Investigate the life of a woman scientist who interests you. Write a biographical description of her life and include things you feel are relevant to her career as a scientist. Include basic information about her early life, her scientific career, and her adult life outside of science, if available. Include events or characteristics that affected her career in science, either positively or negatively. Compare these events and characteristics to those of other women scientists we have read about.  One of your goals should be to identify any broad patterns affecting the career of the person you are writing about and to convincingly argue these.

Your biography should be roughly four to five pages long. Although the emphasis of this assignment it not research, you should try to use at least two sources unless there is only one available.   Online sources are acceptable and encouraged.

For this particular paper, I will use the following grading guidelines. (Large portions are adopted verbatim from Lewis Hyde.)

• The F paper is reserved for cases of plagiarism, excessive lateness, or some other serious failure to comply with the terms of the assignment.
• The D paper, in some significant way, doesn't answer the question that was asked. A D paper which does answer the question is filled with mechanical faults (errors in grammar and/or spelling). Paragraphs do not hold together; ideas do not develop from sentence to sentence. This paper usually repeats the same thoughts over and over, perhaps in slightly different language but often in the same words. It is usually rambling and directionless.
• The C paper is full of grammatical errors, or is somewhat hard to follow due to a poor choice of overall structure.
• The B paper has few grammatical errors. It's easily understood after one reading, and one or two broad patterns affecting the career of the scientist are presented. The paper is well organized and although some sentences may not be elegant, the ideas in them flow well.
• The A paper has all the qualities of a B paper, but in addition it is lively, well paced and interesting. Not only does the author identify broad patterns, but the information about the scientist's life is carefully chosen and supports the arguments made by the author.  The sure mark of an A paper is that the reader continues to think about it after reading it, even wanting to know more about the scientist.