As late as 1999, women who succeeded in science were called exceptional as if it were unusual for them to be so bright. They were exceptional, not because they could succeed at science but because of all they accomplished despite the hurdles. Gripping.. one puts down the book inspired by the women's grit, tenacity, and brilliance. -Science Riveting. -Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Gene In 1963, a female student was attending a lecture given by Nobel Prize winner James Watson, then tenured at Harvard. At nineteen, she was struggling to define her future. She had given herself just ten years to fulfill her professional ambitions before starting the family she was expected to have. For women at that time, a future on the usual path of academic science was unimaginable-but during that lecture, young Nancy Hopkins fell in love with the promise of genetics. With confidence in what she believed to be the equitable and purely meritocratic field of hard science, Hopkins embarked upon a career. 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 favouritism, Hopkins led a group of sixteen women on the faculty in a campaign that prompted Mit to make the historic admission that it had.