Review by Jonathan Wilkins of "Schrödinger’s Wife (and other possibilities)" by Pippa Goldschmidt

 

This is an extraordinary, inventive canon of work, made even more incredible in that all the stories are so unusual, so challenging, as they reflect a scientific bent from a female perspective. The forgotten female in so many cases.

Indeed, the intriguing title Schrödinger’s Wife (and other possibilities) is in itself a beguiling introduction. What will we discover when the book is opened? What will the first page tell us? In this case will the "wife" be alive or dead as per Schrödinger’s Cat conundrum? Indeed who does the "wife" personify and what do they represent?

In this collection of short stories we are led on a journey through the worlds of laboratories, observatories, hospitals, and even into outer space, discovering the stories of women, be they scientists, technicians, or doctors, as they deal with interrogating so many amazing adventures in modern science.

We watch as Margaret Bastock discovers the impact of genes on behaviour while facing up to anachronistic attitudes in the labs. 

We meet the nuclear physicist Lise Meitner who discovered the secrets of nuclear fission even as she escaped from the Nazis and how she had to put up with the most demeaning of new workplaces in Sweden. Demeaning because she was a woman. 

We meet a worker at the CERN laboratory who will not allow her photograph to be taken. Why is this? Another mystery.

Scientists from the old East and West Germany experience the fall of Berlin’s Wall while stationed on opposite sides of Antarctica and we read their unusual responses to it.

And we meet Schrödinger's wife who finesses his theory to get her revenge on her adulterous husband. 

One amusing story centres on a scientific theory who fusses, ironically, about the outlandish idea that it might actually be discovered by of all things, a woman. 

And through a piece of toast we are able to investigate the history of the universe.

Goldschmidt allows us to enter into the lives of real and imaginary scientists, and the world behind their discoveries - a world where women, despite their ability and achievement, are so often sidelined or ignored whilst the male of the species takes the laurels. Science seems to be a world where women are constantly having to prove themselves and their theories because they are women. Has this changed?

Through these beautifully crafted short stories we see this idea challenged through humour as well as searing critique. We can see the realities that women face and can only hope that works like this will chip away at the misogynistic attitudes that some scientists still harbour today.

About the reviewer

Jonathan Wilkins is 68. He is married to the gorgeous Annie with two wonderful sons. He was a teacher for twenty years, a Waterstones’ bookseller and coached women’s basketball for over thirty years before taking up writing seriously. Nowadays he takes notes for students with Special Needs at Leicester and Warwick Universities. He has had a work commissioned by the UK Arts Council and several pieces published traditionally as well as on-line. He has had poems in magazines and anthologies, art galleries, studios, museums and at Huddersfield Railway Station. He loves writing poetry. For his MA, he wrote a crime novel, Utrecht Snow. He followed it up with Utrecht Rain, and is now writing a third part. He is currently writing a crime series, Poppy Knows Best, set at the end of the Great War and into the early 1920s.