The women pioneers of neuroscience at the ICM

The 2019 Annual History of Neuroscience meeting on December 13th at the ICM - Institute for Brain and Spinal Cord -, in Paris, was dedicated to women pioneers in medicine and neuroscience. The program underwent little change due to strikes over French government’s planned pension reform and risked being postponed but turned out to be excellent for the topics covered by presentations, and for the participants engagement.

The scientific committee, composed by Yves Agid, Jean-Gaël Barbara, Laura Bossi, Jacques Poirier, and Olivier Walusinski, strongly supports the dissemination of the history of neuroscience through scientific meetings, publications, and other events.

The first session, on the morning of Friday December 13th, was moderated by Brigitte Lecot, general secretary of the French Association of Women Doctors (AFFM). Olivier Walusinski, a historian of medicine and of the illustrious French neurology, recounted the pioneering clinical contributions of women doctors at La Salpetrière at the beginning of the XXth century. He introduced his talk with the Italian anatomist Anna Morandi Manzolini (1714-1774) and gave the example of three womem neurologists who have been largely forgotten: Augusta Dejerine Klumpke, Chiriachitza Athanassio-Benisty, and Gabrielle Lévy. Jacques Poirier, honorary professor at the Faculty of Medicine Pitié-Salpêtrière who has worked extensively on the Dejerines archives, compared the crossed paths and the differences between two women neuroscientists who lived in the shadow of their husbands: Augusta Dejerine Klumpke and Cécile Mugnier-Vogt. Jean-Léon Thomas, a neurobiologist at Yale and ICM, in an in-depth and affectionate talk, told the story and works of Nicole Le Douarin - "you are a monument in the world of research" -, his mentor, who was in the Auditorium and received the honors of the public.

The following session was moderated by Jacques Poirier. Catherine Vidal, neurobiologist and honorary Research Director at Pasteur Institute, resumed the myths and reality of the male/female brains: "gender stereotypes in scientific publications are speculations" and presented some "Cas d'école" of the interference of ideology in scientific practice. The historian Nicole Edelman retraced the ideas about women in the first decades of the XXth century, from those for which women in medicine were too ambitious and had to be exceptions, to the use by Charcot of hypnosis and diagnosis of hysteria to validate the fragility of women, without taking account the harassment they had suffered.

After a delicious stuffed baguettes lunch, it was my turn, introduced by Yves Agid and Laura Bossi. My talk focused on the life and discoveries of Rita Levi Montalcini, which led to a paradigm shift in neurobiology and to the demonstration of neuronal plasticity (here are some slides and my conclusion).

Seules des femmes extraordinaires, qui surmontent héroïquement la résistance de l'environnement, deviennent des scientifiques immortelles?

Comparons la carrière de Rita Levi Montalcini avec celle de Marguerite Vogt, fille de Oskar et Cécile Vogt, dont nous avons entendu l'histoire ce matin. Comme Levi Montalcini, elle a quitté l’Europe et a déménagé aux États-Unis, où elle a travaillé avec Renato Dulbecco, contribuant de manière substantielle à la recherche qui a conduit à son prix Nobel. Mais Marguerite n’a même pas été mentionnée parmi les remerciements.

"Je suis heureuse de ne pas avoir été dérangée", a déclaré Marguerite Vogt à Natalie Angier du New York Times, en 2001." Quand vous devenez trop célèbre, cessez de pouvoir travailler".

Si nous revenons sur leurs histoires, nous trouverons la réponse à la question de savoir s’il suffit d’être extraordinaire pour obtenir un prix Nobel.

Le facteur déterminant a été le contexte, l’attitude de la communauté scientifique qui exclut encore les femmes des plus hauts niveaux de la carrière académique et des prix et des conferences. Les contextes orientés vers l’inclusion et la diversité sont rares, mais quelque chose change.

Levi Montalcini répète souvent dans ses lettres l’importance qu’il a eu tout au long de sa carrière Hamburger. Et en effet elle écrit, en 1951, seulement quelques années après son arrivée à St. Louis: "Avec Viktor la collaboration se déroule à un niveau d'égalité totale”.

Elle a dit, et avec cela je conclus. "Aujourd'hui, le vrai maître est celui qui communique la parité".

The Journée continued with Caroline Fayolle, a historian of feminism and lecturer at the University of Montpellier, who traced the main changes in the movements for gender equality, from the 1848 revolution to the start of the First World War. At the beginning of the century, new radical feminist figures emerged, and among them, Madeleine Pelletier, the first female intern in French asylums. 

The last session was moderated by Yves Agid. The first speaker, researcher Violeta Zujovic talked about the XX initiative, launched at the ICM to improve the scientific understanding of cognitive prejudices through the knowledge provided by neurosciences. Following, Marwan Hariz, neurosurgeon and professor at the Institute of Neurology, University College, London, focused on women neurosurgeons, who have successfully broken down all social, hierarchical, and cultural barriers, and have not only reached advanced positions in neurosurgery, including academics, but also helped founding and directing disciplines and sub-neurosurgical specialties in their respective countries.

The exposition at Bibliothèque Charcot

It was a memorable day, and the second in two months at the ICM dedicated to the women pioneers of neuroscience. On October 15th, we celebrated the 160th birth anniversary of Augusta Dejerine Klumpke: you can watch the video Celebrating Augusta Dejerine Klumpke .