A young woman leaves New York to earn a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at a small Virginia women’s college in the 1950s. After graduate school, she becomes a revered electron microscopist – but not without the challenges of being a woman in a male-dominated field. Consequently, she spends her life helping female students at her alma mater advance their own careers and pursue their scientific passions.
It sounds like Lessons in Chemistry, the popular Apple+ miniseries based on the novel by Bonnie Garmus, chronicling the life of a female chemist challenging the status quo in the mid-20th century.
Yet, it’s the true story of Irene Piscopo Rodgers ’59. She and other Mary Washington alumnae – such as Anne Hope Scott ’59, Jerri Barden Perkins ’61 and Marilyn Shull Black ’69 – made scientific breakthroughs while breaking through the glass ceiling. Read more.
