The Woman the Mercury Astronauts Couldn’t Do Without
Katherine Johnson negotiated the dynamics of both race and space.
By Margot Lee Shetterly, Illustrations by Richie Pope (from the archives)
Edited 1y ago
womeninstem
Happy birthday to #mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani (1977-2017)! The Fields Medal, one of the most prestigious #math awards, is awarded to mathematicians < 40. In 2014, she became 1st woman to win. Her research included Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, ergodic theory, & symplectic geometry, and Fields committee cited her work in “the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces”.
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#sciart #mathart #linocut #printmaking #womeninSTEM #histsci
This is Sechi Katō (1893-1989) in 1918. It's her graduation photo from a women's college in Tokyo.
Eventually she would become the first woman principal investigator at RIKEN, Japan's national chemistry & physics institute. She faced incredibly daunting hurdles before then...
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Edited 1y ago
Happy birthday Rosalind Franklin (1920 – 1958), #chemist & x-ray #crystallographer whose x-ray diffraction images were instrumental to discovering double-helix structure of #DNA, made important contributions to #carbon & #virus research, was 1 of the great scientists of the 20th century.
Watson’s bio lead some to (inaccurately) joke, “What did Watson and Crick discover?” “Rosalind Franklin’s notes.” 🧵
A photograph by Berenice Abbott of a woman wiring an IBM computer, 1948. #Photography #WomenInSTEM #BereniceAbbott
Happy birthday Rosalind Franklin (1920 – 1958), #chemist & x-ray #crystallographer whose x-ray diffraction images were instrumental to discovering double-helix structure of #DNA, made important contributions to #carbon & #virus research, was 1 of the great scientists of the 20th century.
Watson’s bio lead some to (inaccurately) joke, “What did Watson and Crick discover?” “Rosalind Franklin’s notes.” While it’s important 🧵1/
#linocut #printmaking #WomenInSTEM #histsci #mastoArt #sciart
"Babbage saw the analytical engine as a mathematical device. After all, it primarily stored and operated on numbers. But Lovelace recognized that a machine designed to crunch numbers could do much more if the numbers represented other things.
“Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.”"
Happy Ada Lovelace Day!
It's that time of year again. Pumpkin spice latte time? No. Well, yes, but it's also time to ......
Support the next generation of women in technology!
The Women in CompSci and Eng (WiCSE) chapter at Cal State Fullerton (CSUF) is looking to fund Student Study Group Leaders.
If that's enough for you I'll just drop the donation link here, but read on if you want more details...
Happy birthday to French mathematician, physicist and philosopher Marie-Sophie Germain (1776 – 1831), known as Sophie. She taught herself mathematics using books in her father’s library and by corresponding with leading mathematicians of her day, including Lagrange, Legendre and Gauss, initially using the pseudonym Monsieur LeBlanc. Her work on elasticity theory won her the grand prize from the Paris Academy of Sciences. 🧵
#linocut #printmaking #sciart #mathematician #womenInSTEM #histsci
PRESS RELEASE: https://www.seti.org/news/seti-institute-names-lori-marino-as-2026-drake-award-recipient/
The SETI Institute announced today that Dr. Lori Marino will receive the 2026 Drake Award, continuing its tradition of celebrating contributions to the search for life and intelligence beyond Earth. Marino is recognized for advancing our understanding of intelligence—on Earth and beyond—and for applying that knowledge to foster meaningful scientific, ethical, and social change.
Florence Violet McKenzie was Australia’s first female electrical engineer and promoter of technical education for women.
One way she communicated science and technical concepts to women was through pop culture!
She taught the rhythm of Morse code using music and translation of the code using sections of comic strips.
Isabel briefly touches on this in her new paper on the early history of Australian women in #scicomm: https://jcom.sissa.it/article/pubid/JCOM_2506_2026_A04/
Meet Alison Frantz (1903–1995)—a true polymath whose camera lens and intellect helped shape history!
From pioneering archaeological photography in Athens (including capturing the famous Linear B tablets) to serving with the OSS during WWII and acting as a US cultural attaché, her impact was massive. She even helped restore the Church of the Holy Apostles!
Her groundbreaking work in post-classical and Byzantine archaeology changed how we study history.
