The Woman Who Knew Too Much: Alice Stewart and the Secrets of Radiation

The Woman Who Knew Too Much: Alice Stewart and the Secrets of Radiation by Gayle Greene. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780472087839.

This biography illuminates the life and achievements of the remarkable woman scientist who revolutionized the concept of radiation risk. In the 1950s Alice Stewart began research that led to her discovery that fetal X rays double a childs risk of developing cancer. Two decades later---when she was in her seventies---she again astounded the scientific world with a study showing that the U.S. nuclear weapons industry is about twenty times more dangerous than safety regulations permit. This finding put her at the center of the international controversy over radiation risk. In 1990, the New York Times called Stewart "perhaps the Energy Departments most influential and feared scientific critic." The Woman Who Knew Too Much traces Stewarts life and career from her early childhood in Sheffield to her medical education at Cambridge to her research positions at Oxford University and the University of Birmingham. Gayle Greene is Professor of Womens Studies and Literature, Scripps College.