Lessons in Chemistry

Set primarily in the 1950s and early 1960s Elizabeth Zott wants to be a research chemist but discovers that being a woman made her aims almost impossible to achieve. She gets a job as a lab assistant at the Hastings Institute in California but she is not accepted by the male members of staff because she is a female attempting to work in a man's world. She is also not accepted by female employees because she aspires to be more than a secretary.

When Elizabeth meets another chemist, Calvin Evans, who has a great reputation as a scientist but also is not accepted by the other staff at the institute, they discover that they have much in common and form a permanent relationship. Elizabeth decides that she does not want to be married as that would make her professional aspirations even more difficult to achieve.  However living with a man when not married is also considered by society to be unacceptable. To compound problems Elizabeth does not want to be a mother but she and Calvin decide to fill the gap by adopting a dog, Six-thirty.

But when an event occurs causing Elizabeth to find another line of work she finds herself hosting a cooking show on TV five days a week to support her family. However this is not an ordinary cooking show. Elizabeth makes it clear that she is a chemist and she treats cooking as chemistry. The male producers are not keen on the idea but it soon becomes clear that most women (and some men) watching the program appreciate learning more than just putting different foods together to create a meal.

In Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus encourages the reader to look at how far we have come in accepting equality in the workforce. The world in which Elizabeth lives is very different from that of the 2020s. In most cases women today have a chance to work with men in fields, as equals, which in the 1950s and early 1960s was considered not acceptable because of their gender. Attitudes to marriage and having children outside marriage have also changed in many countries. Although often humorous, Lessons in Chemistry shows that much of what we now take for granted has not always been the case.