The word 'feminism' appeared for the first time in 1895 in the weekly journal Athenaeum.

Some might say it was ironic, given that the august London club for British intellectuals that bears the same name, refused membership to women throughout its 179-year history -- until this month.

The first to be accepted was Baroness Susan Greenfield, presenter of the BBC TV series Brain Story, and Professor of Pharmacology at Oxford University.

The Athenaeum, situated in Pall Mall, is used by senior academics when they are on business in London.

Sir Charles Darwin, a former member, wrote of it: "I am full of admiration for the Athenaeum. One meets so many people there that one likes to see."

Baroness Greenfield will see few other women in the Athenaeum's corridors, but she is looking forward to rubbing shoulders with Britain's intellectual elite.

"The Athenaeum is a very pleasant place to be," she said. "It has a very traditional environment, very calm and pleasant to work in and to meet people. It's like a very agreeable social club and I know quite a few people who are members so I'm looking forward to going there. It's for people who like thinking and talking -- Athena was the goddess of wisdom."

When it first appeared, feminism was used to describe a woman who "has in her the capacity of fighting her way back to independence".

This definition could have been used for Baroness Greenfield herself, whose career has been littered with successful assaults on bastions of male dominance.

Born in west London, Baroness Greenfield, 51, who lives near Oxford, did not study science at schooll. She came up to Oxford to read philosophy, but switched to psychology before taking a PhD in pharmacology.

She went on to become the first female director of the Royal Institution, the Observer Woman of the Year in 2000, one of Tony Blair's 'people's peers' and is among Britain's foremost scientists.

Yet her rise to national prominence has come in the face of hostility from the male establishment, who initially found it hard to take a scientist seriously who enjoys wearing lipstick, eye shadow and short skirts.

"All my life I've fought against bigotry and preconceived notions", she said. "There was an idea about what women in science were supposed to wear and look like and that is something that it is nice to dispel.

"It's not so much about changing things for the sake of it, it's about being an individual."

Baroness Greenfield believes more needs to be done to show girls the relevance of the sciences.

She once said that being a mother was incompatible with making it to the top in science -- she and husband, Prof Peter Atkins, a chemistry professor, are childless -- and she believes women are instinctively averse to the abstract nature of the subject.

"My own theory is that girls are more aware or alert to things like why people fall in love or go to war. They are more interested in relationships and motivations and having best friends," she said.

"Science does not satisfy that curiosity. Girls are more interested in real life, like boyfriends, rather than abstractions, like why the sky is blue."

Baroness Greenfield sees her admission to the Athenaeum as one more milestone in the road towards full equality between the sexes. She said: "It just makes me feel that times are changing and I'm very proud and happy to be in the vanguard of that change.

"I don't see myself as a role model, other people might, but nobody is perfect.

"If I can show young women and girls that they shouldn't take anything for granted and things can change, then that's good, but I wouldn't want anyone to copy me because everyone is an individual."

Few people are as individual as Susan Greenfield. The scientist who once claimed to run her laboratory in a less confrontational way than men wants to bring a more female perspective to the technical and ethical problems facing scientists today.

Her own achievements in researching the brain, particularly Alzheimer's Disease and Parkinson's Disease, made the case for her admission to the Athenaeum club unanswerable.

"I have very little sympathy for clubs or societies that exclude people on the basis of gender", she said. "Prejudice is all in the mind."