Van Broeckhoven: “I always kept on with my research no matter what. If you take away my science, you take away my life. My career happened when people who thought me difficult weren’t looking”, she commented as she took her audience through her impressive CV and list of prizes. Van Broeckhoven started off in chemistry. “I am a basic chemist. I have a very analytical mind and I like physics and maths. There were four females in a class of ninety when I was studying in the seventies. But I find chemistry rather static, and that doesn’t go with my personality. So in my PhD work I focused on RNA, DNA came later. I did not have a good relationship with my supervisor. There was a perception that I was difficult”, she says dryly.

She had her first child between her masters and her PhD. “I was running a household with no washing machine. When an experiment was finished, I would rush off to do something else. I would stay all night if necessary, but I wasn’t wasting my precious time working from nine to five.”

She finished her PhD in 1981. She spent three years working in a lab specialised in metabolic diseases on an unemployment program. “I wrote hundreds of letters, but there was no room for females in the chemical industry in Antwerp. Then I went back to my old supervisor where I could use the empty lab space in return for some work for him. My first official salary, which was still very low, was after I got funding for my research on neurological diseases. This was after the birth of my second daughter in 1985.”

Prizes
Van Broeckhoven won the prestigious Potamkin prize in New York in 1993 and a major Belgian prize for her career in1995 at 42 years old. “This was unheard of. This prize was usually awarded to people at the end of their careers.” She was suddenly subject to a lot of interest from the press. “They asked me what it was like to be a woman in science. Before these interviews I never realised how difficult my situation was. Looking back, I say the university profited from my naiveté.”

“I have certain standards in my department and my lab for molecular genetics because of this. I don’t wish young scientists to go through what I went through. My female hires can easily work and have children. And no one works without pay.”

These days Van Broeckhoven has also branched out into politics. She was elected to Belgian Parliament for the Antwerp sp.a (socialist) party in March of 2007. She wrote a book about her life and research in 2006 entitled ‘Brein en Branie’. In the latest rankings for the ‘greatest Belgian’ she came 56th./.