries. And I know that you've written about how war has the ability to disrupt gender roles. So did World War One do that for women in chemistry? Yeah, in some ways, right?

SPEAKER_04 12:24

So in some ways, World War One opened new doors to women in the field. So the war would even be referred to as the chemists' war. So the war saw the widespread use of all sorts of chemical weapons like mustard gas and other explosives. Women were, you know, definitely involved in studying these things. Um they could also be found in munitions plants, they could be found in factories that made countermeasures, like gas masks being one example. I see.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

So then after the war, I'm sure women had some experience working in the chemistry field, helping to make chemical agents of war and also countermeasures. What happened for them after the war?

SPEAKER_04 13:07

So, as you might imagine, most of the doors that had opened to them during the conflict end up closing again. And as this happened, there's some evidence to suggest that women chemists will increasingly turn to one another for support.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

Like I know the Women Chemists Committee at ACS was formed in 1927.

SPEAKER_04 13:29

Yes, right, absolutely. And so um, I should note that women's membership in the ACS actually grew pretty significantly after World War One. And so we know, for example, before 1900, there were five members, five women members. Um in 1924, there were 500, right? And so like a huge difference. Most of those had joined in the early 1920s, so right after World War I.

SPEAKER_02 13:52

So then World War II comes around. And I know that you you wrote in your book, Searching for Scientific Woman Power, that there were feminist activists that were like using national defense as a way to advocate for for women in science and say, you need us. Um, can you expand on what that looked like?

SPEAKER_04 14:12

Well, World War II definitely opened up lots of new opportunities for women in chemistry, other STEM fields too. Of course, you know, there were a few important differences between World War I and World War II. You know, first of all, the United States will be involved in World War II for a lot longer time than it had been in World War I. Right. Another big difference was the widespread use of research contracts that basically will allow the federal government to sponsor militarily important research in places like industries and at universities, right? So we're not just talking about military labs that were staffed by these soldier scientists that were very sort of commonplace previously. So during the war, there were a number of both individual women and also women's organizations, and they basically made the case that if the United States wanted to win the war, that the country needed to educate and to employ women in STEM fields, right? Which of, of course, included chemistry. As an example, Virginia Gildersleeve, she was the dean of Barner College, and she actually wrote this editorial that appeared in the New York Times where she talked about the importance of using what she called quote unquote trained brains to the war effort, right? Again, sort of pointing out the importance of educating and employing women in these scientific fields.

SPEAKER_02 15:33

Did the editorial work? Did it move the needle at all?

SPEAKER_04 15:36

Well, we know that at least at Columbia, Gildersleeve, she did play a pretty important role in terms of getting the engineering school to admit women for the first time, where it previously had been like a long-standing holdout. And we know that other schools nationwide did the same thing. So admitting women to STEM schools and programs that they hadn't been able to enroll in before. We also know that the federal government during this time established a number of shorter-term programs that were designed to train women as scientific aides. And many of those changes had actually been designed to be temporary. But what happens is that they end up having this effect of introducing women to STEM fields that they, you know, end up being really interested in and proud of.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

Okay, so after World War II, I know there was kind of like this return to traditional roles, but there was definitely pushback, right? Like in the 60s.

SPEAKER_04 16:34

Right. We have the second wave of American feminism that comes in the sort of late 60s, 1970s. And what we see happen in that context is that, you know, many more women in chemistry and elsewhere, they become more and more comfortable with using rights-based arguments instead. That is, you know, the idea that women deserve the same opportunities as men to study and to work in science. And I think it's, you know, really telling that this is precisely when the Women's Service Committee of the ACS changes its name to the Women Chemists Committee. This happened in 1972. The older name, Women's Service Committee, sort of underscored women's usefulness to chemistry, right, to the predominantly male ACS. Um, but the new name, Women Chemists Committee, really highlighted their professional identity in new ways. And of course, the ACS will also elect its first woman president, Anna Harrison, just a few years later in 1978.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

Yeah. And we, I mean, since then, I mean, we know that this has been the case in a lot of the sciences, that there's been an increase in participation and in education for women in higher ed. So, what's the state of women in chemistry now and what challenges are they no longer facing and what challenges are they still facing?

SPEAKER_04 17:57

Yeah, so obviously women have made a lot of gains in the field. I believe they're nearing 40% of the chemical workforce. More than half of the bachelor's degrees in chemistry are earned by women. That percentage, of course, drops down, right, at the higher levels, like the PhD, for example, where women are, you know, less likely to be represented.

SPEAKER_02 18:18

Right. And then less likely to be faculty and tenured faculty keeps dropping off of these higher levels.

SPEAKER_04 18:24

Right, yeah. And um, there's certainly ample evidence showing how women who, you know, combine scientific careers with, you know, marriage and parenthood, they're disadvantaged in ways that men aren't necessarily. And certainly I think we can look at how other categories of identity, right, race and sexuality, and certainly others further affect women's experiences in chemistry. Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

So it seems like changes for women in chemistry were accelerated first by war and the need for jobs, and then by second wave feminism.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

Yeah, it's interesting because around the same time there was similar progress happening for African Americans in chemistry. Although not to say the experiences were the same, they were not. There was still a number of parallels between the experience of white women in the field and those of African Americans. Both were given unprecedented opportunities during the world wars, and both progressed in the field of chemistry with the help of social movements like the civil rights movement. Of course, the people in power, primarily white men, pushed back against bringing others into the fold.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

Yeah, like the misogynist dinner that Laura brought up. Yeah. Yikes! Uh, but also, I find it really heartening to see how far we've come since then. Obviously, this is a podcast from ACS that two women, you and I, are producing. That says a lot in itself. But to get back to what you were saying, in the mid-1900s, racism in the sciences, including in chemistry, was rampant.

SPEAKER_02 20:00

Right. So in 1956, Percy Julian, a natural products chemist and one of the first African Americans to get a PhD in chemistry, he wrote a letter to then president of ACS John Warner. And he was criticizing ACS for using segregated hotels at their conference in Dallas that year. He wrote, but the pure scientists of America will resort to this kind of thing is to me the most disheartening blow to human relations that has appeared on the horizon in our age.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

That's pretty cutting. And I mean for good reason.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

Yeah. But in the 1970s and 80s, efforts to include more underrepresented groups in chemistry in the US were expanding, with the creation of organizations specifically supporting Black and LGBTQ chemists. Which takes us to our next two guests, Sabrina Collins and Barbara Belmont. Both have played instrumental roles in sharing stories of minority chemists and creating opportunities for them in chemistry. We'll start with Sabrina Collins, Director of STEM Education, Outreach, and Workforce Development at Eastern Michigan University. First off, I wanted to ask you how you got involved in telling the stories of other black chemists.

SPEAKER_03 21:21

I was a graduate student in the Department of Chemistry at the Ohio State University. And so this was back in uh June of 1994. And so I was one of eight African American students enrolled in the graduate program at the time. And so on average, Ohio State has about 200 graduate students. So we had a small cohort. And at the time, the department chair, Dr. Matt Platz, invited us out to lunch at the faculty club. And he basically says to us, Tell us what we need to do to keep you here. Because there have been a number of students that have come through the department and they left for whatever reason. And ever since that day, I've kind of been on this journey to understand why so few women and people of color pursue degrees in chemistry.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

Take me back to some of the earliest black chemists to successfully really have the opportunity to go to school and graduate with a degree in chemistry, a master's degree, a PhD. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 22:21

Sure. So some of the early chemists, you can think about, for example, Alice Augusta Ball. She earned her master's degree in chemistry from the College of Hawaii in 1915. So she was the first woman and the first African American to achieve that at that institution. And at the time, she had developed a viable treatment for leprosy. She co-authored an article with her research mentor at the University of Hawaii. So she's likely the first African-American woman to have a Jack's paper. And so, in addition to that, 1914, St. M. O'Brady earns his master's degree from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. And then two years later, he earns his PhD, becoming the first African-American to earn a PhD in chemistry. And then what's interesting is that University of Illinois graduated the second African American to earned a PhD in chemistry, Edward Augusta Chandler. And so it's really interesting that University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, produced the first two at that time.

SPEAKER_02 23:26

What was it like to get a PhD back then as a Black scientist? What was it like for the first?

SPEAKER_03 23:34

Yeah, no, that's a great question. And there weren't very many career options for them. Typically, after earning a master's or PhD, what was available were opportunities to teach at historically black colleges and universities. And so, for example, that's exactly what St. M. O'Brady did after earning his PhD. He went back and taught at Fisk University, but he had taught at Tuskegee, Howard University, he taught at a number of institutions. HBCUs played a really important role in providing opportunities for many African Americans earning these degrees.

SPEAKER_02 24:12

What were some of the challenges that some of these early trailblazers faced?

SPEAKER_03 24:17

I think some of the bigger challenges is that, you know, after earning a PhD at one of these major research universities, they have access to state-of-the-art equipment, scientific journals, a number of uh resources that were not available to them, you know, when they were teaching at these smaller schools. So that was a huge challenge in order for them to continue to engage in research. Obviously, you know, Howard University, I think, led the way, but some of the other schools, they didn't have access to the funding needed to continue to grow the research programs at that time.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

Yeah. Yeah. So the Civil Rights Act is signed into law in 1974, and just six years later, the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers, also known as Novoche, is founded. So what role did that play in the field of chemistry for African American chemists?

SPEAKER_03 25:16

I think Novoche played a really, I know Novoche played a really important role in terms of African-American scientists, because Novache, they had their first national conference in 1974 in New Orleans. And there were seven African American chemists and chemical engineers that established Novache. And so it played a, it plays a really important role. And also thinking, too, about the time with ACS, for example, you know, trying to present at conferences and having to deal with segregated housing and housing not being available. You know, so that kind of, I think, set the stage for the need, you know, for establishing an organization like this. So that was one of the reasons why No Bache was was established, creating a safe space, if you will, for scientists of color to be able to present their research.

SPEAKER_02 26:13

In 2020, with the murder of George Floyd, I know that there was a reckoning with race in all sorts of different arenas, but also in the sciences, like understanding that we have a representation problem, that the opportunities aren't equal for everyone. What change did you see in the chemistry field around that time, around the efforts of diversity, equity, and inclusion?

SPEAKER_03 26:39

One of the first things that I noticed, for example, at that time, the National Science Foundation had put out a statement on their website acknowledging, you know, the inequities that take place within science. And they had actually established a new STEM education program called Racial Equities in STEM education, really to address those kinds of things. So you saw funding opportunities like that taking place. And what since happened is that program is no longer in existence.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

And is that a recent thing?

SPEAKER_03 27:14

That is a very recent thing. And another example that I'll share, not just National Science Foundation, but the National Institutes of Health. As an undergraduate at Wayne State University, I was a recipient of a program titled Minority Access to Research Careers. And that program actually was a catalyst for me pursuing an undergraduate degree in chemistry. I was able to attend a conference in Bethesda, Maryland, get on an airplane for the first time in my life, and present a research poster. And so that program, it was all over the country. And so I was invited to be a keynote speaker for the closing ceremony for this year. And shortly before that, I got notice that the program had been cut. You know, so this is impacting everyone. And so it hurts me terribly that these opportunities are not available as they were for me, you know, for these young people. And so for me personally, that that was that was very troubling.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

So I guess like maybe now more than ever, it's important to reflect back on the stories of key people in history laying the groundwork for the next generations of black chemists. How important is it for you telling the stories of these scientists?

SPEAKER_03 28:37

It's it's so important. And this is why get out of the bed in the morning. Everybody has their why, but to be able to tell these stories, and it's so many stories that haven't been told. And so, you know, with educators, we all want to make the content that we're teaching much more interesting and memorable. And you can do that if you if you bring in stories.

SPEAKER_02 28:59

Yeah, and especially if those stories are about people that reflect the identity of the people that you're teaching, I'm sure that can make a big difference.

SPEAKER_03 29:08

Yeah, absolutely. You know, what what my approach is why not talk about the human side of it, the person that actually made the discovery. And a lot of times if students can identify and connect with someone that has gone through these trials and tribulations pursuing a degree in chemistry, that might be the catalyst that they need to say, you know what, I can do this too.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

It was really powerful hearing Sabrina talk about the importance of storytelling in highlighting black chemists and other people who have been ignored or forgotten. Chemistry is made up of people and their personal stories. It's never just about the science.

SPEAKER_02 29:52

Exactly. I know people say it a lot, but I'll just preach to the choir again and say that representation is so important in chemistry. Seeing other people like you in a field can help you feel like that field is for you too.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

And hopefully, as people have been listening to this episode, it's become more and more evident that representation hasn't always existed for many groups.

SPEAKER_02 30:15

Yeah. Another group who hasn't always had representation in the field are LGBTQ chemists. But this, like most things, has slowly been changing. In 2022, Carolyn Bertosi, a prominent biochemist at Stanford University, became the first out LGBTQ person to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her development of click chemistry and bioorthonal chemistry. Basically, methods to snap together molecular building blocks inside living organisms without damaging other processes.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

So cool and definitely Nobel Prize worthy.

SPEAKER_02 30:52

Yep. And someone who has done a lot of work to increase LGBTQ representation in chemistry is our final guest, Barbara Belmont. She's an analytical chemistry lecturer at California State University Dominguez Hills, who was part of the group that created the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals, now known as Out to Innovate, and also the Pride Subcommittee of ACS. Here's our interview. So I just wanted to first ask about earlier history of LGBTQ people doing chemistry. Was there pushback for people who were openly gay or openly queer or openly trans in the history of chemistry?

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Well, everybody's experience is different in the history of chemistry. And people in the generation before me will talk about being afraid to come out for fear of being, say, blacklisted, because that is how things happened in the 50s. In my time, pushback was a different kind of pushback. It was mostly like, well, why do you have to tell everybody we support you in your weirdness, in your differentness from us? But why do you have to keep throwing it in our face? Why can't you just, you know, live your life and not involve us? And that was just kind of a way of saying, I don't support you because you make me uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_02 32:26

When you were getting your education and training, were there institutions or spaces for gay, lesbian chemists or even scientists that you could go to?

SPEAKER_01 32:38

No, when I was getting my education, nobody even talked about this. I didn't know anybody like me, period, let alone anybody who was a scientist.

SPEAKER_02 32:49

So then where did you go for community or to find like-minded individuals?

SPEAKER_01 32:56

First, I went to women's rap groups at colleges to try to meet other lesbians. I just wanted to see somebody like me, but none of those people were like me at all. At all. I was a scientist and they were not. So we had very little in common except who we like to date.

SPEAKER_02 33:15

And you mean rap like hip hop?

SPEAKER_01 33:17

No. No, that this is what they used to call talking circles.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

Yeah, yeah. The next place where you could get information was at the women's feminist bookstores. And so that's where I picked up the gay yellow pages.

SPEAKER_02 33:31

Is that really what it was called? Like the gay yellow pages?

SPEAKER_01 33:34

Yes, it was called the gay yellow pages. And I came across an organization called Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Scientists. And I thought, well, no, there are some people that maybe I could fit in with. So this group of people, we got together once a month and we had potluck, and we just all became really good friends. And it turns out that they're essentially a chapter of an organization called National Organization of Lesbian and Gay Scientists.

SPEAKER_02 34:05

Tell me about them.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

Okay. Well, um, this was a group started by a botany professor at a Cal State University and a lot of engineers, botanists, some chemists, and they were involved in the initial declaration of the existence of the National Organization of Lesbian and Gay Scientists, which later became Nodal Step, which later became Out to Innovate. At the same time, whenever I went to a national meeting, I would say, Well, where are we? Where am I? Where are my people? So in 1999, some of us in the national organization who were also ACS members got together and said, somehow we need to be able to meet at national meetings, and we need to be able to tell people like us that there was an opportunity to meet. And we were just talking about a reception, a social, or maybe just a night out. And we started an e-list through Yahoo Groups. And a lot of a lot of people joined that so we would be able to get the word out. But what we couldn't do was recruit people who didn't know we existed. We couldn't put up flyers because conventions always take down flyers that aren't part of the convention brand. So we decided that the National Organization of Gay Lesbian Scientists should write a letter to the ACS CEO and ask for space to meet and ask for that to be put in the program. Right. And our reasoning was well, the Chinese American Chemical Society does this, all those fraternities and sororities, the Greeks do that, and they're not part of ACS. So, you know, maybe they'll let us do it. That didn't work.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

So you sent the letters.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

I sent the letter and I never got answered. Um so one of our group was a counselor who got the ear of an incoming national president whose campaign was about diversity and inclusion. And he said, Why don't you sponsor this for us? Why don't you walk the walk here and give us some space and give us give us a mention in the program? And so we got space and it was still fairly poorly attended because mistakes were made, like the room would get switched at the last minute or typos, wrong date, wrong location. This happened for a few times. Um and we'd we think it was just benign neglect, not intentional, but you know, it was pretty frustrating. Um but ultimately we started regularly having these get togethers.

SPEAKER_02 36:52

How were some of those early meetings? What were they like?

SPEAKER_01 36:55

People, people came. Boards of directors came, president elects came, counselors came, people who weren't queer came because they wanted to support, they wanted to be supportive. You know, it was pretty amazing. It was pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

How important was it to the community to have it built into the program and then to have funding coming through for these meetings? Was that a big deal?

SPEAKER_01 37:23

I would say a very, very big deal, especially for young people. For old people, they would come and say, Oh, I can't believe they're doing this. ACS. But the young people felt seen and supported. And that made them come back. That made them feel loyal to ACS and made them want to go to symposia, it made them want to come to the national meeting, it made them want to be involved at the local level when this happened.

SPEAKER_02 37:52

So the LGBTQ plus chemists and allies subdivision at ACS was created in 2011, I think. What was the road to starting like a formal division at ACS?

SPEAKER_01 38:05

We organizers were trying to think of all kinds of ways to have a seat at the table. And one of the things that we thought we would do would be to see if we could get the Committee on Minority Affairs to expand their definition and include LGBT in their charge. So a presentation was made to the committee, and the committee said, no, get your own space. They didn't say it like that, but that was really, you know, get your own space, don't dilute down ours. We're fighting enough for our own marginalized existence. And so the presenters were kind of annoyed at that. And uh those people were from Prof. The Division of Prof Professional Relations. And so they went to the Prof Executive Committee meeting and they were venting about their disappointment. And somebody said, Hey, we have subdivisions, and our subdivisions include all of the diversity groups. We have a subdivision for women chemists and minority chemists and disabled chemists and older chemists. Don't we have the power to create another subdivision? And by golly, they did. They said, Yeah, we're gonna create a subdivision for LGBT chemists and allies. And now all we need to do is find somebody to chair it. And so the people at that meeting, you know, you'd be good at that. And I said, ah, no, no, I don't want to do it. But whoever does it should do this, this, this, this, this, and this. And I was like laying out this giant plan, and then I realized what I was doing. I said, All right, I guess, I guess I I do want to do it.

SPEAKER_02 39:42

Um, so there's a vote at the fall ACS meeting to establish a committee on the advancement of LGBTQ plus chemists. What is the story behind that coming to a vote and what would that mean for the community?

SPEAKER_01 39:57

What it means for the community is that we will have a seat at the governance table. It gives the people a mechanism to report directly to the board of directors about what they did and what they need. And that's a really important thing because we haven't had that voice at all. It's been very hard to ensure representation to the board. And this will give us that. And I'm very excited about it.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

Fingers crossed. Okay, so popping in here to say that shortly after recording my interview with Barbara, the ACS Council voted to establish the Committee for the Advancement of LGBTQ plus chemists, and that's a big boon for the community, as Barbara mentioned. Okay, back to the interview. What is your hope for the community of queer scientists and their support within the chemistry field going forward?

SPEAKER_01 40:54

A place to call home and a place to be supported, a place to be inspired, and a place to network. That's really what I want to see for LGBTQ chemists going forward.

SPEAKER_00 41:22

So, really, the takeaway from this episode is that the chemistry field has progressed in a lot of ways for women, black chemists, and LGBTQ plus chemists. Barbara also mentioned the importance of knowing that ACS is supporting LGBTQ chemists and will continue to support those chemists. It's essential for progress and for chemistry to be a place they can truly call home.

SPEAKER_02 41:47

So are things perfect? No. But we're seeing progress and how essential it is that that progress continues. Folks like Sabrina and Barbara represent a huge community of chemists who have dedicated parts of their careers to pushing the field forward. And historians like Laura play a role in reminding us of how far we have come, but also how much more we still need to do. Also, a super important thing to note: we barely skimmed the surface today. There are a ton of groups of people we didn't touch on, like Latino, Latina, Latinx chemists, disabled chemists, and more.

SPEAKER_00 42:22

Right. And ACS has some groups that listeners might want to check out, like the Women's Chemist Committee, which Laura mentioned, and the Committee on Chemists with Disabilities. We'll leave links in the show notes where you can check out a bunch of different groups. Well, Margot, we started with alchemy, and we ended up here with a more diverse and open field. So it seems fitting to close out this first mini-series of Chain Reaction with the 2025 president of ACS, Dorothy Phillips.

SPEAKER_02 42:51

Yeah, I was able to chat with Dorothy about the chemistry field in ACS specifically, where it's been over the past 150 years, and where it's going. And that's next time on Chain Reaction. See you next week. This was Chain Reaction, a podcast by the American Chemical Society. Our executive producer is Sam Jones. Our producer is me, Marga Wall. Research was done by Buck Roldon, fact-checking by Michelle Boucher, production help from Michael David and Matt Radcliffe, theme song by D. Peter Schmidt, and additional music by Blue Dot Sessions. To learn more about our guests and their work, you can check out our show notes. But just to mention a few here, Laura Plaka has a book that we mentioned in the episode, Searching for Scientific Woman Power, and Sabrina Collins' book, African American Chemists: Academia, Industry, and Social Entrepreneurship. And you can learn more about Barbara's work at outtoinnovate.org.