Podcasts · Science

Lost Women of Science

Lost Women of Science

160 episodes

For every Marie Curie or Rosalind Franklin whose story has been told, hundreds of female scientists remain unknown to the public at large. In this series, we illuminate the lives and work of a diverse array of groundbreaking scientists who, because of time, place and gender, have gone largely unrecognized. Each season we focus on a different scientist, putting her narrative into context, explaining not just the science but also the social and historical conditions in which she lived and worked. We also bring these stories to the present, painting a full picture of how her work endures.

Episodes page 1 of 4

  1. Svetlana Mojsov: The Woman Behind GLP-1

    · 45 min

    In 1983, working with pencil and paper at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital, Svetlana Mojsov spotted what everyone else had missed: the active form of a newly discovered hormone called GLP-1. After…

  2. A pioneer behind x-ray crystallography, Isabella Karle

    · 37 min

    In high school, Isabella Karle had to take a science class to fulfill a prerequisite. She chose chemistry at random. Karle would go on to become one of the most important chemists of her time, doing groundbreaking…

  3. Conversations: The Rediscovery of I Who Have Never Known Men

    · 29 min

    In this episode of Lost Women of Science Conversations, host Elah Feder explores the remarkable resurgence of I Who Have Never Known Men, Jacqueline Harpman’s 1995 novel that went largely unnoticed for decades before…

  4. La mujer que demostró el efecto invernadero

    · 36 min

    En 1856, décadas antes de que se acuñara el término “gas de efecto invernadero”, Eunice Newton Foote demostró el efecto invernadero en su laboratorio casero. Colocó un cilindro de vidrio lleno de dióxido de carbono al…

  5. Best Of: The Woman Who Demonstrated the Greenhouse Effect

    · 32 min

    In 1856, decades before the term “greenhouse gas” was coined, Eunice Newton Foote demonstrated the greenhouse effect in her home laboratory. She placed a glass cylinder full of carbon dioxide in the sun, and found that…

  6. Tilly Edinger: The Paleoneurologist Saved By Her Science

    · 31 min

    How much can you understand about a brain when that brain is long gone? Tilly Edinger, a Jewish paleontologist, used fossilized skulls to study the evolution of brains. That research allowed her to escape Nazi Germany…

  7. Kamala Sohonie: The Chemist who Wanted to Feed a Nation

    · 42 min

    In 1930s India, Kamala Baghvat dreamed of working alongside the world's greatest scientific minds. But she was repeatedly told “no” when she tried to work in the then male dominated field. Inspired by Gandhi, she used…

  8. Sharla Boehm: The Programmer Whose Code Underpins the Internet

    · 27 min

    Sharla Boehm earned a teaching degree from UCLA before channeling her talent for math into computer programming. While working at the Rand Corporation, she built a ground-breaking simulation, originally conceived to…

  9. Profesora de química y caza criminales: La extraordinaria vida de Mary Louisa Willard

    · 31 min

    “La única vez que vi algo que me pareció anormal… había un brazo humano en el refrigerador”, dijo J. Peter Willard sobre su tía, Mary Louisa Willard. Por lo demás, insistió, era “muy normal.” Pero Mary Louisa Willard,…

  10. Best Of: Chemistry Professor and Crime Buster: The Remarkable Life of Mary Louisa Willard

    · 31 min

    “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 “very normal.” But…

  11. Elizabeth Roboz Einstein: The Determined Genius Behind a Multiple Sclerosis Breakthrough

    · 39 min

    Elizabeth Roboz Einstein’s life was shaped by the forces of history. She studied bioorganic chemistry at the University of Vienna in the 1920s and then left her home country of Hungary during World War II, before…

  12. Conversation: If I Am Right, and I Know I Am: Inge Lehmann, the Woman Who Discovered Earth’s Innermost Secret

    · 36 min

    In this episode of Lost Women of Science Conversations, host Carol Sutton Lewis speaks with science writer Hanne Strager about her biography of Inge Lehmann, the pioneering Danish seismologist who discovered that Earth…

  13. BONUS: Agnes Pockels and the Kitchen Sink Myth

    · 37 min

    This bonus episode is a co-production with Distillations, a podcast produced by the Science History Institute. Agnes Pockels did pioneering work in surface science. Her invention, the Pockels Trough, became the basis…

  14. Layers of Brilliance: Vanishing Act -- Episode Six

    · 38 min

    How is a legacy preserved, and how is someone forgotten? Determined to make a final name for himself, Irving Langmuir ventures into science that even he might classify as pathological wishful thinking, while Katharine…

  15. Layers of Brilliance: The Self You Have to Live With - Episode Five

    · 30 min

    Katharine’s relatives lead the production team to a collection of papers and artifacts stored in a New England storage unit, revealing an inner struggle she kept carefully out of sight – even as she was making history…

  16. Layers of Brilliance: The Breakthrough - Episode Four

    · 26 min

    The 1930s prove to be an exceptional decade for research at The General Electric Company. Katharine Burr Blodgett works closely alongside her boss, Irving Langmuir who, in 1932, wins the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. In…

  17. Layers of Brilliance: The Air She Breathed -- Episode Three

    · 40 min

    The only woman in a laboratory filled with men, Katharine Burr Blodgett soon becomes indispensable as an assistant to The General Electric Company’s most famous scientist, Irving Langmuir. Their working relationship is…

  18. Layers of Brilliance: The 'House of Magic' -- Episode Two

    · 41 min

    Katharine Burr Blodgett arrives at The General Electric Company’s legendary research laboratory in Schenectady, New York, known as the “House of Magic.” She was just 20 years old when she entered a world built almost…

  19. Layers of Brilliance: The Chemical Genius of Katharine Burr Blodgett - Episode One

    · 35 min

    In the first of this five-part season we trace Katharine’s early years as she picks up European languages, her early scientific education at a progressive New York school for girls and then Bryn Mawr, a women’s…

  20. Layers of Brilliance

    · 2:04

    Introducing Layers of Brilliance, a six-part season that brings to life the story of a woman whose discoveries in materials science quietly shape our everyday world – but whose legacy was long eclipsed by the famous…

  21. The Lost Women of Science - Our Book for Young Readers

    · 21 min

    The Lost Women of Science by Melina Gerosa Bellows and Katie Hafner is an exciting book for young readers that brings to life the stories of ten remarkable women who changed the world of science but have been…

  22. For Susan

    · 22 min

    In 2022, Susan Wojcicki was on top of the world—CEO of YouTube, parent to five kids, and running a few miles a day—when she received a shocking diagnosis: metastatic lung cancer. She soon resigned from YouTube and…

  23. The Mouse Lady

    · 30 min

    In the 1910s, a relatively unknown cancer researcher named Maud Slye announced the first results of a study with the loftiest ambitions: to identify what causes cancer. To answer that question, the University of…

  24. Lost Women of Science Conversations: Rosalind - The Opera

    · 30 min

    Composer Peter Hugh White and librettist Clare Heath join host Rosie Millard in front of a London audience to explore why the story of chemist and x-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin and the race to uncover the…

  25. Best Of: Finding Dora Richardson: The Forgotten Developer of Tamoxifen, a Lifesaving Breast Cancer Therapy - Episode Two

    · 36 min

    Although initial clinical trials of tamoxifen as a treatment of breast cancer were positive, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) did not believe this market would be commercially viable. The company had hoped for a…

  26. Encontrando a Dora Richardson – La desarrolladora olvidada del tamoxifeno, una terapia vital contra el cáncer de mama

    · 34 min

    Aunque los ensayos clínicos iniciales del tamoxifeno como tratamiento del cáncer de mama fueron positivos, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) no creía que este mercado fuera comercialmente viable. La compañía esperaba…

  27. Best Of: Finding Dora Richardson, The Forgotten Developer of Tamoxifen, a Lifesaving Breast Cancer Therapy - Episode One

    · 42 min

    In the early 1960s, Dr. Dora Richardson synthesized a chemical compound that became one of the most important drugs to treat breast cancer: tamoxifen. Although her name is on the original patent, her contributions have…

  28. Encontrando a Dora Richardson – Episodio 1

    · 32 min

    A principios de la década de los sesenta, la Dra. Dora Richardson sintetizó un compuesto químico que se convirtió en uno de los medicamentos más importantes para tratar el cáncer de mama: el tamoxifeno. Aunque su…

  29. Opening Doors to Computer Science

    · 34 min

    In high school, Carla Brodley was almost shut out of computer science when boys took over all the computers. But she rediscovered her love for the field in college and has made it her mission to open doors for others.…

  30. Frances Glessner Lee: The Mother of Forensic Science

    · 38 min

    Frances Glessner Lee discovered her true calling later in life. An heiress without formal schooling, she was in her fifties when she transformed her fascination with true crime and medicine into the foundation of a new…

  31. The Mothers of Gynecology

    · 1 h 08 min

    In this episode, Katie Hafner joins Alexis Pedrick and Mariel Carr to bring you The Mothers of Gynecology, part of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race, a podcast and magazine project produced by the Science…

  32. Best Of: Dr. Sarah Loguen Fraser, an Ex-Slave’s Daughter, Becomes a Celebrated Doctor

    · 32 min

    Born in 1850, Sarah Loguen found her calling as a child, when she helped her parents and Harriet Tubman bandage the leg of an injured person escaping slavery. When the Civil War ended and Reconstruction opened up…

  33. La Dra. Sarah Loguen Fraser, hija de un ex esclavo, se convierte en una destacada médica

    · 37 min

    Nacida en 1850, Sarah Loguen encontró su vocación cuando era niña, cuando ayudó a sus padres y a Harriet Tubman a vendar la pierna de una persona herida que escapaba de la esclavitud. Cuando terminó la Guerra Civil y…

  34. Mujeres perdidas del Proyecto Manhattan: Carolyn Beatrice Parker

    · 16 min

    Carolyn Beatrice Parker provenía de una familia de médicos y académicos y trabajó durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial como física en el Proyecto Dayton, una parte fundamental del Proyecto Manhattan encargada de producir…

  35. Best Of: Lost Women of the Manhattan Project - Carolyn Beatrice Parker

    · 16 min

    Carolyn Beatrice Parker came from a family of doctors and academics and worked during World War II as a physicist on the Dayton Project, a critical part of the Manhattan Project tasked with producing polonium. Polonium…

  36. Emma Unson Rotor: la física filipina que desarrolló un arma ultrasecreta

    · 21 min

    Emma Unson Rotor se tomó un permiso de su trabajo como profesora de matemáticas en Filipinas para estudiar física en la Universidad Johns Hopkins en 1941. Sus planes se vieron interrumpidos cuando el Ejército Imperial…

  37. Best Of: Emma Unson Rotor: The Filipina Physicist Who Developed a Top Secret Weapon

    · 20 min

    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…

  38. Best Of: The Victorian Woman Who Chased Eclipses

    · 31 min

    The year is 1897 and Annie Maunder, an amateur astronomer, is boarding a steamship bound for India from England. Her goal: to photograph a total solar eclipse. Maunder was fascinated by the secrets of the sun and was…

  39. La mujer victoriana que perseguía los eclipses

    · 22 min

    Corre el año 1897 y Annie Maunder, una astrónoma aficionada, aborda un barco de vapor con destino a la India desde Inglaterra. Su objetivo: fotografiar un eclipse total de sol. Maunder estaba fascinado por los secretos…

  40. Lost Women of Science - Mujeres Olvidadas de la Ciencia - En Espanõl

    · 2:05

    Esto es Lost Women of Science - Mujeres Olvidadas de la Ciencia. Laura Gómez, conocida por su papel de Blanca Flores en la exitosa serie de Netflix “Orange Is the New Black”, es el narradora del podcast Lost Women of…

  41. Lost Women of Science - In Spanish!

    · 1:36 · Trailer

    After the success of our bilingual season about the first female doctor trained in the Dominican Republic, The Extraordinary Life and Tragic Death of Evangelina Rodríguez Perozo, we are adapting more of our episodes in…

  42. The Weather Expert Who Answered the $64,000 Question

    · 35 min

    In the mid-1940s, a teenage June Bacon-Bercey saw the image of a nuclear explosion on the cover of Time magazine and immediately had questions. How would the particles in the mushroom cloud move through the air? What…

  43. Florence Nightingale and her Geeks Declare War on Death

    · 46 min

    In this episode from the Cautionary Tales podcast, Harford teams up with actor Helena Bonham Carter, a distant relative of Florence Nightingale, to tell the story of how the ‘“Lady with the Lamp” revolutionized public…

  44. Lost Women of Science Conversations: Air-borne

    · 34 min

    Air-Borne: the Hidden History of the Air We Breathe by Carl Zimmer charts the history of the field of aerobiology: the science dealing with airborne microorganisms. In this episode, we discover the story of two lost…

  45. Buried History: The Feminist Birth of the Home Pregnancy Test

    · 30 min

    Today, we take it for granted that you can buy a home pregnancy test at the pharmacy. Before the end of the 1970s, this was not the case. Then along came Margaret Crane, a young designer working for a pharmaceutical…

  46. Lost Women of Science Conversations: The Elements of Marie Curie

    · 29 min

    In The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science Dava Sobel celebrates the many women who came to Paris to work with Marie Curie after she won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics. Many…

  47. In Evangelina's Footsteps | 5

    · 22 min

    After Evangelina Rodríguez Perozo died in 1947, the Trujillo regime did its best to erase her legacy, while at the same time appropriating her ideas. Yet those who had known and loved Evangelina in San Pedro de…

  48. Siguiendo los pasos de Evangelina | 5

    · 24 min

    Tras la muerte de Evangelina Rodríguez Perozo en 1947, el régimen de Trujillo hizo todo lo posible no solo por borrar su legado, sino también por apropiarse de sus ideas. Sin embargo, quienes conocieron y quisieron a…

  49. El dictador y la doctora | 4

    · 30 min

    En 1930, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo toma el poder en la República Dominicana e instaura un reino de terror. El controvertido trabajo de Evangelina la puso en conflicto con el nuevo régimen. Sus ideas radicales sobre la…

  50. The Dictator and the Doctor | 4

    · 27 min

    In 1930, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo seized power in the Dominican Republic and introduced a reign of terror. Evangelina’s controversial work brought her into conflict with the new regime. Her radical ideas about…

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