If Only 19th-Century America Had Listened to a Woman Scientist
Where might the US be if it heeded her discovery of global warming’s source?
By Sidney Perkowitz (from the archives)
womeninstem
Meet Williamina Fleming, a 19th-century Scottish maid who became an astronomer
Fleming made major scientific discoveries and belonged to the Harvard Computers, a team of women who processed astronomical data at the university.
By Joe Esposito
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/scottish-maid-astronomer-williamina-fleming/
Now more than ever is a great time to be reminded of the powerful work of Margaret Morgan Lawrence (1914-2019) & honor her extraordinary legacy.
Decades before "social determinants of health" was coined, she spoke of "nature, nurture and noxia"
🧵
How Alice Hamilton Waged a One-Woman Campaign to Get the Lead Out of Everything
At first a crusader for workplace safety, the trained physician railed against the use of the toxic and ubiquitous material
By Daniel Stone
More information about Alice Hamilton:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Hamilton
Edited 145d ago
Edits to Vera Rubin’s Biography Downplay the Need for Women in Science Amid Federal DEI Crackdown
To comply with Trump's executive order about DEI, a federally funded telescope project has altered the biography of its namesake astronomer.
By Passant Rabie
The Talented and Valiant Female Surgeon Who Joined Allied Forces in WWII and Broke Barriers Along the Way
Prohibited from serving with the U.S. Army as a medical officer, Barbara Stimson was commissioned by the British—and helped open the American military to female doctors.
By Catherine Musemeche
More information about Barbara Stimson:
https://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/distinguished-alumni/barbara-stimson/
"I’m only sorry I couldn’t have had as good a chance as a boy, and have been put to my trade regularly."
American inventor Margaret E. Knight was born #OTD in 1838.
She founded the Eastern Paper Bag Company in 1870, creating paper bags for groceries similar in form to the ones that would be used in later generations. Knight received dozens of patents in different fields and became a symbol for women's empowerment.
5 Women in Logic You Should Know
Let’s take a deep dive into some of the most notable women who have contributed to the field of logic.
By Vanja Subotic
New Quarter Honors Vera Rubin, Astronomer Who Revealed the Universe’s Hidden Mass
Astronomer Vera Rubin, now honored on a U.S. quarter, transformed our understanding of the universe by uncovering powerful evidence of dark matter.
By Gabrielle Stewart
A Lab of Her Own
In her bedroom during WWII, she discovered how the nervous system is wired. On a cold, dry Tuesday in December, 1940, Rita Levi-Montalcini rode a train from the station near her home in Turin, Italy, for 80 miles to Milan to buy a microscope.
BY BOB GOLDSTEIN
The Woman the Mercury Astronauts Couldn’t Do Without
Katherine Johnson negotiated the dynamics of both race and space.
By Margot Lee Shetterly, Illustrations by Richie Pope (from the archives)
Edited 112d ago
The Forgotten Victorian Craze for Collecting Seaweed
Victorian women were excellent at it.
by Cara Giaimo (from the archives)
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-forgotten-victorian-craze-for-collecting-seaweed
Books by or about Margaret Gatty at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Margaret+Gatty&submit_search=Search
The Exquisite Illustrations of a Pioneering Woman Herbalist
A Curious Herbal, the first modern edition of Elizabeth Blackwell’s 18th-century botanical guide, grants her the recognition that she has long deserved.
By Lauren Moya Ford (from the archives)
Books by Elizabeth Blackwell at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/53378
Rachel Carson Raised the Alarm About Pesticides in Silent Spring, Changing Environmental History
The influential biologist's work helped launch the modern environmental movement.
By Lloyd Black
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/rachel-carson-pesticides-silent-spring-history
#OnThisDay, 8 Apr 1959, Mary K Hawes initiates a project to create the first universal programming language for computers used by businesses and government. Grace Hopper led the team that then created COBOL. Some mainframes are still using it.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WomenInSTEM #Histodons
The hunt for Marie Curie's radioactive fingerprints in Paris
Marie Curie worked with radioactive material with her bare hands. More than 100 years after her groundbreaking work, Sophie Hardach travels to Paris to trace the lingering radioactive fingerprints she left behind.
Marie Curie at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/39174
This is Sechi Katō (1893-1989) in 1918. It's her graduation photo from a women's college in Tokyo.
Eventually she would become the first woman principal investigator at RIKEN, Japan's national chemistry & physics institute. She faced incredibly daunting hurdles before then...
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Edited 85d ago
Happy birthday to #astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (1900-1979), a trailblazer for women in #astronomy who discovered that hydrogen & helium are the most common elements in the universe.
Born England, she won a scholarship to Newnham College at Cambridge in 1919 where she heard a lecture which changed her life. She wrote, “My world had been so shaken that I experienced something very like a nervous breakdown.”🧵
#linocut #physics #sciart #printmaking #womenInSTEM #mastoArt #astronomy
#OnThisDay, 20 Apr 1902, Maria Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie refine radium chlorine. The discovery leads to Marie being the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903.
The Academy originally planned to award only Pierre and Henri Becquerel. Pierre insisted that Marie should also be included.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomenInSTEM #NobelWomen #Histodons
Edited 79d ago
#OnThisDay, 9 May 1922, the International Astronomical Union formally adopts Annie Jump Cannon's stellar classification system. The principles in it still underpin modern classification.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #Astronomy #WomenInSTEM #AmericanHistory #Histodons
Edited 60d ago
"I used to say the evening that I developed the first x-ray photograph I took of insulin in 1935 was the most exciting moment of my life. But the Saturday afternoon in late July 1969, when we realized that the insulin electron density map was interpretable, runs that moment very close."
'X Rays and the Structure of Insulin', British Medical Journal, 1971
Happy Birthday Dorothy Hodgkin!
More information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Hodgkin
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1964/hodgkin/biographical/
Happy birthday to #mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani (1977-2017)! The Fields Medal, one of the most prestigious #math awards, is awarded to mathematicians < 40. In 2014, she became 1st woman to win. Her research included Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, ergodic theory, & symplectic geometry, and Fields committee cited her work in “the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces”.
🧵1/n
#sciart #mathart #linocut #printmaking #womeninSTEM #histsci #mastoArt
#OnThisDay, 5 Jun 1833, Ada Lovelace meets Charles Babbage, triggering their collaboration on the Analytical Engine and writing the first published program.
Image by Sydney Padua
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WomenInSTEM #Histodons
Happy birthday to #physicist Harriet Brooks (1876 - 1933) who discovered atomic recoil, Radon & recognized radioactive elements could undergo chains of transmutations into a series of new elements. #nuclear #physics
She was Rutherford’s 1st grad student at McGill. After publishing her results in 1899 she completed her MSc in 1901 on “Damping of Electrical Oscillations,” before embarking on #radioactivity research. 🧵
#linocut #printmaking #sciart #womenInSTEM #histsci
