Lost Women of Science Lost Women of Science

“We were each put on earth to torment the other,” says cognitive scientist Steven Pinker of Elizabeth Bates, a psychologist who challenged the prevailing theory about how humans acquire language. Bates believed that language emerges from interactions between our brains and our environments, and that we do not have an innate language capacity. To many, that sounds like an innocuous statement. But in making these claims, Bates challenged formidable linguists like Pinker and Noam Chomsky, placing herself at the center of a heated debate that remains unresolved half a century later.

Melba Phillips, who grew up on a farm in Indiana at the turn of the 20th century, was one of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s first graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley. Together they discovered the Oppenheimer-Phillips Process, which explained a particular kind of nuclear reaction. In this episode, we explain what that is, with a little help from generative AI. Phillips did not follow Oppenheimer to Los Alamos, and was vocal in her opposition to nuclear weapons. During the McCarthy era, she lost her teaching job, and did not return to academia until 1957. In 1962, then in her mid-fifties, she finally became a full professor at the University of Chicago.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was in her early 20s when she figured out what the stars are made of. Both she and her groundbreaking findings were ahead of their time. Continuing the legacy of women working at the Harvard College Observatory, Cecilia charted the way for a generation of female astronomers to come. This Best Of episode of Lost Women of Science follows Cecilia’s journey of discovery, journals her drive and determination against all odds, and takes you to the Harvard College Observatory itself to walk in Cecilia’s footsteps.

The year is 1897 and Annie Maunder, an amateur astronomer, is boarding a steamship bound for India from England. Her goal: to photograph a total solar eclipse. Like the many people whose gaze will turn upwards in North America on April 8, Maunder was fascinated by the secrets of the sun and was determined to travel the globe and unlock them. She understood that the few minutes of darkness during a solar eclipse presented a special opportunity to explore the nature of the sun. Her observations led to our greater understanding of how the sun affects the earth, but like so many early female scientists, her contributions and achievements have been forgotten.

In this episode of Lost Women of Science Conversations, Michelle Nijhuis talks to historian Catherine McNeur about how she rediscovered the lives and work of Elizabeth and Margaretta Morris, two natural scientists who made significant contributions to botany and entomology in the mid-19th Century. Elizabeth collected rare plant species and sent them to institutions around the world, and Margaretta not only discovered new insects but also helped farmers combat the pests that were devastating their fields. Nevertheless, by both design and accident, these women were lost to history. McNeur tells us how that happened and how, piece by piece, she recovered their stories.

While working at the Salk Institute in California, Ursula Bellugi discovered that sign language was made up of specific building blocks that were assembled following strict rules, much like in spoken language. Her subsequent discoveries about the complexities of sign language led both to linguistic breakthroughs and to changes in the way deaf people felt about signing. Bellugi demonstrated that sign language is as rich and complex as any spoken language. Her work deepened our understanding of what it means to communicate as humans.