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This chapter centres on the medical career of Margaret Mason, Lady Mount Cashell (1773–1835). Mason is most often remembered as a marginal member of the Shelley circle and through her early relationship with pioneering women’s rights author Mary Wollstonecraft. Yet Mason’s significant late-life achievements as a medical student, a practising physician to the poor and an author of a domestic medical text are less well known. Mason’s Advice to Young Mothers on the Physical Education of Children (1823) pushed for women’s professionalization and education as a means of reconstituting and reimagining their traditional roles as midwives, a position which had been usurped by the male medical establishment throughout the second half of the eighteenth century. This chapter highlights how Mason’s writings intervened in scientific debates surrounding maternal health and positions her work within a small but important canon of woman-authored medical literature in the period.

Provides a comprehensive overview of the history of women in science from the late 17th century to the present Combines original research, pivotal scholarship and a selection of case studies from significant periods Topics covered include scientific networks; institutions; cultures of science; science communication; and diversity

This introductory chapter maps the history and historiography of women in science, illustrating how women have been neglected due in part to the imposition of masculine models of reference and interpretation that failed to find women’s practice and contributions. Themes include discussions of influential texts in feminist history of science, and of key frameworks of analysis including collaboration, private/public and amateur/professional distinctions, feminized spaces of science, geographical differences and non-Western perspectives, and the implications for women of domestic and institutional places of practice. This chapter also serves to introduce the themes of each section of the volume: Strategies and Networks; Institutions, Archives and Inclusion; Cultures of Science; Science Communication; and Access, Diversity and Practice.

Air superiority became a significant aspect of warfare during World War I. Some of Britain’s finest mathematicians, engineers, and scientists were thus engaged in the quest to understand and advance many aspects of aeronautics, including aircraft construction and performance. Optimizing the trajectory of anti-aircraft fire to improve the chances of bringing down enemy aircraft was also a pressing concern. In this chapter we describe part of the aeronautical landscape in Britain during the second decade of the 1900s and consider the backgrounds, roles, and salient contributions of a number of contemporary women mathematicians and scientists.