Born: 1934 (circa), United States
Died: 2 May 2026
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Roberta Claire Eike Blanchard
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
Three years earlier, Roberta Eike, a biology graduate student, had risked her Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) fellowship by sneaking aboard a WHOI vessel after repeatedly being denied opportunities to go to sea. When the stowaway was discovered several hours into the voyage, the captain turned back, but was ordered to proceed with the trip as Eike was confined to the captain’s quarters like a criminal. Upon their return, she was stripped of her fellowship. WHOI acknowledges, “Eicke also had to suffer the indignity of being physically humiliated by her supervisor, George Clarke, when he ‘held her over his knee and spanked her.’” Clarke was known to be less than equitable towards his female colleagues. Dick Backus, a friend of Eike, later wrote about Clarke’s reputation for sexually harassing the women at WHOI as well. “Prof. Clarke pushed himself on Institution women and his reputation among them was not good.””
Eike’s actions reinvigorated conversation about the double standard, with several prominent oceanographers coming to her defence. Backus, who was also Eicke’s mentor, noted, “Her gutsy act turned the attention of the WHOI community to the issues of women at sea as it had never before. Consider the problem: one couldn’t be an oceanographer without going to sea. Did that mean that women couldn’t become oceanographers? The answer was the one that a trifling amount of thought had given in all such cases: it not only would be unfair, but it would also halve the pool of talent. Further, so long as oceanographic research was mainly paid for with public funds, the prohibition of women on research vessels was surely doomed.”