Twitter: @LostWomenofSci (followed by 7 science writers)
Site: lostwomenofscience.org
27 episodes
2021 to present
Average episode: 25 minutes
Open in Apple Podcasts • RSS
Categories: Science-Adjacent
Podcaster's summary: 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 |
| 2023-Mar-16 • 2 minutes Lost Women of Science Season 5: Trailer In 1965, a team of doctors at Rockefeller University announced what sounded like a miracle—they’d found a treatment for heroin addiction that actually seemed to work. For nearly two years, the researchers had been running an experiment with a small group of men, aged 19 to 37, who’d been using heroin for several years—and the results were astonishing. Men who’d been transfixed by heroin cravings for years, who had tried to quit before and failed, were suddenly able to return to their lives. One started pai... |
| 2023-Jan-26 • 24 minutes Of Chestnuts, Cherry Trees, and Mushroom Catsup: Flora Patterson, the Woman who Kept Devastating Blights from U.S. Shores Flora Wambaugh Patterson, a widowed mother of two, played a crucial role in keeping fungal blights from U.S. shores. |
| 2023-Jan-12 • 36 minutes A Complicated Woman: Leona Zacharias A blindness epidemic among premature babies, and a brilliant biologist whose story hits close to home here at Lost Women of Science. |
| 2023-Jan-05 • 2 minutes Introducing Lost Women of Science Shorts: Trailer Our brand new mini-series – 30-minute episodes, each devoted to the story of one overlooked female scientists. |
| 2022-Dec-01 • 28 minutes The Woman Who Knocked Science Sideways A special guest episode from Portraits |
| 2022-Nov-17 • 21 minutes The Feminist Test We Keep Failing There's a test that we at Lost Women of Science seem to fail again and again: the Finkbeiner Test. |
| 2022-Nov-03 • 34 minutes The "Relentlessly Positive" Yvonne Young Clark: An Interview with Y.Y.'s Daughter, Carol Lawson A special guest episode from Our Mothers Ourselves |
| 2022-Oct-13 • 39 minutes E4: The First of Many - The Success of STEM at HBCUs YY taught at Tennessee State University for 55 years. We look at her legacy as an engineer, an educator and a mom. And we investigate how HBCUs are training the next generation of Black scientists. |
| 2022-Oct-06 • 37 minutes E3: NASA, Rocket Engines, and the Moon Rock Box What did YY actually do as a mechanical engineer? We dive into her work at NASA, and the history of the American space program. |
| 2022-Sep-29 • 35 minutes E2: The Three Nevers - From Undergrad to Engineer When YY started college at Howard University, there were three things she swore she’d never do: marry a tall man, become a teacher, and work for the government. But love and life had other plans. |
| 2022-Sep-22 • 35 minutes E1: If You Want It, You Will - Growing Up in Segregated Louisville With her knack for fixing household appliances in early childhood, YY was practically born an engineer. And fortunately, she had a family that nurtured her atypical interest—even when the segregated South made pursuing it almost impossible. |
| 2022-Sep-08 • 2 minutes The First Lady of Engineering: Trailer Yvonne Y. Clark, known as YY throughout her career, has also been nicknamed “The First Lady of Engineering,” because of her groundbreaking achievements as a Black female mechanical engineer. Season 3 of Lost Women of Science traces her trajectory, from her unconventional childhood interest in fixing appliances to civil rights breakthroughs in the segregated South; from her trailblazing role at historically Black colleges and universities to her work at NASA. What can YY teach us about what it means to be th... |
| 2022-Sep-01 • 2 minutes Lost Women of Science Season 3: Trailer Carol Sutton Lewis, host of the podcast Ground Control Parenting, has long been interested in Black history. This season, she’s joining Lost Women of Science as a cohost to help tell the story of the mechanical engineer, Yvonne Young Clark. Known as Professor Clark to her students and YY to her engineering colleagues, YY’s career spanned academia and industry. She was a dedicated STEM educator and a champion of historically Black colleges and universities. Alongside cohost Katie Hafner, Carol will trace YY’... |
| 2022-Jun-02 • 26 minutes The Weather Myth When we first started researching Klára Dán von Neumann, we thought she was “the computer scientist you should thank for your smartphone's weather app.” It turns out, that’s not true. |
| 2022-Apr-28 • 30 minutes E5: La Jolla A new home, a new husband, and a new project. |
| 2022-Apr-21 • 40 minutes E4: Netherworld Klári von Neumann enters the Netherworld of computer simulations and postwar Los Alamos. |
| 2022-Apr-14 • 38 minutes E3: The Experimental Rabbit The ENIAC, an early electronic computer, gets a makeover. |
| 2022-Apr-07 • 40 minutes E2: Women Needed Klári von Neumann arrives in Princeton just as war breaks out in Europe. |
| 2022-Mar-31 • 38 minutes E1: The Grasshopper Before she entered a world of secrecy, computers and nuclear weapons, who was Klára von Neumann? |
| 2022-Mar-17 • 2 minutes A Grasshopper in Very Tall Grass: Trailer The first modern-style code executed on a computer was written in the 1940s by a woman named Klára Dán von Neumann–or Klári to her family and friends. And the historic program she wrote was used to optimize nuclear weapons. This season, we dive into this fascinating moment in postwar America through Klári’s work. We explore the evolution of early computers, the vital role women played in early programming, and the inescapable connection between computing and war. |
| 2021-Dec-23 • 27 minutes The Resignation We investigate the curious, charged circumstances surrounding the resignation of the director of pediatrics at Columbia University's Babies Hospital, and one pathologist at the center of it all: Dorothy Andersen. |
| 2021-Nov-25 • 37 minutes E4: Breakfast in the Snow Dr. Andersen’s legacy creates hope for those living with cystic fibrosis today. |
| 2021-Nov-18 • 29 minutes E3: The Case of the Missing Portrait A missing portrait of Dr. Andersen takes us on a journey into the perils of memorialization—and who gets to be remembered. |
| 2021-Nov-11 • 39 minutes E2: The Matilda Effect The traces Dr. Andersen left behind provide glimpses into her life. |
| 2021-Nov-04 • 31 minutes E1: The Question Mark While performing an autopsy on the body of a young child, Dr. Dorothy Andersen made a startling discovery. |
| 2021-Oct-20 • 3 minutes The Pathologist in the Basement: Trailer When Dr. Dorothy Andersen confronted a slew of confounding infant deaths, she knew the accepted diagnosis couldn’t be right. Her medical detective work led to our current understanding of Cystic Fibrosis, a disease that circuitously impacts the pancreas and lungs. But she is by no means a household name, and the details of her life get scarcer every day. Who was this scientist, and how did she come to quietly make such an important medical contribution? |
| 2021-Oct-14 • 2 minutes Lost Women of Science: Trailer For every Marie Curie or Rosalind Franklin whose story has been told, hundreds of female scientists remain unknown to the public at large. 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 focuses on one 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 p... |