
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”
Katie Hafner is host and co-executive producer of Lost Women of Science. She was a longtime reporter for the New York Times,, where she remains a frequent contributor. Hafner is uniquely positioned to tell these stories. Not only does she bring a skilled hand to complex narratives, but she has been writing about women in STEM for more than 30 years. She is also host and executive producer of Our Mothers Ourselves, an interview podcast, and the author of six nonfiction books. Her first novel, The Boys, was published by Spiegel & Grau in July. Follow Hafner on Twitter @katiehafner
Mycologist Flora Patterson helped make the USDA fungus collection into the world’s largest. She also made a mean mushroom “catsup”
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...
There's a test that we at Lost Women of Science seem to fail again and again: the Finkbeiner test
Yvonne Y. Clark, known as Y.Y., had a lifetime of groundbreaking achievements. In the final episode of this season’s Lost Women of Science podcast, we see how Y.Y.’s more than five decades of teaching educated a new generation of mechanical engineers, who credit her with helping to change the industry...
Yvonne Y. Clark, known as Y.Y. throughout her career, had a lifetime of groundbreaking achievements as a Black female mechanical engineer. In the third episode of the third season of the Lost Women of Science podcast, we see how Y.Y.’s brilliance helped make Project Apollo a success...
Yvonne Y. Clark, known as Y.Y. throughout her career, had a lifetime of groundbreaking achievements as a Black female mechanical engineer. In the second episode of the newest season of the Lost Women of Science podcast, we see Y.Y.’s true grit as she fights for recognition and a place at the science table...
Yvonne Y. Clark, known as Y.Y. throughout her career, had a lifetime of groundbreaking achievements as a Black female mechanical engineer. The third season of the Lost Women of Science podcast begins at the start of her story, during her unconventional childhood in the segregated South...
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...
Klára Dán von Neumann encounters a new home, a new husband and a new project
In the newest season of Lost Women of Science, we enter a world of secrecy, computers and nuclear weapons—and see how Klára Dán von Neumann was a part of all of it...
Klára Dán von Neumann enters the netherworld of computer simulations and the postwar Los Alamos National Laboratory
ENIAC, an early electronic computer, gets a makeover
In the newest season of Lost Women of Science, we enter a world of secrecy, computers and nuclear weapons—and see how Klára Dán von Neumann was a part of all of it...
Klára Dán von Neumann arrives in Princeton, N.J., just as war breaks out in Europe
Before she entered a world of secrecy, computers and nuclear weapons, who was Klára Dán von Neumann?
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...
A new podcast is on a mission to retrieve unsung female scientists from oblivion.
Lost Women of Science digs deep to uncover stories of scientists that have long been overlooked
In our final episode, we explore pathologist Dorothy Andersen’s legacy—what she left behind and how her work has lived on since her death. Describing her mentor’s influence on her life and career, pediatrician Celia Ores gives us a rare look into what Andersen was really like...
A missing portrait of physician and pathologist Dorothy Andersen takes us on a journey into the perils of memorialization—and who gets to be remembered. Pediatric intensivist Scott Baird hunts for the portrait, and psychiatry resident Nientara Anderson and emergency medicine resident Lizzy Fitzsousa, both former medical students at Yale University, explain how, in today’s diverse communities, “dude walls” can have an insidious effect on those who walk past them every day...
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