Ida Henrietta Hyde
Ida Henrietta Hyde | |
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University of Heidelberg | |
Known for | Micro-electrode |
Ida Henrietta Hyde (September 8, 1857 – August 22, 1945) was an American
Childhood
Born in
In 1871, the family home was destroyed in the
Education
At the store where she worked, Hyde chanced upon an English version of
Ida began studying at the University of Illinois at the age of 24, but her study was cut short when her brother became sick in 1882 and she had to attend to him. She also used all of her savings for just one year of education. However, she passed the county teacher's exam and, three years later, the Chicago teacher's exams, and for the next seven years she worked as a teacher of second- and third-graders within the Chicago public school system. Her biological pursuits were still expressed in her attempts to work nature studies into the public school system. She saved money to put towards her tuition, remaining focused on her goal of attaining a college degree.[3]
In 1888 she was finally able to return to the collegiate scene at the age of 31. She enrolled at Cornell University and earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in just three years. She was then offered a biology scholarship at Bryn Mawr College. She accepted and began under the tutelage of Jacques Loeb and Thomas Hunt Morgan.[2] As an assistant att Woods Hole Biological Laboratory, she conducted research on the nervous system of jellyfish. She produced many detailed drawings and descriptions of the nerve cells. In 1893, Hyde received a European Fellowship from the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, which would later become the American Association of University Women.
Ida's results from the research at Woods Hole is said to have helped motivate Dr. Goette in inviting her to come to University of Strasbourg in 1893, to work with him even as no woman had done previously. Hyde, during her attendance at Strasbourg, was the first woman in Germany to have ever petitioned to matriculate for an advanced degree in natural science or mathematics. At the time it was necessary to petition the government and get permission from the faculty. Before this process went fully into motion Ida withdrew her attempts. It is said that the large number of people who spoke out against Ida going through with the petition is what was the cause of that decision, and that Heidelberg University would be a better place to gain her degree.
Ida received her
Ida researched at several other institutions before going to the University of Kansas (KU) including University of Berne 1896, and Radcliffe College 1897. After she started working at KU, Hyde also studied at Rush Medical College over several summers to receive her M. D. in 1911.[6]
Career
In the course of Ida's seven years of teaching she was involved in establishing the “Science in the Schools” program in Chicago's public school system. This program helped to introduce nature studies into these school, where Ida was even known for sharing her own teaching methods with the other educators.
Following completion of her doctorate, she was invited to Naples, Italy as the Investigator of Residence at the Naples Zoological Station, a prestigious post. She continued work on marine invertebrate physiology, until moving to the University of Bern, Switzerland to work with Dr. Kronecker on muscle physiology. She became the first woman admitted to do research at Harvard Medical School under W.T. Porter. While continuing her research, she also furthered her education and medical training at Harvard. Hyde remained an educator as well, teaching classes at preparatory schools and at Woods Hole during the summer.
She was hired as an Associate Professor by the University of Kansas in 1899 and founded the Department of Physiology, also serving as its first Chairman of the Department of Physiology, where she worked for 22 years.[7]
Over her career, Hyde's research covered the nervous, circulatory, and she respiratory systems of vertebrates and invertebrates, and explored the effects of narcotics, caffeine, and alcohol on the body. Also in through the course of her work she noted the differences in the effects of music on the cardiovascular system in athletes, musicians, and farmers and caffeine being the cause of decreased efficiency in physical work. She was the first woman elected into the American Society of Physiologists in 1902, and was its only female member until 1913.[8]
Microelectrode
Hyde was a researcher and professor, but also an inventor and innovator. She developed instruments for monitoring physiological parameters in a marine animal that could be used in seawater. Her most well-known invention was an intracellular micropipette electrode. Dr. Hyde had observed that electrolytes in high concentrations affect processes of cell division, leading to her noting of the minute differences in electrical potential within cells. In order to understand how these nerve and muscle cells work, she needed to be able to stimulate the cells properly and be able to record the results of the change in the currents of the individual cells occurring. Ida's microelectrode can be used for stimulating cells at the micro level while recording electrical activity within the cell without disturbing the cellular wall. This device was a revolutionary invention in neurophysiology and the study of contractile nerve tissue, however, the micro electrode was never officially attributed to Ida as being its first inventor.[3][5]
Though Dr. Hyde's possible microelectrode invention was reported in 1921, several others also created electrodes similar to Ida's, while scientific historians, like G. Kass-Simon have accredited Hyde's invention as being the original and revolutionary. Another microelectrode was supposedly invented another time, about twenty years after Ida was said to have made her version of this invention, by Judith Graham and Ralph W. Gerard from the University of Chicago. Then in the 1950s, Gerard was nominated for a Nobel Prize, because of his developed model of the microelectrode.[9]
Selected publications
- Notes on the Hearts of Certain Mammals. The American Naturalist 25(298) 1891. pp. 861–863. JSTOR 2451734
- The Nervous System in Goneomea Murbachii. Biological Bulletin 4(1) 1902. pp. 40–45. JSTOR 1535511
- The Kaiser and the Devilfish. The New York Evening Post Magazine, May 25, 1918.
- A micro-electrode and unicellular stimulation. Biol. Bull. 40:130–133, 1921.
- Effects of music upon electrocardiograms and blood pressure. J. Exp. Psychol. 7:213–224 1924.
Human health contributions
Ida Hyde lectured on multiple occasions within and outside of the University of Kansas. With the aid of area physicians, she established a program of public medical examination of school children for communicable diseases such as tuberculosis and spinal meningitis. Though she was not a true medical professional, she was elected to membership in the Kansas Medical Society because of her expertise in the knowledge and control of infectious diseases. And in 1918 she was appointed State Chairman of the Kansas Women's Committee on Health, Sanitation and National Defense. A notable proportion of the lectures Ida held in her career were on hygiene and spreadable diseases. Dr. Hyde spoke openly about human sexuality and its involvement in the spread of disease, as well as being an open promoter of public health education.[8]
Anti-discrimination efforts
- It was not until I had worked many days in the splendid laboratory assigned to my private use that it dawned upon me that I was occupying a unique position... In the university circle the news quickly spread that an American "woman's rights" freak... had had the boldness and audacity to force entrance into the college halls. — Ida H. Hyde, "Before Women Were Human Beings".[10]
Hyde repeatedly encountered barriers to her education and career due to her gender, and pressed for more equal access and treatment of women in academia throughout her life. When she was denied the right to enroll in Strassburg University because of her gender, she went to Heidelberg University. Although she was allowed to matriculate, the university's medical school did not permit women, and the faculty denied her entry to physiology lectures or laboratories. Fortunately, her male colleagues shared their lecture notes, and after intense study she passed her doctoral examinations with honor.
After returning to America, Hyde enlisted the help of many fellow women academics and wealthy female benefactors to create a fund to support women in science. The Naples Table Association became a source of both financial aid and professional support for women in scientific research, with 36 women benefiting from the program.
References
- ^ Rose, Rose (1997). Women in the biological sciences: a biobibliographic sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 248.
- ^ ISBN 0-313-29180-2. Retrieved 2009-04-26.
Ida Henrietta Hyde.
- ^ a b Butin, Jan. "Ida Henrietta Hyde (1857–1945)" Encyclopedia, Jewish Women's Archive, accessed March 6, 2015.
- ^ "Physiology's Hidden Genius" by Lisa Scanlon. Trailing Edge column, Technology Review, May 2003, p. 80.
- ^ PMID 7043502. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2011-05-23. Retrieved 2009-04-26.
- ISBN 978-1-59884-158-9.
- ^ Tucker, Gail S. (1981). "Ida Henrietta Hyde: The First Woman Member of the Society". 24(6) pp. 1–9
- ^ PMID 7043503. Archived from the original(PDF) on January 22, 2017.
- ISBN 978-1-58765-522-7.
- ^ a b Hyde, Ida H (1938). "Before Women Were Human Beings... Adventures of an American Fellow in German Universities of the '90's". AAUW Journal. 31 (4): 226–236.
- ^ JSTOR 3173357
- ^ Emily Taylor Center for Women & Gender Equity, The University of Kansas. http://emilytaylorcenter.ku.edu/pioneer-woman/hyde Archived 2021-03-06 at the Wayback Machine accessed March 6, 2015
External links
- Encyclopedia of World Biography on Ida Henrietta Hyde
- Biography From Answers.com
- Tucker, Gail (1981). "Ida Henrietta Hyde: The First Woman Member of the Society" (PDF). Physiologist. 24 (6): 1–9. PMID 7043502. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2011-06-09. Retrieved 2009-04-26.
- Hyde, Ida (1905). Outlines of Experimental Physiology. Harvard University. Retrieved 2009-04-26.
- Marcus, Jacob (1996). The Jew in the American world: a sourcebook. Wayne State University Press. p. 211. ISBN 0-8143-2548-3. Retrieved 2009-04-26.
- Heggie, Vanessa (8 September 2013). "Happy Birthday to Ida H Hyde". The Guardian. Retrieved 2022-04-28.