The Victorian Woman Who Chased Eclipses
Annie Maunder was an astronomer who expanded our understanding of the sun at the turn of the 20th century. Her passion was photographing eclipses.
Stories by The Lost Women of Science Initiative
The Lost Women of Science Initiative is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with two overarching and interrelated missions: to tell the story of female scientists who made groundbreaking achievements in their fields--yet remain largely unknown to the general public--and to inspire girls and young women to embark on careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).
The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science
The Morris sisters made significant contributions to botany and entomology, but their stories were erased from the history of early American science, both accidentally and by design.
The Cognitive Neuroscientist Who Helped Unravel the Mysteries of Language
Ursula Bellugi was fixated on how we learn language. Her groundbreaking research on sign language demonstrated the connection between language skills and biology
The Amazing Aerial Adventures of Lilian Bland, the ‘Flying Feminist’
In 1910 an Anglo-Irish woman named Lilian Bland built a plane with little to no encouragement from her family or aviation enthusiasts. Shortly after the plane took off, she quit flying and moved on to her next challenge
The Untold Story of the Black Nurses Who Helped Develop a Cure for Tuberculosis
Black nurses worked through unsanitary conditions and racial prejudice to help patients through the debilitating disease TB before a cure was found—with their help
The Industrial Designer behind the N95 Mask
Sara Little Turnbull used materials science to invent and design products for the modern world
The Forgotten Star of Radio Astronomy
Ruby Payne-Scott and her colleagues unlocked a new way of seeing the universe, but to keep her job, Ruby had to keep a big secret.
Forgotten Electrical Engineer's Work Paved the Way for Radar Technology
Sallie Pero Mead made major discoveries about how electromagnetic waves propagate that allowed objects to be detected at a distance
This Doctor Helped Spare Women from Radical Mastectomy
Canadian radiation oncologist Vera Peters pioneered the use of lumpectomies and postoperative radiation to treat breast cancer patients.
Adventures of a Bone Hunter
Annie Montague Alexander went on paleontology expeditions most women could only dream of in the early 1900s
This Filipina Physicist Helped Develop a Top Secret Weapon
Emma Unson Rotor worked on the proximity fuze, a groundbreaking piece of World War II weapons technology that the U.S. War Department called “second only to the atomic bomb.”
The Devastating Logic of Christine Ladd-Franklin
This early feminist fought for the credit she deserved for her deductive reasoning system and her educational qualifications
This Biophysicist 'Sun Queen' Harnessed Solar Power
Hungarian-American biophysicist and inventorMária Telkes illuminated the field of solar energy. She invented a solar oven, a solar desalination kit and, in the late 1940s, designed one of the first solar-heated houses
The Woman Who Demonstrated the Greenhouse Effect
Eunice Newton Foote showed that carbon dioxide traps the heat of the sun in 1856, beating the so-called father of the greenhouse effect by at least three years. Why was she forgotten?
The U.S.’s First Black Female Physician Cared for Patients from Cradle to Grave
Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first Black woman in the U.S. to receive an M.D., earned while the Civil War raged, and the first Black person in the country to write a medical book, a popular guide with a preventive approach
How the Daughter of Sharecroppers Revolutionized Preschoolers' Health
Flemmie Pansy Kittrell, the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in nutrition in 1936, showed the importance of good health and developed a program that became the model for Head Start
This Virus Hunter Hunter Fought a Pandemic Using a Garage Full of Guinea Pigs
It's a global pandemic. The year is not 2020 but 1918, and Harriet Jane Lawrence is developing a vaccine against the deadliest influenza outbreak the world has ever seen
This Code Breaking Quaker Poet Hunted Nazis
How Elizebeth Smith Friedman went from scouring Shakespeare for secret codes to taking down a Nazi spy ring
A Chance Discovery Uncovered the Remarkable Life of One of the First Female Oceanographers
Eight pages hidden in an archive led to the discovery of the story of Christine Essenberg
Reconstruction Helped Her Become a Physician. Jim Crow Drove Her to Flee the U.S.
Sarah Loguen Fraser was the daughter of abolitionists and one of the first African American female doctors trained after the Civil War.
This Efficiency-Obsessed Psychologist (and Mother of 11) Revolutionized Kitchen Design
Lillian Gilbreth pioneered time and motion efficiency in workplaces and revolutionized kitchen design
How Antisemitism and Professional Betrayal Marred Lise Meitner’s Scientific Legacy
Letters between Lise Meitner and the chemist Otto Hahn reveal how she struggled with Hahn's failure to credit her work and condemn the Nazi atrocities
She Cracked the Mystery of How to Split the Atom, but Someone Else Got the Nobel Prize for the Discovery
Lise Meitner, an Austrian-born Jewish physicist, never received the Nobel Prize she deserved for her pioneering work on nuclear fission
They Remembered the Lost Women of the Manhattan Project So That None of Us Would Forget
Physicists Ruth Howes and Caroline Herzenberg’s 10-year research project ensured a place in history for the female scientists, engineers and technicians who worked on the atomic bomb