profile written by Janis Shaw
WISENET Journal No. 3, November 1985, p. 9
Christa Critchley, who is currently working as a National Research Fellow at the Botany Depart- ment, The Faculties, ANU, is also known to her many friends and colleagues as a mainstay of the women's movement in the scientific and academic communities.
Christa holds a diploma in biology from the University of Koln and a PhD from the University of Dusseldorf and came to Australia from West Germany in 1976 to work with CSIRO in Sydney. The offer to work with CSIRO came at a time when she was experiencing serious difficulties with the scientific establishment in Germany - she had been advised by her supervisor to think about teaching or motherhood instead of science! Since then she has held a variety of research positions at CSIRO, ANU and the University of Illinois.
Not holding a permanent position, and disagreeing with tenure in any case, Christa does most of her own work through independent funding which she solicits herself. Her decision to continue her work at ANU is concomitant with Canberra being the best place for her field of interest. Collaboration with CSIRO is an important part of her work but the challenge of supervising her PhD students is part of the incentive to stay at ANU. Her students, she says, keep her on the ball and she sees their supervision as being as useful to science as the sole pursuit of her own work.
Current funding is from the National Research Fellowship Scheme, and the small team Christa leads is looking at the basic mechanism of photo-inhibition of photosynthesis, to find out how plants evolve oxygen and discover the reasons why some plants, such as mangroves, have evolved a tolerance to salt. Work of this nature has obvious advantages to agriculture by affecting crop yields. It will, however, take a long time and a lot of funding if useful results are to be obtained and applied to agriculture.
An Oxford University Press monograph on Photoinhibition of Photosynthesis which Christa is currently co-authoring with Barry Osmond will add to an already impressive list of publications she has to her credit.
It seems somewhat surprising that Christa has not always nurtured the idea of herself as a scientist. In fact, on leaving school in 1968, she had her sights on political journalism and was all set for a career as a foreign correspondent. Fate intervened in her plans, however, when she atten- ded a university lecture on photosynthesis. The subject caught her interest and she has been hooked ever since!
Initial apprehension about coping with physics and chemistry at a tertiary level proved to be unfounded for Christa as her background gave her a firm foundation for the transition from journalism to botany. To start with, the West German secondary education system is very comprehensive, placing as much emphasis on science as it does on humanities, and Christa was fortunate to have an inspiring biology teacher. Combined with attendance at a single sex school, which she considers to have been an advantage, this proved to be a positive foundation to work on.
Christa has always been a feminist but only became organized about it on deciding to stay in Australia. She joined the Women's ElectoralLobby (WEL) which was a source of information for her on the status of women here. Apart from a continued involvement with WEL, Christa has been a prominent member of the Association of Women Employees (AWE) at ANU and has been its convenor in 1985. She has been the treasurer of WISENET since its inception and chaired our first Canberra meeting at the Academy of Science in November last year. She is also currently a member of the ACT ANZAAS executive, the ANU Staff Association executive and the FAUSA Research Committee which deals with government funding. As well as all this, she is Secretary to the Australian Society for Biophysics and is doing a part time BA.
One wonders how she keeps up with all this activism! She has a simple philosophy, 'you just have to be organized - and don't worry about chaos if it occurs'. Knowing what she is committed to and getting her priorities sorted out are the baais for her decision making and daily order of events.
Christa would like to see WISENET flourish into a strong national group through which women can work for their rights. She sees the day of women 'making the ranks' in science as rather distant but considers that WISENET could make a significant contribution at the secondary school level by presenting science as an option for girls. She admits that many women are terrifyingly busy but she would encourage as many possible to make even a small contribution to the organization - even if just to introduce a new member to it.