The Silenced Women of STEM

So we’ve all pulled an all nighter before, or stayed up a little too late before having to wake up early. I am currently suffering the consequences of that action. But how important is sleep really, and how does losing it affect how we function? Today we are talking about Maria Manasseina- also known as Marie von manassein, and Marie de Manaceine -, a Russian doctor who was a pioneer in biochemist...

Computers originally actually referred to a person, a computator…a person who does computations… a computer. Today, we will be talking about the female human computers who programmed the world’s first digital computer. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC https://www.computer.org/volunteering/awards/pioneer/about-women-of-eniac https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/csep590a/06au/readin...

Today’s episode speaks of a woman who created a brand new drug that went through clinical testing almost entirely in secret in order to become one of today’s very popular treatments of breast cancer. Oh, and the worst part is...a man took all her research and never credited her. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_Richardson https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dora-richardson-took-h...

Today we're talking about an angel of life, actually an angel of the battlefield to be specific, a one Miss Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross. Sources: https://www.thenmusa.org/biographies/clara-barton/ https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/clara-barton https://www.redcross.org/content/dam/redcross/enterprise-assets/about-us/history/history-clara-barton-v5-4-1...

Giselle Perl, a Hungarian Jewish gynecologist who was imprisoned in Auschwitz and forced to be a doctor there while simultaneously being a prisoner. This is her story. Sources: https://mjhnyc.org/events/a-jewish-doctor-in-auschwitz-gisella-perl/ https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200526-dr-gisella-perl-the-auschwitz-doctor-who-saved-lives https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/pb-daily/gisella-perl-a...

I have been seeing videos of people whose parents sold everything they had to send their child to the olympics, and even with full adult olympians how they work 6+ jobs to afford their sport or struggle to make rent. So today we are discussing Debi Thomas, a story of dedication, hard work, a fall from grace, and now hopefully a comeback story…and if you thought we forgot the STEM part…don’t worry,...

What would you do if you lived in Nazi Germany and knew what the government stood for, but speaking out could cost you your life? Would you stay silent, or would you dare to resist? Most people chose survival. Sophie Scholl did not. As a young university student, Sophie openly opposed the Nazi regime through her involvement in the White Rose resistance movement, using words and ideas as weapons ag...

Today's epidsode is about Louise Bourgeois Boursier! A royal midwife and the first woman to write an obstetrics textbook! Sources: https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/louyse-bourgeois https://fn.bmj.com/content/89/2/F185 https://becker.wustl.edu/news/louise-bourgeois-and-the-first-obstetrics-book-published-by-a-woman/ https://hekint.org/2020/01/28/the-barber-surgeons-their-history-over...

What is a seismic wave? Duh, it's the vibrations generated by an earthquake, explosion, or similar energetic source and propagated within the earth or along its surface. Did you know u can better understand the Earth's structure with them? Today, we're going to talk about the woman who used math to better understand our world. Sources https://www.britannica.com/science/seismic-wave https://www.amn...

What did you think women did back in the day for Gynecology? Going to the gynecologist is such a terrifying experience in 2025; I can't even imagine what it would be like before modern medicine. Well, back in the day, when scientific thought was just being birthed, little was known about people’s health, and even less was known about women’s bodies. Today we will be talking about Cleopatra Metrodo...

Today’s episode is called “The Great Menstrual Lie”, and as ridiculous as that sounds, this was an actual medical debate in the 1800s. Male doctors genuinely believed that periods made women too weak, emotional, and unstable for higher education or real careers. Today, we’re talking about the woman who used real science to shut that argument down. This is the story of Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, the w...

Someone be very proud of us because we are not covering a Mary, Maria, Marie today!! Instead we will be talking about Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte, the first Native American to earn a medical degree and a woman at that. Sources: https://www.civilwarmed.org/la-flesche/ https://www.nebraskastudies.org/en/1875-1899/susan-la-flesche-picotte-first-na-female-physician/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/his...

When we talk about the history of astronomy, we often hear about the same familiar names: Kepler, Galileo, and Copernicus. Men whose work helped define the scientific revolution. But hidden between these well-known figures are brilliant thinkers whose contributions were nearly lost to time, simply because they did not fit the mold of who society believed a scientist could be. Today, we want to int...

Today, we’re talking about the woman behind the miracle of Test Tube Babies, the mother of IVF. A woman whose dedication helped solve infertility for millions of people around the world. Her name is Jean Purdy, and even though history tried to tuck her behind the men she worked with, her fingerprints are on every modern fertility clinic that exists today. Sources: https://winfertility.com/blog/jea...

Where's the farthest you've ever traveled? Well, what if planes didn’t exist and you had to take a two-month sea voyage instead? Today’s woman in STEM traveled the world when airplanes weren’t even dreamed of yet. She self-funded a journey halfway across the globe to take care of soldiers that weren’t even from her country, and was never formally recognized for her nursing due to her skin color. T...

You're familiar with the idea of a stressed, unpaid intern running around with a million things to do, of course to include grabbing the boss's lunch and fancy coffee order? Okay, now imagine that, but in the 1940s. You’re literally inventing a whole new kind of astronomy, working on secret radar systems during World War II, and everyone’s like, “Oh, sorry, can you file these papers real quick?”,...

Imagine diving to the bottom of the ocean while pregnant. Dude, I feel like when I am pregnant, I won’t be able to even move or do anything. But today’s woman in STEM was literally on the ocean floor while pregnant. Sources: https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sylvia-earle https://www.britannica.com/science/marine-biology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Earle https:/...

Imagine going to work or school or whatever, and that's just normal. Men's bathrooms are everywhere, but you have to walk across the street at the very least to go to the BATHROOM. Now imagine trying to do groundbreaking research and dealing with that. Well, that's what Lise Meitner had to do when she was discovering Nuclear Fission. Sources https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lise-Meitner https:...

So we carved Pumpkins this weekend in celebration of fall, October, and all things spooky season. And you will never guess what Disha carved on her pumpkin. It was a uterus…because there’s nothing scarier than being a woman. Well, that started me thinking about Women’s health, which led me to today’s Silenced Woman of STEM, a paleobotanist turned women’s health activist. Sources: https://embryo.as...

Today’s Silenced Woman of STEM not only spent hours creating beautiful and scientifically accurate illustrations of the microscopic world, but she was also a self-taught naturalist, an acclaimed author, and an astronomer in a time when women were mostly banned from professional science. This is the story of Mary Ward. She published a significant amount of work, all while raising eight children. Sh...

We will be taking a week break from SWOS to celebrate Durga Puja! Learn a bit about Hinduism and Bengali culture in this very special episode about Durga Puja!

Rita Levi - Montalcini created an entire laboratory in her bedroom when she was banned from her lab, she discovered a protein that changed how neuroscience is done, and won a noble prize all after surviving World War II. This is her story. Sources: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10014200/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11490299/ https://www.nobelprize.org/stories/women-who-chan...

Imagine moving to a different country by yourself at 18, getting a PhD by 26, and then decrypting the genome of one of the scariest viruses in the US at the time. Flossie Wong-Staal was a pioneering molecular biologist and virologist whose work reshaped our understanding of HIV and AIDS. Born in China and later making her mark in the United States, Wong-Staal became the first scientist to clone HI...

Do you know who discovered climate change? Most people would say John Tyndall, but that wouldn’t exactly be true. The actual first discoverer was a woman. But what's crazy is that she was almost completely erased from history. This is the story of Eunice Foote. Sources https://www.climate.gov/news-features/features/happy-200th-birthday-eunice-foote-hidden-climate-science-pioneer https://www.aps.or...

Hypatia, an ancient Roman philosopher, was literally the smartest woman of her time, and people knew it. She was, in fact, so smart that she literally became a threat to Christianity… This is the story of Hypatia, the first female mathematician