Anyone who might be tempted to think that we have heard enough about gender and science should be persuaded otherwise by Claire Jones's book. We look into the world of science and mathematics around 1900 through the lens of a detailed examination of the working lives of experimentalist and electrical engineer Hertha Ayrton (1854–1923) and pure mathematician Grace Chisholm Young (1868–1944). Ayrton and Young are of interest not just because they both studied for the mathematical tripos at Girton College, Cambridge, but because they eschewed the career of teacher for that of researcher and practitioner. That their careers were marked by marginalization and deliberate exclusion will be no surprise. However, in taking us along the journey of the lives of these fascinating women, Jones paints an evocative picture of the professionalization of mathematics and science at the turn of the nineteenth century, developing a number of original insights into the process on the way. Importantly, Jones reminds us that, although the book's title suggests a study of femininity, gender applies to men and masculinity as much as to women and femininity.

The choice of the decades around 1900 is important as it was then that debate raged about women's access to higher education and the campaign for women's suffrage accelerated. The situation is complex. Women were ‘locked out’ of the laboratories, nevertheless some opportunities were available to them. It is in this context that Ayrton was considered for election to a Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1902. Given that she was a serious contender, it is quite shocking to think that the milestone of the first woman FRS was not achieved until forty years later. The situation with mathematics was not the same. As women were increasingly excluded from the laboratory, by contrast they were admitted into the realm of pure mathematics in growing, albeit never large, numbers as pure mathematics gradually became less conflicted with notions of femininity.

The mathematics tripos at Cambridge University was the training ground for much of the elite of British physics and was a bastion of superior English masculinity, demonstrated by wranglers' abilities to withstand the physical and psychological rigours of the examination. Abstract and cerebral, mathematics was held to be a man's subject unsuitable for women. Despite the elite nature of the mathematical tripos it gradually became more open to women as men increasingly began to move to the natural sciences after Part I of the mathematical tripos. The fears of the Cambridge establishment that numbers were declining contributed to a degree of feminization of the subject. Coupled with this, the perception of mathematics as clean, sedentary, safe and removed, at least to some extent, from the harsh realities of the world meant that mathematics came to be regarded as more suitable for a woman as laboratory-based sciences developed. However, this hardly meant that women were made particularly welcome in mathematics.

Young's experiences attaining her doctorate at the University of Göttingen at first offered a glimpse of freedom and equality unimaginable at Cambridge. But her hopes were not to be sustained as the culture of pure mathematics, with its emphasis on male genius, meant it was impossible for her to gain a suitable position. By contrast, the scientists of Finsbury and South Kensington, presenting themselves as modern and progressive, at one level welcomed Ayrton into their community. Nevertheless the embodiment of a heroic masculine science in such institutions meant that she tended to be portrayed as an iconic ‘angel of science’:

Training, and the jostling for access to space and equipment in the crowded laboratories, were, of course, part of the problem. This coincided with a time when laboratory research and training were of a particularly heroic cast. An appropriate model of late Victorian scientific manhood might include mountaineering and marathon-walking. In the laboratory this was coupled with stamina and activity in the use of experimentation and often large-scale apparatus. The laboratory was hardly a genteel, sedentary place; rather it was a site of heroic, manly and possibly dangerous display. Jones notes that at the Cavendish laboratory, Clerk Maxwell regularly subjected his visitors to electric shocks. A ‘Danger’ sign hung from the ceiling in Rayleigh's laboratory in the Royal Institution. Women's access to teaching laboratories was often at the whim of male dons. However, the option of siting the laboratory in the home was problematic for women. At a time when the laboratory had rapidly moved away from the scientist's home and into the university or research institute, home laboratories represented ambivalent spaces. A photograph of Ayrton (p. 136) in her laboratory reinforces this ambivalence. In the domestic space of her home laboratory, a pot plant, vase, bookshelves and paintings are clearly visible. She is standing in front of some equipment but she is dressed to receive visitors. She refuses to meet our eye, instead her gaze is to one side. As Jones notes, the effect is to reinforce ambiguities between hostess in her drawing room and scientist in her laboratory.

Just as the notion of the ‘great man’ in scientific history has become discredited, Jones reminds us that we need to eschew the ‘great woman’. It is all too easy too cast Ayrton as such a great woman, achieving great strides for women as one of the first women (but not the first woman) to have a paper read at the Royal Society and because of her Fellowship nomination. Nevertheless there is evidence that senior scientific women of the period felt their exclusion from the Royal Society keenly and there was bitter opposition in some quarters. Ayrton's papers for the Royal Society met with an exceptional level of questioning and delay in acceptance. However, not all scientific societies were so exclusive, with opportunities for women to find a voice significantly better in the BAAS and the London Mathematical Society.

Jones's study is significant in that it shows how women's exclusion is far from uniform, varying in relation to changing models of masculinity prevalent in scientific and mathematical domains. Jones's aim in this book is to look to the why and the how rather than the traditional approach to gender and science, which is usually cast as ‘how many’ in relation to numbers of women and science. The success of her book lies in her deft weaving of the lives of these two women into larger questions of masculinity in laboratory sciences and mathematics and, importantly, showing that women's exclusion, although always present, was variable and contingent. Detailed and highly readable, Jones opens up the space for more much-needed studies of the why and the how in relation to gender, mathematics and science.