Margaret Rossiter's Life and Work Brought Women Scientists to Light

Margaret Rossiter wouldn't listen. 

She once asked a group of mostly male professors and students in the history of science department at  Yale if there were ever any women scientists, as they had never been discussed this at these regular monthly gatherings.

"No," they answered. "None." Someone hedged that Marie Curie might be an exception. And that was that.

Rossiter didn't listen to these responses. She didn't believe that women scientists hadn't played a role in the history of American science. She spent the next fifty years of her career disproving that sentiment and chronicling the contributions of women in science.

Margaret W. Rossiter in 1989.
 Office of Visual Services (UREL), Cornell University.

Rossiter was born in Malden, Massachusetts. She became interested in the history of science in high school. She attended Radcliffe and graduated with a degree in the history of science, then earned master's degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the same field, and in philosophy at Yale, where that famous conversation about women scientists took place. She stayed at Yale to complete her PhD, where she worked on agricultural science.

While agricultural science was the focus of her first published work, Rossiter still gravitated to the idea that women scientists did exist and played an important part in the development of science. She began researching this idea and delved into writing her first book on the history of women in science, Women Scientists in America, Struggles and Strategies to 1940, published in 1984. Rossiter followed that book with two more: Women Scientists in America: Before Affirmative Action, 1940–1972, published in 1995, and Women Scientists in America Volume 3: Forging a New World Since 1972, published in 2012.

Rossiter wrote the first book while juggling a series of visiting professorships and grants, as she struggled to find a tenured position. At one point, she said she identified with those women scientists who also struggled. Rossiter finally found tenureship at Cornell where, after two years as a visiting professor, Cornell gave her an endowed chair in their new Department of Science and Technology. 

Rossiter was the recipient of many grants and awards throughout her career, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the MacArthur Fellows Program, the Women's Prize from the History of Science Society, and the George Sarton Medal. The Women's History Prize was eventually renamed in her honor. 

In addition, Rossiter coined the phrase "the Matilda effect" to refer to the tendency within science to attribute women scientists' discoveries to their male counterparts. In doing so, she drew attention to this bias in science.

In 2019, Smithsonian Magazine featured Rossiter and the immediate impact of her work on women in STEM, saying, "In excavating the lives of forgotten women astronomers, physicists, chemists, entomologists and botanists, Rossiter helped clear the way for women scientists in the future." Read more from that article at Smithsonian Magazine.

Margaret Rossiter died August 3, 2025, after a long career in supporting women in science and preserving their stories and rightful places in history. 

Read more about Rossiter's life at the Cornell Chronicle or the New York Times.