In the 1940s, Nell I. Mondy was usually the only woman in chemistry wherever she went. How the young woman from the deep South broke into the male-dominated academic world, improving food and nutrition from India and Nigeria to Peru and Poland and becoming an international expert on the common potato, is the focus of her new autobiography.

You Never Fail Until You Stop Trying: The Story of a Pioneer Woman Chemist (Dorrance Publishing, 2001) starts in the small town of Pocohontas, Ark., where Mondy grew up as the only child of a young widow. Getting her first degree at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark., in 1943 during World War II, Mondy describes how she made her way to becoming a professor emerita of nutrition, food science and toxicology at Cornell University, and traveled the world.

"My purpose in writing this book was to encourage today's young women to pursue science as a career option," says Mondy, now 80. "Although it may have been more difficult for women to succeed in chemistry 50 years ago, the process still remains challenging. I hope these pages will inspire others who encounter difficult challenges and obstacles in their lives to keep trying."

Mondy's expertise in biochemistry not only reaped a fruitful teaching career that spanned more than four decades and a research career of more than 50 years, both at Cornell, but also took the Cornell professor to 47 countries where she presented papers, worked as a consultant or conducted research. She describes food processing behind the Iron Curtain in Warsaw in 1966; her work at the R.T. French Co. developing new products and improving the flavor of Sloppy Joes and Hamburger Helper; visiting lepers and malnourished children and living through a military coup in Nigeria; getting lost alone and on foot close to nightfall in Yogyakarta, Indonesia; and why she photographed foreign food she didn't want to eat.

Mondy's research at Cornell has ranged from determining the availability of iron in frozen vegetables' the effect of sulfur dioxide on living cells and naturally occurring toxicants in food to the biochemical and nutritional aspects of fresh and processed potatoes. But she also describes the special projects she undertook at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Nigeria and the Environmental Protection Agency. Mondy has received many awards, including the first E.F. Steir Award from the Institute of Food Technologists, the outstanding alumni award from Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the Centennial Achievement Award from Ouachita Baptist University. She is in the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, N.Y., and is listed in more than two dozen reference books, such as Who's Who in America, Foremost Women in the Twentieth Century and, most recently, the 2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century . She is the namesake of the Nell I. Mondy Organic Chemistry Laboratory at Ouachita Baptist University, which also sponsors the Nell Mondy Lecture Series that brings experts in chemistry, food science and nutrition to that campus. Mondy also is the author or co-author of more than 100 scientific publications.

Mondy received her B.S. at Ouachita Baptist University (1943); M.A. at Texas University (1945) and Ph.D. at Cornell (1953).

You Never Fail Until You Stop Trying: The Story of a Pioneer Woman Chemis t includes numerous photos, anecdotes, excerpts from correspondence and a summary of Mondy's research.