The obit for Yvonne Brill for the New York Times gathered a lot of bile on Twitter this weekend. The original obit (it was later revised) began like this:
She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. “The world’s best mom,” her son Matthew said.
But Yvonne Brill, who died on Wednesday at 88 in Princeton, N.J., was also a brilliant rocket scientist, who in the early 1970s invented a propulsion system to help keep communications satellites from slipping out of their orbits.
I wasn't clear if Brill viewed herself as a Mom-First-Scientist-Second or this is how the journalist (a dude) interpreted her life. Lots of women of her generation want their mom accomplishments to come first, and maybe Brill was a product of her time. But maybe the journalist was just a jerk. Not sure.
I suppose that it's pretty cool that Brill was great enough in her home life AND her professional life that it's tricky to decide which accomplishment is most important. It's a GOOD problem to have.
What will the obit writers say about me? I think it will start with a lede, "she made a mean grilled cheese sandwich and then squandered too much time on the Internet."