Ethaline Hartge Cortelyou

Ethaline Hartge Cortelyou (26 November 1909 – 19 July 1997) was an American chemist and scientific technical writer and editor who worked on the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory ("Met Lab") and was one of 70 scientists to sign the 1945 Szilárd petition. She also was a strong advocate for female scientists, strongly criticizing unequal treatment of women by employers and arguing that underutilization of women was holding back the United States' scientific advancement. She studied chemistry at Alfred College in New York and graduated with a bachelor's of science degree in chemistry in 1932. and served as technical editor of the Atlantic Division of Aeorojet-General Corporation in Frederick, Maryland.

In September 1948, Cortelyou helped organize a National Cooperative Undergraduate Research program to get undergraduate students more involved in chemistry research. She was appointed the program's secretary and editor of the catalog of projects. She served as editor of DCL's publication, Chemical Literature (now the Chemical Information Bulletin) in 1958 and from 1965 to spring of 1969. She also pointed out the benefits of technical editing positions for women, including that they could be a good bridge job between college graduation and starting a family and were more flexible in terms of reentry after taking time off for childcare.

By 1958, however, she came to see such funneling of women into these positions as a "waste of talent" that was detrimental to the advancement of science. In her talk on "The Status of American Woman Scientists," which she gave in the wake of the Soviet Union's Sputnik successes, Cartelyou argued that part of the Soviet Union's scientific successes, could be linked to their inclusion of female scientists. Warren Cortelyou served as chairman of Roosevelt University's Chemistry Department. They had a daughter named Marie. Ethaline died on 19 July 1997 in Colorado Springs.