The countless women scientists at Johnson & Johnson across the world are examples of the pioneering work that women in science do every day. With so many necessary efforts underway to encourage girls and young women to study STEM2D fields (science, technology, engineering, math, manufacturing and design), women scientists are crucial role models for girls aspiring to careers in these fields.
Johnson & Johnson has known that women make good scientists for a long time. Way back in 1908, when the barriers to women in science were much higher, Johnson & Johnson hired its first female scientist—a chemist in our Scientific Department.
Let’s turn the clock back to the first decade of the 1900s. The world was a very different place: Long-distance overland travel was still mostly by steam locomotive and, although automobiles were becoming increasingly more popular, the nationwide network of highways in the United States would not exist for another half century.
In the U.S., the struggle for women’s suffrage had been underway since the mid-1800s, but women did yet not have the national right to vote: That would not come until 1920. Many women worked out of economic necessity, and growing numbers of them pursued higher education, but the prevailing attitude of the day (which may not have matched the reality for many women) remained the Victorian mindset that women should remain in the home, not very independent and needing to be protected.
Very few women attended college in the first decade of the 1900s, and the percentage of women studying science in college was even smaller. The prevailing stereotype of that era was that going to college would make women into bookworms who would be inhibited from fulfilling what was seen then as their traditional role in society.
In defiance of the prevailing attitude of her day, and no doubt at risk of being considered a bookworm, Minneapolis resident Edith von Kuster applied to and was accepted by the University of Minnesota (which had admitted women for some years) and she was a member of their 1902 freshman class. Edith didn’t study rhetoric, as many women undergraduates there did: She studied chemistry. Perhaps she was inspired by contemporary scientists like Marie Curie, who would go on to win a Nobel Prize in science in 1903 and one in chemistry in 1911.
The women in Edith’s college yearbook wore long skirts with upswept hair in the Gibson Girl style. Despite the many female students at the University of Minnesota, and despite their very visible presence in the college yearbooks, higher education in the early 1900s was still very much oriented toward men.
It was in this setting that Edith von Kuster pursued her degree in chemistry. She must have been good at what she did, since she was listed as first a scholar and assistant and then as an instructor in general chemistry in 1907. Edith was also cited in a book as having begun research work on the halogen compounds of aluminum, work that was being continued by others in 1912 and 1913, when the book was published.
Edith graduated with a degree in chemistry in 1907. At that time, career options for women chemists were largely confined to teaching or academic research. While Edith was still at her university, Johnson & Johnson Scientific Director Fred Kilmer reached out to her and offered her a job as a staff scientist at Johnson & Johnson.
Edith left Minnesota in 1908 to move halfway across the United States to New Brunswick, New Jersey, to take the position at Johnson & Johnson. She likely would have traveled by railroad—an adventurous and independent move in an era when young women traveling by train were still advised by etiquette books to keep to themselves and not accept calling cards from male travelers.
Edith von Kuster is listed in the 1908 program for a reception and dance for Johnson & Johnson employees to commemorate the opening of the new addition to the company’s cotton mill in New Brunswick. Under the heading “Executive and Superintending Staff,” she is listed as one of the four members of the Johnson & Johnson Scientific Department, working with Scientific Director Fred Kilmer and two male scientists.
According to Kilmer, the Scientific Department was staffed by scientists skilled in chemistry, bacteriology, pharmacy and the “allied sciences.” In Edith’s day the department conducted scientific research, published a scientific journal for the medical and pharmaceutical profession and also oversaw the testing of raw materials and finished products. Edith and her colleagues examined and tested raw materials used in the manufacture of products, checked and tested them throughout every step of the manufacturing process and then checked and tested the finished products.
Scientific Director Fred Kilmer was an early advocate of what we now refer to as transparency, and he made sure the department’s research findings were made available for the advancement of science and the industry: “The work of Johnson & Johnson’s Scientific Department is accessible to laborers in science through a statement of its results before societies, by publication in journals and from time to time it adds a quota to the work of lightening the labors of the pharmacopoeial committee.” [Red Cross Messenger Anniversary Messenger 1913, Johnson & Johnson, January 1913, Vol. V, No. 8, page 226, “Scientific Department.”]
Settling in at Johnson & Johnson, Edith joined the Laurel Club, the organization for women employees, and she is mentioned in articles in the New Brunswick Times as having been involved in the community volunteer work the organization did. (As a fellow Laurel Club member, she would have known the eight women department supervisors in charge of manufacturing departments at Johnson & Johnson.) In 1908, Edith was one of five delegates from the Laurel Club chosen to represent the club at a national meeting of women employee clubs in Washington, D.C., which included a reception at the White House with President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt.
The arrival of the company’s first woman scientist—a university-educated chemist from halfway across the country—must have caused quite a splash at Johnson & Johnson. It certainly attracted the notice of the company’s superintendent of manufacturing, W--- Johnson Kenyon, a nephew of the company’s three founders. Kenyon, who had patents to his name, and who was described as inventive and clever, struck up a friendship with Edith, which led to an engagement, which led to marriage. Today, as our trailblazing first woman scientist more than a century ago, Edith von Kuster Kenyon serves as an inspiration to the many women in science and other technical fields at Johnson & Johnson across the world, both in their own careers and as they seek to inspire future generations of young women to pursue STEM2D education and careers.
Thank you to the Kenyon family for sharing Edith von Kuster Kenyon’s story with us!