Abstract
I read with some interest Pamela Zurer's Science Insights column, Where are the women? (C&EN, July 28, page 41). I am a graduate student at California Institute of Technology and a graduate of a women's college, so I am always interested in new perspectives and information about the position of women in science. However, I believe that this particular editorial was totally off base in its offhand criticism of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Mars Pathfinder group. Had Zurer actually spent the Fourth of July watching the Mars landing, she would remember that the flight director during the landing—the person giving the orders in front of the TV cameras—was a woman. Had she watched CNN anytime that weekend, she would have seen the feature story about Donna Shirley, the head of the Mars Rover design team. This wasn't a picture of the Apollo mission control rooms from the late 1960s at all, at least not to those of us who were glued to the TV all day. Moreover, at various community events in Pas...
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