Descrizione

Einband berieben, mit Feuchtigkeitsspuren. - Erwin Frink Smith (21 January 1854 � 6 April 1927) was an American plant pathologist with the United States Department of Agriculture. He played a major role in demonstrating that bacteria could cause plant disease. At a time when it was unusual to do so, Smith was known for hiring many women at the Bureau of Plant industry, including botanists Nellie A. Brown, Mary K. Bryan, Florence Hedges, Lucia McCulloch, Agnes J. Quirk, Angie Beckwith, and Charlotte Elliott. Historian Margaret W. Rossiter cites this as an example of a harem effect. In Smith's case, a factor in hiring women only as assistants may have been USDA's structural exclusion of women from taking the examinations that would have allowed them to enter the higher-ranking jobs for which they were qualified. Many of Smith's assistants praised him for giving them research projects suited to their skills rather than confining them to the more limited tasks presumed by their job classifications.