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Stein, B. R. 2001. ON HER OWN TERMS: ANNIE MONTAGUE ALEXANDER AND THE RISE OF SCIENCE IN THE AMERICAN WEST. University of California Press, Berkeley, 380 pp. ISBN 0-520-- 22726-3, price (hardcover), $35.00.
". . . I do not want to be selfish yet it seems to me we [women] have the right to a considerable extent of disposing of our lives as we think fit." (A. M. Alexander to her friend M. Beckwith, February 1901).
Over the past few decades historians, scientists, and the like have become interested in the role played by women in the development of various scientific disciplines during the early 1900s (Abir-Am and Outram 1989; Bailey 1994; Bonta 1991; Ogilvie 1986; Rossiter 1982). In an era when few worked outside the home, professional scientific careers for women were unheard of, and educational opportunities were limited, some women still managed to become involved in scientific endeavors. On her own terms is the biography of one such remarkable woman, Annie Montague Alexander. Not only was Alexander an intrepid explorer with an insatiable appetite for adventure, but she was also a highly skilled amateur naturalist. Over her lifetime she collected more than 22,000 mammal, 17,000 botanical, and 1,500 fossil specimens, including a number of previously undescribed species. Arguably more important, however, was Alexander's pivotal role as the founder and patron of both the Museum of Paleontology and the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California at Berkeley (MVZ).
This book is more than just a biography. Drawing on correspondence, diaries, personal interviews, and other archival material, the author Barbara Stein has written an engrossing account of how science in the early 1900s was influenced by Annie M. Alexander. This occurred not only through the scientific and political impact of the 2 museums Alexander founded and continued to fund throughout her life but through her role as the patron, advisor, and colleague of men who went on to become highly influential and respected scientists. Readers will find her relationship with Joseph Grinnell particularly intriguing, especially in the light of his well-known prejudices against female scientists. The author is not shy about this apparent paradox: "Grinnell's willingness to take direction from Alexander and be accountable to her...