Evelyn Fox Keller facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Evelyn Fox Keller
Keller in 1999
Born	(1936-03-20)March 20, 1936 New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	September 22, 2023(2023-09-22) (aged 87)
Citizenship	USA
Alma mater	Brandeis University (B.A.), Radcliffe College (M.A.), Harvard University (Ph.D.)
Awards	MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship
Scientific career
Fields	Physics, Molecular Biology, History and Philosophy of Modern Biology, Gender and Science
Thesis	"Photoinactivation and the Expression of Genetic Information in Bacteriophage-Lambda" (1963)

Evelyn Fox Keller (born March 20, 1936 – died September 22, 2023) was an American scientist and writer. She was a physicist and also a feminist. She taught about the history and philosophy of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Evelyn Fox Keller first studied how physics and biology connect. Later, her work focused on how modern biology developed. She also studied how ideas about gender affect science.

About Her Life

Evelyn Fox Keller was born in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. Her parents were immigrants from Russia. She grew up in Woodside, Queens.

Education and Early Career

She earned her first degree in physics from Brandeis University in 1957. She then studied theoretical physics at Harvard University. She received her Ph.D. (a high-level degree) in 1963.

While finishing her Ph.D., she visited Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. There, she became very interested in molecular biology, which studies life at a tiny, molecular level.

Keller taught at many universities during her career. These included Northeastern University, Cornell University, and Princeton University. Her brother, Maurice Sanford Fox, encouraged her early interest in science.

Supporting Human Rights

In 2007, Keller joined an advisory board for FFIPP. This group works for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. When she won the Israeli Dan David Prize in 2018, she gave the money away. She donated the award to organizations that work for human rights.

Evelyn Fox Keller passed away on September 22, 2023. She was 87 years old.

Her Ideas and Work

Evelyn Fox Keller first learned about feminism as a field of study at a conference. At this event, some speakers suggested more women should be in science. They thought women had a "special female genius" that could help science.

Later, in 1969, Keller gathered information about women scientists. She wrote about why women were (or were not) in science. She realized that some of her own experiences in science were due to gender issues. This research helped her understand things better.

Becoming a Feminist Critic

In 1974, Keller taught her first course on women's studies. Soon after, she was asked to give talks about her work. She began to share her personal experiences as a woman becoming a scientist. These talks marked the start of her work as a feminist critic of science.

Her research then focused on three main questions. These questions guided her writing for the next ten years.

Gender and Science

One of her important contributions was to a book called The Gender and Science Reader. In her article, "Secrets of God, Nature, and Life," Keller connected feminist issues to the Scientific Revolution. This was a big change in how science was done in the 1600s.

Keller also looked at how ideas about masculine and feminine roles shaped thinking in biology. She studied two areas: population genetics and mathematical ecology. She wanted to show how certain assumptions limited what scientists discovered.

For example, she argued that some geneticists thought of individuals as separate units. This led them to ignore sexual reproduction in their models. Keller pointed out that this way of thinking overlooked the complexities of mating and fertilization. She believed that biologists sometimes used ideas from the "public sphere" (often seen as masculine) to describe how individuals interact.

Impact of Her Work

Rene Almeling, a sociologist from Yale University, said that Keller helped create the field of "gender and science." Because of Keller, many historians, philosophers, and social scientists have studied this topic for decades.

Keller's later work explored how language connects science and society. She wrote detailed studies on the history of biology in the 20th century. She looked at how scientific theories are shaped by language, technology, and even political factors. Her historical studies became like a "philosophical laboratory" for her ideas.

Different Views on Her Theories

Some experts who study women in science have different opinions about Keller's theories. Ann Hibner Koblitz argued that Keller's ideas did not fully explain the differences across cultures and time periods.

For example, in early European universities, many women studied natural sciences and medicine. These fields were more open to women than humanities at the time. Koblitz and others worried that some of Keller's statements might make it harder to encourage more women in science.

Other critics of Keller's gender and science theory include Mary Beth Ruskai, Lenore Blum, and Mary W. Gray. These discussions highlight an important difference. It is the difference between studying women as scientists (a profession) and studying how gender ideas affect scientific theories themselves.

Published Works

• 1983 A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock. Freeman ISBN: 0-805-07458-9
• 1985 Reflections on Gender and Science. Yale University Press ISBN: 0-300-06595-7
• 1989 Three Cultures: Fifteen Lectures on the Confrontation of Academic Cultures. The Hague : Univ. Pers Rotterdam
• 1990 Conflicts in Feminism. (co-edited with Marianne Hirsch) Routledge ISBN: 0415901774
• 1990 Body/Politics: Women and the Discourses of Science. (co-edited with Mary Jacobus and Sally Shuttleworth) Routledge (reprinted 2013 ISBN: 1134976089)
• 1992 Secrets of Life/Secrets of Death: Essays on Language, Gender and Science. Routledge
• 1995 Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth-century Biology. The Wellek Library Lecture Series at the University of California, Irvine. Columbia University Press ISBN: 0-231-10205-4
• 1996 Feminism and Science. (co-edited with Helen Longine) Oxford Readings in Feminism ISBN 9780198751465
• 1998 Keywords in Evolutionary Biology (co-edited with Elisabeth Lloyd). Harvard University Press (reprinted 1998 ISBN: 0-674-50313-9).
• 2000 The Century of the Gene. Harvard University Press ISBN: 0-674-00825-1
• 2002 Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines. Harvard University Press ISBN: 0-674-01250-X
• 2010 The Mirage of a Space between Nature and Nurture. Duke University Press ISBN: 0-822-34731-8
• 2017 Cultures without Culturalism: The Making of Scientific Knowledge (co-edited with Karine Chemla) Duke University Press ISBN: 978-0-8223-6372-9
• 2017 The Seasons Alter: How to Save Our Planet in Six Acts. (co-authored with Philip Kitcher). Norton. ISBN: 978-1-63149-412-3
• 2023 Making Sense of My Life in Science: A Memoir. Modern Memoirs, Inc. ISBN: 978-0-99977-058-0

Awards and Honors

• 1986 Distinguished Publication Award, from the Association for Women in Psychology
• 1987-1988 Member, Institute for Advanced Study
• 1991 Mount Holyoke College, Honorary Degree Recipient (Doctor of Humane Letters)
• 1992 MacArthur Fellowship - also called the Genius Grant
• 1993 University of Amsterdam, Honorary Doctorate Recipient
• 1996 Luleå University of Technology, Honorary Degree Recipient (Doctor of Technology)
• 2000 Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2001 Wesleyan University, Honorary Doctorate Recipient
• 2004-2005 Radcliffe Institute Fellow
• 2005 Appointed to the Blaise Pascal Research Chair
• 2006 Elected Member of the American Philosophical Society
• 2007 Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 2008 Dartmouth 2008 Honorary Degree Recipient (Doctor of Science)
• 2011 Science Hall of Fame
• 2011 John Desmond Bernal Prize from the Society for Social Study of Science
• 2018 Dan David Prize

See also

In Spanish: Evelyn Fox Keller para niños