The Woman Who Knew Too Much

Download or read book The Woman who Knew Too Much written by Gayle Greene and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This biography illuminates the life and achievements of the remarkable woman scientist who revolutionized the concept of radiation risk. In the 1950s Alice Stewart began research that led to her discovery that fetal X rays double a child's risk of developing cancer. Two decades later---when she was in her seventies---she again astounded the scientific world with a study showing that the U.S. nuclear weapons industry is about twenty times more dangerous than safety regulations permit. This finding put her at the center of the international controversy over radiation risk. In 1990, the New York Times called Stewart "perhaps the Energy Department's most influential and feared scientific critic." The Woman Who Knew Too Much traces Stewart's life and career from her early childhood in Sheffield to her medical education at Cambridge to her research positions at Oxford University and the University of Birmingham. Gayle Greene is Professor of Women's Studies and Literature, Scripps College.