UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #646
MEISNER, LORRAINE

MEISNER, Lorraine (1931- )
Chief of Cytogenetics Section, Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene; Professor of Population Health Sciences (formerly Preventative Medicine); Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
At UW: 1968-

Interviewed: 2003	
Interviewer: Joyce Coleman
Length: 1.75 hours

Childhood; Undergraduate education at Wayne University; MA in anthropology and PhD in zoology and genetics at University of Chicago; Work in Boston, Virginia and Palo Alto; Appointment to Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene; Work with committee on childcare; Committee on Non-Discrimination and Affirmative Action in Faculty Appointment; Discusses two gender discrimination cases; Gender pay equity; Research; Teaching.

Interview Session (December 5, 2003): Tapes 1-2

Tape 1/Side 1

00:00:21	Lorraine Meisner was born in Chicago but her family moved to Detroit during the Depression in search of work. Her strongest desire at the time was to overcome her family’s poverty and become a teacher.

00:01:08	LM graduated at the top of her high school class. She loved languages and literature, but did not take any science classes because she thought science too difficult.

00:02:43	LM’s parents and teachers encouraged her academic studies. She attended Wayne University (now Wayne State University), a city college. She planned to major in English, but then switched to sociology.

00:04:01	When LM’s husband wanted to study at the University of Chicago, she moved with him to Chicago. She studied briefly at the Art Institute and then applied to the University of Chicago to do a Masters degree in anthropology. She explains that students with no Bachelors degree could be accepted to do graduate work at that time if they did well on a series of placement exams.

00:04:55	Even though LM had never taken a biology course, she scored in the 99th percentile on the biology placement exam. A dean suggested she switch to biology, but she remained in anthropology because of her fear of science.

00:05:26	LM was interested in both physical anthropology and cultural anthropology. Because she wanted to learn more about which human characteristics were genetic and which were environmental, she minored in animal behavior and genetics. LM describes her first classes in genetics and comparative anatomy as thrilling.

00:07:14	LM debated whether to pursue a PhD in anthropology or in biology, and finally chose biology. There were a number of women in the anthropology program at the University of Chicago. She explains the aspects of anthropology she found interesting.

00:09:47	LM explains that it was an advantage to begin studies in biology and genetics at the graduate level because the material was more exciting than at the undergraduate level. She talks about her interest in determining the relative influence of genetics and of the environment on human characteristics.

00:10:29	Although LM was primarily interested in human genetics, geneticists at the time were more focused on flies, viruses and bacteria because of the difficulty of studying humans.  She explains that “You couldn’t mate humans. There wasn’t a whole lot you could do with humans. You couldn’t put them in a jar and study their chromosomes.”

00:13:36	LM’s thesis advisors were Herluf Strandshov and Hewson Swift. Her zoology class was small and included very few women. The main obstacle LM faced at the time was being a mother. In this era the University of Chicago was reluctant to accept married women as students. One of her major professors was annoyed when he discovered she had a child, but his attitude became more encouraging later on.

00:15:48	LM talks about how she balanced her graduate work with her family duties. She learned to do most of her work at night, after her children were asleep. No daycare was available, and so LM and an acquaintance took turns caring for each other’s children. Because she had little money, she could not afford to buy textbooks.

00:18:29	In 1962, LM took time off from her thesis to supplement the income her husband earned as a post-doctoral student in Boston. She first found part-time work as a histologist at Harvard, but then accepted a more interesting position relating to cytogenetics at the Cancer Research Institute.

00:22:16	LM used some of the data from this project for her dissertation, which dealt with chromosome damage in the leukocytes of patients undergoing radiation therapy.

00:23:13	After leaving Boston, LM moved to Virginia, where her husband had found a position. She recalls that a professor in the Virginia medical school recruited her to work for him. She reluctantly accepted the position, but was frustrated to find that the work did not use her skills. When LM threatened to shift to a position relating to cytogenetics, she learned that her supervisor had obtained a grant from the Atomic Energy Commission to support her work, but was using the money to fund his laboratory assistants instead.

00:26:40	LM then moved to Palo Alto after her husband was nominated to the Advanced Institute for Studies in the Social Sciences. She found a postdoctoral position at the Stanford department of medicine. When her husband was offered a position at UW, LM interviewed with Stanley Inhorn, who had recently established a small cytogenetics laboratory at the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene.

00:28:48	LM talks about her husband’s attitude toward her work. She says that he felt benevolent for allowing her to earn a PhD and pursue a career.

00:29:20	When LM arrived at Wisconsin, she had three children. She turned over her entire salary to the live-in nanny she hired. Even though she was only breaking even financially, she believed it was important to stay active in her field.

00:30:28	There were very few women on the staff and faculty at the time.

00:31:17	End of side.

Tape 1/Side 2

00:31:56	In about 1980, a woman philanthropist left the university money to hire a female professor. Gerda Lerner was brought to the university because of this named professorship.
	
00:32:52	The lack of childcare made it difficult for women to work. LM recalls that schools did not have lunch programs because they expected all children to go home for lunch. It was embarrassing for children to remain at school and eat sack lunches and then play outdoors. LM was outraged one day when she learned her daughter had been required to go outside in extremely cold weather.

00:34:19	The childcare committee on which LM worked accomplished four tasks: it convinced the city to institute both a lunch program and a daycare program, it established Bernie’s Place, and it organized the mothers at Eagle Heights. The committee was active in the early 1970s.

00:35:19	LM talks about how difficult it was to leave her children with other people.

00:36:27	Another obstacle women faced was a lack of networking and mentoring. LM believes she would have had less difficulty with tenure if she had received advice from a colleague. She explains the expectations for tenure. After she had been an associate professor for many years, she learned that her department was recommending a less qualified colleague for a full professorship. She demanded and received a promotion to full professor.

00:38:37	Before the early to mid 1970s, a woman had no recourse if she had been discriminated against. LM briefly talks about two women who sued the university on the basis of discrimination, Marion Namenwirth and Theresa Duello.

00:39:51	LM discusses the impact of the women’s movement on campus. She recalls that it was wonderful to meet other women on campus and talk about mutual concerns. She mentions her involvement with two organizations, the Association of Faculty Women and Sigma Delta Epsilon (SDE). As leader of the SDE education committee, LM insisted on bringing in only female speakers.

00:43:01	LM talks about the impact of two pieces of federal legislation–the Equal Employment Opportunities Act and the Educational Amendments Act (Title IX)–passed in 1972. Because of this legislation, the university established a committee on non-discrimination, named Cyrena Pondrom to the newly created position of head of the office for women, and created a mechanism for resolving complaints.

00:44:26	LM chaired the Committee on Non-Discrimination and Affirmative Action in Faculty Appointment from 1974 to 1979. This committee reported to the university senate. She believes she was named chair because of her work on the childcare committee.

00:45:55	The committee met with departments on campus to discuss their efforts to recruit more women and minorities. Most deans resisted hiring more women on the grounds that there were not enough qualified female candidates.

00:47:21	LM talks about some women who were hired into scientific departments in the 1970s. Cytogeneticist Klaus Patau’s dying wish was that the genetics department give his wife, Eeva Patau, a faculty position. She had worked for many years as his technician and collaborator without any recognition from the department. LM was infuriated when Dr. Fox jokingly introduced Eeva Patau as the department’s token woman. LM sent letters to many administrators expressing her outrage, and received an apology from the chairman of genetics.

00:49:10	In the report LM prepared for the university senate on behalf of the Committee on Non-Discrimination and Affirmative Action, she wrote that although the university had hired a few women and minorities, it had not made sufficient progress. Several days later, she was removed from the committee. LM does not know what happened to the committee after 1979, or who replaced her.

00:52:01	LM talks about Ruth Bleier, a neuroanatomist who served as a role model and mentor to many women on campus.

00:54:14	Apart from childcare and hiring, another important issue facing women was discrimination in promotion. LM talks about Marion Namenwirth, a zoology professor who sued the university when she was denied tenure. She also discusses the case of Theresa Duello, an anatomist who was ultimately given tenure in the ob-gyn department when she won her discrimination suit against the anatomy department. Several years later, when Duello complained her salary was lower than that of her male colleagues, the university initiated a university-wide salary review and found that many women were underpaid.

00:58:12	LM recalls complaining about her low salary in the 1970s and being reminded that she had her husband’s income too. She discovered that some colleagues with only Master’s degrees were earning more than she was. In the early 1990s the university began studying salaries and giving raises to many women, including LM.

00:59:48	The committees studying salaries took into consideration the number of publications a faculty member had and the number of outside offers they received. LM points out that women might be discriminated against when submitting articles for publication, and are less likely than men to solicit outside offers.

01:00:58	LM notes that many departments had female staff.

01:02:13	End of side. End of tape.

Tape 2/Side 1

01:07:17	LM talks about changes she has seen in the climate for women in the sciences. The population health sciences and pathology departments both have a significant number of women on the faculty.

01:03:20	Although the number of women faculty has increased, LM believes male faculty still have negative perceptions of their female colleagues. She notes that it is difficult to prove cases of discrimination.

01:05:56	The number of women applying to medical school now exceeds the number of men. LM talks about the importance of mentors and recalls a female anthropologist at the University of Chicago who encouraged her.

01:08:04	LM discusses her research, some of which focused on the effects of environmental toxicants on genetic mutations. In the 1990s she began working on DNA probes to study a gene associated with breast cancer. She explains how over time mastectomies have become less radical, though she believes current mastectomies are still too radical and deforming.  LM is trying to prove that by studying the genetic constitution of a cancer, physicians can avoid removing a patient’s lymph nodes in all but a few cases.

01:14:46	LM’s ability to do research has recently been curtailed by her increased clinical load. She gives examples of the genetic tests her laboratory performs for clinics and hospitals around the state.

01:16:33	LM talks about a publication in which she proposed a non-invasive way of diagnosing leukemia using peripheral blood rather than bone marrow. It was for this publication that she received tenure.

01:17:03	LM and her colleagues succeeded in having the atrazine limit lowered after demonstrating that the herbicide could produce genetic mutations if introduced into the water supply. She has also done work that resulted in a lower acceptable limit for the discharge of PCBs into the environment.

01:18:17	LM worked on a project that demonstrated the role of vitamin E in preventing damage to cells undergoing radiation therapy. She notes that radiologists are generally unwilling to believe that vitamins or health foods can help patients undergoing radiation therapy.

01:20:49	LM talks about the teaching she has done. One of the courses she taught is “Ways of Knowing,” a small course that introduces students to various biological topics.

01:24:38	LM greatly enjoys interviewing applicants for medical school. She discusses other service activities with which she has been involved, such as the university senate. Whenever the opportunity arises, she takes high school girls for tours of her laboratory.

01:28:50	In LM’s opinion, Chancellor Donna Shalala did nothing to help recruit or retain female faculty.

01:29:51	LM comments on other research projects with which she has been involved.

01:33:28	End of side.

Tape 2/Side 2

01:33:58	LM talks about her disagreement with a prominent social scientist who claimed that mothers cause their children to develop autism through poor parenting. Contemporary opinion now supports LM’s position that autism is strongly influenced by genetics.

01:36:09	LM says she is frustrated because her research is not sufficiently valued.  A newly hired colleague spends 90% of his time on research, which leaves a heavy clinical burden on her.

01:39:41	End of side.

END