Embedded Files
by Robert L. Switzer
by Robert L. Switzer
A dying Emma Hanson asks her granddaughter to try to right a wrong that denied her a rightful place in history. Emma, a poor farm girl born in 1900, has exceptional scholastic ability and a deep fascination with the natural world. Despite fighting her way through poverty, her family’s indifference, and prejudices against women attaining an education, she attends college. Under the tutorage of the college’s only female professor, Emma conducts her first research with dung beetles and micro-organisms and knows she’s found her calling.
Emma manages to secure a faculty position at Harrington College and becomes a distinguished professor. In the lab, Emma and Joe Bellafiori, a young chemist, slowly unlock important secrets of genetic expression. The publication of their work is delayed by a prominent competing scientist who appears to take their work and publish it as his own.
The Lady Professor is a novel about the human side of real science, historically and scientifically accurate, portraying a transitional time for women in science.
“From science to fiction: Switzer changes creative outlets after retirement” by Jason Lee Brown, Smile Politely
Details
Details
Bink Books
236 pp. ● 5.5×8.5
$12.95 (pb) ● $7.99 (eb)
ISBN 978-1-945805-12-7 (pb)
FICTION
Publication date: July 2017
Robert L. Switzer is Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned a B. S. in Chemistry from the University of Illinois in 1961, a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966 and joined the University of Illinois faculty in 1968. He is the author or co-author of 138 original scientific research articles, reviews and book chapters and the co-author of the textbook Experimental Biochemistry (W. H. Freeman). He was a Guggenheim Fellow and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.
In recent years Robert has turned to a career in creative writing. His non-fiction memoir A Family Farm: Life on an Illinois Dairy Farm was published in 2012 by the Center for American Places, Columbia College, Chicago. He is currently working on a new novel and a collection of short stories. The Lady Professor is his first published novel.
Robert and his wife Bonnie, an artist, live in Urbana, Illinois. They are the proud parents of a son and a daughter and four grandchildren.
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