Today’s Silenced Woman of STEM not only spent hours creating beautiful and scientifically accurate illustrations of the microscopic world, but she was also a self-taught naturalist, an acclaimed author, and an astronomer in a time when women were mostly banned from professional science. This is the story of Mary Ward. She published a significant amount of work, all while raising eight children. She also holds the unfortunate, morbid distinction of being the first person in the world known to have been killed in a motor vehicle accident.Sourceshttps://www.herstory.ie/news/2020/2/11/mary-ward https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/mary-ward/ https://www.whipplelib.hps.cam.ac.uk/special/exhibitions-and-displays/microscopy-in-print/microscopy-books-ward https://exhibits.library.duke.edu/exhibits/show/2024sciencewomen/women/mward https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/mary-ward-2/ https://cobbdefense.com/first-car-accident-history/ https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/100347-first-road-traffic-death https://offalyhistoryblog.com/2019/08/30/mary-ward-artist-naturalist-and-astronomer-a-woman-for-our-time/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15949449/
We will be taking a week break from SWOS to celebrate Durga Puja! Learn a bit about Hinduism and Bengali culture in this very special episode about Durga Puja!
Rita Levi - Montalcini created an entire laboratory in her bedroom when she was banned from her lab, she discovered a protein that changed how neuroscience is done, and won a noble prize all after surviving World War II. This is her story.Sources:https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10014200/https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11490299/https://www.nobelprize.org/stories/women-who-changed-science/rita-levi-montalcini/https://civilrights.ku.edu/rita-levi-montalcini-md
Imagine moving to a different country by yourself at 18, getting a PhD by 26, and then decrypting the genome of one of the scariest viruses in the US at the time.Flossie Wong-Staal was a pioneering molecular biologist and virologist whose work reshaped our understanding of HIV and AIDS. Born in China and later making her mark in the United States, Wong-Staal became the first scientist to clone HIV and map its genes, a breakthrough that opened the door to blood tests and lifesaving treatments. Beyond her discoveries, she was also a role model for women and immigrants in science, proving that persistence and vision can break barriers. Today, we will be exploring her journey, her groundbreaking contributions, and the lasting impact she left on medicine and society.References:https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/flossie-wong-staalhttps://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abe4095https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/human-t-lymphotropic-virus-type-1https://ccr.cancer.gov/news/article/in-memoriam-flossie-wong-staal-phdhttps://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/flossie-wongstaal/https://hivinfo.nih.gov/understanding-hiv/fact-sheets/hiv-and-aids-basics#:~:text=The%20abbreviation%20%E2%80%9CHIV%E2%80%9D%20can%20refer,lymphocytes)%20of%20the%20immune%20system.https://www.cdc.gov/museum/online/story-of-cdc/aids/index.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flossie_Wong-Staal#cite_note-nyt20200717-22
Do you know who discovered climate change?Most people would say John Tyndall, but that wouldn’t exactly be true. The actual first discoverer was a woman. But what's crazy is that she was almost completely erased from history. This is the story of Eunice Foote.Sourceshttps://www.climate.gov/news-features/features/happy-200th-birthday-eunice-foote-hidden-climate-science-pioneer https://www.aps.org/apsnews/2023/07/carbon-dioxide-atmosphere-eunice-foote https://www.momscleanairforce.org/eunice-newton-foote/ https://www.schools.nyc.gov/learning/subjects/social-studies/hidden-voices/contentdetails/hidden-voices/2025/04/22/eunice-foote-the-nearly-forgotten-mother-of-climate-science https://vitalsigns.edf.org/story/female-climate-scientist-youve-never-heard-should-have https://climatepromise.undp.org/news-and-stories/worlds-largest-survey-climate-change-out-heres-what-results-show https://www.natureandculture.org/climate-change-and-extreme-weather/?utm_term=what%20is%20climate%20change&utm_campaign=BTD+%7C+Power+Page+%7C+Climate+Change&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=2265980610&hsa_cam=21703171123&hsa_grp=169004252044&hsa_ad=713379801246&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=kwd-289419804&hsa_kw=what%20is%20climate%20change&hsa_mt=b&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21703171123&gbraid=0AAAAADlRPw2FJs_GVRg0fDN_2ey0VEbnI&gclid=CjwKCAjw2brFBhBOEiwAVJX5GHE_IjvRla7pI2msasTfYOf7K9JexC4TLRiGSr5w3QPxe4o-F39b7BoC7UwQAvD_BwE https://climatekids.nasa.gov/greenhouse-cards/ https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsnr.2018.0066 https://www.independent.com/2018/05/10/john-perlin-rediscovers-feminist-crusader-who-discovered-climate-change/
Hypatia, an ancient Roman philosopher, was literally the smartest woman of her time, and people knew it. She was, in fact, so smart that she literally became a threat to Christianity… This is the story of Hypatia, the first female mathematician
What do the most ravishingly beautiful actresses of the 1930s and 40s and the inventor whose concepts were the basis of cell phone and Bluetooth technology have in common? They are both Hedy Lamarr, the glamour icon whose ravishing visage was the inspiration for Snow White and Cat Woman and a technological trailblazer who perfected a secure radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes during WWII.This is the story of Hollywood film star and inventor, Hedy Lamarr.Sourceshttps://www.thalesgroup.com/en/worldwide/digital-identity-and-security/magazine/women-technology-hedy-lamarr-mother-wi-fi https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/hedy-lamarrs-wwii-invention-helped-shape-modern-tech https://www.britannica.com/place/Hollywood-California https://www.hedylamarr.com/about/biography/ https://www.hedylamarr.com/https://www.hedylamarr.com/hedy-lamarrs-forgotten-frustrated-career-as-a-wartime-inventor/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/hedy-lamarr-frequency-hopping-wifi-bluetooth
You’ve seen quinceañera dresses, right? Imagine having to perform surgery in that. Dr. Mary Edwards Walker thought the same thing. Mary was one of the most progressive women of her time, who became a surgeon and refused to wear dresses. This story is kinda insane, so buckle up.References:https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mary-edwards-walkerhttps://www.nps.gov/people/mary-walker.htmhttps://libraryguides.oswego.edu/c.php?g=191606&p=1264945https://womenshistory.si.edu/blog/dr-mary-edwards-walker-recognized-new-us-quarterhttps://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/mary-e-walker
Sourceshttps://www.amphilsoc.org/blog/cecilia-payne-gaposchkin-1900-1979 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-century-ago-pioneering-astrophysicist-cecilia-payne-gaposchkin-showed-us-what-stars-are-made-of-180986193/ https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cecilia-Payne-Gaposchkin https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosmic-horizons-book/cecilia-payne-profile
Have you ever thought, hmm my sugar needs to be sweeter? Well, India did. They enlisted the help of Janaki Ammal, an Indian Botanist sweetened sugar, saved a forest, and traveled the world in search of knowledge. This is her story.References:https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-63445015https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pioneering-female-botanist-who-sweetened-nation-and-saved-valley-180972765/https://www.mpg.de/19967547/janaki-ammalhttps://record.umich.edu/articles/it-happened-at-michigan-an-historic-doctorate-in-botany/
Imagine waking up every morning with joints so swollen and painful that even buttoning a shirt feels impossible, yet you still choose to spend your day hunched over delicate instruments, determined to uncover mysteries in chemistry. This was the world of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, a woman who refused to be defined by pain or limited by the expectations of her time.References:https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1964/hodgkin/biographical/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dorothy-Hodgkin https://royalsociety.org/about-us/who-we-are/diversity-inclusion/case-studies/scientists-with-disabilities/dorothy-hodgkin/ https://www.biophysics.org/profiles/dorothy-hodgkin
What do royal wedding gowns, octopuses that look like aliens, and the invention of the aquarium have in common? One woman: Jeanne Villepreux-Power. Today, we’re diving into the story of a self-taught scientist who defied the odds, turned her home into a marine lab, and changed the way we study life in the ocean.References:https://oumnh.ox.ac.uk/learn-jeannette-villepreux-powerhttps://www.themarginalian.org/2022/12/26/jeanne-villepreux-power-argonaut/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jeanne-Villepreux-Powerhttps://scientificwomen.net/women/villepreux-jeanne-144https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9635632/https://www.petmd.com/horse/conditions/skin/proud-flesh-horses
It's 1963. You're 26 years old. You’ve left school at 16 to work in a textile factory. On weekends, you sneak off to jump out of airplanes, perhaps as an escape from day to day life. Suddenly, out of 400 candidates, you are chosen to become the first woman in space. You’re launched into orbit alone, riding in a spacecraft with settings so wrong, if you hadn’t caught the mistake, you would have drifted endlessly into the void. You fix it. You stay calm. You orbit the Earth 48 times. And when you land, you're told to smile for the cameras - because you're not just a cosmonaut anymore. You're a symbol. A political tool.Sourceshttps://www.britannica.com/biography/Valentina-Tereshkova https://www.esa.int/About_Us/50_years_of_ESA/50_years_of_humans_in_space/First_woman_in_space_Valentina https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/mar/29/valentina-tereshkova-first-woman-in-space-people-waste-money-on-wars https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/june-16/first-woman-in-space https://nmspacemuseum.org/inductee/valentina-v-tereshkova/ https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/space-race http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2367681.stm https://www.space.com/v2-rocket https://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1165/2216
Have you heard about how Henry the VIII of England and his six wives? There’s like a whole musical about it now called SIX. Well Henry being the king that he was kept getting rid of his wives for various reasons, a large one being that his wives were not giving him male children. Well, the joke’s on Henry because we now know that sperm which is produced by men holds the key for sex determination aka it was lowkey Henry’s fault for not having sons. And you know who found out that men are the ones who control sex determination…Nettie Stevens.References:https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/nettie-maria-stevens-1861-1912https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nettie-Stevenshttps://www.yalescientific.org/2023/05/hidden-histories-nettie-stevens/https://carnegiescience.edu/news/nettie-stevens-biographyhttps://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2021.0215https://genestogenomes.org/nettie-stevens-sex-chromosomes-and-sexism/https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/temperature-dependent-sex-determination-reptileshttps://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-three-patterns-of-temperature-dependent-sex-determination-a-type-Ia-as-seen-in_fig1_350113406https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0303720718301230https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/womens-studies-and-feminism/matilda-effect
6 years. What can you do in just 6 years? Could you change the world in 6 years? Probably not. But you know who did. Alice Ball. From graduating high school to her death, Alice Ball invented a technique in just 6 years that would change the world.References:https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.4c00611https://www.britannica.com/topic/kava#ref90385https://lhncbc.nlm.nih.gov/LHC-publications/PDF/pub2003048.pdfhttps://www.uhfoundation.org/impact/students/woman-who-changed-worldhttps://www.unmc.edu/healthsecurity/transmission/2023/04/11/overlooked-no-more-alice-ball-chemist-who-created-a-treatment-for-leprosy/https://www.unsw.edu.au/science/about-us/equity-diversity-inclusion/science-history-trail/alice-ball
Imagine your best friend gets murdered. You call the cops, expecting a team equipped with gloves, evidence bags, testing kits, all of that. Instead, they trample through the house, accidentally ruining all the evidence that could have led them directly to your friend's killer. While this would cause outrage in today’s society, this was normal in the 1800s. Investigators were not investigating back then (they didn't even have proper training). There was this one grandma who had enough. She decided that she would contribute the rest of her life to teaching the cops how to cop. She was a real life CSI investigation episode. She used her womanly grandma craft skills to build incredibly accurate models of real life crime scenes to teach the police how to investigate. BTW grandma also became the first female police captain in the United States. This is the story of Frances Glessner Lee, aka the Mother of Forensic Science.Sources:https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/visibleproofs/galleries/biographies/lee.html#:~:text=Frances%20Glessner%20Lee%20(1878%E2%80%931962)%2C%20a%20New%20England,medicine%20and%20scientific%20crime%20detection.https://www.deathindiorama.com/francesglessnerlee.html https://deadmaidens.com/2015/05/04/murder-she-crafted/ https://www.britannica.com/topic/police/The-history-of-policing-in-the-Westhttps://www.universalclass.com/articles/law/history-of-forensic-investigation.htmhttps://unfspinnaker.com/90467/features/womens-history-month-spotlight-frances-glessner-lee/ https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/nutshells https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/frances-glessner-lee/
Did you know that most dentists back in the day did NOT have a dental license? It makes sense now why a lot of people were scared of going to the dentist. Because back then, you didn't know if your dentist was a guy who knew what he was doing or just some rando who liked teeth. Now imagine TRYING to get your dental license, so that you are credible, but you are basically barred from getting one because you're a girl, even though you are grossly overeducated. You wouldn’t stand for that, so you basically change the laws to allow women into Dental Colleges. This is the story of Lucy Hobbs Taylor.References:https://www.kansashistory.gov/kansapedia/lucy-hobbs-taylor/15500https://www.speareducation.com/spear-review/2014/03/honoring-women-in-dentistry-lucy-hobbs-taylorhttps://www.britannica.com/biography/Lucy-Hobbs-Taylorhttps://web.archive.org/web/20120402130624/http://www.cda.org/library/cda_member/pubs/journal/jour0602/hyson.htmlhttps://www.oda.org/news/lucy-hobbs-opened-the-door-to-dental-school-for-women-150-years-ago/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002065392030215X#:~:text=Starting%20with%20Lucy%20Beaman%20Hobbs,American%20Association%20of%20Women%20Dentists.https://ifeminist.org/taylor.html https://louisville.edu/dentistry/news/exploring-growth-of-women-in-dentistry https://www.researchgate.net/publication/10940112_Advancement_of_Women_in_Dental_Education_Trends_and_Strategies
Imagine that you have 9 other siblings (maybe 8), but they all die except your one older brother. Your family is also incredibly poor, but you enjoy hunting fossils with your father. Even though you have NO education, he helps you learn geology and anatomy. But then he also dies. Now you are even poorer. And even though it is frowned upon for a girl, your mother makes you continue laboring for fossils in hopes of earning a few extra pennies.Referenceshttps://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/mary-anning-unsung-hero.htmlhttps://oumnh.ox.ac.uk/learn-mary-annings-ichthyosaurhttps://www.britannica.com/animal/ichthyosaurhttps://www.britannica.com/animal/plesiosaurhttps://www.britannica.com/animal/pterosaurhttps://www.northwestern.edu/onebook/the-reluctant-mr-darwin/essays/darwin-religion.htmlhttps://www.geolsoc.org.uk/the-library/online-exhibitions/mary-anning-and-the-geological-society/https://www.natgeokids.com/nz/discover/history/general-history/mary-anning-facts/