Elma gonzalez biography

Elma L. González (born June 6, 1942) is a.
Elma L. González is a Mexican-born American plant cell biologist.
Born in 1942 in northeast Mexico, González was the daughter of migrant farmworkers.

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The Importance of Being Elma

Elma González grew up in a small ranching town in South Texas where youngsters typically tried to escape the local poverty by joining the military, finding some menial job or leaving altogether in the hope of a better life. González, instead, sought refuge in college, largely because of an almost sacred childhood memory: Her father, a cowboy who supplemented his meager income by picking crops in the summer, read to her regularly from two cherished books.

These weren’t the works of Cervantes or Shakespeare but tattered geography textbooks he had kept as the only mementos of his brief six months in school. In a charmless town without even a stoplight, let alone a bookstore or library, and where cows outnumbered people 20-to-1, the texts were González’s sole window to the outside world. “I wanted to see how the other half lived outside my small town,” she says. Her father’s “dreamy kind of marveling at people in distant lands” has been a theme throughout her life, she adds, inspiring her to

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Elma González

Mexican-born American plant cell biologist

Elma L. González (born June 6, 1942) is a Mexican-born American plant cell biologist. She is Professor Emerita of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles.^[1] In 1974, she was appointed professor of cell and molecular biology at the University of California, Los Angeles.^[2] At the time, she was the only Mexican American woman scientist in the University of California system faculty. Professor Martha Zúñiga at the University of California, Santa Cruz, appointed in 1990, was the second.^[3] In 2004, the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science recognized González with a Distinguished Scientist Award.^[4]

Early life and education

González was born in Ciudad Guerrero, in Tamaulipas, Mexico. She is the daughter of Efigenia and Nestor González, both migrant farm workers. At the age of six, her parents brought her to the U.S.^[5] She did not start school until the age of nine.^[5] As

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From migrant farmworker to scientist: Elma González opened doors for Latinas in STEM

This story is part of a Hispanic Heritage Month collaboration with Voces Oral History Center based at UT-Austin’s Moody School of Communication.

There’s been a push in recent decades to get more women to pursue careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). Historically, women have been underrepresented in these often high-paying industries, and the difference is even more pronounced among women of color.

Elma González, a Latina scientist who grew up in South Texas, was one of the first to open doors for women like her.

Born in 1942 in northeast Mexico, González was the daughter of migrant farmworkers. She started picking crops like sugar beets and cotton in South Texas when she was 13. She often missed school, but still fell in love with science and math.

“I just enjoyed all of the mathematical and science courses that I took,” González said in a 2013 interview with the University of Oklahoma. “I took as many of the