Esther M. Lederberg had to overcome gender discrimination as best she could. Esther M. Lederberg was not alone in this respect. Consider the emminent mathematician, Emmy Noether.
Amalie Emmy Noether, (March 23, 1882 – April 14, 1935) was a German American mathematician known for her groundbreaking contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. Described by David Hilbert, Albert Einstein and others as the most important woman in the history of mathematics, she revolutionized the theories of rings, fields, and algebras. In physics, Noether's theorem explains the fundamental connection between symmetry and conservation laws.
Emmy Noether was Jewish and she originally planned to teach French and English after passing the required examinations. Instead, she studied mathematics at the University of Erlangen. After completing her dissertation, she worked at the Mathematical Institute of Erlangen without pay for seven years. In 1915 she was invited by David Hilbert and Felix Klein to join the mathematics department at the University of Göttingen. The philosophical faculty objected, however, and she spent four years lecturing under Hilbert's name. Her habilitation (eligibility for tenure) was approved in 1919, allowing her to obtain the rank of privatdozent.
In 1924, Dutch mathematician B. L. van der Waerden joined her circle and soon became the leading expositor of Noether's ideas: her work was the foundation for the second volume of his influential 1931 textbook, Moderne Algebra. By the time of her plenary address at the 1932 International Congress of Mathematicians in Zürich, her algebraic brilliance was recognized around the world. Noether remained a leading member of the Göttingen mathematics department until 1933. The following year, Germany's Nazi government dismissed Jews from university positions. The intellectual climate at the time is clearly stated as follows. At the University of Göttingen the German Student Association led the attack on the "un-German spirit". Antisemitic attitudes created a climate hostile to Jewish professors. One young protester reportedly demanded: "Aryan students want Aryan mathematics and not Jewish mathematics." Noether moved to the United States in 1934 to take up a position at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.
Emmy Noether worked in such areas as differential invariants in the calculus of variations, the theory of ideals in commutative rings, and the representation theory of groups in relationship to the theory of modules and ideals.
Emmy was taught to cook and clean, as were most girls of the time, and she took piano lessons. Emmy Noether showed early proficiency in French and English, sufficiently so that she could teach languages at schools reserved for girls. (It was not uncommon for male students and female students to study in totally separate schools.)
In Europe (as well as the New World), women were expected to take
care familes. Education was expected to be reserved only to men. Thus
the following observation expresses how an educated woman was viewed.
Mostly unconcerned about appearance and manners, she [Emmy Noether]
focused on her studies to the exclusion of romance and fashion. A
distinguished algebraist Olga Taussky-Todd described a luncheon,
during which Noether, wholly engrossed in a discussion of mathematics,
"gesticulated wildly" as she ate and "spilled her food constantly and
wiped it off from her dress, completely unperturbed". In simple terms,
Emmy Noether was not viewed as a woman. This was the price of
choosing to be educated.
Perhaps the best view of gender discrimination possible that captures the times, is the following. In the spring of 1915, Noether was invited to return to the University of Göttingen by David Hilbert and Felix Klein. Their effort to recruit her, however, was blocked by the philologists and historians among the philosophical faculty: women, they insisted, should not become privatdozent. One faculty member protested: "What will our soldiers think when they return to the university and find that they are required to learn at the feet of a woman?"
David Hilbert responded with indignation, stating, "I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission as privatdozent. After all, we are a university, not a bath house."