The exceptions : Nancy Hopkins and the fight for women in science / Kate Zernike.

Includes Book Club reader's guide and a Q & A with Kate Zernicke excerpted from an interview published in Shelf awareness, October 11, 2002.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 371-392) and index.

Prologue -- Part One. An epiphany on Divinity Avenue -- The choice -- An immodest proposal -- At the feet of Harvard's great men -- Bungtown Road -- "Women, please apply" -- The vow -- Part Two. "We should distance all competitors" -- Our Millie -- The best home for a feminist -- Liberated lifestyles -- Kendall Square -- "This slow and gentle robbery" -- "Fodder" -- Fun in middle age -- Three hundred square feet -- MIT Inc. -- Part Three. Sixteen tenured women -- X and Y -- All for one or one for all -- "The greater part of the balance" -- Epilogue -- The sixteen.

"In 1999, Nancy Hopkins, a noted molecular geneticist and cancer researcher at MIT, found herself underpaid and denied the credit and resources given to men of lesser rank. Galvanized by the flagrant favoritism, Hopkins led a group of sixteen women on the faculty in a campaign that prompted MIT to make the historic admission that it had long discriminated against female scientists. The MIT sixteen were formidable in their respective fields: their work has advanced our understanding of everything from cancer to geology, from fossil fuels to the inner workings of the human brain. And their effort to highlight the inequity they observed would set off a national reckoning with the pervasive sexism in science that continues to this day. Written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who broke the story in 1999 for the Boston Globe, The exceptions is the intimate and unforgettable story of Nancy Hopkins--a surprisingly reluctant feminist who became a hero to two generations of women in science." -- Back cover.