Role Models
thusspakezuska | July 18, 2007Well, the White House finally got around to naming the winners of the 2006 National Medals of Science. Of the 11 winners named, two - count 'em, two! - are actually women! Rita Colwell and Nina Federoff made the cut. Here's how the Chronicle of Higher Education summarized their accomplishments:
Rita R. Colwell, a professor of microbiology and biotechnology at the University of Maryland at College Park. Ms. Colwell, who was director of the National Science Foundation from 1998 to 2004, will receive the prize for creating a better understanding of marine microbes -- the agent that causes…
thusspakezuska | June 29, 2007There's a debate going on among my Sciblings about atheism: is it or is it not a civil rights issue? Matthew at Framing Science is of the opinion that it is not, and apparently thinks people like Richard Dawkins are giving atheists a bad name. Jason at Evolutionblog writes the following:
Atheists don't face a public image problem because of the books of Dawkins and Hitchens. They face a public image problem because of the bigotry and ignorance of so many religious people. Not all religious people, certainly, as the strawman version of their arguments would have you believe. But a much…
thusspakezuska | June 24, 2007One year has passed since Denice Denton's untimely death. It's a real understatement to say that Denice was a trailblazer. Here's Jean Bahr's memory of Denice:
I met Denice at a reception at the Women's Studies Center in the fall of 1987 when we were both beginning our tenure track appointments at Madison. There were only a handful of women faculty in the physical sciences, and Denice was the ONLY woman faculty member in the College of Engineering. Someone suggested that the women in physical sciences and engineering should try to get together periodically for mutual support. If my memory is…
thusspakezuska | June 21, 2007I can't tell if this Chronicle piece is behind a paywall or not, because I already logged into my account today so everything opens up in my browser right away...I hope it's not, because I'd love for you to see the picture of Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College, on a skateboard. It's how she commutes from her home to her office! If you can get to the article, then there's a link to an audio slide show, too. From the article:
A video-game enthusiast, marathon runner, juggler, and painter, Ms. Klawe, 55, is a self-described klutz who credits her talents to intense practice. The…
thusspakezuska | June 3, 2007Every week in the Currents section of the Sunday paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer runs a feature called "Influences: What Shapes The Minds That Make The News". It's basically a "twenty questions" type of thing, with the same questions each week, and each week some interesting local bigwig answers it.
This week's bigwig is Catherine T. Hunt, who is president of the American Chemical Society, and is also described as a "leader in technology partnerships, Rohm & Haas Co., in Spring House". Let me just note here that she is also an alumna of Smith College; women's colleges send a…
thusspakezuska | May 14, 2007I have to admit, I am an avid reader of comic strips in the daily newspaper. There's a lot of social commentary in the daily comics. Over the past year or two, I've watched as a few of the more conservative strips have slyly (or not so slyly) introduced references to intelligent design into a panel here and there. Here's an example I commented on in September 2005.
You will also find reflected in many comic stips stereotypical attitudes about gender. You don't have to look very hard most of the time. So when you find something different, it's really a pleasure.
Today's Baldo strip…
thusspakezuska | May 12, 2007The theme of the upcoming Scientiae carnival is "Mothers and Others, women who have influenced you along the way". So here are my musings. scientiae-carnival
I am fond of saying that my mom is the reason I became an engineer. She is not, of course, the sole reason I became an engineer, nor is she the sole person responsible for me sticking it out despite all the crap I had to put up with and all the jerkwads who tried to discourage me and get me to quit along the way. But she played a pretty significant role, and that's all the more remarkable given who she is and where she came from.…
thusspakezuska | April 23, 2007The Spring 2007 issue of SWE Magazine has an article on the newest inductees into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Among them is Eleanor Baum, the fifth SWE member to be so honored. The others are Lillian Moller Gilbreth, Beatrice Hicks, Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, and Sheila Widnall. Baum is currently dean of engineering at Cooper Union. You could while away some pleasant time just browsing among the list of members of the Hall of Fame.
Baum was nominated for the Hall of Fame by Jill Tietjen, a past-president of SWE. Jill has a distinguished career as an engineer and is the…
thusspakezuska | February 23, 2007So, they've been handing out this award for 40 years. For 39 of them, they couldn't see fit to find any woman qualified to receive it. But FINALLY! Yay! Three cheers for Frances E. Allen, 2006 winner of the Turing Award and its $100,000 prize!
She only had to wait until she was 75, and retired for 4 years, to be honored for her work. I guess they just didn't notice her anytime during the last four decades. Lucky for her she lived long enough for the judges to find her.
Plus, she must be the ONLY woman up until now who has done anything deserving of the Turing Award. Unless,…
thusspakezuska | February 6, 2007I like to scan the New Scholarly Books section of the Chronicle of Higher Education; every so often, something interesting in History of Science or Women's Studies pops up. Recently I saw a little blurb under history of science that read
Science in Latin America: A History, edited by Juan José Saldaña...Translation of writings by Latin American historians on the role of science in the region's societies since the colonial era.
That piqued my interest so I poked around on the web. You can order the book on Amazon. The summary below is from this site, where you'll also find the table of…
thusspakezuska | January 31, 2007Kristin wrote, in a comment:
Hey, although a search for blogs by Hispanic scientists is coming up empty, it looks like there's a new anthology by female Hispanic scientists and engineers! But you can't find it in the online bookstores. Looks like if you want a copy, you have to email NCantu AT malcs DOT net. I think we should give them a boost at getting the word out, don't you?
And she gave us this website to check out.
Here's a press release about one of the contributors to the book.
Growing up in rural Los Angeles County in the 1960s, Cal State Northridge biology professor…
thusspakezuska | January 24, 2007Penny writes:
January 23rd is the birthday of Gertrude Elion (1918-1999) -- she won the Nobel in Medicine and held 45 patents.
January 24th is the birthday of a less famous medical researcher who was about the same generation as Elion: Virginia Minnich (1910-1996) was a hematologist. She was only able to attend college during the Depression because her older sister lent her the money--yeah for older sisters!
I would just like to add that January 20th is the birthday of Zuska and I celebrated with Mr. Zuska (but not till the 21st, since I was at the Science Blogging Conference on the…
thusspakezuska | January 24, 2007I think my favorite part of the day at the Science Blogging Conference was when Dr. Free-Ride gave her talk. It was titled "Adventures In Science Blogging: Conversations We Need To Have, and How Blogging Can Help Them". I am hoping she will turn this into a paper and publish it somewhere so I don't want to steal all her thunder. But I do want to share just a bit of what she talked about.
Dr. Free-Ride talked about the need for community and communication as key ingredients for human beings to flourish. She also drily noted that since, when she last checked, scientists are still human…
thusspakezuska | January 14, 2007Penny left some comments over at Let's All Have A Party with some January 14 birthdays to celebrate. She writes:
January 14 (as I type) is the birthday of botanist/geneticist Carrie Matilda Derick (1862-1941), the first woman appointed to a full professorship at a Canadian university. Her story is full of the pain and struggle of being the "first woman" over and over and over... and it's probably no wonder she worked for women's rights, including suffrage and birth control, beyond her academic work. See here for more info.
And one more born on January 14: Ninetta May Runnals (1885-1980…
thusspakezuska | December 11, 2006Penny commented that today is Annie Jump Cannon's birthday. I have long known of her as a famous astronomer but I did not know that she became deaf as an adult. Thanks, Penny, for providing the link to Disability Studies at Temple U. and the bit about Annie Jump Cannon for her birthday today. Do visit the DS-TU page; there is a marvelous photo of Cannon and a great short little bio. Her biography at 4000 Years of Women in Science is here. Also see this site at Wellesley. Great photos there, too, and a link to more info.
thusspakezuska | December 10, 2006I'm one day late getting to this, but...
...Penny posted this comment on Let's All Have a Party!
Posting this on the centenary of Grace Murray Hopper, born 9 December 1906. Math PhD from Yale in 1934, taught at Vassar till she joined the Naval Reserve during WWII and became a computer programmer. She's credited with overseeing the development of COBOL. {for bio, see here]
I have a soft spot in my heart for Amazing Grace. Now THERE is a real geek goddess for you.
Do visit the link for Let's All Have A Party! and see all the birthdays of fabulous women scientists and engineers that have…
thusspakezuska | December 6, 2006The latest installment in the X-Gals series is out: Life As A Mother-Scientist. Subtitle: The X-Gals, a group of nine female biologists, see a direct correlation between their productivity and their child care.
Note that last phrase: the link is not between productivity and having children. It's between productivity and child care. Access to it, quality of available child care, sudden unpredictable collapse of previously arranged child care, difficulty of obtaining child care for very young infants or sick children, and so on. When good child care arrangements are in place,…
thusspakezuska | December 4, 2006I should have posted this yesterday but wasn't able to...so this is a belated birthday celebration for Ellen Swallow Richards. Thanks again to Penny Richards for sending along the following information.
December 3, 1842--birthdate of Ellen Swallow Richards (1842-1911), first woman admitted to study at MIT.
She was a chemist; she was also married to the head of the mining engineering department. She worked to establish the Women's Laboratory at MIT (1876-1883), and had an (unpaid) instructor's position teaching chemistry courses. She was the official water analyst for the Massachusetts…
thusspakezuska | December 4, 2006SuzyQueue is a frequent commenter on this blog and usually has something interesting to say. I just had to promote one of her latest comments to a blog post:
I have made it a point to celebrate each 'first' woman elected to membership in the engineering professional societies by ordering a cake and having a party in the student commons area. I read a short biography of the woman whose birthday we are celebrating.
I do celebrate other birthdays and since I am buying the cake, I get to decide the event, whether it be a person's, building's, or event's birthday. I celebrate Chuck Yeager's…
thusspakezuska | November 29, 2006Penny Richards wrote via email to tell me that Saturday, November 25 was Kate Gleason's birthday.
Gleason (1865-1933) was the first woman admitted to full membership in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, in the 1910s (she represented ASME at an international conference in Germany in 1930). She was also the daughter of Irish immigrants, a bank president, an executive at her family's gear-planing company, and a lifelong suffragist. At Rochester Institute of Technology, the Kate Gleason College of Engineering is named in her honor, and displays a bust of Gleason at its entrance.…