Nancy Hopkins, eminent molecular biologist, is the subject of Kate Zernike’s book, The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science (2023).  

 

The Exceptions chronicles groundbreaking science and a history-making fight for equal opportunity. It is the “excellent and infuriating” (The New York Times) story of how this group of determined, brilliant women used the power of the collective and the tools of science to inspire ongoing radical change. And it offers an intimate look at the passion that drives discovery, and a rare glimpse into the competitive, hierarchical world of elite science—and the women who dared to challenge it.

 

At age 19, in the early 1960s, Hopkins fell in love with genetics and embarked on what was then considered to be an unusual path for a woman: a career in scientific research. Expecting a pure meritocracy, she faced decades of discrimination, low pay, and lack of recognition, as well as sexual harassment.

 

In 1999, Hopkins, now a noted molecular geneticist and cancer researcher at MIT, divorced and childless, found herself underpaid and denied the credit and resources given to men of lesser rank. Galvanized by the flagrant favoritism, Hopkins led a group of sixteen women on the faculty in a campaign that prompted MIT to make the historic admission that it had long discriminated against its female scientists. The sixteen women were a formidable group: their work has advanced our understanding of everything from cancer to geology, from fossil fuels to the inner workings of the human brain. And their work to highlight what they called “21st-century discrimination”—a subtle, stubborn, often unconscious bias—set off a national reckoning with the pervasive sexism in science.
 

A professor of biology at MIT, Hopkins is celebrated for her research on the genetics of zebrafish and mouse RNA tumor viruses, and for her activism promoting equality for women in science.