Lost Women of Science: Recent Episodes
Lost Women of Science
For every Marie Curie or Rosalind Franklin whose story has been told, hundreds of female scientists remain unknown to the public at large. In this series, we illuminate the lives and work of a diverse array of groundbreaking scientists who, because of time, place and gender, have gone largely unrecognized. Each season we focus on a different scientist, putting her narrative into context, explaining not just the science but also the social and historical conditions in which she lived and worked. We also bring these stories to the present, painting a full picture of how her work endures.
Katharine “Kay” Way was a nuclear physicist who worked at multiple Manhattan Project sites. She was an expert in radioactive decay. But after the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, she became increasingly concerned about the ethics of the nuclear weapons. Dr. Way signed the Szilard Petition and worked to spread awareness of the moral responsibility surrounding atomic weaponry, including co-editing the influential One World or None: a Report to the Public on the Full Meaning of the Atomic Bomb, remaining an outspoken advocate for fairness and justice.
Lilli Hornig was only 23 years old when she arrived at Los Alamos to contribute to the development of an atomic bomb that would end World War II. A talented chemist, Lilli battled sexism throughout her career and remained a steadfast advocate for female scientists like herself.
Lilli is the only female scientist named in Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer. But the character is a blur, popping up here and there to say they didn’t teach typing in her graduate chemistry program at Harvard, when asked whether she could be a typist, or to rib a colleague, telling him that her reproductive system was better protected from radiation than his. The real Hornig worked closely on plutonium research and was part of the team that developed and tested the mechanism for the plutonium weapon in the Trinity test.
Naomi Livesay, born in 1916 in the northern reaches of Montana, aspired to one career: mathematics. She earned a bachelor’s degree in math, but when she decided to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, men on the faculty balked. Mathematics, they said, was no place for a woman.
Then fate intervened, and Livesay embarked on a circuitous route to Los Alamos, where she landed in 1944 and started as a supervisor in the computation lab during the Manhattan Project. She played, as episode guest Nichole Dale Lewis describes it, “a unique role at a unique place under unique pressures.”
Livesay was a reluctant recruit, and it wasn’t until the physicist Richard Feynman stepped in to persuade her to take the job of supervising work on the IBM punch card accounting machinery, that she agreed. And then Oppenheimer himself went out of his way to make sure that Livesay had everything she needed to get the job done.
Floy Agnes Lee was a hematologist at Los Alamos. Recruited to the Manhattan Project while still a student at University of New Mexico, she collected blood samples from many Manhattan Project scientists, including Louis Slotin, following an accident that exposed him to a fatal dose of radiation. Years after the war, she returned to Los Alamos National Laboratory and conducted research on the impact of radiation on chromosomes.
Leona Woods Marshall Libby was the only woman hired onto Enrico Fermi's team at the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago. She was just 23 years old, already had a Ph.D. in molecular spectroscopy and a deep understanding of vacuum technology. She was also the only woman present at the world’s first successful nuclear chain reaction. Amid all this, she managed to conceal her pregnancy until two days before her baby was born.
During World War II, thousands of scientists and engineers worked on the Manhattan project, the top secret push to develop an atomic bomb that would end the war. Two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did just that, while also killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians. The devastating potential of nuclear weapons sparked a moral controversy that continues to this day.
Hundreds of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project were women. Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you a few of their stories.
Welcome to the first in our From Our Inbox series, in which we give listeners a taste of the mail we get from folks wanting to bring a particular forgotten scientist to our attention. Here’s the story of Alessandra Giliani, brought to us by Barbara Quick, an author and poet in the San Francisco Bay Area.
There’s a persistent myth in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy about Alessandra Giliani, a 14th-century girl who defied the laws of Church and state to attend medical school. The most concrete evidence of her existence comes in the form of illuminated manuscripts depicting an assistant to anatomist Mondino de Liuzzi who appears to be a cross-dressed woman. In this episode, associate producer Mackenzie Tatananni speaks with author Barbara Quick about Alessandra’s discoveries, which were well ahead of their time.
Cecilia Payne was in her early 20s when she figured out what the stars are made of. Both she and her groundbreaking findings were ahead of their time. Continuing the legacy of women working at the Harvard Observatory, Cecilia charted the way for a generation of female astronomers to come. This episode of Lost Women of Science: shorts follows Cecilia’s journey of discovery, journals her drive and determination against all odds, and takes you to the Harvard Observatory itself to walk in Cecilia’s footsteps.
We’re hard at work producing the next season of Lost Women of Science, but we wanted to bring you this special guest episode from Portraits, a podcast from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu was a towering figure in science whose parity experiment shattered our understanding of the physical world. She enjoyed rockstar status in China, met the pope, inspired an opera and even became a “Jeopardy!” question. But to Jada Yuan, she was grandma.
See the portraits discussed in the episode:
Dr. Wu in the lab
Tsung-Dao Lee, Nobel Laureate
Chen-Ning Yang, Nobel Laureate
Dr. Wu on the forever stamp
Also, check out Jada Yuan’s article about her grandmother here!
There's a test that we at Lost Women of Science seem to fail again and again: the Finkbeiner Test. Named for the science writer, Ann Finkbeiner, the Finkbeiner Test is a checklist for writing profiles of female scientists without being sexist. It includes rules like not mentioning her husband’s job, or her childcare arrangements, or how she was the “first woman to…”—all rules we break regularly on this show. In this episode, Katie Hafner talks to Christie Aschwanden, the science writer who created the test, and Ann Finkbeiner, who inspired it, to find out how they came up with these rules, and to see if there might be hope yet for our series. She reports her findings to Carol Sutton Lewis, who has a whole other set of rules for telling these stories.
This week, we’re bringing you an episode from another podcast hosted and produced by Katie Hafner, Our Mothers Ourselves. It’s a show that celebrates extraordinary mothers through conversations with their children. In this episode, Katie speaks with Yvonne Young Clark’s daughter, Carol Lawson.
We hope you enjoy this episode of Our Mothers Ourselves, “The ‘Relentlessly Positive’ Yvonne Young Clark: An Interview with Y.Y.'s Daughter, Carol Lawson.”
YY taught at Tennessee State University, a historically Black university, for 55 years. In this episode, we hear from YY’s colleagues, students and family members about who she was as an educator and how she’s remembered. We’ll also explore where HBCUs stand today – particularly, why they graduate so many successful Black scientists compared to other institutions, and their place in the future of science. Plus, a reimagining of YY’s accomplishments: what did it mean to be the first?
Access a transcript of the episode here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/this-black-female-engineer-broke-through-the-double-bind-of-racism-and-sexism-and-directly-nurtured-a-legion-of-stem-leaders/
What is mechanical engineering? What was YY actually doing? This episode is about the work itself – specifically, the work Yvonne Young Clark did at NASA on the Saturn V rocket, and in designing the “moon rock box” for transporting lunar samples back to Earth. And we take a deep dive into the history of the American space program, the mechanics of a rocket, and how YY brought her troubleshooter’s mind to a problem that was plaguing some of the country’s top scientists.
Access a transcript of the episode here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasas-saturn-v-rocket-the-moon-rock-box-and-the-woman-who-made-them-work-properly/
When YY started college at Howard University as a mechanical engineering student, there were three things she swore she’d never do: marry a tall man, become a teacher, and work for the government. But love and life had other plans, and YY soon discovered the difficulty of entering private industry as one of the few Black women in her field. After success at RCA-Victor and Frankford Arsenal, YY moved back to the South, where Brown v. Board of Education had recently integrated public schools, prompting a violent backlash.
Access a transcript of the episode here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/for-the-first-lady-of-engineering-freedom-meant-facing-down-racism-and-sexism-and-breaking-her-own-rules/
With a librarian mother and a physician father, YY was brought up in a supportive, educated, and prosperous Black enclave of Louisville, Kentucky. Her parents nurtured her knack for engineering. She got her start as a young child when she repaired the family toaster. An early introduction to a Black pilot group inspired her to fly planes, and she applied to the University of Louisville, where she hoped to study engineering and eventually aeronautics—until she learned her race disqualified her.
Access a transcript of the episode here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-first-lady-of-engineering-lost-women-of-science-podcast-season-3-episode-1/
Yvonne Y. Clark, known as YY throughout her career, has also been nicknamed “The First Lady of Engineering,” because of her groundbreaking achievements as a Black female mechanical engineer. Season 3 of Lost Women of Science traces her trajectory, from her unconventional childhood interest in fixing appliances to civil rights breakthroughs in the segregated South; from her trailblazing role at historically Black colleges and universities to her work at NASA. What can YY teach us about what it means to be the first in a scientific field, especially as a Black woman in America?
Carol Sutton Lewis, host of the podcast Ground Control Parenting, has long been interested in Black history. This season, she’s joining Lost Women of Science as a cohost to help tell the story of the mechanical engineer, Yvonne Young Clark. Known as Professor Clark to her students and YY to her engineering colleagues, YY’s career spanned academia and industry. She was a dedicated STEM educator and a champion of historically Black colleges and universities. Alongside cohost Katie Hafner, Carol will trace YY’s life and work through fascinating chapters of Black history, from the promises of Reconstruction to integration efforts at NASA.
We saw the story over and over again: computer programmer Klára Dán von Neumann was a pioneer in weather forecasting. But when we talked to Thomas Haigh, a historian who studies Klári’s work, he said he’s found absolutely no evidence of this. How did this weather myth start? We set out to answer that question, and in the process, we asked this: Why is it so tempting to credit the wrong person, even when that false credit is given with the best of intentions?
Note: we’d like to acknowledge the operators of the ENIAC who ran the 1950 weather simulation, Homé McAllister and Clyde Hauff.
After Johnny’s death, Klári becomes the keeper of his legacy. It’s an exhausting, full-time commitment that takes her out of the computing world for good. She marries her fourth husband, a physicist, and moves to a Southern California beach town. She resolves to settle down, and starts writing a memoir. We discuss her legacy in computing and beyond, and the current state of gender and programming.
Note: this episode includes content that could be upsetting. We’ll be talking about depression and self-harm.
After World War II, tensions build between the Soviet Union and the U.S. Scientists at Los Alamos continue developing nuclear weapons, helped by the recently-reconfigured ENIAC. Using a statistical method called Monte Carlo, they optimize nuclear weapons through computer simulations. In these simulations, physics is neither purely experimental nor theoretical–it’s both, creating what historian Peter Galison calls a “netherland…at once nowhere and everywhere.” And Klári finds herself immersed in this sort of netherworld, turning nuclear physics into code.
When John von Neumann runs into fellow mathematician Herman Goldstine at a train station, Goldstine clues him into a new powerful computer called the ENIAC that is being constructed to help with the war effort, and Johnny immediately grasps the machine’s enormous potential. Though the computer is not completed in time to be useful in the second world war, it finds new purpose in the war’s aftermath. Soon, Klári von Neumann is enlisted to instruct the machine what to do, and in doing so, becomes one of the first coders. This episode takes a deep dive into the workings of the ENIAC and the origins of computing in the 1940s.
With John von Neumann absorbed in work, Klári struggles to find a niche in her new suburban home while dealing with devastating losses. A new chapter opens for Klári when the U.S. finally enters the war and women are called into the workforce.
To understand how Klára Dán von Neumann arrived at computer programming, we need to first understand where she came from. Born in Budapest to a wealthy Jewish family, Klári grew up surrounded by artists, playwrights, and intellectuals. Her first marriage, to an inveterate gambler, took her on a tour of Europe’s casinos, and in one of them, she had a chance encounter with the famous mathematician, John von Neumann.
The first modern-style code executed on a computer was written in the 1940s by a woman named Klára Dán von Neumann–or Klári to her family and friends. And the historic program she wrote was used to optimize nuclear weapons. This season, we dive into this fascinating moment in postwar America through Klári’s work. We explore the evolution of early computers, the vital role women played in early programming, and the inescapable connection between computing and war.
In 1949, at the height of his career, Rustin McIntosh, the director of pediatrics at Columbia University’s Babies Hospital, submitted his letter of resignation. Dr. Scott Baird, who wrote a biography on Dorothy Andersen, takes us back to this pivotal moment, which occurred at the dawn of pediatric pathology in the United States. Through archival resources, Scott explores the institutional tensions that led to this abrupt resignation. At the eye of the storm is a character we’ve come to know well, perhaps the most important person working in pediatric pathology at the time: Dr. Dorothy Andersen.
In our final episode, we explore Dorothy Andersen’s legacy—what she left behind and how her work has lived on since her death. Describing her mentor’s influence on her life and career, Dr. Celia Ores gives us a rare look into what Dr. Andersen was really like. We then turn to researchers, doctors, and patients, who fill us in on the progress that has grown from Dr. Andersen’s initial work. These major developments include the discovery of the cystic fibrosis gene, the tremendous impact of the drug Trikafta, and the lifesaving potential of gene editing techniques.
A missing portrait of Dr. Andersen takes us on a journey into the perils of memorialization—and who gets to be remembered. Dr. Scott Baird hunts for the portrait, and Drs. Nientara Anderson and Lizzy Fitzsousa, former medical students at Yale, explain how, in today’s diverse communities, “dude walls” can have an insidious effect on those who walk past them every day.
A passionate outdoorswoman, a “rugged individualist,” and a bit of an enigma—the few traces Dr. Andersen left behind give us glimpses into who she was. In this episode, we track down people determined to stitch together her life. Our associate producer, Sophie McNulty, rummages through the basement of Dr. Andersen’s colleague for clues about the elusive pathologist. Meanwhile, in Manhattan, pediatric intensivist Scott Baird suggests we take a second look at the conventional wisdom surrounding the evolution of cystic fibrosis research in the 1950s.
When Dr. Dorothy Andersen confronted a slew of confounding infant deaths, she suspected the accepted diagnosis wasn’t right. Her medical sleuthing led to the world’s understanding of cystic fibrosis, a disease that affects the lungs, the pancreas, and a host of other organs. But hers is by no means a household name. Who was this scientist, and how did she come to quietly make such an important medical contribution?
When Dr. Dorothy Andersen confronted a slew of confounding infant deaths, she knew the accepted diagnosis couldn’t be right. Her medical detective work led to our current understanding of Cystic Fibrosis, a disease that circuitously impacts the pancreas and lungs. But she is by no means a household name, and the details of her life get scarcer every day. Who was this scientist, and how did she come to quietly make such an important medical contribution?
For every Marie Curie or Rosalind Franklin whose story has been told, hundreds of female scientists remain unknown to the public at large. We illuminate the lives and work of a diverse array of groundbreaking scientists who, because of time, place and gender, have gone largely unrecognized. Each season focuses on one scientist, putting her narrative into context, explaining not just the science but also the social and historical conditions in which she lived and worked. We also bring these stories to the present, painting a full picture of how her work endures.