Back when she was a self-described hippie graduate student in flowers and beads, Tanya Atwater figured out how the theory of seafloor spreading applied to geological features on land. It was a seismic—get it?—discovery. And it didn’t come easy:
When a recruiter from the California Institute of Technology visited Atwater’s high school, she asked about science degrees. But Caltech didn’t accept women; they would just get married, quit and waste their educations, Atwater remembered being told. She visited Harvard next, which pointed her toward the neighboring women’s college, Radcliffe — a nonstarter, as she lacked the Greek or Latin prerequisites.
Never mind: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology would do.
MIT welcomed women into its science programs. When Atwater asked a professor why, he replied MIT-educated women would raise great children, which she took to mean boys.
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