Elizabeth Wagner Reed

After a second marriage to Sheldon C. Reed, the couple became research partners, first at Harvard University and from 1947 at the Dight Institute for Human Genetics at the University of Minnesota. As her husband directed the institute which had rules against nepotism, although she had a work station at the institute, Reed was not listed as staff until the 1970s. She was one of the few women who performed pioneering work in genetics. Her studies first focused on species evolution, for which she undertook statistical analysis and comparison of minute differences in the Drosophila genus of flies. Later, as the couple's interest shifted to human genetics, the Reeds published works on congenital disorders and diseases. They were in favor of genetic counseling based on an understanding of how such disorders occurred, especially in connection with family planning.

In addition to her genetic work, Reed wrote about sexism toward women scientists. An active women's rights advocate, she not only strove to mentor other women in the profession, but to recover the histories of women scientists. Her book American Women in Science before the Civil War (1992), reclaimed the contributions and biographies of twenty-two women who published in science before the American Civil War. Among them were Eunice Newton Foote and Mary Amelia Swift. Reed's own legacy was obscured by her husband's prominence, until her contributions were recovered by Marta Velasco Martín in 2020.

Early life and education

Elizabeth Cleland Wagner was born on August 27, 1912, in

Wagner grew up near Carroll, Ohio, and graduated from Canal Winchester High School.^[6] From 1930, she furthered her studies at Ohio State University, majoring in botany.^[5][6] She excelled in her studies and in her second year had the highest marks in her class.^[7] She graduated with honors and was elected to the academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa, in 1933.^[8] With support from the Ohio State Graduate School, Wagner earned her master's degree in 1934 and a PhD in 1936.^[5][9][10] After graduation, she did further studies in 1937 in plant research, with funding provided by the Sherwin-Williams Paint Company.^[3][5] Because of biases against women, Wagner was told she should publish her research using only her initials. Thus, her thesis, Effects of Certain Insecticides and Inert Materials upon the Transpiration Rate of Bean Plants, published in 1939, appeared in the name of E. C. Wagner.^[5]

Career

Early teaching career (1938–1943)

After completing her studies, Wagner was hired as a biology and chemistry instructor at

In 1944, Wagner took a post at

Although Reed had a desk at the Dight Institute from 1947 to 1966, she never held an academic position with the institute because of nepotism rules. Her nominal tie was to the University of Minnesota.[20] She nevertheless continued to work with Sheldon and publish works on genetics. Their next two papers, Natural Selection in Laboratory Populations of Drosophila (1948) and Natural Selection in Laboratory Populations of Drosophila II: Competition between a White Eye Gene and Its Wild Type Allele (1950), focused on Drosophila melanogaster and natural selection.^[21] These studies were important in the development of new theoretical and methodological approaches, using statistical analysis and comparison of minute differences, to studying the process of speciation. As a pioneer in the work on Drosophila genetics, Reed was one of the women who contributed to establishing and standardizing processes to study species evolution.^[22]

From 1950, the Reeds changed from studying flies to human genetics and published works together on intellectual disability. In June 1951, their son William was born.^[20] Many of their works, like a 1958 follow-up study of former residents from the turn-of-the-century at the Minnesota Experimental School for the Feeble Minded in Faribault, and a 1962 study on intelligence, focused on families and attempted to determine whether certain traits were genetic.^[23][24] They became proponents of genetic counseling, studying parental genes to determine the probable source of children's congenital disorders or diseases, in an effort to mitigate and understand how they occurred.^[25][26] Their best known joint book, which gave Reed lead author position, was Mental Retardation: A Family Study, published in 1965.^[20]

Women's studies (1950–1992)

From 1950, Reed was interested in writing about women and studying

The push of activists in the Women's Liberation Movement in the 1970s brought about the advent of women's studies courses. A central role of the new field was to recover the histories of women's participation and contributions to society. In 1992, Reed published American Women in Science before the Civil War, which recovered the histories of twenty-two American women scientists who had published prior to the American Civil War.^{[29][30][Notes 2]} The book, along with Ladies in the Laboratory by Mary R. S. Creese, was acknowledged by Tina Gianquitto, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines, whose work focuses in on nineteenth-century women scientists, as being one of two sources that gave extensive historical and biographical information on women scientists of that era.^[32][33] Historian William P. Palmer noted in 2011 that Reed had been "the most thorough biographer of Mary Amelia Swift".^[34] In a different chapter of the book, about Eunice Newton Foote, Reed wrote that Foote's experiments confirmed that when subjected to sunlight, carbon dioxide became warmer than air "thereby demonstrating what we call the greenhouse effect today".^{[35][Notes 3]}

Later career (1966–1980)

In 1966, Reed was officially hired by the University of Minnesota to develop the Minnesota Mathematics and Science Teaching project, known as Minnemast. The program was funded by the National Science Foundation and aimed to focus on better science and math education for kindergarten and primary school children. Reed worked on the project through 1970.^[42] The project developed twenty-nine teaching plans, six of which were created by Reed.^[30] She was still working at the Dight Institute and was part of the staff in the 1970s, as well as serving as co-director of research for the Minnesota Genetics League.^[25][43] She taught courses at the University of Minnesota and gave courses on women's contributions throughout history at the university's Continuing Education and Extension Department.^[44][45]

Death and legacy

Reed died on July 14, 1996, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.^[2] Her legacy in genetics was obscured and according to scholar Marta Velasco Martín, the academic record omitted the involvement of Reed and other women scientists from the historic record of early genetic research. Reed's work was hidden behind that of her more prominent husband, although he acknowledged their partnership.^[46][47] This same fate befell women scientists like Foote, whose biography was "recovered" by Reed.^[29][48] Foote had told Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1868 that women's work was often claimed by men for self-serving reasons.^[49] Reed's legacy, along with that of Natasha Sivertzeva-Dobzhansk and María Monclús, was recovered in the paper Women and Partnership Genealogies in Drosophila Population Genetics, written by Velasco Martín in 2020, to confirm that women were pioneers in genetics, although leading historians tended to ignore their contributions.^[50] On 22 April 2023, The New York Times feature "Overlooked No More" honored Reed.^[51]

Selected publications

• Wagner, E. C. (1939). Effects of Certain Insecticides and Inert Materials upon the Transpiration Rate of Bean Plants (PhD). Columbus, Ohio:
  PMC 437783
  .
• Beasley, E. W. (1942). "Effects of Some Chemically Inert Dusts upon the Transpiration Rate of Yellow Coleus Plants".
  PMID 16653746
  .
• S2CID 6730465
  .
• S2CID 37671503
  .
• OCLC 5551131154
  .
• Reed, Elizabeth Wagner (January 1950). "Productivity and Attitudes of Seventy Scientific Women".
  OCLC 5551779579
  .
• PMID 13469186
  .
• Reed, E. W.;
  OCLC 794036611
  .
• Reed, Elizabeth Wagner (January 1971). "Temperature Distribution in Water".
  OCLC 425372216
  .
• Reed, Elizabeth Wagner (1992). American Women in Science before the Civil War (PDF). Minneapolis, Minnesota:
  OCLC 28126164. Archived from the original
  (PDF) on July 8, 2016.