Emma Unson Rotor took leave from her job as a math teacher in the Philippines to study physics at Johns Hopkins University in 1941. Her plans were disrupted when the Imperial Japanese Army invaded and occupied the Philippines. Unable to access her Philippine government scholarship to attend Johns Hopkins, she joined the Ordnance Development Division at the National Bureau of Standards. It was here that she did groundbreaking research on the proximity fuze, the “world’s first ‘smart’ weapon,” in the words of physicist Frank Belknap Baldwin, who also helped develop the technology. 

In 1925, a young anthropologist named Margaret Mead traveled to Samoa to explore the impact of cultural factors on adolescent development. In her subsequent book Coming of Age in Samoa, Mead described teenagers who were free to explore and express their sexuality. The book struck a chord with readers in the U.S., became a bestseller, and Mead skyrocketed to fame. But what were her actual methods and motivations? This episode traces Mead’s legendary nine-month stay in the South Pacific.

Christine Ladd-Franklin is best known for her theory of the evolution of color vision, but her research spanned math, symbolic logic, philosophy, biology, and psychology. Born in Connecticut in 1847, she was clever, sharp-tongued, and never shied away from a battle of wits. When she decided to go to college instead of pursuing a marriage, she convinced her skeptical grandmother by pointing to statistics: there was an excess of women in New England, so a husband would be hard to find; she’d better get an education instead. “Grandma succumbed,” she wrote in her diary. When a man didn't give her credit for her “antilogism,” the core construct in her system of deductive reasoning, she took him to task in print, taking time to praise the beauty of her own concepts. And when Johns Hopkins University attempted to grant Ladd-Franklin an honorary PhD in 1926, she insisted that they grant her the one she'd already earned — after all, she’d completed her dissertation there, without official recognition, more than 40 years earlier. Johns Hopkins succumbed.

Ann Finkbeiner, creator of the Finkbeiner Test, discusses the need for gender-neutral profiles of female scientists. Topics include challenging gender tropes, the controversy over Yvonne Brill's obituary, media portrayal issues, limitations of the Finkbeiner Test, and the importance of inclusivity in science.

Today we tell the story of Mária Telkes, one of the developers of solar thermal storage systems, who was so dedicated to the world of solar energy that while she was working at MIT, she earned the nickname: The Sun Queen. Over her lifetime, she registered more than 20 patents, nearly all related to harnessing the power of the sun. Her inventions included an oven, a desalination device, and one of the first solar-heated houses in 1948: the Dover Sun House. We heard about Mária Telkes from Erin Twamley, a children's book author who shares the stories, careers, and the superpowers of everyday women. She said she would love Dr. Mária Telkes to be in every fifth grade classroom to inspire young people.

A female scientist named Eunice Newton Foote conducted groundbreaking experiments in 1856 on the greenhouse gas effect, predating its official discovery. Her work was overshadowed by her male colleagues, but an amateur historian uncovers her story. This podcast discusses Eunice's experiment on heat-trapping gases and contrasts it with the work of John Tyndall. It also explores the challenges women faced in the scientific community during the 1800s and the historical context of the women's rights movement in Seneca Falls.

Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, born in 1831, was the first African American female medical doctor in the U.S. and is considered the first Black person to publish a medical book. In it, Dr. Crumpler lays out best practices for good health with a focus on women and children. She writes that she was inspired by her aunt, a community healer and midwife, who raised her in Pennsylvania. In 1864, during the Civil War, Rebecca graduated from the New England Female Medical College, the world’s first medical school for women and the founding institution of what is now the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. The following year, in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War, she traveled to Virginia to treat refugees. Many women and children, suddenly freed from bondage, were dying. She worked to dispel the myth that recently freed slaves were spreading disease, rightly pointing instead to poor living conditions. There are no known photos of Rebecca Crumpler, but a Boston newspaper article describes her in her 60s as “tall and straight, with light brown skin and gray hair”. Rebecca Crumpler was ahead of her time, promoting preventive medicine, and she paved the way for women of color in the field of public health.

In the 1960s, Flemmie Kittrell, a Black home economist at Howard University, conducted an experimental preschool program for poor Black children. She aimed to improve their lives through comprehensive care, nutritious food, and fun activities. This podcast explores Flemmie's journey, her college experience, and the effectiveness of the Head Start program. It also highlights her contributions to early childhood development and the overshadowing of her work in history.

Harriet Jane Lawrence was one of the first female pathologists in the U.S. In the early 1900s she worked in Portland, Oregon, where she hunted microbes and developed vaccines and serum therapies with the help of 200 guinea pigs that she kept in her garage. Her work on a vaccine during the 1918 influenza pandemic earned her presidential recognition and has had a lasting impact on medicine.

Known as “America’s first female cryptanalyst,” Elizebeth Smith Friedman was a master codebreaker who played a pivotal role in both world wars, but for many years, no one knew what she had done—not even her own family. Elizebeth didn’t set out to be a codebreaker. In 1917, she was a 23-year-old English lit major, looking for an interesting job. That all changed when an eccentric millionaire whisked her off to his lavish country estate and recruited her to work on his passion project: finding the secret codes in Shakespeare’s plays. Elizabeth scoured the texts alongside a tiny team of self-taught codebreakers. No hidden messages surfaced. But soon, the U.S. government came knocking with a slightly higher priority mission. Perhaps her greatest coup was when she uncovered a Nazi spy ring in North America during World War II. J. Edgar Hoover took credit on behalf of the FBI, while Friedman signed an NDA, never speaking of her achievements, and fell into obscurity. Records of what she had done were found in the National Archives annex in College Park, Maryland.