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First woman to head the National Science Foundation
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS
A year
ago, when Dr. Rita Colwell was sworn in as the director of the
National Science Foundation, new ground in science and politics
was broken. Dr. Colwell, a microbiologist now 64 years old, became
the first woman and the first biological scientist to head the
federal agency, whose $3.6 billion budget provides financing for
basic non-medical research in science and engineering.
Before
accepting the foundation post, Dr. Colwell was president of the
University of Maryland's Biotechnology Institute and one of the
world's major experts on cholera.
She
spoke during a break in a recent meeting of American Association
for the Advancement of Science in Anaheim, Calif.
Q.
You went to Purdue University during the early 1950s, the time
when the ideology that held that women were best off as housewives
and mothers was burning strongest. What was it like to be a woman
with scientific ambitions during that era?
A.
It felt peculiar wanting to be a scientist when everyone around
me majored in home economics. On the other hand, I had encouraging
teachers. For instance, at Purdue, I took a course with a bacteriologist
named Dorothy Powelson. A woman bacteriologist in those days was
unbelievably rare. Her approach was, "Look under the microscope
and what do you see?" She got me hooked.
My
goal, originally, was to go to medical school. But in the last
semester of my senior year, I met this handsome 6-foot-2 physical
chemistry graduate student, Jack Colwell, and after one date,
we decided to get married. The marriage, incidentally, has lasted
for 40-plus years. So I think it was a good decision. But once
I made it, medical school was out.
So
I began looking for a bacteriology fellowship. I went to the chairman
of the department of bacteriology and told him of my new plans.
"We don't waste fellowships on women," he declared.
The
day was saved by my adviser, Dr. Alan Burdick, a geneticist, and
he said, "OK, their loss is our gain. Would you like a fellowship
to study genetics?" This was the foundation of my molecular biology
career.
Q.
Did you encounter much prejudice during those years.
A.
Oh, yes. In 1961, my husband was awarded a fellowship in Canada.
When I applied for one, too, the Canadian National Research Council
rejected me because of their "anti-nepotism" rule, which precluded
offering fellowships to husbands and wives. Eventually, I obtained
some funds from the National Science Foundation and was offered
laboratory space in Ottawa. The University of Washington, where
I'd received my doctorate, then appointed me a research assistant
professor and granted me a leave of absence. So in this complicated
way, I was able to be with my husband and still do my research.
You
were always, always, going against the norm, the dogma. And that
does wear on a person after a while.
Q.
Is the path still full of obstacles?
A.
They are there, sometimes. Especially when you're heading organizations
that used to be run by men. The academic world is still a closed
circle. I try to work around that.
For
instance, sometimes at meetings, a woman will suggest something
and there's no response afterward. Then, a male colleague says
exactly what you said and they say, "By God, that's a good thing
to do!" I've learned to seed the conversation quietly with my
ideas and then, they get adopted. You don't get the credit, but
if you're concerned about credit, nothing gets done.
Q.
About your area of research -- cholera. Why was your discovery
-- that the cholera bacterium exists in a dormant stage in most
of the world's water -- a benchmark in the control of the disease?
A.
Because before our findings were published, the medical community
always believed cholera was transmitted person to person, that
it had a human host or reservoir. We showed it exists in the environment,
on plankton, and in a dormant stage between epidemics. The implication
of that is that when the plankton populations bloom in the spring
and again in the fall in countries like Bangladesh, the bacterial
numbers go way up -- along with the increase in numbers in plankton.
So if the water that is used directly for drinking has large numbers
of cholera bacteria in it, there may then be enough bacteria present
to cause the disease.
Q.
One idea you've come up with for cholera control in Bangladesh
is getting people to filter their drinking water by pouring it
through layers of sari cloth. How did such a simple notion come
to you?
A.
I thought if one could remove the zooplankton -- the copepod on
the zoo plankton serve as host to the cholera bacteria in drinking
water -- we could go a long way toward curbing the disease.
The
problem was that sophisticated water filters were too expensive
for Bangladesh, one of the least wealthy countries on earth. So
the thought was, "What could be used as a filter that exists in
everyday life?" The answer was cloth, sari cloth, which even the
poorest of the poor have.
Q.
Has your method gained acceptance?
A.
Where people use it, yes. Recently, I was in Bangladesh with a
crew from Maryland Public Television and we went to a village
where we asked a woman if she'd gather water for drinking.
She
did that and she could see plankton and various larval stages
swimming about the unfiltered water. "The cause of cholera is
on the particles in the water," I explained. We then showed her
how to use the sari cloth as a filter. The filtered water wasn't
crystal clear, but it was clearer than the unfiltered water. There
was nothing swimming in it.
After
that, the cameraman wanted a shot of her going again to collect
water and drinking it, and she said, no-- she wasn't going to
ever drink unstrained water anymore. That woman "got it," in a
minute!
Q.
Let's talk about some of the areas of research the National Science
Foundation supports. Do you think now that the Cold War is over
that the United States should be financing more research in Antarctica?
A.
Oh, absolutely. The things we can learn about atmospherics science,
physics, astronomy -- are done extraordinarily well at the South
Pole. It's the least contaminated area in the world.
Q.
Do you have an opinion about human embryo research?
A.
I agree with Harold Varmus, the head of the National Institutes
of Health, who said that human stem cell research is very important.
It's an opportunity for us to learn how human cells differentiate
and the potential is so great for developing a capacity for producing
organs. I think the value to humanity, plus the wonderful information
it can bring about life and development is so very, very important.
I do think it'svery fundamental.
Q.
Vice President Gore recently announced a $366 million a year information
technology research initiative that the NSF will be heavily involved
in and that will finance new computer hardware and software research.
Why can't the computer industry, which is doing quite well, finance
this sort of thing itself?
A.
Because the basic software research requires this kind of investment.
You need it in order to keep America at the cutting edge.
Let
me just give you a vignette. I recently visited Seattle and the
computer science department at the University of Washington and
I met incredibly bright young people who were soaring like eagles
with their research. Afterward, I went to Microsoft and again
met some incredibly bright people. But it was like watching eagles
soaring within the aviary. They were netted-in because they had
a product-driven challenge.
The
United States as a nation, has got to be at the forefront of this
technology. The competition is keen from other countries. When
they put up a new university in China, the first structure they
build is the computer sciences building. Our military, our medical
institutions, need to go that next step for those new kinds of
languages that will link up a thousand processors for the kinds
of research we need to do.
Q.
On a different subject, do you think physicists make great husbands?
A.
(Laughs) I think, yes. I know that anecdotes don't make statistics,
but I was once on a panel for the National Institutes of Health
and there were four prominent women there speaking. Afterward,
we had lunch together, and it turned out that each one of us was
married to a physicist.
We
concluded that physicists have interesting work, a wide range
of interests and are not overly concerned about their masculinity.
Now obviously, you will find physicists who have none of these
characteristics. But in general, we all felt this was so.
Q.
So your advice to a bright woman looking for an appropriate man
is: Go to a physics convention?
A.
I'm not quite sure it's that simple. What I think you have to
do is find someone who is interested in you as a partner, not
as a domestic. My husband is the most gentle and supportive soul
I've met in this life. We've been married a long time and it's
been a powerful partnership. He's been a superb father and much
involved with our two daughters. Both of them are scientists,
by the way. Alison, 36, is with the U.S. Geological Survey. Stacie,
33, is an MD/PhD postdoc at Harvard.
Excerpted
from the New York Times
February
16, 1999
Last modified:
August 14, 2003 |
