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Elizabeth Zott is many things: a brilliant chemist, a formidable woman far ahead of her time, and a loving mother to Mad are are just a few. The novel introduces her as a research chemist in the 1960s, but much of the book discusses her early career in the 1950s. Chemistry was an unusual field for women to have advanced degrees in during that period of American history, but Elizabeth is talented and single-minded enough to succeed professionally despite a deck stacked against her. Because she’s young and beautiful, and because they are morally bankrupt, several figures of authority in Elizabeth’s life sexually and physically assault her. She’s forced to quit her PhD. program at UCLA when her advisor rapes her and she fights him off by stabbing him with a pencil. The police officer who interviews her doesn’t even try to account for her side of the story. Elizabeth doesn’t give up on chemistry, though, despite the Hastings Institute being just as unwelcoming as UCLA. Throughout the novel, Elizabeth's actions and choices defy conventional societal expectations for women’s behavior and women’s goals. Her struggle for recognition and respect in the scientific community is a recurrent problem, as her colleagues of all genders resent her success and try to slow her progress. She’s also a wonderful cook, but she refuses to be confined to the kitchen and the home.
Elizabeth's relationship with Calvin Evans is both a professional partnership and a deep love connection. Everyone around them assumes that Elizabeth is dating Calvin for his fame, and he for her looks. They don’t take her work seriously, but he does. She’s resolute in her independence, not wishing to marry Calvin or take his name as she knows that would eclipse any scientific discoveries she could make. After he dies, she is utterly heartbroken but forces herself to continue working, rowing, and researching to honor his memory and provide for his daughter. Though her colleagues criticize her for becoming pregnant, she refuses to be ashamed of her love for Calvin or her sexuality, especially as male workers at Hastings are held to a different standard. As a chemist, Elizabeth focuses on abiogenesis, the emergence of life from nonliving matter. Although her research is brilliant, the men she works with underestimate her at best, and shamelessly plagiarize her at worst.
Motherhood is also very challenging for Elizabeth. She didn’t want children and initially had no idea what to do with Mad, especially as Calvin was gone and she had to support them both. Elizabeth's approach to parenting is unconventional, as she applies scientific principles to raising and feeding her daughter, and encourages Mad's curiosity and independence in all aspects of her growth. Her role as a mother is tightly inlaid with her identity as a scientist and as a TV personality. In all things, Elizabeth wants to show women and girls that they can be independently successful and live bravely, even when men still hold most of the power.
