Week of June 23

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June 23, 1992

Biochemist Maxine Frank Singer receives National Medal of Science

June 23, 1997

Anna Halprin receives lifetime achievement award in modern dance

June 24, 1983

Spotlight on work of AIDS activist Mathilde Krim

June 25, 1894

First woman to cycle the globe begins journey

June 27, 1931

"Something Rotten in America"

June 28, 1980

Award for Yiddish actress, Molly Picon

 

June 23, 1992

Biochemist Maxine Frank Singer receives National Medal of Science

Maxine Frank Singer, a leading biochemistry researcher and advocate of science education, was awarded the National Medal of Science on June 23, 1992, in recognition of her illustrious career in biochemistry. The award citation noted "her outstanding scientific accomplishments and her deep concern for the societal responsibility of the scientist."

After earning degrees from Swarthmore (1952) and Yale (1957), Singer joined the National Institutes of Health as a postdoctoral fellow, later becoming a staff member. She was appointed chief of the National Cancer Institute's Biochemistry Lab in 1980, a position she held until 1987. In 1988, she became president of the Carnegie Institution, a major national scientific research center based in Washington, DC.

At the Carnegie Institution, Singer created the Carnegie Academy for Science Education, which trains elementary school teachers in science. Reflecting her concern about the lack of women and members of racial minorities in scientific fields, she also created a weekend science school for elementary-age students. Among her other accomplishments at Carnegie was a $50 million capital campaign that financed Carnegie's participation in the building of two giant optical telescopes at the Institution's campus in Chile as well as other capital improvement projects.

Singer's own research interests have ranged widely within biochemistry, but have included significant work on recombinant DNA. Partly as a result of her interest in mammalian DNA, Singer has long taken an active interest in issues of science policy and ethics. Beginning in 1973, she helped to organize a series of conferences that addressed both the promises and the perils of human DNA research. She has also spoken out about U.S. public policy, advocating national investment in the human genome project but cautioning against overspending on biomedical research in space.

Singer has served on the boards of the Whitehead Institute, Johnson & Johnson, Yale, and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Singer was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1979 and to the Pontifical Academy of Science in 1986. She retired from Carnegie in 2002.

Sources: carnegieinstitution.org/singer/.

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June 23, 1997

Anna Halprin receives lifetime achievement award in modern dance

On June 23, 1997, Anna Halprin received the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement in modern dance. The award, which was presented at a ceremony in Durham, N.C., carried a $25,000 prize, the largest dance award presented annually. The award citation praised her for inspiring "generations of dancers" and for "multi-faceted ideas [that] have transcended traditional boundaries." It was a fitting tribute to a woman who, since the 1950s, has pushed the boundaries of avant-garde dance.

Halprin took interpretive dance lessons as a child, and decided early in life that she would pursue a dance career. Following her graduation from the University of Wisconsin in 1941, she performed for a few years on Broadway, and then moved to San Francisco, where she founded her own company, the San Francisco Dancers Workshop. With the Workshop, she created new pieces that pushed the boundaries of modern dance. One famously controversial piece was the 1969 "Parades and Changes," which included a scene where dancers removed their clothes and wrapped themselves in paper. Nudity in art would soon become relatively commonplace, but at the time it had never been seen in such a mainstream venue as the Hunter College Playhouse, where the piece premiered.

By the late 1970s, Halprin was moving in a new direction, using dance as a form of therapy. In 1981, she staged a dance "exorcism" on California's Mount Tamalpais, where a serial killer was stalking the trails. She has also created works that involve the participation of all those present, and an annual spring ritual, "Circle the Earth: A Planetary Dance for Peace." In addition, Halprin works extensively with people with cancer, HIV, and AIDS, especially through two ongoing workshop groups for HIV-positive men and women. Although she has been criticized for her devotion to therapeutic work, she remains an influential teacher of dance. Those she has mentored include Meredith Monk, Trisha Brown, and Yvonne Rainer.

The 1997 ADF award was only one of many that Halprin has received. She has also been honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Education Association Fellowship, and an American Dance Guild Award. In 2000, the Dance Heritage Coalition named her one of "America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures." In an interview following that announcement, she explained her philosophy of art, saying, "I work toward a future where … art is honored for its power to inspire, teach, transform, and heal. I work for a future where all the peoples, creatures, and landscapes of the world are dancing together."

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 587-588; www.artistswithaids.org/artforms/dance/catalogue/halprin.html; New York Times, June 7, 1997; June 22, 1997; June 25, 1997; August 26, 2001.

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June 24, 1983

Spotlight on work of AIDS activist Mathilde Krim

Biologist Mathilde Krim recognized soon after the first cases of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) were reported in 1981 that this new disease raised grave scientific and medical questions and that it might have important socio-political consequences. She dedicated herself to increasing the public's awareness of AIDS and to a better understanding of its cause, its modes of transmission, and its epidemiologic pattern.

Born in Como, Italy, on July 9, 1926, Krim was raised in Geneva, Switzerland, where she studied biology at the University of Geneva and earned a Ph.D. in 1953. At that time, she was one of a very small number of women with advanced degrees in science. It was also during her doctoral studies that Krim converted to Judaism, inspired in part by learning the truth about the Holocaust and in part by her association with Jews from Israel (then Palestine) who were studying at the University. In 1953, Krim moved with her husband and daughter to Israel, where she found a position at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. At Weizmann, she contributed to studies that laid the foundation for amniocentesis, became one of the first experts in culturing cells, and studied the viruses thought to cause some forms of cancer.

After a move to New York with her second husband in 1958, she joined the research faculty at Cornell Medical College and later at Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research. For many years, she was deeply involved in the study of interferons, natural substances that were considered promising for the treatment of cancer. Just as the study of interferons was falling out of favor, AIDS was becoming a major public health concern. Krim left full-time research and became involved in AIDS treatment and activism.

In 1983, she founded the AIDS Medical Foundation (AMF), the first private organization concerned with fostering and supporting AIDS research. The new Foundation was profiled by the New York Times on June 24, 1983; the Times reported that the group had already won an endorsement from New York Governor Mario Cuomo. Krim was able to draw on her husband's contacts in Hollywood (he was chairman of Orion Pictures) and in the Democratic Party (he was the Party's finance chairman and an advisor to Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter) to win publicity and funds for her work. She was also joined by at least a dozen other New York City medical researchers, who hoped to use AMF funds to find both the causes of and effective treatments for AIDS. In 1990, AMF merged with a like-minded group based in California to form the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) that soon became the preeminent national nonprofit organization devoted to mobilizing the public's generosity in support of trail-blazing laboratory and clinical AIDS research, AIDS prevention, and the development of sound AIDS-related public policies. Krim is amfAR's Founding Chair and was, from 1990 through 2004, the chairman of its Board.

In addition, Krim now holds the academic appointment of Adjunct Professor of Health Policy and Management at Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. She holds fifteen doctorates honoris causa and has received many other honors and distinctions. In August 2000 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 761-763; New York Times, June 24, 1983, November 3, 1984, February 14, 1988, January 30, 1990, May 27, 1991; www.amfar.org/cgi-bin/iowa/amfar/record.html?record=1; www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2005/04/28f.html; www.aegis.com/news/ads/1990/AD901187.html.

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June 25, 1894

First woman to cycle the globe begins journey

Her adventure began with a bet. In 1894, a gentleman in Boston bet another gentleman, $20,000 against $10,000, that no woman could travel around the world by bicycle, a feat that had been completed for the first time by a man in 1885. Although it is not clear why she was chosen, Annie Cohen Kopchovsky set out from Boston on June 25, 1894, to attempt the journey. Married and a mother of three children under age six, she was an unlikely choice but a good example of the ways that the bicycle was transforming women's lives. Besides providing women with a respectable form of independent transportation, the popularity of the bicycle led to changes in women's dress, for example, as bloomers replaced unwieldy and inconvenient full skirts.

Under the terms of the bet, Kopchovsky, who had ridden a bicycle for the first time only days before her departure from Boston, was supposed to begin her journey penniless, earn $5000 above her expenses along the way, and finish her trip in 15 months. Her resourcefulness was in evidence from the first day. On her way out of Boston, she hung a placard advertising Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Company from her bicycle, and accepted $100 from the company's representative in return. In addition, she agreed to be known as Annie Londonderry.

Kopchovsky, alias Londonderry, reached Chicago in September, and there she nearly gave up the trip altogether. Ultimately, however, she traded in her 42-pound ladies' bicycle for a men's model that weighed half as much, and set out again in the opposite direction, headed back east. She sailed from New York for France in November. In France, Kopchovsky earned money by carrying advertising on her clothing and her bicycle as she rode the main streets of Marseilles and other cities. Later in her trip, she would give lectures in which she embellished her story with lurid details of accidents, near-death experiences, and dangers narrowly averted.

Because the terms of the bet did not specify how many miles she had to ride, Kopchovsky sailed from Marseilles all the way to East Asia, with brief stops in Egypt, Sri Lanka, and Singapore. After a tour through China, she was in Japan by March. On March 23, she arrived back in the United States through San Francisco Bay's Golden Gate. Over the next six months, she bicycled across the southwest, great plains, and midwest, reaching Chicago on September 12, 1895, just under 15 months from her original departure from Boston, and only ten months after her re-departure from Chicago.

She had done what the Boston gentleman had bet $20,000 no woman could do. Not only had she circumnavigated the globe by bicycle, an astounding athletic feat in itself, but she had done it alone, proving that a woman could make her own way in what was still very much a man's world. Bucking the entrenched gender norms of her day, she had fended for herself and survived physical injury, mechanical problems with her bicycle, and the scrutiny of the press. In Chicago, Kopchovsky collected her $10,000 prize and then rejoined her family. After a move to New York, she wrote sensational features for the New York World for a time, including an account of her trip. She seems to have then retreated to family life, raising her three children and largely disappearing from the historical record. She died in 1947.

Source: Peter Zheutlin, "Chasing Annie," Bicycling, May 2005; www.annielondonderry.com/.

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June 27, 1931

"Something Rotten in America"

"For the first time in American economic life, the people are disturbed and frightened … There is something rotten in America; it is your job to lead the way out," Theresa Wolfson told the students of the Barnard College Summer School for Women Workers in Industry at the opening exercises on June 27, 1931. The school, then in its fifth year, offered six weeks of free classes in history, economics, and English literature to New York's laboring women. In 1931, 38 women representing seven nationalities and eight trades were admitted from 100 applicants. In addition to academic instruction, the students were to be offered chances to swim, play tennis, and take part in dramatics.

Born in Brooklyn in 1897, just three years after her parents had emigrated from Russia, Theresa Wolfson earned her bachelor's degree at Adelphi College (1917). During college, she spent a summer investigating wage standards in the New York garment industry; it was the beginning of a long career in labor relations. After her graduation from Adelphi, Wolfson took a position as a health worker in New York City, then worked for the National Child Labor Committee, investigating child labor across parts of the South and Midwest. Then, from 1920 to 1922, Wolfson served as executive secretary of the New York State Consumers League, where she lobbied for minimum wage and maximum hour legislation.

For her M.A. degree (1924) at Columbia University, Wolfson conducted a study of posture, lighting, and fatigue in New York's garment factories. After Columbia, Wolfson became director of education at the Union Health Center of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. At the same time, she conducted research on the barriers to organizing women workers; this research, published in 1926, brought Wolfson her Ph.D. from the Brookings Institution.

Wolfson joined the faculty of the Brooklyn branch of Hunter College in 1928. When this branch became Brooklyn College soon thereafter, Wolfson helped to develop the curricular and organizational design of the new institution. Her scholarly work also took her into public life. She served on the public panel of the War Labor Board (1942 to 1945), was involved in the New York State Board of Mediation (1946-1953) and the Kings Country Council Against Discrimination (1949-1953), and served as president of the New York chapter of the Industrial Relations Research Association. She won the John Dewey Award from the League for Industrial Democracy in 1957 for her work in mediating labor disputes.

Throughout her career, Wolfson combined academic expertise with a concrete approach to the workings and status of labor unions and to the dynamics of gender in labor and labor organizing. Combining research and social action, her focus on worker education was designed to break down barriers to the advancement of women in the workplace and gender inequality within trade unions. Wolfson believed that a worker's ability to deal effectively with society depended on a sound education. Thus, in addition to her scholarly teaching and writing, she also taught in non-academic settings, including classes for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, the Summer School for Office Workers, and, after her retirement, for a continuing education program at Sarah Lawrence College. Theresa Wolfson died on May 14, 1972 at the age of 74. A scholarship in her name allows a Brooklyn College student to pursue graduate studies in labor economics each year.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1487-1488; New York Times, June 27, 1931, June 28, 1931, May 15, 1972.

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June 28, 1980

Award for Yiddish actress, Molly Picon

Born in New York in 1898, Molly Picon moved with her family to Philadelphia before she was three. It was in Philadelphia that she performed in public for the first time, in 1903, at age five. Picon's mother, who worked as a seamstress for a Yiddish theatre, entered her daughter in a talent contest. On the way to the contest, a drunk on the streetcar challenged the child to perform then and there. She did, and then collected two dollars in coins from the passengers. She went on to win the contest, and a legendary theatre career was born.

Picon acted in local productions throughout her youth, and left high school at 16 to tour as Topsy in a Yiddish production of Uncle Tom's Cabin. She soon joined a traveling vaudeville troupe, where she was cast as Winter in a production called The Four Seasons. When the troupe reached Boston in 1918, they found the city shut down due to an epidemic of influenza. Only one theatre, the Boston Grand Opera House, was functioning. Picon applied for work there, and was hired. The next year, she married the theatre's director and producer, Jacob Kalich. In 1920, the pair toured Europe, performing Yiddish theatre to great popular success. By the time they returned to New York, Picon's was a well-known name on both sides of the Atlantic.

Many of Picon's roles were in plays created for her by Kalich. Perhaps the most famous of these was Yonkele, a young Peter-Pan-like boy who wants to make the world a better place. It was a role she would play over and over into her 80s. Like Yonkele, many of Picon's most successful characters were either young boys or young girls who acted like boys. During the 1920s, she performed these roles across the U.S. and also made her film debut. Among her films was the 1923 Viennese production of Ost und West (East and West), which is now the earliest surviving Yiddish film. In 1934, she began broadcasting her first radio show, increasing the size of the audience that was already enthralled with the petite, dark-haired woman with the mischievous eyes.

Throughout the 1930s, Picon and Kalich traveled back and forth between Europe and the U.S. to perform. In 1938, they made the last Jewish film to be created in Poland before the Nazi invasion. Mamale, in which the 40-year-old Picon played a 12-year-old girl, was a musical comedy, but it also sought to document the endangered shtetl culture. During the Second World War, Picon performed for soldiers in USO camps. After the war, she brought music and theatre to displaced persons camps and then to Israel. She also performed in the first Yiddish play (Oy Is Dus a Leben! (What a Hard Life!), 1942) ever to reach Broadway, a biographical piece based on Picon's own early years.

Over the four decades after the war, Picon continued to perform in both Yiddish and English, including as an Italian mother in Come Blow Your Horn (1963), for which she won an Oscar nomination; as Yente in the movie version of Fiddler on the Roof (1971); and with Barbra Streisand in For Pete's Sake (1974). At the age of 81, Picon created a new one-woman show, Hello, Molly (1979), which traced her long relationship with the Yiddish theatre. In 1980, she published her autobiography, titled simply Molly!. On June 28, 1980, she received a Creative Achievement Award from the Performing Arts Unit of B'nai B'rith; the following year, she was elected to the Broadway Hall of Fame. In 1985, the Congress of Jewish Culture awarded her a "Goldie" for lifetime achievement. Picon died of Alzheimer's on April 6, 1992. Her plays and films are frequently revived for a younger generation, keeping alive her legacy of contributions to Yiddish culture.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1064-1068; New York Times, March 30, 1979, March 3, 1981, April 7, 1992; jwa.org/exhibits/wov/picon; jwa.org/discover/comedy/picon.html; www.MakingTrouble.com.

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