Nancy Hopkins (scientist)

Nancy Hopkins
Citizenship	United States
Fields	Biology
Institutions	MIT
Alma mater	Harvard
Influences	James Watson[1]

Nancy Hopkins, an American molecular biologist, is the Amgen, Inc. Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is known for her research identifying genes required for zebrafish development, and for her earlier research on gene expression in the bacterial virus, lambda, and on mouse RNA tumor viruses. She is also known for her work promoting equality of opportunity for women scientists in academia. Hopkins received her BA and PhD from Harvard, the latter working with Professor Mark Ptashne. With Ptashne she identified the operator sites on DNA to which the lambda repressor binds to control early gene expression and hence the viral life cycle. As a postdoctoral fellow of Nobel Laureate James D. Watson and Robert Pollack at the Cold Spring Harbor Lab she worked on DNA tumor viruses and cell biology, discovering that cells whose nucleus had been removed were able to re-establish normal morphology. She joined the MIT faculty in the Center for Cancer Research in 1973 as an assistant professor and switched to work on RNA tumor viruses. She identified viral genes that determine host range and the type and severity of cancers mouse retroviruses cause, including importantly the capsid protein p30 and transcriptional elements that came to be known as enhancers. After a sabbatical in the lab of Nobel laureate Christiane Nusslein-Volhard in 1989, Hopkins switched fields to develop molecular technologies for working with zebrafish. With her students Amsterdam and Gaiano and others in her lab she developed an efficient method for large-scale insertional mutagenesis in the fish. Using this technique her lab carried out a large genetic screen that identified and cloned 25% of the genes that are essential for a fertilized egg to develop into a free-swimming zebrafish larva. Among the genes identified was an unexpected class of genes which when mutated predispose fish to get cancer, and a set of genes that cause fish to develop cystic kidney and which overlap with genes that cause cystic kidney disease in humans.

Hopkins' complaint over gender discrimination at MIT

During the mid-90s, Hopkins felt she and other women were systematically discriminated against at MIT. Due to her complaints to the administration, a committee was formed (with Hopkins as the chair) to investigate the issue of inequalities experienced by women professors as a result of unconscious gender bias.

The results were bold but contentious: A summary of the committee’s findings, published in 1999 and endorsed by then-MIT president Charles Vest and then-Dean of Science (now Chancellor of Berkeley) Robert Birgeneau, is credited with launching a national re-examination of equity for women scientists. It also led 9 research universities, including MIT, to form an ongoing collaboration to study and address issues of gender equity. The group, which came to be known as “The MIT-9”, includes Harvard, Stanford, Cal Tech, Princeton, U. Penn, U Michigan, Yale, and Berkeley.

On the other hand, that the members of the committee were allowed to be judge and jury over their complaints of discrimination, that arguably the only evidence of intentional discrimination the committee found was a disparate proportion of men vs women as science faculty, and that their conclusions materially benefitted the committee members has caused some to question the process and results.^[2]

Hopkins and Larry Summers' resignation from Harvard

In January 2005, at an NBER meeting in Cambridge, MA on the topic of how to address the under-representation of women and minorities in science and engineering fields, Hopkins caused controversy by walking out in protest during a talk by then President of Harvard Lawrence Summers when he proposed that one reason for the very small number of high-achieving women in science and engineering fields might be “intrinsic aptitude” (specifically that the bell-curve of aptitude is flatter for men than women).^[3] Her action became public when she replied to an e-mail from Boston Globe reporter Marcella Bombardieri inquiring about Summers’ speech. Bombardieri’s report of Summers’ speech set off a national discussion of gender discrimination, academic freedom, and human biodiversity, and contributed to Summers’ resignation as the President of Harvard.

References

1. ^ PBS - Scientific American Frontiers:The Gene Hunters:Science Hotline:Nancy Hopkins
2. ^ Jonah Goldberg on Nancy Hopkins on National Review Online
3. ^ Stephan Thernstrom. "In Defense of Academic Freedom at Harvard". History News Network, George Mason University. http://hnn.us/articles/10963.html. 

External links

• Faculty homepage at MIT
• Hopkins Lab Website
• Inaugural article for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
• FNL article known as “The MIT Report on Women in Science”
• FNL article on Summers speech
• FNL article on the hiring of women faculty at MIT
• National Academy of Sciences report reviewing research on cognitive abilities of women vs men and on gender bias
• Hyde and Mertz’ article on women and mathematical ability

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Name	Hopkins, Nancy
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