Infinite Women

Read interview transcript This week we're joined by the fabulous Jess Harper, an Australian operatic soprano who dropped by for a chat about the even more fabulous Australian operatic soprano, the great Dame Nellie Melba. In addition to being an alumna of the Melba Opera Trust's scholarship program, Jess performed as Nellie in the biographical stage production Melba: A New Musical, with Hayes Theatre Company in Sydney in 2017. Read Nellie's bio on our website: https://www.infinite-women.com/women/nellie-melba/ For more on Jess, head to her website: https://jessicaharpersoprano.com/ Learn more about the Melba Opera Trust and their work: https://www.melbaoperatrust.com.au/

Mileva Marić was a brilliant physicist and mathematician, but we’ll never know what all she could have accomplished because a classmate knocked her up out of wedlock and she had to give up her career to care for their children. That classmate, named Albert Einstein, later divorced her after he decided he’d rather marry his cousin, though he did pay child support, including the money when he won the Nobel for work they likely collaborated on together. Mileva was the only woman in their class at Zürich Polytechnic and only the second woman to complete her studies in the Department of Mathematics and Physics. She had hoped to pursue a PhD, but her pregnancy and subsequent marriage derailed that plan. Although her husband never publicly acknowledged her contributions, contemporaneous sources, including witnesses and letters between the two, indicate that much of his work was the result of collaborations with her. He wrote to Mileva: “How happy and proud I will be when the two of us together will have brought our work on relative motion to a victorious conclusion.” He reputedly declared at a social gathering, “I need my wife. She solves for me all my mathematical problems”. American chemist Alice Augusta Ball developed the most effective treatment for leprosy of the early 20th century. She was the first woman and first African American to earn a master's degree from the University of Hawaii, and to be a chemistry professor at the university. After studying the kava plant for her master’s thesis, Ball developed a technique to make the plant’s oil injectable and able to be absorbed by the body. While it couldn’t cure or fully stop the progress of leprosy indefinitely, hers was the only effective treatment for leprosy available until sulfonamide drugs were developed in the 1940s. Unfortunately, she became ill and died at age 24 before she could publish her findings. Her graduate study advisor, who was also dean of the college and later university president, stole her research and, after additional trials, published her work without acknowledging her at all, even naming it after himself. She was largely forgotten until the 1970s, when University of Hawaii professors found records of her research and fought for recognition for her. Since then, she has posthumously received a variety of awards and acknowledgements, including a proclamation that Feb 28 is now "Alice Augusta Ball Day" in Hawaii. English chemist and crystallographer Rosalind Franklin is best known for her work on X-ray diffraction images of DNA while at King's College London. By refining existing techniques and tools, she was able to get clearer images than her colleague Maurice Wilkins, who apparently didn’t like her for personal reasons. As a result, she was able to identify the “helical structure” of DNA. One image, Photo 51, taken by her student Raymond Gosling, led to the discovery of the DNA double helix for which Francis Crick, James Watson, and Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Wilkins’ main contribution seems to have been showing Watson the photo Franklin's student captured using her methods under her guidance. Keep in mind, that was after Watson, who originally wanted to talk to Franklin, pissed her off by implying she didn’t know how to interpret her own data. It’s also worth noting that Watson racked up decades of racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and even fat-shaming remarks, including offensive comments about Franklin herself. Yet even he suggested that Franklin should have ideally been awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry; however, as Franklin died in 1958, she would have been ineligible as the Nobel committee does not award prizes posthumously. Incidentally, at the time of her death from ovarian cancer at age 37, she was leading pioneering work on the molecular structures of viruses. Her team member Aaron Klug continued her research, winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1982. So really, she should have won twice.

Possibly the most successful pirate of all time was Ching Shih (https://www.infinite-women.com/women/ching-shih/)In 1801, the woman who would be known as Ching Shih was a young prostitute who married a pirate lord, Ching I. It’s said that she demanded an equal share and command before she would marry him, which he agreed to. Six years later when her husband died, Ching Shih took command of the Guangdong Pirate Confederation, putting her in charge of about 400 junk ships and 40,000 to 600,000 pirates in her early 30s. Years earlier, she had helped her husband form the confederation, in which different pirate leaders each sacrificed some autonomy for collective benefit. Her political savvy and knowledge of players, relationships and dynamics helped her not only gain power but keep the confederation together after Ching I’s death. She then wrecked havoc on the South China Sea for years - under her command, the confederation was far more active. Ching Shih took on everybody who was anybody, including the East India Company, the Portuguese Empire, and the Qing Chinese navy. One captive estimated that Ching Shih had 80,000 pirates, 1,000 large junks and 800 smaller junks and rowboats under her command in 1809.She also ruled with an iron fist - any pirate caught giving his own orders or disobeying those of a superior was to be beheaded on the spot. It was also a capital offence to steal from the common treasury or from villagers who supplied the pirates. Additionally, if a pirate raped a female captive, he would be put to death, but if the sex was consensual, both would be put to death, though a captive was allowed to marry a pirate if they wanted to.Perhaps the most impressive part of her piratical career was its ending. Ching Shih was such a powerful enemy that she was able to arrange a peaceful surrender in 1810. At the time she was in command of 17,318 pirates, 226 ships, 1,315 cannons, and 2,798 assorted weapons; her personal command encompassed 24 ships and 1,433 pirates. The terms of surrender included pardons, pork, wine and money for her crews and her lover Zhang Bao was awarded the rank of lieutenant and allowed to keep a private fleet of 20 to 30 ships. She married him, retired to run a gambling house in Macau, had more children and lived to be almost 70.