I was listening to a woman the other day advance the premise of changing male behavior in order to strengthen women's role in society. While she was speaking, it occurred to me that the recent women's movement had developed their image or concept of strength from attributes that are considered strong in males. The result is often women who attempt to act like strong men. It seems to me that a better model for young women is not that of a strong man, or a woman acting like one, but rather a strong woman who still acts like a woman.

While I was in school in the 1960's, I admired about a half dozen people in my field (zoology). The list included four women and two men.

I was one of those landlocked midwesterners who dreamed of the ocean and the far away places it could take you - the romantic"isle beneath the wind". It is not surprising then that two of the women on my list were marine scientists. The other two were giants in their respective fields. All were women who were remarkable for their strength, courage, and individualism.

At the top of my list was Rachel Carson. Unfortunately, when I hear her name mentioned today it is because of her book "The Silent Spring" which is usually given credit for starting the environmental movement. I say "unfortunately" because it was her other works, somewhat forgotten now, that nurtured my fascination for the sea. Her highly acclaimed book published in 1951: "The Sea Around Us" won the prestigious National Book Award and established Rachel Carson as a gifted writer and naturalist. However, it was one of her other books: "Under the Sea Wind" that was my favorite. I carried a tattered paperback copy of that book for many years. Its story was the ultimate odyssey - an adventure written by a person with a great love of nature and an unsurpassed understanding of the sea and its marine life.

Another woman on my list, and one that I had the privilege of meeting some years later, was Eugenie Clarke. When I was in college someone who new of my interest in oceanography gave me a book entitled: "Lady with a Spear". This was a book, almost a journal, about a young woman who circumnavigated the world in the late forties collecting a certain type of fish. This was a trip that she elected to take on her own with little help from anyone or anybody. Although her book was not written as beautifully as those of Rachel Carson, it did celebrate the courage and resourcefulness of a young woman who overcame many obstacles in order to accomplish her goal.

The third woman on my list was the behavioral scientist Jane Goodall. I needn't say too much about her since her work with chimpanzees is now legendary and most already know of her. Jane Goodall went to Africa, by herself, in 1960 to spend "a couple of years" studying the behavior of chimps in the wild. She is still living there today and expects to die there. If you have ever seen her in interviews or read her work, it is immediately obvious that she is a woman of uncommon strength and one who is completely comfortable in her own company.

The last woman on my professional "most admired" list was also a legend in her field. Her name was Libbie Hyman and, unlike the others above, she was a woman of very limited physical attractiveness. The first story I heard about her was related to me in graduate school. It seems that while Libbie Hyman was an undergraduate student in vertebrate zoology, she became frustrated with the quality of the laboratory manual and complained to her instructor about it. "If you don't like it, write a better one" sniffed the instructor. Amazingly, she did just that and her effort resulted in a very popular laboratory manual in vertebrate zoology. This would be interesting in itself but there's more. Libbie Hyman's passion was not for vertebrate animals but for invertebrates. In fact, she went on to write a monumental work of five volumes entitled: "The Invertebrates" which has been one of the encyclopedias of invertebrate zoology for many years. Later on, after I had finished graduate school, a well known man who had been the curator of fishes and invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History told me another story about Libbie Hyman. During a meeting of the governing board of the Museum, a suggestion was made to award Libbie Hyman, now quite old, a stipend in appreciation of her work. She usually worked alone in a small secluded office and had, at times, been mistaken for a cleaning woman. (The parody character of Carol Burnett's cleaning woman immediately springs to mind.) The board voted to award her the stipend which was sent to her a short time later. Time passed, and no one heard a thing about the award, or her reaction to it, until the board met again the following year. At the next meeting the board chairman said: "Did any of you hear about Libbie Hyman's stipend?". No one had. The board member went on to explain that when the stipend was awarded, Miss Hyman, in a huff, promptly took the check around the corner and donated the entire sum to the Museum library. Apparently, her services were not to be sullied by something as mundane as money.

There is a common thread that unites all these exceptional women. They were strong, intelligent, individualistic, and comfortable with themselves as women. No need for male pretensions. They did not attend seminars on empowerment, eat power lunches, or emulate male behavior. The women on my list achieved what they did before the feminist movement told us that such feats were not possible for women living in a "man's world". These women achieved great stature, not by adopting male behavior, but by using the strengths that are unique to women and not possessed by many men.