Greeks in the sciences?
 

I've read countless stories about Greeks going on to become successful in law, business, and the entertainment industry. A lot of the Go Greek! campaigns I've seen emphasize the wide social networks that joining a sorority or fraternity opens you to, and I can definitely see how that could help.

However, I'm wondering: are Greeks in science-related fields more rare? As a pre-med, I'm interested in reading any articles or personal stories about doctors or researchers that were involved with the Greek system in college. Please do share!

Thanks a lot, and feel free to tell me if this is an inappropriate question, or if this doesn't belong here.

You know, I wouldn't be surprised to find that there are less science majors. I am the only science major in my sorority [I'm biochem] and from what I can see, it comes down to a time commitment. Both take a LOT of time; while I only have fifteen credits this semester, I have 20 hours of class time per week because of labs and discussion sections. I dunno.

However, I'm sure that being a Greek wouldn't HINDER anyone from being successful in the scientific community!

My chapter has a long tradition of graduating pre-med (bio/chem/biochem) pre-law and accounting students. This continues to this day, as I graduated only a few years ago, and am an accountant. However, it seems that while we have tons of physicians that are alumni, the ones who are involved, or at least come back during homecoming are all in business or attorneys. Perhaps there is more of a focus on networking in these fields.

Alpha has quite a few distinguished scientists and physicians (Lasalle Lefall, Garret Morgan, Levi Watkins, though the Omegas probably have some that are more well known than ours (Ernest Everett Just, Charles Drew).

Perhaps it's a combination of less of us being interested in the sciences in the first place AND it being more challenging to distinguish yourself in that field.

I was a Microbiology major undergrad, planning on going into biomedical research. Turns out that I did not enjoy working in a lab very much. But I now maintain the Natural Sciences collection and answer the science reference questions at my library. So the degree was useful indeed.

There have been several astronauts who were members of GLOs.

I work with an epidemiologist who has millions of dollars in R01 and R03 grants and is well known for her cancer research and her childhood asthma and allergy research. She's been first author on more papers than I can count, presents her research at numerous conferences all over the world, and is on a study section to review NIH grants. She is a Gamma Phi Beta and she is brilliant (and one of the nicest people I know too).