UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #1025
DOVE, ALEXANDRA

DOVE, ALEXANDRA (1933-)
Research Professor Emerita at McArdle Laboratories
At UW: 1965-present

Interviewed: 	2008 (2 sessions)
Interviewer: 	Eleanor Albert
Index by: 	Stephen A. Pierce
Length: 	1 hour, 25 minutes

Abstract: In her two 2008 interviews with Eleanor Albert, Alexandra Dove talks about her training and career as a molecular biologist and geneticist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from the 1950s to the late 2000s.  She recounted early influences that interested her in science, from her father to her teachers at Harvard School of Medicine, and explained main currents in her research. She also reflected on personalities at McArdle Labs at UW, her husband’s work, her travel and training in Europe, her roles as researcher and parent, changes in academic science, and her being a woman scientist. This interview was conducted for inclusion into the UW-Madison Oral History Program.

Key Words: New York City; Hunter College (CUNY); Harvard Medical School; Boris Magasanik; women in science; molecular biology; genetics; Paris; McArdle Labs; Deric Bownds; mouse and rat models; William Dove; computers; animal rights; academic staff.

First Interview Session (September 26, 2008): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:27	Question: Talk about your childhood. Answer: Dove was born March 27, 1933 in NYC and lived in Queens until she was 10. Her father and mother were physical chemists, her father at Rockefeller Institute. When she was 10, the family moved into Manhattan, where she attended NYC public schools and later Hunter College to pursue a degree in chemistry. She graduated in 1954.

00:02:33	[no question] Wanting to go to graduate school, she nevertheless decided to work in Boston for a year at Harvard Medical School’s pharmacology dept., reading the papers of Jacques Monod and Joshua Lederberg.

00:05:36	[no question] She explained that her job at Harvard led to her staying there in a new one-year “Medical Sciences” program for med students and graduate students. The course was a general survey of all of the medical science fields. She explained the lab in which she worked, and why she decided not to forego getting the master’s degree.

00:08:40	Question: As a woman, were you in the minority? Answer: Yes; but she didn’t feel discriminated because of it. While her lab only had one other woman, their major professor, Boris Magasanik, was supportive of women in science.

00:10:05	Question: Then what? Answer: After her year in “Medical Sciences,” she approached Magasanik about her interest in “microbial physiology” (later molecular biology and genetics). Follow up: No doubts? Answer: When she graduated from college, she really didn’t know what she wanted to do until she “landed in this fortunate job.”

00:11:36	Question: Siblings. Answer: Her brother got a degree in geochemistry.

00:11:59	Question: Your dissertation? Answer: She did it on the role of adenine in the metabo-lization of histidine. Follow up: Did you continue this research after your PhD? Answer: No; she got into bacterial viruses and got  a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship, first in Copenhagen and then with Sydney Brenner at Cambridge. It was during this postdoc that she met her husband.

00:15:01	Question: After the postdoc? Answer: She got a job in Paris at Institut Biologique et Physiologique where she studied molecular biology. So she was abroad from 1960 to 1964—when she married—on a CNRH and then at a postdoc at Stanford to be with her husband Bill. 

00:18:10	Question: Why Madison? Answer: She mentioned that Bill had interviewed at a number of places, but liked McArdle because teaching was optional. She initially thought she wouldn’t like Madison, having a “New Yorker’s view of the world,” but came to like the work and family environment it provided.

00:20:12	Question: What job did you do? Answer: She got a fellowship with Harold Rusch working on slime molds. Then she and Bill had 3 children in 3 ½ years, and she stayed at home until the children were in preschool, at which point she worked with Bill and then in the dept of Biophysics.

00:23:07	[no question] She continued by talking about a sabbatical the family took in Paris when Bill got a Guggenheim working on mice. She talked about sending her children to the French school system.

00:24:35	Question: Talk about getting back after a 7-year hiatus. Answer: It was hard to get back, but her husband’s being an active scientist helped her to engage with his research and conferences.

00:26:09	Question: How do you feel about women working while their children are small? Answer: She gave examples of women’s ability to breastfeed children and get childcare that weren’t always available. Follow up: Is it a change for the better? Answer: It’s just different; she thought some mothers feel guilty for not being able to spend time with their children, but there are lots of variables over time. She felt fortunate  to have been able to go back in stages. Follow up: Did you keep up with the field? Answer: She couldn’t, but Bill helped her with this.

00:30:08	Question: After the sabbatical? Answer: She came back and was uncomfortable with the neurophysiology emphasis in the Bownds lab, being a geneticist. So she started working in Bill’s lab in 1976. 

00:31:13	Question: You were here during the student protest movement? Answer: Yes, but at home. She recalled her son’s dismay when the Lab School would occasionally close for protests. Follow up: Was McArdle affected? Answer: Not significantly; people gathered to discuss issues—the war, student power and organization—and they had conversations with their French friends who were experiencing something similar.

00:32:55	Question: Did UW have a different feel afterward? Answer: Subtly, yes. She noted that medical schools tended to be rigidly structured and were changing, and talked about Rusch’s influence in founding the cancer center at UW. Follow up: Faculty governance? Answer: She thought that now many depts have rotating chairs.

00:34:47	Follow up: When you returned to McArdle? Answer: She said Henry Pitot and Betty Miller shared the chair—they worked well together. Follow up: Substantive changes in the way things are run? Answer: There are more graduate students and funding has changed from many university researchers to industry-based research. 

00:37:47	Question: Did UW provide funds for you? Answer: She said she was paid on “soft money” since she came, and Bill had been lucky with funding. She also observed components of the difficulty of getting graduate students as a researcher aged, and detailed her appointment in Bill’s lab and the McArdle departmental programs.

00:40:22	Question: Those areas interest you particularly? Answer: She felt animal rights to be essential, especially clarifying ethical rules. Follow up: Do you miss your research for the administration? Answer: She did, though she thought there was a time and place for everything, and the nature of the work had changed. Follow up: Why? Answer: She noted that much of the work (a mouse model and a rat model of colon cancer) had to do with chromosomal organization.

00:45:35	Question: How has your work been influenced by computers? Answer: It makes data handling possible that wasn’t practical before—virtual colonoscopies on the rat and the mouse and modeling of treatment regimens. Follow up: Was it hard to learn these methods? Answer: She hadn’t worked with it, but the cancer center had been helpful in collaborative data handling.

00:48:19	Question: Discuss the disappearance of support staff. Answer: She reflected on how computers had changed the process of writing papers, communicating with colleagues, and reading journals. 

00:49:48	Question: Did affirmative action influence your lab? Answer: She recalled trying to attract a minority graduate student who soon after left because he had no companionship. Otherwise, she noted, the lab wasn’t very diverse.

00:51:45	Question: Did you work with students? Answer: Informally. She worked with them on experiments. Follow up: Have they changed over time? Answer: Perhaps they’ve become more mature than before, comparing the kind of coursework undergraduates take today with what she took as a graduate student.

00:54:00	Follow up: Does science interest students? Answer: She thought so; she talked about hiring undergrads, first just to do organization, but also to participate in experiments.

00:54:50	Question: Regrets? Answer: She said she felt so fortunate, though she might have made more of an effort not to live at home during college, being somewhat bored as an undergraduate.

00:56:46	Question: Were there obstacles at UW? Answer: She observed that the way “scientists” were tracked (as opposed to faculty) could have held her back in other circumstances, but her connection with Bill gave her a lot of flexibility.

00:59:28	End of First Interview Session

Second Interview Session (October 3, 2008): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:19	Question: Talk about publications. Answer: Dove explained that two papers were published from her thesis on microbial metabolism and control mechanisms. She reviewed Magasanik’s and Brenner’s mentorship.

00:02:19	Question: What advice would you give to grad students today? Answer: She felt that students had to work hard to get funding and should value teaching as a way of clarifying one’s own thinking. Being a medical researcher is difficult, but rewarding.

00:04:37	Question: Were your children interested in the field? Answer: No, she thought they purposely avoided having to compete with their parents.

00:06:23	Question: Your greatest success? Answer: She thought working out how to mutagenize mice was path-breaking.

00:07:47	Question: Animals in research? Answer: She thought new protocols were a good thing and wouldn’t have hindered their previous research, though they would have had to conduct it differently. She disagreed with the animal rights’ point of view of prohibiting all animal research, but hadn’t had problems with animal rights groups.

00:10:30	Question: Other ways research has changed? Answer: She responded that one had to now account for safety in ways she didn’t have to as a graduate student.

00:11:55	Question: Talk about honesty in reporting research? Answer: She observed that this was a remarkably rare event, running counter to everything that research was about. In those rare cases, she suspected it was prompted by competition and funding needs, thought she admitted these were complex issues.

00:15:06	Question: Co-authorship? Answer: She attributed long lists of co-authors to increase-ing specialization, which required collaboration in order to take advantage of very specialized techniques. She explained different schools of thought on the issue and discussed her view that she should only be listed if she could defend the paper.

00:17:58	Question: You still use your maiden name? Answer: On publications, yes.

00:18:23	Question: Advice to women? Answer: She thought she’d give the same advice to women as to men.

00:18:43	Question: Could someone like you be a tenure-track position today? Answer: Her category of “scientist” are parallel (academic staff) to faculty and still couldn’t be tenured, though there were a progressions of titles. Follow up: Responsibilities? Answer: It depended on the scientist—sometimes there are group meetings and presentations, thought university service varied. She explained how her life would be different if she’d been faculty and other scientist-level staff in the dept.

00:22:37	Question: Awards? Answer: She quipped “not really.”

00:23:06	Question: Anything else? Answer: She reflected on history and its interest for later generations, and also on her position as a woman in science.

00:25:47	End of Second Interview Session

End of Oral History #1025