Professor Rose Leke

Professor Rose Leke is an internationally renowned immunologist and parasitologist who has dedicated her career to helping eradicate malaria. Working with Dr Diane Taylor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, her research has advanced understandings of how malaria during pregnancy can harm the health of both mothers and foetuses. She has also dedicated many years to working on polio elimination programmes and advocating for better representation for women in STEM.

As a young girl growing up in rural Cameroon in the 1950s, Leke experienced regular bouts of malaria as a normal part of life. Her interest in medicine was initially sparked by the treatment she received for a lung abscess as a child: she wanted to understand exactly what she had gone through, as well as how she could help others experiencing health problems. In secondary school, Leke noticed how many pregnant women in her community were dying of malaria and decided to pursue a career in mitigating the harm caused by the disease.

In 1966, Leke left Cameroon for undergraduate studies in the US, followed by a masters and a PhD in parasitology in Canada. She then returned to Cameroon to research onchocerciasis, or river blindness. “To me, the choice was never going to be oncho, I had to do work in malaria,” she said later. Malaria was what she felt she “was supposed to do”.

That goal was certainly achieved. Leke has worked on malaria elimination programmes, served as a member of multiple national and international malaria response committees, and held the positions of Executive Director of the Cameroon Coalition Against Malaria and president of the Federation of African Immunological Societies. Her primary research focus is the immunology of parasitic infections, with emphasis on malaria in pregnant women, and she has worked for decades to improve clinical care for pregnant women suffering from the disease.

In the early 1990s, Leke began her decades-long collaboration with Taylor. The women’s research has made it easier to diagnose placental malaria and shown how the presence of the malaria parasite within the placenta can affect the immune development of newborns. Leke has also worked extensively on polio elimination, inspired partly by the experiences of close relatives who suffered with the disease.

Leke retired from senior university positions in 2013, when she was head of the Department of Medicine and Director of the Biotechnology Centre at the University of Yaoundé I in Cameroon. Two years later, she established the Higher Institute for Growth in Health Research for Women Consortium – furthering a lifelong commitment to improving gender equality in science and global health leadership. To date, the mentorship initiative has supported over 100 young women scientists in Cameroon.

Today, Leke is Emeritus Professor of Immunology and Parasitology at the University of Yaoundé I. She also serves as a chair or consultant on several global committees related to malaria and polio, including for the World Health Organization (WHO).

Among many awards, Leke was ceremonially named Queen Mother of the Cameroon Medical Community by the Cameroon Medical Council in 2019 and recognised for her “Achievement in Global Health Leadership” by the Africa Centres for Disease Control & Prevention in 2022. This year, she received the 2023 Virchow Prize for Global Health – honouring her “pioneering infectious disease research towards a malaria-free world and relentless dedication in advancing gender equality”.

You can follow her work here:

Twitter: @LekeRose

Further Reading

• Rose Leke, Wikipedia
• Interview With Professor Rose Leke: How To Certify A Region As Wild Polio Free, Africa Kicks Out Wild Polio

Written by Moya Crockett, with thanks to Stylist for their support.

Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon, Melissa L Sevigny

In the summer of 1938, botanist Elzada Clover and PhD student Lois Jotter set off from the University of Michigan to travel the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious expedition leader and three amateur boatmen. The expedition held a tantalising appeal for Clover and Jotter: no one had yet surveyed the plant life of the Grand Canyon, and they were determined to be the first. Journalists and veteran river-runners proclaimed that the motley crew would never make it out alive, but the reputation of the Colorado River as the most dangerous river in the world did not deter the women from their mission. The adventurous expedition is all the more remarkable considering the context of attitudes towards women in botany at the time, which, like many other areas of science, was very much male-dominated. 

Through the vibrant letters and diaries of the two women, science journalist Melissa L Sevigny traces their daring 43-day journey down the Colorado River, during which they meticulously catalogued the thorny plants that thrived in the Grand Canyon’s secret nooks and crannies. Along the way, they chased a runaway boat, ran the river’s most fearsome rapids, and turned the harshest critic of female river-runners into an ally. These brave and pioneering women garnered significant publicity and curiosity at the time for their expedition, and their work has had a lasting impact on the scientific understanding of this unique landscape. Clover and Jotter’s plant list, including four new cactus species, would one day become vital for efforts to protect and restore the river’s ecosystem. 

Brave the Wild River is a joyful and spellbinding adventure story of two women who risked their lives to make an unprecedented botanical survey of a defining landscape in the American West at a time when human influences had begun to change it forever.

Order the book on Bookshop.org.uk.

About the Author 

Melissa Sevigny is a science journalist and reporter at KNAU (Arizona Public Radio) in Flagstaff, Arizona. She has worked as a science communicator in the fields of planetary science, Western water policy, and sustainable agriculture. Her lyrical nonfiction explores the intersections of science, nature, and history, with a focus on the American Southwest. Sevigny is also the author of Mythical River (University of Iowa Press, 2016) and Under Desert Skies (University of Arizona Press, 2016). She earned a BS in Environmental Science & Policy from the University of Arizona and an MFA in Creative Writing & Environment from Iowa State University. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.

You can follow Melissa Sevigny’s work here:

Website: Melissa L. Sevigny – Science Writer (melissasevigny.com)
Twitter: @MelissaSevigny
Bluesky: @melissasevigny.bsky.social

With thanks to Synergy for their support.

Dr Lori Alvord

Dr Lori Arviso Alvord is an American surgeon who became the first Navajo woman to be certified in surgery in 1994. She blends traditional Navajo healing techniques with conventional Western medicine, with the aim of providing Native American people with culturally competent healthcare and accelerating the recovery process for all patients.

Alvord was born in 1958 to a Diné father and White mother on the Navajo reservation of Crownpoint, New Mexico. She initially majored in natural sciences at Dartmouth College but received low grades. Believing she wasn’t clever enough to pursue a STEM career, she switched to a double social sciences major with a minor in Native American studies, graduating in 1979.

However, a neuroanatomy course at college had ignited Alvord’s interest in neurology. She joined a neurobiology clinic as a research assistant, where colleagues encouraged her to apply to medical school. She was accepted into Stanford University Medical School and earned her MD in 1985.

Medical school is always tough, but it posed specific challenges for Alvord, whose training required her to go against some Navajo traditions. She undertook a six-year residency at Stanford University Hospital after her M.D., then began practising as a surgeon with the Indian Health Service in Gallup, New Mexico. In 1994, she earned her board certification as a surgeon – the first Diné or Navajo woman to ever do so.

During her time in Gallup, Alvord cared for her own tribal members and observed that their needs, concerns and traditions often clashed with her conventional Western medical training. She began to develop a new philosophy of surgical care that respects Native American culture. Alvord has been particularly influenced by Navajo beliefs about the importance of harmony. In the context of medicine, this involves paying attention to all aspects of a patient’s life – including their personal relationships and psychological and spiritual wellbeing – rather than trying to address physical ailments in isolation.

Alvord also incorporates Navajo songs, symbols and ceremonial rituals into her practice, recognising that these can ease stress in a way that helps accelerate healing. Respect for nature is central to Alvord’s work, too; she advocates for hospitals “where you can see trees and grass and sky and sun”.

In 1999, Alvord published a bestselling memoir about her surgical career, The Scalpel and the Silver Bear. She has held a number of prestigious academic posts in the US since the 1990s, including assistant professor of surgery and psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School, associate faculty member for the Center for American Indian Health at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and associate dean of the Central Michigan University College of Medicine. In 2013, she was nominated to serve as U.S. Surgeon General.

Today, Alvord is chief of staff at Astria Health in Washington in the United States, where she continues to focus on surgical care that incorporates patients’ native culture. She has published research articles in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, and expressed pleasure that mainstream scientific research is beginning to support  some Native philosophies and practices – from meditating to reduce stress and increase immune responses to the benefits of following a high-vegetable, low-meat diet. Her goal, she says, is to “achieve a better way to deliver health care not just for Native people, but for everyone”.

Alvord’s honours include the Wallace Sterling Lifetime Achievement Award from the Stanford Medicine Alumni Association in 2018, and recognition from the Navajo Area Health Board for her “dedication and concern for the quality of healthcare on the Navajo Nation”.

You can follow her work here:

Twitter: @lori_alvord

Further Reading

• Lori Alvord, Wikipedia
• Dr Lori Arviso Alvord, Changing the Face of Medicine
• Lori Arviso Alvord ’79 hosts lecture on integrating Native and Western medicine, Kent Friel, The Dartmouth, 3 February 2023
• Lori Arviso Alvord, MD: The First Navajo Nation Tribal Member to Be Board Certified in General Surgery, Capt Susan V. Karol, MD, Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons, 4 February 2022
• Dr. Lori Alvord: From Navajo Healing Ceremonies To 21st Century Medicine, New Hampshire Public Radio, 1 August 2014 
• Bridging the Cultural Divide in Medicine, Edna Francisco, Science, 3 December 2004 
• Through Navajo Eyes, Dr Lori Arviso Alvord, Stanford Magazine, January/February 2000

Written by Moya Crockett, with thanks to Stylist for their support.

Dr Laura Bassi

Laura Bassi Veratti was an 18th century Italian physicist and philosopher who made history as the first woman in the world to have a doctorate in science. She was also the first woman to become a salaried university tutor, and possibly the first woman ever to achieve a fully-fledged scientific career.

Bassi was born in Bologna in 1711 and privately tutored from the age of five. Impressed by her intelligence, Bassi’s family doctor – who was also professor of medicine at the University of Bologna – asked to have a hand in her education, teaching her subjects including philosophy, metaphysics and logic. By the time Bassi was 20, people would visit her home to watch the brilliant young woman debate philosophy and physics with leading male academics.

The Archbishop of Bologna became Bassi’s patron, and arranged for her to publicly defend 49 philosophy theses before professors of the University of Bologna in April 1732. She was promptly awarded a doctorate in natural sciences and philosophy (the second woman to earn a doctorate in philosophy, after Elena Cornaro Piscopia in 1678, as well as the first to have a science doctorate). Bassi was also elected to the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna, making her the first female member of any Western scientific establishment.

Those weren’t the only big moments for Bassi in 1732. Later that year, she was appointed professor of natural philosophy at the University of Bologna. At 21, not only was she the university’s first female teacher, she was the first paid woman lecturer in the world.

However, while the university was keen to publicise Bassi’s appointment, it was less keen to place her on genuinely equal footing with male academics. She was blocked from teaching ordinary classes and only allowed to lecture publicly at occasional high-profile events. But Bassi had no interest in serving as a ceremonial female figurehead; she wanted to work and teach.

Unusually for the time, Bassi’s marriage helped her pursue her academic and professional ambitions. After she married fellow scientist Giuseppe Veratti in 1738, it was seen as acceptable for her to lecture from her Bologna home (a more controversial activity for a single woman). She started running eight-month courses of daily lessons that combined theoretical and experimental physics in a manner not taught at the University of Bologna.

Bassi was particularly interested in experimenting with electricity, then an exciting new discovery. Students flocked from all over Europe to learn from her. Over time, she gained a reputation as a supporter of the theories of Isaac Newton, and helped introduce Newtonian physics and natural philosophy to Italy.

She authored 28 papers, mostly on physics and hydraulics. While few of Bassi’s works survive today, her influence can be seen in her correspondence with leading scientists and philosophers of her time. Her greatest professional achievement came when she was appointed to the Chair of Experimental Physics by the Bologna Institute of Sciences in 1776. It was her final history-making moment: she was now the first woman in the world to be appointed to a chair of physics at a university.

Bassi died on 20 February 1778 aged 66, having achieved the kind of success as a scientist and academic that many others – men and women alike – could only dream of.

Further Reading

• Laura Bassi, Wikipedia
• Laura Maria Catarina Bassi, MacTutor
• Laura Bassi, Enlightenment Scientist, Emily Zarevich, JStor Daily, 8 January 2023
• Laura Bassi and the city of learning, Paula Findlen, Physics World, 29 August 2013
• Science as a Career in Enlightenment Italy: The Strategies of Laura Bassi, Paula Findlen, Isis, September 1993

Written by Moya Crockett, with thanks to Stylist for their support.

The Sloth Lemur’s Song: Madagascar from the Deep Past to the Uncertain Present, Alison Richard

A moving account of Madagascar told by a researcher who has spent over fifty years investigating the mysteries of this remarkable island.

Madagascar is a place of change. A biodiversity hotspot and the fourth largest island on the planet, it has been home to a spectacular parade of animals, from giant flightless birds and giant tortoises on the ground to agile lemurs leaping through the treetops. Some species live on; many have vanished in the distant or recent past. Over vast stretches of time, Madagascar’s forests have expanded and contracted in response to shifting climates, and the hand of people is clear in changes during the last thousand years or so. Today, Madagascar is a microcosm of global trends. What happens there in the decades ahead can, perhaps, suggest ways to help turn the tide on the environmental crisis now sweeping the world.

The Sloth Lemur’s Song is a far-reaching account of Madagascar’s past and present, led by an expert guide who has immersed herself in research and conservation activities with village communities on the island for nearly fifty years. Alison Richard accompanies the reader on a journey through space and time—from Madagascar’s ancient origins as a landlocked region of Gondwana and its emergence as an island to the modern-day developments that make the survival of its array of plants and animals increasingly uncertain. Weaving together scientific evidence with Richard’s own experiences and exploring the power of stories to shape our understanding of events, this book captures the magic as well as the tensions that swirl around this island nation.

About the author

Professor Dame Alison Richard received her undergraduate degree in Anthropology at Cambridge University, and her doctorate from London University. In 1972, she joined the faculty of Yale University, where she became professor of anthropology in 1986, chairing the Department of Anthropology from 1986 to 1990, and later serving as director of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, where she oversaw one of the most important university natural history collections in the USA. From 1994-2002, she served as Provost of Yale, with operational responsibility for the University’s financial and academic programs and planning. In 1998 she was named the Franklin Muzzy Crosby Professor of the Human Environment.

From 2003-2010, Professor Richard was Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, a position carrying the responsibilities of university president. During her tenure, she led several major changes in university policy, reorganised management of the University’s endowment, expanded Cambridge’s global partnerships, and launched and completed a billion pound fund-raising campaign. Her achievements received recognition in 2010, when she was awarded a DBE (Dame Commander of the British Empire) for her services to Higher Education.

As a researcher, Professor Richard is widely known for her work and writings on the evolution of complex social systems among primates. This work has taken her to Central America, Northern Pakistan and, in particular, to the forests of Madagascar. Professor Richard has been working in Madagascar since 1970, when she spent 18 months studying the socioecology of sifaka, Propithecus verreauxi, for her PhD. Since 1984, in collaboration with colleagues in Madagascar and the US, her research has focused on the demography and social behavior of the sifaka population at Bezà Mahafaly, Madagascar. In 1975, with colleagues from the University of Antananarivo and Washington University, she launched the Bezà Mahafaly partnership for conservation, research and training, and she has been deeply involved in that activity ever since.

Professor Richard is a trustee of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Liz Claiborne & Art Ortenberg Foundation. She chairs the Advisory Board of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative and the Leadership Council of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, and serves on the Advisory Board of Arcadia. She has received numerous honorary doctorates, and in 2005 she was appointed Officier de l’Ordre National in Madagascar.

With thanks to Synergy for their support.