Lost Women of Science

In the 1950s, a German drug company developed a new sedative that was supposed to be 100% safe: thalidomide. So safe, in fact, it was promoted to women as a treatment for morning sickness. It quickly became a bestseller. But in the early 1960s, shocking news started coming out of Europe. Thousands of babies were being born with shortened arms and legs, heart defects, and other serious problems. Many died. In the United States things were different, thanks to one principled, strong-minded skeptic who joined the Federal Drug Administration in 1960 as a medical reviewer. One of her first assignments was to review the approval application of that very wonder drug, thalidomide. But the application was, to her mind, flawed. Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey was a physician, a pharmacologist, and a nitpicker who refused to be intimidated by big pharma. Starting in September, a new five-part series from Lost Women of Science: The Devil in the Details, the story of Frances Oldham Kelsey, The Doctor Who Said No To Thalidomide.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In the 1920s, when newspapers and magazines started to showcase stories about science, many of the early science journalists were women, working alongside their male colleagues despite less pay and outright misogyny. They were often single or divorced and, as Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette explains, writing for their lives. From Emma Reh, who traveled to Mexico to get a divorce and ended up trekking to archeological digs on horseback, to Jane Stafford, who took on taboo topics like sex and sexually transmitted diseases, they started a tradition of explaining science to non-scientists, accurately and with flair.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

By the second half of the 20th century, physicists were on a mission to find the ultimate building blocks of the universe. What you get when you zoom in all the way to the tiniest bits that can’t be broken down anymore. They had a kind of treasure map, a theory describing these building blocks and where we might find them. But to actually find them, physicists needed to recreate the blistering-hot conditions of the early universe, when many of these particles last existed. That’s why, in the mid-1970s, a major national laboratory entrusted Helen Edwards with a huge task: to oversee the design and construction of the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, the first of a new generation of particle colliders built to uncover the inner workings of the universe.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Dr. Jess Wade is a physicist at Imperial College London who’s made it her mission to write and update the Wikipedia pages of as many women in STEM as she possibly can. She inspired us at Lost Women of Science to start our own Wikipedia project to ensure that all the female scientists we profile have accurate and complete Wikipedia pages. In this episode, Jess talks with us about what she does and why she does it.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Dr. Nancy Hopkins, a renowned molecular biologist, shares her journey of fighting for gender equality in science at MIT. She exposes discrimination through data collection and activism, leading to pivotal change. The podcast highlights the challenges faced by women in science and the impact of advocacy and solidarity in empowering female scientists.

 “The only time I ever saw something that I thought was abnormal…there was a human arm in the refrigerator,” said J. Peter Willard about his aunt, Mary Louisa Willard. Otherwise, he insisted, she was just “very normal.” But Mary Louisa Willard, a chemistry professor at Pennsylvania State University in the late 1920s, left a strong impression on most people, to say the least. Her hometown of State College, Pennsylvania, knew her for stopping traffic in her pink Cadillac to chat with friends and for throwing birthday bashes for her beloved cocker spaniels. Police around the world knew her for her side hustle: using chemistry to help solve crimes. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When Laura J. Martin decided to write a history of ecological restoration, she didn’t think she would have to go back further than the 1980s to uncover its beginnings. What she found, however, deep in the archives, was evidence of a network of early female botanists from the turn of the last century who had been written out of history. Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration sets the record straight. It tells the stories of Eloise Butler, Edith Roberts and the wild and wonderful gardens they planted and studied.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 at what Dr. Andersen was really like. We then turn to researchers, physicians, and patients, who fill us in on the many areas of progress that have grown out of Dr. Andersen’s 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. We end the episode with an update on the effect Trikafta has had on the lives of many CF patients, who can now expect to live a normal life.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The missing portrait of Dr. Andersen takes us on a journey into the perils of memorialization and who gets to be remembered. Dr. John Scott Baird, Dorothy Andersen’s biographer, looks for the portrait, and Drs. Nientara Anderson and Lizzy Fitzsousa, former medical students at Yale University, explain how “dude walls” — the paintings of male scientists that line institutional walls — can have an insidious effect on those who walk past them every day. And we go back to Columbia University to give you an update on the hunt for the missing portrait. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Our associate producer, Sophie McNulty, rummages through boxes in a Connecticut basement, looking for clues to Dorothy Andersen’s life story. Pediatric critical care physician Dr. John Scott Baird, who published a biography of Dorothy Andersen in 2021, suggests we take a second look at the conventional wisdom surrounding the evolution of cystic fibrosis research in the 1950s. And in this updated episode, we interview science historian Margaret Rossiter, who coined the term “Matilda Effect” to describe how credit for work done by female scientists too often goes to their male colleagues. We examine how this affected Dorothy Andersen and her groundbreaking research into cystic fibrosis. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices