Lessons in Chemistry

I bought this book because I thought it were a realistic depiction of a female scientiest in the later 1950s/early 1960s. It most definitely is NOT anything like that, but it might still be worth a read.

The book follows the life of (fictitious) chemist Elisabeth Zott during the 1950s until 1961. She is pictured as a brillant, but very quirky scientist who is trying to succeed as a woman in academia as well as in personal life. Occasionally, there are time jumps into her past and changes in perspective (most of the time, her boyfriend or her dog), but most of the time the story focuses on Elisabeth. The book is not directly told through her perspective, though, so the reader does not only follow her stream of thoughts, but also people's reaction towards her behavior. Eliabeth's story is probably a story many women in STEM can relate to, with sexual abuse (both verbally and physically), theft of her intellectual work "because she's just a woman" and finding her role in a society which expects women to be not more than caring mothers. Eventually, Elisabeth finds herself as a kind of "science communicator" where she comes to fame as the host of a TV cooking show - where she explains cooking, eating and nutrition from a scientist's point of view.

I enjoyed the book for the most part. Elisabeth is quirky in the way of a Sheldon Cooper, in that she is oblivious to many social norms and reacts in the "scientifically correct" way. Of course, this leads to many hilarious situations, which are in stark contrast to the more serious situations Elisabeth has to face (one scene early in the book, in particular, could have used a trigger warning). However, even though the situations described in the book are definitely based on a reality many women have to face, the basic plot is so overly fantastic and unbelivable that it undermines the important points made in the book. In particular towards the end of the book (~50 pages), the plot and the book completely collapse for me and leave me confused.

Elisabeth Zott is a completely unrealistic character in the same way there is probably no real-life Sheldon Cooper. She is not portrayed consistently throughout the books; sometimes she appears to be on the spectrum, completely oblivious to social norms and standards, other times she just appears quirky, willingly ignoring them. This also translated into her scientific ability sometimes, which culminates towards the end in a dialogue, where she is unable to explain the term "normal" on a scientific basis - where she would have started a sermon about Gauss and normal distributions before, she just did not know how to react here.

Elisabeth in general is not an authentic display of a female scientist of the time, and the book instead mixes modern perceptions and behavior into her behavior. This also translates sometimes in anachonisms, like Elisabeth talking about how humans and tomatoes share 60 % of their DNA, something which probably was not known on this deep level before the dawn of DNA sequencing which began in the 1970s, or her referencing the Big Bang theory when the term was not widely used until the 1970s (and even before that only rarely within even the astrophysicist community).

The way science communication is displayed in the book is also terrible. Especially during her cooking show, Elisabeth for the most part changes everyday words with the scientific terms - this does not help educate people on a deep concenptual level, but just ends up in empty tech talk in many cases. I thought the portions of her show in which she actually empowers women and directly encourages them to think outside the social norms were very strong and inspirational, though.

One of my main issues with the book, however, is the main plot. Most of the important plot points are incredibly forced and often it feels as if central themes of the book get lost over time: the central love story is not convincing to me, and the number of improbable events which somehow align still is incredible. In particular towards the end of the book, it seems as if some of the still open plot points had to be wrapped up quite quickly. The last ~50 pages of the book are mostly about a magazine interview Elizabeth gives which reiterates all the important points and events of the book, in case you forgot about them or missed them, without giving them a new sping, and the last 10 pages are occupied with a sub-plot which resolves a minor issue, which did not really need that depth of esolution. Somehow, everything turns out great in the end and all systemic problems of women in academia and society in general seem to have been solved, but as we know 70 years later, they of course haven't. Hooray?

A very minor note: the book is only focused with the role of women, but not other underrepresented minorities. In fact, I cannot think of a single POC in the entire book. This is a bit confusing, since Elisabeth includes race quite often in her public speeches about overcoming inequalities, but the book never engages with any actual example of discriminated POC. I would envision 1950/1960 USA to be a lot more racist, but the topic is avoided altogether.

I don't know how to judge the book in the end. I enjoyed reading it for the most part and I can definitely see how the upcoming TV adaptation will have a great mass appeal. It is quite witty at times and I can overlook the anachronisms, both scientifically and in Elisabeth's behavior. On the other hand, I think my time would have been much better invested in reading an actual (auto-)biography of a female 1950s scientist, showing how discriminating science and society was and still is towards non-white non-male scientists.

Did I read a different book? It probably doesn't help that I am a scientist and have known lots of women scientists, who could hardly be put into one archetype as books like this love to do. I have also seen what academia is like both pre and post millenium. I know when DNA and RNA were discovered and how likely it might be for a 60s chemist to pursue abiogenesis with vigor. Beyond the science, not much in this book felt realistic for the time period, and when it did, it was downright depressing and infuriating. The many frank discussions that are had also lead characters, oddly, to better things. I have had the exact opposite experience in life - people usually don't like it when they're confronted with uncomfortable truths; they're not liberated by it. And they don't appreciate hearing them. There was very little in this book I felt I could relate to, and I don't think I laughed out loud once.

I'm struggling with how I feel about this one. On one hand, I related with so many of Elizabeth's experiences as a woman in STEM and thoroughly enjoyed six-thirty's character, in fact the dog was my favorite part of this book.

However so much of this seemed out of time, like the book either wasn't sure what era it was in or the author was combining multiple eras. At times it also felt like Elizabeth might be neurodivergent, others it felt like she was just an awkward scientist, so overall I wasn't entirely sure what her story was or how to interpret her actions. Elizabeth is also a terrible science communicator. The book shows women eating up Elizabeth's every science-heavy word, but in reality she wasn't actually making science accessible to these people with how she acted and how she spoke about it to them. That whole part of the plot came across to me like an attempt to be inspirational with how Elizabeth inspired so many women, but as a scientist myself who's passionate about science communication it read like the author just wanted a shiny story about a quirky woman scientist in the 60s without putting too much depth into the character. It would have been much stronger if Elizabeth had shown that women can be scientists and are regular everyday people too, instead of leaning so hard into the "she's a scientist so can only speak like a scientist" thing.