In the course of researching my book ‘The Man in the Monkeynut Coat’, I’d been interested to discover that physicist Florence Bell who, despite having shown for the first time in 1938 that X-rays could be used to reveal the structure of DNA, was described under the heading ‘Occupation’ on her death certificate as ‘housewife.’ But I’ve just found that when Bell emigrated to the USA in 1943, she was also described not as a scientist, but as a ‘housewife’ on her US Naturalisation records. Talk about hiding your light under a bushel (not that I’m trying for one minute to say that housework doesn’t qualify as hard and worthy graft – it does!)
Anyway, I was delighted to be interviewed about Bell’s life and work for the programme ‘Discovery’ on the BBC World Service this week – and hope that in doing so, I’ve done my bit to lift that bushel and bring Florence Bell out from beneath it!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct5rmm
