This Doctor Helped Spare Women from Radical Mastectomy
Canadian radiation oncologist Vera Peters pioneered the use of lumpectomies and postoperative radiation to treat breast cancer patients.
Stories by The Lost Women of Science Initiative
The Lost Women of Science Initiative is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with two overarching and interrelated missions: to tell the story of female scientists who made groundbreaking achievements in their fields--yet remain largely unknown to the general public--and to inspire girls and young women to embark on careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).
Adventures of a Bone Hunter
Annie Montague Alexander went on paleontology expeditions most women could only dream of in the early 1900s
This Filipina Physicist Helped Develop a Top Secret Weapon
Emma Unson Rotor worked on the proximity fuze, a groundbreaking piece of World War II weapons technology that the U.S. War Department called “second only to the atomic bomb.”
The Devastating Logic of Christine Ladd-Franklin
This early feminist fought for the credit she deserved for her deductive reasoning system and her educational qualifications
This Biophysicist 'Sun Queen' Harnessed Solar Power
Hungarian-American biophysicist and inventor Mária Telkes illuminated the field of solar energy. She invented a solar oven, a solar desalination kit and, in the late 1940s, designed one of the first solar-heated houses
The Woman Who Demonstrated the Greenhouse Effect
Eunice Newton Foote showed that carbon dioxide traps the heat of the sun in 1856, beating the so-called father of the greenhouse effect by at least three years. Why was she forgotten?
The U.S.’s First Black Female Physician Cared for Patients from Cradle to Grave
Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first Black woman in the U.S. to receive an M.D., earned while the Civil War raged, and the first Black person in the country to write a medical book, a popular guide with a preventive approach
How the Daughter of Sharecroppers Revolutionized Preschoolers' Health
Flemmie Pansy Kittrell, the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in nutrition in 1936, showed the importance of good health and developed a program that became the model for Head Start
This Virus Hunter Hunter Fought a Pandemic Using a Garage Full of Guinea Pigs
It's a global pandemic. The year is not 2020 but 1918, and Harriet Jane Lawrence is developing a vaccine against the deadliest influenza outbreak the world has ever seen
This Code Breaking Quaker Poet Hunted Nazis
How Elizebeth Smith Friedman went from scouring Shakespeare for secret codes to taking down a Nazi spy ring
A Chance Discovery Uncovered the Remarkable Life of One of the First Female Oceanographers
Eight pages hidden in an archive led to the discovery of the story of Christine Essenberg
Reconstruction Helped Her Become a Physician. Jim Crow Drove Her to Flee the U.S.
Sarah Loguen Fraser was the daughter of abolitionists and one of the first African American female doctors trained after the Civil War.
This Efficiency-Obsessed Psychologist (and Mother of 11) Revolutionized Kitchen Design
Lillian Gilbreth pioneered time and motion efficiency in workplaces and revolutionized kitchen design
How Antisemitism and Professional Betrayal Marred Lise Meitner’s Scientific Legacy
Letters between Lise Meitner and the chemist Otto Hahn reveal how she struggled with Hahn's failure to credit her work and condemn the Nazi atrocities
She Cracked the Mystery of How to Split the Atom, but Someone Else Got the Nobel Prize for the Discovery
Lise Meitner, an Austrian-born Jewish physicist, never received the Nobel Prize she deserved for her pioneering work on nuclear fission
They Remembered the Lost Women of the Manhattan Project So That None of Us Would Forget
Physicists Ruth Howes and Caroline Herzenberg’s 10-year research project ensured a place in history for the female scientists, engineers and technicians who worked on the atomic bomb
Meet the Physicist who Spoke Out against the Bomb She Helped Create
After atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear physicist Katharine Way persuaded the world’s greatest physicists to contribute essays to a book opposing nuclear weapons
She Helped Build the Atomic Bomb to Stop the Nazis, But Was Haunted by What It Did to Japan
Here’s the story of the Lilli Hornig, the only female scientist named in the film Oppenheimer.
Meet the Woman Who Supervised the Computations That Proved an Atomic Bomb Would Work
Naomi Livesay worked on computations that formed the mathematical basis for implosion simulations. Despite her crucial role on the project, she is rarely mentioned as more than a footnote—until now
This Lost Woman of the Manhattan Project Saw the Deadly Effects of Nuclear Radiation Up Close
Floy Agnes Lee came to Los Alamos, N.M., in 1945 knowing nothing of the top secret work on the atomic bomb happening all around her—but she studied the blood of the researchers who did
What the Film Oppenheimer Probably Will Not Talk About: The Lost Women of the Manhattan Project
Hundreds of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project were women. They were physicists, chemists, engineers and mathematicians. Today we bring you the story of one of them.
This Astronomer Discovered What the Stars Were Made Of, and Few Believed Her Discovery
Nearly 100 years ago a young astronomer named Cecilia Payne changed the way we see the stars in the sky because she was able to look into their burning heart and see something no one else ever had
How an American Psychiatrist Inspired a Street Name in Germany—And Why That’s So Unusual
Nyswanderweg, a tiny residential street in Hamburg, Germany, is easy to miss. Yet it’s a rare and significant monument to Marie Nyswander
A New Era in Addiction Medicine: A Trailblazing Doctor’s Legacy and the Ongoing Search for a Cure
Medication treatment for heroin addiction has come a long way since its pioneer died. But what would she think of the field today?