Medicine
Reconstruction Helped Her Become a Physician. Jim Crow Drove Her to Flee the U.S.
Sarah Loguen Fraser was the daughter of abolitionists and one of the first African American female doctors trained after the Civil War.
Stories by Katie Hafner
Electronics
This Efficiency-Obsessed Psychologist (and Mother of 11) Revolutionized Kitchen Design
Lillian Gilbreth pioneered time and motion efficiency in workplaces and revolutionized kitchen design
Particle Physics
How Antisemitism and Professional Betrayal Marred Lise Meitner’s Scientific Legacy
Letters between Lise Meitner and the chemist Otto Hahn reveal how she struggled with Hahn's failure to credit her work and condemn the Nazi atrocities
Particle Physics
She Cracked the Mystery of How to Split the Atom, but Someone Else Got the Nobel Prize for the Discovery
Lise Meitner, an Austrian-born Jewish physicist, never received the Nobel Prize she deserved for her pioneering work on nuclear fission
Defense
They Remembered the Lost Women of the Manhattan Project So That None of Us Would Forget
Physicists Ruth Howes and Caroline Herzenberg’s 10-year research project ensured a place in history for the female scientists, engineers and technicians who worked on the atomic bomb...
Defense
Meet the Physicist who Spoke Out against the Bomb She Helped Create
After atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear physicist Katharine Way persuaded the world’s greatest physicists to contribute essays to a book opposing nuclear weapons...
Defense
She Helped Build the Atomic Bomb to Stop the Nazis, But Was Haunted by What It Did to Japan
Here’s the story of the Lilli Hornig, the only female scientist named in the film Oppenheimer.
Defense
Meet the Woman Who Supervised the Computations That Proved an Atomic Bomb Would Work
Naomi Livesay worked on computations that formed the mathematical basis for implosion simulations. Despite her crucial role on the project, she is rarely mentioned as more than a footnote—until now...
Defense
This Lost Woman of the Manhattan Project Saw the Deadly Effects of Nuclear Radiation Up Close
Floy Agnes Lee came to Los Alamos, N.M., in 1945 knowing nothing of the top secret work on the atomic bomb happening all around her—but she studied the blood of the researchers who did...
Defense
What the Film Oppenheimer Probably Will Not Talk About: The Lost Women of the Manhattan Project
Hundreds of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project were women. They were physicists, chemists, engineers and mathematicians. Today we bring you the story of one of them...
Anatomy
Who Was Alessandra Giliani, 14th-Century Teen Anatomist?
Was a teenager named Alessandra Giliani the Western world’s first female anatomist? In 14th-century Italy, women were strictly barred from medical research. One flouted that rule—disguised as a man...
Astronomy
This Astronomer Discovered What the Stars Were Made Of, and Few Believed Her Discovery
Nearly 100 years ago a young astronomer named Cecilia Payne changed the way we see the stars in the sky because she was able to look into their burning heart and see something no one else ever had...
Inequality
How an American Psychiatrist Inspired a Street Name in Germany—And Why That’s So Unusual
Nyswanderweg, a tiny residential street in Hamburg, Germany, is easy to miss. Yet it’s a rare and significant monument to Marie Nyswander
Drug Use
A New Era in Addiction Medicine: A Trailblazing Doctor’s Legacy and the Ongoing Search for a Cure
Medication treatment for heroin addiction has come a long way since its pioneer died. But what would she think of the field today?
Drug Use
Methadone Maintenance versus Synthetic Heaven: Inside the Historic Fight over Heroin Treatment
In the 1970s Marie Nyswander thought that she had finally found a long-term treatment for heroin addiction, but not everyone agreed—including some of the people she was trying to help...
Drug Use
These Doctors Fought the Federal Bureau of Narcotics to Treat Addiction—With Drugs
In the early 1960s a trio at the Rockefeller Institute started a bold experiment to change the way heroin addiction was treated, and they did so using a drug originally created by “the devil’s chemist”...
Drug Use
From Orgasms to Overdoses: How Marie Nyswander Went from Treating ‘Sexual Frigidity’ to Heroin Addiction
A young psychoanalyst specializing in sexual issues starts getting calls for help—about something else entirely
Drug Use
Marie Nyswander Changed the Landscape of Addiction. Here’s How Her Story Begins
In the first episode of Season Five of the Lost Women of Science podcast, we meet a young doctor who, in 1946, was posted to Kentucky’s Narcotic Farm
Microbiology
This Overlooked Scientist Helped Save Washington, D.C.’s Cherry Trees
Mycologist Flora Patterson helped make the USDA fungus collection into the world’s largest. She also made a mean mushroom “catsup”
Medicine
Leona Zacharias Helped Solve a Blindness Epidemic among Premature Babies. She Received Little Credit
In the first Lost Women of Science Shorts podcast, host Katie Hafner dives into the life and work of Leona Zacharias—a brilliant researcher who, before reporting this story, Hafner only knew as her grandmother...
