A woman who discovered the link between cholera and plankton. The story of Rita Colwell

The first woman in history to serve as director of the American National Science Foundation, Rita Colwell, celebrates her 92nd birthday this year. Her fascinating career is an inspiration for thousands of female scientists around the world and an excellent subject for reflection on the March celebration of women.

Infectious diseases and the aquatic environment

According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), cholera, a disease caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, still kills between 20,000 and 140,000 people each year. In the 19th and 20th centuries, pandemics caused by the disease claimed tens of millions of lives, including a great many small children. The fight against this waterborne pathogen became one of the greatest global challenges for microbiologists, especially since for many decades fecal contamination was considered the main cause of infection.

Rita Colwell proved that the virulent pathogen may naturally occur in the aquatic environment, even in waters that appear clean. Her research, conducted in the 1970s and 1980s in the estuaries and coastal zones of Bangladesh, showed that dangerous bacteria attach to plankton, colonizing the chitinous shells of the organisms that form it. Under unfavorable conditions they can remain dormant, but with the right temperature and after heavy rainfall they return to activity. Monitoring the aquatic environment is therefore the first step in combating cholera and many other infectious diseases.

But identifying the enemy’s tactics is not enough. Colwell’s experiments, carried out in 65 Bangladeshi villages, showed that filtering river water with a piece of cloth reduces the incidence of the disease by almost half. This simple and inexpensive method of purifying drinking water has saved the lives of millions of people in poor communities.

A woman with a capital “W”

Rita Colwell is one of eight children of Louis and Louise Rossi. Neither of her parents was a scientist. Driven by ambition, she graduated from Purdue University and then earned a PhD in microbiology from the University of Washington. She is the author of 20 books and more than 800 scientific publications. However, she did not devote herself entirely to research. She got married, had two daughters, and today she is the grandmother of three grandchildren.

From 1998 to 2004 Colwell served as head of the National Science Foundation, emphasizing the importance of educating society. Throughout her long scientific career she has made enormous contributions to the protection of public health and has become one of the leading authorities in the study of drinking and recreational water. In recent years, as a professor at the University of Maryland, she has focused on predicting the risk of pandemics, supporting humanitarian activities in regions that need it most.

A scientist in a skirt does not have it easy

In an interview given to Rockefeller University Press in 2024, Rita Colwell admitted that at the beginning of her career she faced enormous discrimination because of her gender. We do not waste scholarships on women, the head of the department at Purdue University told her directly.

These unpleasant experiences prompted Colwell to actively support women in science through her work with the Rosalind Franklin Society. She devoted a book to the problem of discrimination, A Lab of One’s Own: One Woman’s Personal Journey Through Sexism in Science.

Asked about the prospects for female scientists, she replied: I am cautiously optimistic about the future of women in science. The #MeToo movement has enabled women to openly oppose discrimination and harassment. However, concerns about a lack of culture and vulgar behavior still persist.

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main photo: Anwar Huq/Wikimedia

Sources:

Van Emmenis L. Rita Colwell: Use your voice to bring about positive change. J Exp Med. 2024 Mar 4;221(3):e20240259. doi: 10.1084/jem.20240259. Epub 2024 Feb 23. PMID: 38393068; PMCID: PMC10890922

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cholera