In 1960 Marthe Gautier left the lab where she had discovered the genetic cause of Down syndrome, and went on to have a successful career as a pediatric cardiologist. For decades, she remained silent as her former colleague Jérôme Lejeune continued to take credit for this pioneering discovery, and history wrote her out of the story. Until 2009. On the 50th anniversary of the paper that announced the discovery of trisomy 21, she decided to set the record straight. The process of changing history did not always go smoothly. In 2014, at the age of 88, she was set to give a talk and receive a medal at a conference, but the event was canceled hours in advance, and she was given the medal privately the next day. Finally, toward the end of her life, Gautier got the recognition she deserved. Before she died in 2022, she was also decorated by the French government for her contributions to science.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In the mid-1950s, Marthe Gautier made a groundbreaking discovery about the genetic cause of Down syndrome by identifying an extra chromosome. However, her male colleague rushed to claim credit, overshadowing her crucial contributions. This tale of resilience unveils the struggles women face in science, emphasizing the importance of recognizing their often-ignored achievements. The podcast intertwines personal and scientific legacies as it explores Gautier's journey and the ethical complexities of scientific recognition.

In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we are telling the story of Margarethe Hilferding, a pioneering psychoanalyst and physician from Vienna who was murdered in a Nazi concentration camp in 1942. She was the first woman to earn a medical degree at the University of Vienna and the first woman to join Sigmund Freud’s Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. In her paper On the Basis of Mother Love, presented to the society in 1911, she argued that the maternal instinct is not innate but can develop after birth, a theory Freud and the rest of her male colleagues rejected. Margarethe soon left the society and devoted much of her life to treating women in working class neighborhoods and advocating for their reproductive health. Her theory of maternal instinct remains controversial even today. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Dr. Katalin Karikó, a Hungarian-born biochemist, dedicated her life’s work to messenger RNA, which she always believed had the potential to change the world. After decades of being ignored, she persisted with the research that eventually revolutionized the field of medicine and enabled the development of lifesaving vaccines in record time during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Karikó tells her story in her memoir, Breaking Through: My Life In Science, sharing her journey from young researcher in Hungary to Nobel Prize-winning biochemist.In this conversation, she reflects on the challenges and breakthroughs that defined her career, her resilience, and the scientific curiosity that fueled her passion for mRNA research Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

At this festive time of year, when many people are bringing trees into their homes to decorate for the holidays, we are going back to our story of a pioneering scientist who made it her mission to ensure that plants traveling across borders did not carry any diseases. It was in 1909, that the Mayor of Tokyo sent a gift of 2,000 prized cherry trees to Washington, D.C. But the iconic blossoms enjoyed each spring along the Tidal Basin are not from those trees. That’s because Flora Patterson, who was the Mycologist in Charge at the USDA, recognized the original saplings were infected, and the shipment was burned on the National Mall. In this episode, we explore  Patterson’s lasting impact on the field of mycology, starting with a blight that killed off the American chestnut trees, and how she helped make the USDA’s National Fungus Collection the largest in the world. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Two female botanists – Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter – made headlines for riding the rapids of the Colorado River in 1938 in an effort to document the Grand Canyon’s plant life. In Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon, author Melissa L. Sevigny retraces their journey and shows how the ambitious river expedition, one that many believed impossible for women, changed not only Clover and Jotter but also our understanding of botany in this remote corner of the American West. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Carolyn Beatrice Parker came from a family of doctors and academics and worked during World War II as a physicist on the Dayton Project, a critical part of the Manhattan Project tasked with producing polonium. (Polonium is a radioactive metal that was used in the production of early nuclear weapons.) After the war, Parker continued her research and her studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but she died of leukemia at age 48 before she was able to defend her PhD thesis. Decades later, during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, citizens in her hometown of Gainesville, Florida voted to rename an elementary school in her honor. November 18th would have been her 107th birthday. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Anna Von Mertens' thoughtful new exploration of Henrietta Swan Leavitt's life describes and illuminates Leavitt's decades-long study of stars, including the groundbreaking system she developed for measuring vast distances within our universe simply by looking at photographic plates. Leavitt studied hundreds of thousands of stars captured on the glass plates at the Harvard College Observatory, where she worked as a human computer from the turn of the 20th century until her death in 1921. Von Mertens explores her life, the women she worked alongside, and her discoveries, weaving biography, science, and visual imagery into a rich tapestry that deepens our understanding of the universe and the power of focused, methodical attention. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Although initial clinical trials of tamoxifen as a treatment of breast cancer were positive, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) did not believe this market would be commercially viable. The company had hoped for a contraceptive pill – tamoxifen didn’t work for that – not a cancer treatment. In 1972 the higher-ups at ICI decided to cancel the research. But Dora Richardson, the chemist who had originally synthesized the compound, and her boss, Arthur Walpole, were convinced they were on to something important, something that could save lives. They continued the research in secret. Tamoxifen was eventually launched in the U.K. in 1973 and went on to become a global success, saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Dora Richardson’s role in its development, however, was overshadowed by her a male colleague and all but forgotten. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In the early 1960s, chemist Dr. Dora Richardson synthesized a chemical compound that became one of the most important drugs to treat breast cancer: tamoxifen. Although her name is on the original patent, her contributions have been lost to history. In the first episode of this two-part podcast, Katie Couric introduces us to Dora’s story. Lost Women of Science producer Marcy Thompson tracked down Dora’s firsthand account of the history of the drug’s development. This document, lost for decades, tells the story of how the compound was made and how Imperial Chemical Industries, where Richardson worked, almost terminated the project because the company was hoping to produce a contraceptive, not a cancer therapy. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices