I can definitely relate to Laura L. Mays Hoopes memoir, Breaking the Spiral Ceiling: An American Woman Becomes A DNA Scientist (March 2011). She and I grew up at the same time, and we both entered careers in the scientific and engineering world. We also both experienced the inequities between men and women that abounded in that world. Though I am not a trained scientist as Laura (Laura got her Ph.D from Yale), I worked as a technical writer, editor and proposal manager in the aerospace industry and trained many scientists and engineers to write. However, Laura is not a scientist who needs writing help. Her memoir is easy to read even for non-scientists like myself, and her voice is humorous and friendly. Not only does she tell the struggles of moving up the spiral ladder in her scientific world, she shares her life as a wife and mother. During that time if woman wanted to make it in the man's world, she had to prove herself way more than her male colleagues. Plus, she couldn't let … [Read more...]