May 2005. Minuscule scars in the tree's trunk betray the site of last year’s injection. Each elm is marked as a green dot on the land registry map of Pernis. Ten trees next to a car park on Deijffelbroekselaan, a lone elm near the football field a little further down the road, three more on the outskirts of the village, and six on a canalside near Willem Weysingel. A row of duck- lings follow a mother duck in the water. The trees are in full leaf. Their green makes a sharp contrast with the clear blue sky.

The two tree surgeons work their way methodically down the row of green dots. One of them looks at the map in their van and points out the elms requir- ing treatment, while the other wields the injection pistol. The ritual is repeated each time afresh. As he walks towards his next patient, the tree surgeon scru- tinizes its crown. When he reaches the tree, he thrusts the injection pistol into it with a short jabbing motion, at hip height. Rotating the pistol by 90 degrees, he pulls the trigger. He then withdraws it cleanly and chooses another injection site, about ten centimetres from the first. The process is repeated until the entire trunk has a circle of injections. Then the man cleans the hypodermic needle with a cloth drenched in disinfectant while walking towards the next tree and studying its crown. Meanwhile, his co-worker in the van ticks off the elms that have been treated.

The injection fluid is stored in giant test tubes in a refrigerator at the back of the van. The tubes contain a light blue translucent fluid with a suspension of a fungus, and have to be transported horizontally, explains one of the men. ‘Verticillium’, he specifies, half turning and talking to me over his shoul- der. ‘We inject a suspension of Verticillium. It was prepared by the University of Amsterdam.’

On the way to Hoogvliet, the men stop at a small side road leading to some allotments. At one corner stands a gigantic elm, swaying in the wind. Its crown has bare patches, like a worn carpet. The trunk is overgrown with ivy.

‘It has become a tradition to start each year with a summary of what the past year has meant to the department and to reflect on what the new year has in store for us’, remarked Schippers on 5 January 1987, in his first New Year's address to his staff as the Laboratory's new director.

Who better to look back? At 54 years of age – for 28 of which he had worked at the Phytopathology Laboratory in Baarn – he could still recall the days when Westerdijk and her housekeeper had lived there. It took an effort of the imagination to recognize that past in the complex he was standing in now. A corridor connected the Phytopathology Laboratory to the white building of the Central Bureau of Fungal Cultures (cbs) on Oosterstraat, like an intact umbilical cord. The old Villa and ‘Madoera’ coach-house had been renovated several times and modernized: besides central heating, telephones and electric lighting, a computer network was now being installed. The Villa had a wing with brightly illuminated rooms and modern laboratories, and there was a little electricity substation in the garden. And quite recently, in November 1986, the board and staff had gathered for the festive opening of a brand-new greenhouse. The entire complex had a hyper-modern look to it – as befitted an internationally renowned laboratory, said Schippers.

Phytopathology itself had changed beyond recognition since Westerdijk's time. It had undergone explosive growth, from a small and clearly defined area of science to a ramified international network of specialisms and sub-specialisms. The almost inevitable result had been an enormous fragmentation in research, but on the other hand, the immense expansion had generated countless opportunities for cooperation between teams. Modern communication technologies made it easier and more attractive for teams to work together at both national and international level.

‘We can be well satisfied with our research output, in terms of both quantity and quality’, said Schippers, midway through his speech. ‘It is interesting to see the growing demand in society for… fundamental insight into … possible ways of manipulating the resistance properties of plants to ward off disease and of manipulating antagonistic organisms to protect crops and to improve growth and yield; two areas in which our department has ample experience as well as expertise and enthusiasm.

‘There were three things I wanted to change’, says Koen Verhoeff in a recent interview. ‘When I took over as director, the atmosphere at the Laboratory struck me as… how shall I put it…’. He pauses thoughtfully, and then says, nodding, ‘quiet.’ Folding his hands, he explains, ‘After the lively surroundings of Naaldwijk Research Station and the Institute of Phytopathological Research in Wageningen, that took me by surprise. There were not many students in Baarn to inject life into the place. I was also startled to find that most people here went home for lunch. In America, I had been used to lunch breaks being used for friendly exchanges and consultations.’ So the first thing to be done was to attract more students.

‘I also felt that we needed to lobby for extra resources, especially from zwo [the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research; now nwo].’ After his index finger, Verhoeff now extends his middle finger. ‘We could scarcely expect the universities to allocate any extra staff. And thirdly,’ grasping his ring finger, ‘we needed to encourage internal cooperation. That has a deepening effect on the research and improves your position when you’re applying for external resources. Under Kerling the work had become fragmented, with everyone doing his own thing. That's not right; in science you have to work together, otherwise you don't achieve much.’

He stares ahead a little gloomily. ‘There was a permanent staff of eight plus one vacancy. My aim was to have three project groups, each with three permanent members of staff. And I wanted each member of staff to have a personal laboratory technician. But that was too ambitious; I never managed to get that far.’

Koen Verhoeff took over officially as professor-director of the Phytopathology Laboratory on 16 October 1970. Kerling had relinquished her responsibilities a few weeks earlier, on 1 September, and Bob Schippers had been standing in. Un the nomination of a new director or professor had been a professorial prerogative. Board members sounded each other out about suitable candidates, occasionally seeking recommendations from former students or staff members, and eventually nominated a candidate.

Westerdijk was just thirty-four when she gave her inaugural address in Utrecht. One of the photographs taken on this occasion shows her in a static pose, standing beside a column. She is wearing a black gown and has a book in her left hand. A white jabot dangles below her chin, and her flat black beret is stuck upright on her head. She gazes earnestly into the camera, her eyes hidden as always behind the thick lenses of her glasses. It is a stately portrait, so dark that her face and jabot provide the only highlights. The picture exudes gravity, a consciousness that history was being made.

Her students took a slightly different view. After the ceremony they ascribed the following lines to her in a musical:

‘In my black tent I bring to mind

A laundry basket from ancient times.’

Westerdijk laughed good-humouredly.

Her appearance changed little over the years. Anyone who leafs through a few of the photographs in the International Information Centre and Archives for the Women's Movement will easily pick out the ‘Lady Professor’ even in a large group of people, not only on account of her appearance – an ample figure in a tent dress, thick glasses pinching her nose, heavy chin and plump cheeks, resolute bottom lip – but also because of her position and forceful gaze. If Villa Java was the setting for academic phytopathology, Westerdijk, whether in radiant or earnest mood always a strong presence, was its absolute centre.

She was also a woman in a world that had hitherto been dominated by men. Countless stories highlight this anomaly. At the first professorial social event she attended, Westerdijk was reported to have ostentatiously lit a large cigar, prompting one of her male colleagues to slap her heartily on the back, exclaiming words to the effect of ‘Hallo old chap, how's life?’ In a cigar-less version of this story, Westerdijk was welcomed with the equally absurd ‘How do, old girl!’

Anecdotes frequently cite her booming laugh, her love of parties, drinking and dancing, her distaste for marriage and other pointless conventions, her short-sightedness, and her expressive eyes, whether mocking, interested, or full of sympathy.

On Saturday 14 March 1931, Westerdijk celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of her directorship. Early in the morning, she and her mother were driven to the Badhotel in Baarn, where the entire board of the Willie Commelin Scholten Phytopathology Laboratory Foundation awaited her for the fiftieth board meeting.

Before Went opened the meeting, however, Westerdijk made him a gift of a gavel, ‘to remedy the absence of a gavel in the years behind us’, the venerable Ernst Krelage, secretary of the board, recorded gravely in the minutes. In this close circle of board members, Went then proceeded to share with his fellows some reflections which were ‘better not aired in public.’ He doubtless closed the meeting with a merry tap of his new gavel.

After lunch followed the official ceremony. Seated grandly among several lush flower arrangements and surrounded by hundreds of people who had arrived to pay tribute to her, including professors, local dignitaries, students and former students, friends and acquaintances, Westerdijk listened to Went's speech, which was interrupted half-way through by two crackling radio tributes from the Dutch East Indies. After dinner, students performed a revue in the auditorium of Baarn's Lyceum, the local grammar school. One of the highlights of the festivities was the reappearance of the traditional puppet show: former students put Punch and Judy through their paces one more time, with some idiosyncratic commentary on the guest of honour. The dancing and merrymaking went on until the early hours.

The anniversary did indeed mark the end of an era. For one thing, only Krelage, Went and Hugo de Vries, of the original founders, were still alive; the latter two were nearing the end of their careers, and both would die in the summer of 1935. After that, only Krelage, who, since the collapse of the bulb market after the First World War, had been forced to sell the firm of E.H. Krelage & Son, and whose board membership was therefore based purely on historical considerations, could bear witness to the old times. But it was the end of an era in another sense too: with Westerdijk's dual appointment as professor of phytopathology, the Phytopathology Laboratory had finally achieved its destiny as a public, university laboratory, rather than a private foundation. This transformation was accompanied by several drastic changes.

‘The war stopped just at the frontier of Baarn’, Westerdijk wrote in 1946 to one of her many foreign contacts in the world of phytopathology. ‘One day longer, and the whole village would have disappeared.’ It is said that Westerdijk spent the entire evening playing the piano, completely alone, with the distant thunder of approaching bombing in the background. The Villa suffered no damage.

The College of Agriculture was less fortunate. ‘Many of the Wageningen institutes were severely attacked’, she wrote to another fellow-phytopathologist. ‘And the worst is, that all the instruments have been stolen by the Germans, not even brought to Germany, but sometimes thrown into ditches etc.’

Who survived? How are they? And what state is science in, and phytopathology in particular? After five years of bitter isolation, the letters poured in. Former PhD student Alexander Liernur wrote from Goirle: ‘We did not do too badly; were made to leave our home for three months and in February a V-1 landed about 100 yards away, destroying almost all the windows, the roof and the interior dividing walls. I also got a shower of glass in my face, which gave me an eye infection that lasted a month, but I’m happy to say that it's gone now.’ Otto Appel, from Berlin: ‘In these past long years I have often thought of you and your splendid institute. … As a family, however, we came through these difficult years very well. In any case we are all still alive, and that is the main thing.’

In answer to requests for information about various people, Westerdijk wrote back ‘I can tell you that Dr Jordan died when he [was hiding from] the Germans, from heart disease. His wife is living. …. Honing is [well]; he married again and has two small children, but his house at Wageningen was destroyed and his institute was badly damaged. … Miss Spierenburg is now over 65 and has left the phytopathological service [Plant Protection Service], but she is quite well, though her house at Wageningen has been totally destroyed by bombs. Dr Duifjes [was] murdered in a camp on Java, but I think his wife is living. Perhaps you remember Dr Diddens [of my staff].

Seven Women and a Diseased Elm

May 1995. The harsh whining of chain saws pierces the air of the sleepy neighbourhood. The Parks and Public Gardens Department has started work bright and early and two men are sawing down a twenty-metre high elm in an enclosed garden in the western district of Amsterdam. Hanging from ropes like mountaineers, the men slice off the tree's branches one by one, each time with a single sweep of the saw. The lopped branches swish down to the ground below. A few hours later, the colossus has been reduced to a pathetic stump. The houses on the other side of the square suddenly seem a few metres closer.

A furious resident phones the local authority. The elm was diseased, the official explains amicably, and there is no cure for elm disease. Only by chopping the tree down and removing it can you prevent the disease spreading or – more important still in a dense residential neighbourhood – make sure that the tree will not come thundering down of its own accord, toppled by strong winds.

Local residents had not even noticed anything wrong with the tree. How you can tell that an elm is diseased actually? ‘It's an insidious process’, explains Doekle Elgersma, plant pathologist at the University of Amsterdam. The first symptoms appear in the spring. The leaves on the youngest twigs wither and become discoloured, as if autumn has already come. Then they die. Some fall to the ground, and others stay hanging in the tree like little dead flags. Then, in the summer, bare patches appear in the full green crown of the tree. The patches are bigger the following year, and bigger still the year after, until the doomed tree is eventually completely bare. By then it won't take much to blow it down. The entire process of death can last as long as much as ten years.

Elgersma suddenly demands: ‘Did you know that this disease is called ‘Dutch elm disease’ all over the world because the most important discoveries about elm disease were made by seven Dutch scientists? And that all seven were women?’

* = research not conducted at the Phytopathology Laboratory

To illustrate the relatively large number of women researchers at the Laboratory, especially in its early years, the following table differentiates betwen men (m) and women (f).

Westerdijk as first or second supervising professor

Schwarz, M.B. (f), Das Zweigsterben der Ulmen, Trauerweiden und Pfirsichbäume. Utrecht, 4 April 1922.

Löhnis, M.P. (f), Onderzoek over Phytophthora infestans (Mont.) de Bary op de aardappelplant. Utrecht, 7 April 1922.

Berkhout, C.M. (f), De schimmelgeslachten Monilia, Oidium, Oospora en Torula. Utrecht, 29 January 1923.

Bolle, P.C. (f), Die durch Schwärzepilze (Phaeodictyae) erzeugten Pflanzenkrankheiten. Utrecht, 16 April 1924.

Simon Thomas, K. (m), Onderzoekingen over Rhizoctonia. Utrecht, 2 February 1925.

Doyer, C.M. (f), Untersuchungen über die sogenannte Pestalozzia-Krankheit und die Gattung Pestalozzia de Not. Utrecht, 15 June 1925.

Roodenburg, J.W.M. (m), Zuurstofgebrek in de grond in verband met wortelrot. Utrecht, 7 February 1927.

Buisman, C.J. (f), Root rots caused by Mycophycetes. Amsterdam, 22 March 1927.

Jacob, J.C. s’ (m), Anorganische beschadigingen bij Pisum sativum L. en Phaseolus vulgaris L. Utrecht, 28 March 1927.

Karthaus, J.P. (m), Het afsterven van stengels en knoppen bij de roode framboos. Utrecht, 2 May 1927.

Liernur, A.G.M. (m), Hexenbesen, ihre Morphologie, Anatomie und Entstehung. Utrecht, 4 July 1927.

Pfältzer, A. (m), Het vruchten bladvuur van de komkommer, Cladosporium cucumerinum Ell. en Arth. en Corynespora melonis (Cooke) L. Utrecht, 4 July 1927.

Kerling, L.C.P. (f), De anatomische bouw van bladvlekken. Utrecht, 2 July 1928.

Meurs, A. (m), Wortelrot, veroorzaakt door de geslachten Pythium Pringsheim en Aphanomyces de Bary. Utrecht, 22 October 1928.

Broekhuizen, S. (m), Wondreactie van hout. Het ontstaan van thyllen en wondgom in het biezonder in verband met de iepenziekte. Utrecht, 2 June 1929.

Vos, H.C.C.A.A. (f), De invloed van Pseudococcus citri (Risso) Fern op de plant. Utrecht, 17 February 1930.

Veen, R. van der (m), Onderzoekingen over tracheomycosen. Utrecht (by way of Leiden), 3 March 1930.

Mes, M.G. (f), Fisiologiese siektesimptome van tabak. Utrecht, 10 March 1930.

Brinkman, A. (m), De roodneuzenziekte van Phaseolus vulgaris L., veroorzaakt door Pleospora herbarum (Pers.). Amsterdam, 22 June 1931.

Diddens, H.A. (f), Onderzoekingen over de vlasbrand veroorzaakt door Pythium megalacanthum de Bary. Amsterdam, 24 June 1931.

Feekes, F.H. (m), Onderzoekingen over schimmelziekten van bolgewassen. Utrecht (via Leiden), 7 July 1931.

Like farmhouses and land, the knowledge of farming was passed down from father to son. Farmers knew from experience which soil was more fertile and which fertilizer produced a higher yield. They had learned which crop rotation systems prevented soil exhaustion and reduced the risk of disease. They reproduced this knowledge for generation after generation. Improvements and innovations were ascribable to their own acute powers of observation and to chance rather than to the application of any insights based on scientific discoveries.

Someone like Jacob Krelage, who farmed his land well, could afford to build a study and pore over scholarly treatises. Those with less money to spare continued to rely on timeless common sense [which the Dutch call boerenverstand, ‘farmers’ sense’– transl.], crop rotation, avoiding infected soil, removing diseased plants (or parts of plants) as quickly as possible, using healthy specimens for their further cultivation, good water management, sufficient fertilizer. The meagre provision of agriculture education was a luxury, and agriculture research even more so.

This situation changed dramatically towards the end of the nineteenth century. The change was precipitated first and foremost by the enormous crisis in agriculture into which European agriculture was plunged by the dumping of cheap grain from the United States, vast cargoes of which had been imported since the advent of ocean-going steamers. Germany and France closed their borders to the cheap grain in response, and the Dutch government appointed a special commission to study the problem. In its conclusions, in 1886, the commission asserted that government has a role in the development of agriculture. The Hague would have to abandon its outmoded laissez-faire policies and provide incentives for agriculture: it should set up research stations as well as an agriculture and horticulture information service, and provide for ade- quate education and research in agriculture.

At the same time, the pressing threat of disease compelled European governments to take action. Besides passengers, crews and crops, the gigantic ocean steamers also carried pathogens. If these tiny stowaways landed in areas with favourable habitats and none of their natural enemies, they could multiply and spread unchecked, colonizing the new continent as true conquerors, with no regard for national borders and disdaining the desperation of farmers, the fury of landowners and the power of politicians.

Caspar Willem Reinhard Commelin Scholten died on Friday, 30 June 1893, exactly one week before the end of the academic year. According to the record of his death in Amsterdam's municipal archives, he was, ‘a Philosophiae Naturalis Candidatus [bachelor of natural philosophy] by occupation’, and lived in Amsterdam. He was twenty-five years old. Yet Amsterdam's archives reveal nothing about the cause of death, so that the inquiry moves to Apeldoorn, the city where he died.

In the card-index boxes of Apeldoorn's municipal archives, there is no mention of a ‘Commelin’, ‘Scholten’, or any combination of the two. In the microfiche death records, however, his name does appear. The record of Willie's death has been written in a flamboyant hand. Two witnesses had stated to the official of Apeldoorn's Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths that Willie had died ‘at 2 p.m…. in the home of Dr. Pierre François Spaink in this municipality’. Erica, the address-book and yearbook of the municipality of Apeldoorn, carries a listing in 1893 for ‘Spaink … physician, medical director of the sanatorium for the mentally ill, on Loolaan.’

In the annals of Erica, the name of Spaink, with this description, first occurs in 1892. According to the volume published in 1963, the last one in the archives, Bosrust private sanatorium for the mentally ill was located at Loolaan 59. Its medical director, Spaink, had moved to Utrecht with his family in 1909.

Apeldoorn's municipal archives contain a large collection of historical photographs and postcards. In one of the blue files with old photographic material is a postcard with a view of a magnificent villa: the caption tells us that this was Bosrust Sanatorium on Loolaan, Apeldoorn. The institution appears to be in the middle of a wood, but this is an illusion. Loolaan is an avenue lined with a wide row of trees. ‘Huize Boschrust’, to give the villa its old name, is set back at some distance from the Loolaan. It is a capacious building, with a circular tower beneath a pointed roof serving as watchtower. It has numerous large windows, including generous-sized, high, bay windows.

Female students were no longer exceptional by the late 1890s. Between 1878, the year in which Aletta Jacobs became the first woman to take her final medical examinations at the University of Groningen, and 1905, when Ritzema Bos finally left Amsterdam for Wageningen, the proportion of female university students increased from 2 % in the academic year 1895 to over 18 % in 1904.

The percentage of female biology students was traditionally much higher (25 % in 1898; 63 % in 1913). A variety of explanations have been suggested for this. One is that biologists were regarded as peace-loving people who communed with nature in a way that gave them ‘profound joy, pleasure and wisdom’ – something that evidently appealed to girls more than boys. Another is that biology was ‘a good area in which… to find comfort for unfulfilled desires; one did not have to be a brilliant biologist to derive pleasure from it’, as an admirer of Westerdijk's once wrote to her. Then there were some professors who whispered that ‘the ladies come here not to study biology, but to catch a husband. You never see them after their bachelor's exams. Once they get engaged, they take to embroidering cushions.’

Johanna Westerdijk (known familiarly as ‘Hans’), who was born on 4 January 1883 and grew up in Amsterdam, gravitated to biology from her sheer love of nature – along with music, dancing and literature – which she greatly preferred to typical girls’ pastimes like embroidery and playing with dolls. As a young girl, and the eldest child of a general practitioner in Amsterdam, she drew inspiration – like hundreds of her fellow townspeople – from the immensely popular nature books written by the Amsterdam teachers Eli Heimans and Jacobus Thijsse. But it was not until she attended the lectures of Hugo de Vries that she became enthralled with the scientific aspects of biology.

‘Strangely enough, however, [De Vries] would not allow the three new firstyear students who arrived in 1900 to do practical laboratory work,’ she wrote. ‘Out of sheer rebelliousness I applied to the Willie Commelin Scholten Phytopathology Laboratory, where Dr C.J.J. van Hall, a man of my acquaintance and a former assistant of De Vries’s, took me under his wing and instructed me on the anatomy of plants.

Introduction

This chapter focuses on care obligations towards family members. The relevance of examining this normative aspect of solidarity is the interdependence between feelings of obligation and actual support exchange. Earlier research has shown that a sense of duty towards one's family can have a predictive value for the informal care actually exchanged. Elderly American parents, for example, who felt strongly that family should help one another, gave their children more practical and financial help than parents who felt less strongly about this (Lee et al., 1994). Other studies have shown that the more strongly elderly parents and/or their adult children subscribed to the view that children and parents should support one another, the more practical support they received (Broese van Groenou, 2005; Klein Ikkink et al., 1999; Stein et al., 1998). Conversely, actual support exchange has also been found to influence feelings of obligation. According to Festinger's (1957) cognitive dissonance theory, situations in which behaviour conflicts with personal values (cognitive dissonance) are considered undesirable. In order to reduce dissonance, giving or receiving support is retrospectively attributed to a strong sense of duty, and the absence of support exchange could lead to the adjustment of personal values.

In the self-completion questionnaire used in SHARE, a number of items on two types of care obligations were posed: an obligation to care for the elderly and an obligation to care for children and grandchildren. With regard to the first type of obligation, respondents were asked who should bear the responsibility for three aspects of care for the elderly: (1) help with household chores for older persons who are in need such as help with cleaning and washing; (2) personal care for older persons who are in need such as nursing or help with bathing or dressing; and (3) financial support for older persons who are in need. Respondents could choose any of the following answer categories: totally the government, mainly the government, totally the family, mainly the family, both equally.