Women In Science - Tumblr Posts
Her name is Katalin Karikó. Hungarian. Daughter of a butcher. Her thesis work became the basis of the mRNA vaccine technology. Read the article here.
Turin, 22 April 1909 - Rome, 30 December 2012
![Since her death in 1979, the woman who discovered what the universe is made of has not so much as received a memorial plaque. Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery. […] Every high school student knows that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, that Charles Darwin discovered evolution, and that Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time. But when it comes to the composition of our universe, the textbooks simply say that the most abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen. And no one ever wonders how we know.❞ — Jeremy Knowles, discussing the complete lack of recognition Cecilia Payne gets, even today, for her revolutionary discovery. (via alliterate) OH WAIT LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT CECILIA PAYNE • Cecilia Payne’s mother refused to spend money on her college education, so she won a scholarship to Cambridge. • Cecilia Payne completed her studies, but Cambridge wouldn’t give her a degree because she was a woman, so she said to heck with that and moved to the United States to work at Harvard. • Cecilia Payne was the first person ever to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College, with what Otto Strauve called “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.” • Not only did Cecilia Payne discover what the universe is made of, she also discovered what the sun is made of (Henry Norris Russell, a fellow astronomer, is usually given credit for discovering that the sun’s composition is different from the Earth’s, but he came to his conclusions four years later than Payne — after telling her not to publish). • Cecilia Payne is the reason we know basically anything about variable stars (stars whose brightness as seen from earth fluctuates). Literally every other study on variable stars is based on her work. • Cecilia Payne was the first woman to be promoted to full professor from within Harvard, and is often credited with breaking the glass ceiling for women in the Harvard science department and in astronomy, as well as inspiring entire generations of women to take up science. • Cecilia Payne is awesome and everyone should know her. (OP: Matthew Gardner)](https://64.media.tumblr.com/62252d2e0b47b6782fbd6ef350407812/5bd09b4ca294947e-d3/s500x750/58ae690a544239d5a7cdf38d6193c1e114d908a1.jpg)
There's this floor demo that we do at the science center I'm interning at called "Earthquake Liquefaction." I might start including this as a bit of extra trivia/science history! It's so cool, and not enough people (including myself up until now) are aware of Marie Tharp (or heck, a lot of female scientists)!
God could you imagine how mad geologists must have been to slowly watch the "hey all the continents kinda fit like puzzle pieces :)" guy get proven right
When astronomy honour’s student Michelle Kunimoto graduates on Monday, she’ll do so already holding the honour of being a galactic pioneer with distinction.
The 22-year-old University of British Columbia undergraduate has discovered four new planets in the Cygnus (Swan) constellation, known as “exoplanets” because they’re outside our solar system.
“I got interested in exoplanets from Star Trek,” she told Metro in an interview in UBC’s physics department. “The whole theme of Star Trek, curiosity and exploration, is really important for the long, long, long term. We want to answer the age-old question: Are we alone?”
She spent months poring through 400 different data samples from the Kepler space telescope, which captures the curves of light from distant stars. Sudden dips in their light can correspond to planets passing in front of them.
Kunimoto likened her method to trying to hear one quiet voice in a crowded room full of loud talkers. But when she first noticed the faint but tell-tale dip, she didn’t allow herself get excited.
“I had to be very careful,” she explained. “I ran them through a lot of tests, but the more tests I ran, the more confident I felt.
“When they all passed the right tests, and I had these four planets remaining, that was really exciting!”
The planet she’s most enthusiastic about is called Kepler Object Of Interest 408.05, which she nicknamed “Warm Neptune,” because it’s roughly the size of its namesake planet, but is within the distance needed for the warm, Earth-like atmosphere needed to host life. It’s 3,200 light years from Earth.
Technically, what she found are still considered “planet candidates” until they can be independently confirmed, but for her UBC supervisor the results are clear.
“It’s rare that you have that ‘Eureka!’ moment any more,” astronomy professor Jaymie Matthews told Metro proudly. “Michelle’s discovery was time-consuming, and she’s done this for only 400 out of 150,000 light curves.”
But will Kunimoto’s “Warm Neptune” — located within what Matthews dubbed the “Goldilocks” zone of planets that are neither too hot nor too cold to support life — potentially be home to intelligent life?
“You can bet that once the results are confirmed and more widely disseminated, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute will put KOI-408.05 on their list of higher-priority targets to monitor,” Matthews said. “If there is life and signals we could eavesdrop on, these are the places they’d be coming from.”
On Saturday, Kunimoto got a shout-out before a large UBC audience from Star Trek star William Shatner, who praised her discoveries on stage. “I was really honoured!” she said. “That was completely unexpected, my face was going red.”
Her name is Katalin Karikó. Hungarian. Daughter of a butcher. Her thesis work became the basis of the mRNA vaccine technology. Read the article here.
These are amazing — and shockingly accurate. Did you know there’s a “Bechdel test” for female scientist biographies?
Follow @the-future-now
Delaware Today
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This is a piece for Delaware Today about young girls losing interest in science,technology, engineering and math related studies. The state’s schools and businesses are hoping to turn all this around. I love it when I come up with a few sketches that I still want to use for something and this was one of those times. A big thanks to AD Kelly Carter!
Engineering Change, One Ad at a Time
Imagine this: In the middle of a billion-dollar televised spectacle of sporting violence, sandwiched between beer ads and gyrating plastic cheerleaders, surrounded by the latest Madison Avenue pleas for flavored taco shells and montages of young, hip people using that one new e-reader that everyone likes so much, 120 seconds of hope emerged.
Here is that hope.
It comes in the form of this Rube Goldberg-inspired ad for Goldie Blox, a series of building toys aimed at smashing the blinding pink wall put up around young girls and their toys. Maybe we should change it to Ruby Goldberg after this? Because they just owned it.
Here’s the deal: I don’t have to tell you how amazing this toy is (although I have before) or how great this video is (because that will be obvious when you watch it). What you need to do is go vote for this ad to be featured during the next Super Bowl!!!! Yes. Go vote. Go now, and go every day. The whole world has a chance to see this.
The power is literally in your hands. Use them to build some little girl’s future. Then who knows what she might build?
Its pretty incredible how accurate the science of astrophysics has gotten. New Horizons actually arrived 72 seconds early after travelling for almost 10 years straight to its destination.
#GirlsWithToys hashtag - part 35
What is this hashtag about? In short: the hashtag was born out of casual sexism by a male scientist. To read more about what spurred this response, read Kate Clancy’s (creator of the hashtag) article below:
Girls With Toys: This is what real scientists look like.
View my other posts here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13, part 14, part 15, part 16, part 17, part 18, part 19, part 20, part 21, part 22, part 23, part 24, part 25, part 26, part 27, part 28, part 29, part 30, part 31, part 32, part 33 and part 34.
Can I just say that as a future engineer, and hopeful candidate for the NASA space program Katherine Johnson, and NASA engineer Mary Jackson are the women I look up to. Every day I go to class I get my male peers treating me like I do f have the capability to understand the coursework. I get declined internships because they don’t feel I could handle the workload like the “strong men on the floor.” However none of these small inconveniences even pale in comparison to the suffering these brave, brilliant women had to go through to garner the respect they so deserved. Despite all the hardship, injustice, prejudice, and hate they received from a society who refused to see their worth simply because of what they looked like, these women kept fighting. They fought the good fight, and helped pave the way to a better future. A future where men and women alike could touch the stars. These are the women I want to make proud. These are the women that I want to succeed for.
Katherine Johnson (b. 1918) is a physicist and mathematician who has made crucial contributions to several NASA missions, assuring their success with her highly accurate calculations. She worked with NASA for several decades, and helped advance the rights of both African-Americans and women.
She initially worked as a human computer, and later as an aerospace technologist. She calculated trajectories for missions such as the 1961 Mercury mission or the 1969 Apollo 11 flight. She was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson in the 2016 film Hidden Figures.
“HR was right about one thing: I AM DIFFICULT!”
My new favorite mad scientist supervillain hero