My Science School

Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845) was an English prison reformer of the Victorian era. In 1812, she visited Newgate prison in London which housed men as well as women prisoners. The prisons were overcrowded and filthy, and Fry was shocked to see the conditions in which prisoners lived. She then committed the rest of her life to prison reform.

Fry gave practical solutions to improve the conditions of prisoners, such as bringing food and clean clothes for them. She spent nights in various prisons to understand what it was like to live there. Fry believed that it was important to encourage prisoners to develop a sense of self-respect, as this would help them to reform.

Fry founded the Association for the Reformation of the Female Prisoners in Newgate in 1817, which was one of the first nationwide women's organisations in Britain. (This association helped female prisoners to adapt to society after their release from jail.) She also started a night shelter for homeless people after she saw a young boy lying dead on the streets.

Fry's books include "Prisons in Scotland and the North of England" (1819) and "Observations on the Visiting, Superintendence and Government of Female Prisoners" (1827). The Home Office Minister of the time, Robert Peel, admired Fry's work and he passed the Gaol Act in 1823, which improved prison conditions in London to an extent.

Picture Credit : Google 

It was Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori who pioneered the Montessori method of teaching for children.

For over a hundred years, the Montessori Method has been a favoured way of shaping the first learning experiences of young children. And it is all because of the efforts of a pioneering Italian educator, Maria Montessori (1870-1952).

A bright student, Maria had wanted to study medicine but was rejected by the University of Rome because of her gender. It was only after she earned a degree in natural sciences and a recommendation from the Pope that she was grudgingly given admission. During the course, she was not allowed to attend the anatomy class with the other students as it was deemed inappropriate for a woman to see a naked body in the presence of men. So she had to practise her dissections of bodies alone, after class hours.

Nevertheless, she graduated with flying colours, becoming one of the earliest Italian women to receive a medical degree in 1896.

Maria began her career by working with children in mental asylums. She devised new educational methods for them, which were so successful that her students passed the examinations meant for normal children!

In 1907, she opened Casa dei Bambini (Children's House) in a slum in Rome, her first chance to see if her methods worked on normal children. She believed that children learned best through doing. She encouraged them to use their five senses to explore their surroundings while playing. She gave them special toys and lessons to develop their innate creativity and imagination.

Maria found that children learned to write before they learned to read. Once, in a class of children who had begun to write a little, she wrote on the blackboard. If you can read this, come up and give me a kiss and waited. Many days passed and then a little girl suddenly went up to her and said, "Here I am!" and kissed her. The children in her schools learnt to read and write by the time they were five years old.

Today Montessori education is followed in over 25,000 schools in more than 140 countries.

Picture Credit : Google 

The astronomer is best known for her discovery of a comet, which later came to be known as 'Miss Mitchell's Comet.

Maria Mitchell was the first professional female astronomer in the United States. She is best known for her discovery of a comet, which later came to be known as 'Miss Mitchell's Comet

Maria Mitchell was born in 1818 in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Her father was a school principal and an amateur astronomer who helped her develop interest in science and astronomy at an early age. Maria would spend hours observing the night sky through a telescope and help her father in such calculations as predicting annual eclipses. Through her jobs as a teacher and later as a librarian, Maria Mitchell kept her passion for astronomy alive. Her success in establishing the orbit of a new comet in 1847 gained her international repute. She received a gold medal from the King of Denmark for this discovery.

Later, she took up a job as professor of astronomy at Vassar College in New York. Mitchell and her students continuously tracked and photographed sunspots. She was the first to find that sunspots were whirling vertical cavities and not clouds, as had been earlier believed. In 1882, she documented Venus traversing the sun-one of the rarest planetary alignments known to man.

Maria Mitchell was also a well-known proponent of equal rights-she fought relentlessly for women as well as for blacks. The school that she started admitted black children at a time when segregation was common in the US. At Vassar College, she demanded and got equal pay when she realised that her junior male colleagues were paid more.

Picture Credit : Google 

A journalist and nature lover, Olga Owens Huckins wrote two letters - one of which was published in ‘The Boston Herald’ on January 29, 1958 - in quick succession expressing her dismay regarding the usage of DDT as a pesticide. One of these letters prompted American marine biologist, writer, and conservationist Rachel Carson to write Silent Spring, now considered a classic in the environmental sciences.

There is no doubting the fact that we, human beings, have been responsible for more' environmental degradation than any other living species. As we continue our search for longer lifespans and more comfortable living, we seem to be indiscriminately damaging the world around us.b

Despite the knowledge we possess and the awareness of the damage we are causing, there seems to be little collective will to lead to resolute actions on a consistent basis. That said, there have been a number of individuals through the course of history who've made change possible with their doggedness. Olga Owens Huckins and Rachel Carson were two such American women.

Birds drop dead

A journalist and nature lover, Huckins and her husband had created a little bird sanctuary on their property. When the Massachusetts' programme to control mosquitoes sprayed dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or DDT, in their area, Huckins noticed birds and insects too dropping dead in her garden.

As there was little she could do herself about it, Huckins conveyed her anger through a letter that she sent to ‘The Boston Herald.’ This letter, titled 'Evidence of Havoc by DDT’, was published in the newspaper on January 29, 1958.

Seeking to reach out to people in power at Washington who might be able to stop the aerial spraying, Huckins shot off another powerful letter to her old friend Carson. A marine biologist, writer, and conservationist, Carson had spent much of her life studying, observing, and writing about nature. Having already heard about DDT since it was developed in the 1940s as the first of the modern synthetic insecticides, Carson decided to delve deeper into the subject.

Not a miracle substance

DDT was perceived as a miracle substance that could work wonders. It was used with great effect to combat insect-borne diseases such as malaria in many populations. It was sought after by farmers as they saw it as a boon in their fight against pests to save crops.

The more she read about DDT and other insecticides, however, the more convinced she was that the ongoing indiscriminate spraying was untenable. Unable to gain the interest of any magazine to write on the subject with what were then seen as controversial views, Carson decided to go ahead with a book with the wealth of research she possessed. "Knowing what I do, there would be no future peace for me if I kept silent," she said, and decided on the title for her book - Silent Spring.

In her book, which took her four years to complete and was first published in June 1962, Carson spoke about how DDT enters the food chain and gets accumulated in the fatty tissues of animals, including humans, causing cancer and even genetic damage. The success of the book meant that for the first time there was public concern surrounding the improper use of pesticides and the need for better controls around their usage.

Faces personal attack

Just as she had anticipated, there was a barrage of questions that followed, as she was targeted by the chemical industry and by some in the government, with many even attacking her personally. Her meticulous preparation and copious notes put her in good stead, and when she testified before Congress in 1963, she called for new governing policies that protected the health of both humans and the environment.

Even though Carson didn't live to see it (she died in 1964), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned the usage of DDT in 1972, based on its adverse environmental impact and potential risk to humans. Even though the dangers of its usage are by now well-established, DDT is still used in some countries, including India, to control mosquitoes that spread malaria. India, in fact, is one of the last countries that still manufactures DDT.

Carson once said that "The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth." Carson and Huckins definitely did that and also took it to the masses. If there is a lasting legacy of ‘Silent Spring’, it would be the fact that the vulnerability of nature to human intervention was laid bare. And yet, 60 years on, there are many out there who continue to disagree.

Picture Credit : Google