34 Facts About Ruth Hubbard

Ruth Hubbard was a professor of biology at Harvard University, where she was the first woman to hold a tenured professorship position in biology.

Ruth Hubbard's mother was a concert-quality pianist, and as a child, Ruth showed promise on the piano as well.

The family settled first in Brookline, Massachusetts, where Ruth graduated Brookline High School, and then in Cambridge.

Ruth Hubbard decided to enroll at Radcliffe College with the intent to pursue a pre-medicine degree, which she attributes to the fact that everyone around her was a doctor.

Ruth Hubbard sensed the disdain that the distinguished Harvard professors had for the system that required them to travel to the Radcliffe campus to teach the small female classes after teaching the same lecture to their male students at Harvard.

Out of a desire to help the Allied War effort in World War II, Ruth Hubbard joined the laboratory of George Wald, where they conducted research on infrared vision.

Ruth Hubbard briefly relocated to Chattanooga where her first husband Frank Hubbard was stationed.

Ruth Hubbard returned to Radcliffe in 1946 in pursuit of her doctorate in biology.

Ruth Hubbard was awarded a predoctoral fellowship by the US Public Health Service in 1948, allowing her to study at the University College Hospital Medical School in London.

Ruth Hubbard worked under George Wald, investigating the biochemistry of retinal and retinol.

Ruth Hubbard had confirmed the long-held belief that vitamin A was related to vision.

In 1952, Ruth Hubbard received a Guggenheim Fellowship at the Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Ruth Hubbard made many important contributions to the visual sciences but her single most important contribution was the fact that visual excitation is initiated by a chemical rearrangement of the visual pigment which is called a cis-trans isomerization.

Ruth Hubbard showed that this is the only direct action of light on the visual system.

Ruth Hubbard identified the specific intermediate in the visual cycle that leads to downstream effects, that culminate in a light-activated neural signaling to the brain Hubbard described the bleaching and resynthesis of the rhodopsin molecule each time a photon is absorbed.

Ruth Hubbard discovered retinene isomerase that converts all-trans retinal back into 11-cis retinal.

Ruth Hubbard studied the visual pigments in several new species.

Ruth Hubbard's early work focused on the basic properties of rhodopsin, which is a combination of the chromophore and a protein called opsin, which is reutilized in the resynthesis of rhodopsin.

Ruth Hubbard published at least 31 scientific papers devoted to vision.

Ruth Hubbard describes an instance where she was working with squid as one of the pivotal moments where her interests shifted from scientific research to social relevance.

Around the same time in the late 1960s, as a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Ruth Hubbard was asked to give a talk about being a female in the sciences.

Ruth Hubbard was the first woman to be offered a tenured Harvard professorship in the Biology Department in 1973.

Ruth Hubbard became known as a strong critic of sociobiology.

Ruth Hubbard became a critic of recombinant DNA research, in a time when the field was booming.

Ruth Hubbard was concerned that people were attempting to assign every trait, disease, and behavior a genetic cause, leading to an oversimplification of science which does not consider the complexities of nature and outside factors.

Ruth Hubbard continues forth with the various means of debate for both sides.

Ruth Hubbard even refers to the means of debate as "breathing new life" into old theories and assumptions.

Ruth Hubbard promptly stresses that "[she believes] the subject of women's biology is profoundly political", explaining away the book's title as she does so.

Ruth Hubbard raises the question of whether or not women can improve the sciences but makes an attempt to bring into attention her belief that women can make an impact.

Ruth Hubbard closes by saying that scientists never want their work to be forgotten and lost, and that she sides with feminism for political insight and analytic testing on the scientific assumptions about women.

Ruth Hubbard was married to WWII GI and fellow Harvard graduate Frank Hubbard in 1942.

Ruth Hubbard fondly remembered the months that the pair spent traveling via motorcycle across Europe as Frank researched harpsichords.

Ruth Hubbard had met her second husband, George Wald, while they were both at Harvard.

Ruth Hubbard would go on to publish a book, Exploding the Gene Myth, with her son Elijah.