ABSTRACT
Responding to the visibility of women, this chapter suggests that the professional scientist's need for moral and material status necessitated the representation of a heroic laboratory culture which was antithetical to femininity and, by necessity, ignored female experimenters. The term 'laboratory culture' is used in a broad sense to encompass both the shared experiences of workers in the laboratory and the way in which these experiences were represented to a wider public. The stereotype of the laboratory as a dangerous place calling for physical and psychological bravery and endurance by necessity omits any feminisation or representation of women. It is difficult to find evidence of the experience of women who worked in this environment; no wonder there is little scholarship in this area. Given research revealing women in the laboratory, it is important to ask why their presence has for so long been obscured, not least by 'manly' representations of laboratory life.
