April 8, 2005

An Aptitude for Science

To the Editor:

Lawrence H. Summers's argument that the higher number of men than women in science and engineering can be attributed to innate aptitude simply does not add up ("Primed for Numbers," The Chronicle, March 4).

Women's colleges have a long history of graduating talented women scientists in numbers highly disproportionate to their institutional size. At Smith College, for example, one in four students majors in the sciences, a rate that is three times the national