THE CRYING WINDOW

by Helene Z. Hill ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Hill’s memoir makes a case for ethics in scientific research.

As a married woman living a seemingly comfortable domestic life in the 1950s, the author recounts that she “became increasingly frustrated with my empty life, enlivened only by my addiction to radio soap operas.” To alleviate her boredom, she enrolled as a part-time graduate student at Brandeis University, where she took a class on cellular biology. At the time she enrolled in 1957, cellular genetics was a revolutionary field, having been transformed just four years earlier by the discovery of the Watson-Crick model for DNA. This new area of molecular biology combined some of Hill’s favorite subjects—chemistry, physics, and math—and, from that class forward, she writes, “I was hooked.” By 1964, Hill had divorced her first husband, obtained a doctorate degree, and launched her career as a groundbreaking woman scientist. The book is divided into two parts, the first of which focuses on the author’s life of “privilege and opportunity” growing up in 1930s Philadelphia in an upper-middle-class family (her grandfather was one of the nation’s preeminent ophthalmologists). Despite an ostensibly propitious upbringing, which included summer camps in Connecticut, Hill emphasizes that she was “not happy.” Indeed, much of the book’s narrative is somber in tone, including its second part (“My Career as a Scientist”), which highlights her impressive work history. Her resume includes dozens of publications as well as postdoctoral and faculty appointments at Harvard University, the University of Colorado Medical Center, and a long-standing tenure as a professor of radiology at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. Despite these accomplishments, much of the narrative is devoted to the author’s unsuccessful quest to expose scientific malpractice among her male colleagues who, she believes, wrongly received significant grant funding from the federal government for allegedly dubious research. After a failed qui tam lawsuit in the early 2000s, in which she acted as a whistleblower under the False Claims Act to stop fraudulent grant activities by fellow scientists, Hill concludes, “crime does pay.” In the wake of the lawsuit, the author lost many of her friends from the scientific community as her career “collapsed.” And though she would join a group of women professors in winning a gender discrimination lawsuit against the New Jersey Medical School in 2006, the damage to her career had already been done.

The book’s often depressive, defeatist tone extends to the author’s personal life as well. Indeed, the book’s titular “Crying Window” is a reference to a window in her house that her youngest daughter would press against and cry “Please don’t go!” every day before Hill went to work. Those looking for a feel-good story of a pioneering scientist will be rudely brought to reality in this often forlorn narrative, which emphasizes the personal tolls that successful careers take on families as well as the professional ramifications of adhering to honesty and integrity in a system exploited by colleagues without similar ethical codes. Many of the book’s later chapters delve into complex scientific arguments the author presented in court, which may overwhelm readers unfamiliar with the complexities of radiation biology. Nevertheless, as a 93-year-old woman, Hill is to be admired for her continued commitment to “set the record straight.” A brutally honest memoir of the successes and defeats of a pioneering scientist.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Manuscript

Review Posted Online: March 14, 2024

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR