Lost Women of Science

In the first of a new series we’re calling Lost Women of Science Conversations—and a fitting choice for Black History Month—we talk to Maria Smilios, author of a new book that tells the story of Black nurses who were lured from the Jim Crow South to work at a tuberculosis (TB) hospital called Sea View on Staten Island, N.Y. Facing unsanitary conditions and racial prejudice, these “Black Angels” cared for TB patients for decades before a cure that they helped develop was found. It’s a story of bravery and dedication that Smilios pieced together from oral histories and medical records because there were no archives that described these nurses’ work. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sara Little Turnbull, an industrial designer known for her work in material science, discusses her role in designing the moldable bra cup that inspired the N95 mask, as well as her disputed contributions to its development. She also talks about her other innovative projects, such as clear glass cooktop development and storage systems.

The Australian physicist Ruby Payne-Scott helped lay the groundwork for a whole new kind of astronomy: radio astronomy. By scanning the skies for radio waves instead of the light waves we can see with our eyes, Ruby and her colleagues opened a window into the universe and transformed the way we explore it. But to keep her job as a woman working for the Australian government in the 1940s, Ruby had to keep a pretty big secret. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sallie Pero Mead, a forgotten electrical engineer, played a crucial role in developing radar technology during World War II. By developing and testing hollow metal tubes as waveguides, her team discovered a new way for hyperfrequency waves to propagate, paving the way for radar technology. The podcast uncovers Sally's educational background and discusses the applications of radar technology today. The importance of collaboration and ongoing research into forgotten female scientists is also highlighted.

Scientist Leona Zacharias was a rare woman. She graduated from Barnard College in 1927 with a degree in biology, followed by a Ph.D. from Columbia University. But throughout her career she labored behind men with loftier titles who got the bulk of the credit. In the 1940s, when premature babies born with healthy eyes were going blind, Dr. Zacharias was part of the team that worked to root out the cause. In this best of Lost Women of Science episode, host Katie Hafner visits the archives at M.I.T. and The Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston to try to understand Dr. Zacharias’s role in rooting out the cause. For host Katie Hafner, it's personal: Leona Zacharias was her grandmother. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Meet Vera Peters, a doctor who discovered a less invasive treatment for breast cancer patients that spared women from radical mastectomy surgery. Her groundbreaking research challenged traditional surgical practices and revolutionized breast cancer treatment. Peters' approach using lumpectomy and radiation therapy proved to be more effective than radical mastectomy, providing women with a less invasive and more accessible treatment option.

Annie Montague Alexander was an adventurer, amateur paleontologist, and the founding benefactor of two venerated research collections at UC Berkeley - the UC Museum of Paleontology and the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. She was born in 1867, the daughter of a wealthy sugar baron, but she never quite fit in with her high society peers. Instead, Annie created for herself a grand life out of doors, away from the constraints of the era: she funded expeditions up and down the West Coast, hunting fossils. And sometimes she wore pants! But there was a catch. Annie always had to be accompanied by a female chaperone, as it was considered unseemly for a woman to travel surrounded only by men. Luckily, this worked out well for Annie: One of those female chaperones would become her life partner. For show notes and transcript, visit lostwomenofscience.org Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices