Nancy Hopkins

"...I still remember those girls and who didnt love math, uh, the way I did. And I mean, oh my gosh, think what they were missing. I know I always felt, you know, solving math problems was a little bit like eating candy. There was something about it. It was so rewarding. It was just such a pleasure to do it. And I thought, oh, once they see this, theyre going to enjoy it too."

"...And it was so ridiculous. And this was this thing about this teaching of a class and Ive been told that I couldnt teach undergraduates because MIT students didnt believe scientific information spoken by a woman. And so Id said, well, of course, everyone knows that. I had accepted it as normal because as soon as somebody said it, I realized, of course, its true. I was able to see that women were so under-respected that students couldnt respect them enough. And so they were afraid to put an important course into the hands of a woman for fear the students would not be able to respect them."