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KU’s First Woman of Chemistry, Mary Elvira Weeks, A History of Our Historian

dc.contributor.authorBray, Carol
dc.date.accessioned2018-04-09T02:05:43Z
dc.date.available2018-04-09T02:05:43Z
dc.date.issued1999
dc.identifier.citationCarol Bray, “KU’s First Woman of Chemistry, Mary Elvira Weeks, A History of Our Historian,” Chemistry at the University of Kansas, [Department of Chemistry press release], 1999, 5 pp, http://www.chem.ukans.edu/PressReleases/ElviraWeeks/elvira.htm (accessed Oct. 28, 1999).en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1808/26294
dc.descriptionThis five-page article was originally published in 1999 as a press release by the University of Kansas Department of Chemistry in the publication "Chemistry at the University of Kansas,"

A greatly abridged version, consisting of one page and lacking notes, appeared as “Our First Woman of Chemistry, Mary Elvira Weeks, A History of Our Historian,” Jayhawk Chemist, The Newsletter of the University of Kansas Chemistry Department, October 1999, Issue No. 33, p 11.
dc.description.abstractMary Elvira Weeks (1892–1975) was the first woman to earn a PhD in chemistry at the University of Kansas and the first woman on the chemistry faculty there (1921–1944), attaining the rank of associate professor in 1937. Her book, Discovery of the Elements, went through seven editions between 1934 and 1968. In 1967 she received the Dexter Award for Outstanding Achievement in the History of Chemistry from the Division of the History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. This article tells the story of her life and career with particular attention to the challenges she faced as a woman in a profession dominated by men.
dc.publisherUniversity of Kansas, Department of Chemistryen_US
dc.titleKU’s First Woman of Chemistry, Mary Elvira Weeks, A History of Our Historianen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US
kusw.oanotes2018/04/08: Added to KU ScholarWorks with the permission of the Chemistry Department.

From: Neeley, James D. Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2018 12:15 PM To: Reed, Marianne A. <mreed@ku.edu> Subject: RE: ukans.edu

Sounds good! I thought you had to have a digital file to start. Will the attached scans work? They’re from a 2001 copy, slightly better than the 1999 copy I mentioned. (There is not a page missing; I accidentally scanned p 2 twice.)

If not, we can arrange delivery of the print.

From: Reed, Marianne A. Sent: Thursday, April 5, 2018 8:57 AM To: Neeley, James D. <jneeley@ku.edu> Subject: RE: ukans.edu

Unless Chemistry or Archives has a copy, which sounds unlikely, given your experience, let’s scan your copy of the article and add it to ScholarWorks in the Chemistry community. If we happen to find an online source later, I can include a link to it or upload a better copy. But if it’s in ScholarWorks, Kathleen can cite it there using the https://hdl.handle.net/1808/xxxxxx address in the record.

Would this work for you? I can come pick up the article from you and then return it after it’s scanned. I’m on vacation for a 10 days starting on Saturday, but I can drop by to pick this up before then.

-- Marianne

From: Neeley, James D. Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2018 3:54 PM To: Reed, Marianne A. <mreed@ku.edu> Subject: RE: ukans.edu

Marianne,

Thanks for the reply. If you know any easy tricks, I’d appreciate your taking a look. But before you spend much time on it be aware that I am also trying to get help from the Chemistry Department.

The publication info is below. Kathleen is citing this publication in her article about Frank B. Dains—the one I will be sending you for ScholarWorks—almost finished. She wants to give a reliable citation. The one she has, chem.ukans.edu, of course, isn’t.

I contacted the author, now retired, to see if the article was published anywhere else besides chem.ukans.edu. She didn’t know, and referred me to a Chemistry professor, who has referred me to someone else who has referred me to several other people, and I haven’t finished following up on all these leads. I’m not optimistic, but thought it was worth a shot.

So, I don’t need a copy of the article; I have one already. I just need a reliable source to cite. I’m wondering, even if you can find it using your inside knowledge, what chance would a future reader have finding it, too?

One of the people I heard from said, “If you’d like to create a digital copy and deposit it into the KU digital repository, KU Scholar Works, the Department would be in support.” I could do that, actually—retype the text. And I know where the illustrations came from. But if you could find the original file hidden somewhere, I could work from that, saving me the typing. What do you think of that idea?

The article is related to Kathleen’s research, and she corresponded with the author while she was working on it. Kathleen had thought of writing a similar article until she discovered the author’s research was already well underway. We think it’s a shame to leave it lost.

It’s about Mary Elvira Weeks, the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry at KU and KU’s first female chemistry faculty member (1921–1944). She and Dains worked together on a number of projects, especially her book, The Discovery of the Elements, which went through seven editions and acknowledged Dains’s contribution of many of the illustrations from his historical image collection, now in Archives, and one of the topics covered in Kathleen’s ScholarWorks paper. The original URL includes “PressReleases.” I think that was the original plan. But along the way the project grew into an article, much longer than a press release, complete with source notes and illustrations. So the article we’re wanting to cite was issued on chem.ukans.edu, and the press release version was issued in the print Jayhawk Chemist, the second item listed below, which has a link to the chem.ukans.edu version.

This is the chem.ukans.edu article we want to cite: Carol Bray, “KU’s First Woman of Chemistry, Mary Elvira Weeks, A History of Our Historian,” Chemistry at the University of Kansas, [Department of Chemistry press release], 1999, 5 pp, http://www.chem.ukans.edu/PressReleases/ElviraWeeks/elvira.htm (accessed Oct. 28, 1999). The greatly abridged version, one page and lacking notes, appeared as “Our First Woman of Chemistry, Mary Elvira Weeks, A History of Our Historian,” Jayhawk Chemist, The Newsletter of the University of Kansas Chemistry Department, October 1999, Issue No. 33, p 11. This version referred the reader to the full article at chem.ukans.edu. University Archives does not have a copy of the full article in the Chemistry Department record group, though the Jayhawk Chemist is available there. I have not found the full article elsewhere after much searching. Your thoughts? Jim

From: Reed, Marianne A. Sent: Wednesday, April 4, 2018 10:14 AM To: Neeley, James D. <jneeley@ku.edu> Subject: RE: ukans.edu

Not much hope for this, as departmental web sites have been moved to new systems and templates many times since then.

I checked the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive to see if they had captured the site when crawling KU webspace, but no luck.

Do you have a title of the work? If so, that might help me find it, if it’s still available.

Marianne

From: Neeley, James D. Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2018 4:53 PM To: Reed, Marianne A. <mreed@ku.edu> Subject: ukans.edu

Marianne,

Any chance this 1999 file can be retrieved: http://www.chem.ukans.edu/PressReleases/ElviraWeeks/elvira.htm

If so, the Chemistry Department, which claims copyright, says they would approve moving it into ScholarWorks. It seems never to have been published elsewhere.

Jim		en_US
kusw.oaversionScholarly/refereed, publisher versionen_US
kusw.oapolicyThis item does not meet KU Open Access policy criteria.en_US
dc.rights.accessrightsopenAccessen_US


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