Tag

Women in STEM

 Dr. Valerie Thomas in 1979 standing with a stack of early Landsat Computer Compatible Tapes (CCTs). Thomas was responsible for the development of early Landsat digital media formatting.

 NASA on Wikimedia Commons (public domain) 

Meet Valerie Thomas, the inventor and scientist who launched the longest-running satellite program imaging Earth’s surface

During Thomas's three-decade career at NASA, she connected scientists with the data they need to understand our planet

Meet Nancy Grace Roman, the "mother" of the Hubble Space Telescope

She discovered fundamental truths about stars and galaxies, and also shaped NASA into what we know it as today

Meet Evelyn Boyd Granville, the mathematician who mass produced computers and shot Apollo into space

One of the first Black women to earn a PhD in math, she worked on seemingly every major math project of the 20th century

Meet Gerty Cori, the Nobel-winning biochemist who uncovered how the body stores and consumes sugars

Cori's work determined glycogen storage "disease" had several subtypes, each with a unique molecular cause

Meet Kathleen Lonsdale, the physicist and prison reformer who cracked benzene's code

Lonsdale assembled her own X-ray crystallography laboratory from scratch to solve a century-old mystery

Meet Sophie Germain, the amateur mathematician who worked on number theory's toughest problem

Germain, or "Monsieur LeBlanc" to her professors, took a bold and creative approach to life and math

Women scientists are bearing the brunt of COVID-19's impacts

International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2021 marks countless setbacks for the science world

Meet Virginia Apgar, the unlikely anesthesiologist who saved newborn babies

Apgar's simple, standardized score helped decrease the startlingly high infant mortality rate

Produced in partnership with The Biota Project

A power list of the LatinX scientists who are changing the world

In celebration of LatinX Heritage Month, these are LatinX scientists shaping policy and research worldwide

Produced in partnership with Science Friday

A slime mold changes its mind: an interview with slime mold scientist Audrey Dussutour

How do slime molds and ants make decisions without a central brain?

Produced in partnership with Science Friday

Neuroscientist seeks love molecule: a conversation with Bianca Jones Marlin

The Columbia scientist on the neuroscience of motherhood and how social justice and science intersect

Produced in partnership with Science Friday

How to become a galaxy hunter: an interview with Burçin Mutlu-Pakdil

The University of Chicago astronomer talks about getting a galaxy named after herself and fighting for telescope time

Produced in partnership with Science Friday

How did birds become birds? An interview with Jingmai O'Connor

The paleontologist and soon-to-be curator at the Field Museum on excavations, being a party animal, and imposter syndrome

Produced in partnership with Science Friday

Volcano diplomacy and the future of eruption predictions: the life of a volcanologist

NASA petrologist Kayla Iacovino on her life studying volcanoes and being a Star Trek fanatic

Meet Merit-Ptah, the ancient Egyptian doctor who didn't exist

Though created by accident, her story fit neatly with burgeoning 20th century feminism

Meet Lynnae Quick, NASA's hunter of space cryomagma

Only the fifth African American woman with a planetary sciences PhD, she's on the team hoping to first see Europa's geysers

It's lonely being a Black scientist

I have been weighed down by tragedy, passed over, and exploited

Meet Lady Mary Montagu, who brought smallpox inoculation to England

This poet and essayist likely saved many lives from this deadly, disfiguring disease

Meet Hertha Ayrton, the mathematician who cleared WW1 trenches of poisonous gas

Ayrton was the first woman to recieve the Hughes Medal for outstanding research in the field of energy, but still the Royal Society refused her membership