Where can a great idea take you? Anywhere—especially when you’re a child with a boundless future ahead of you. Take IBM Master Inventor Lisa Deluca. Her first brush with invention occurred in second grade, when she prototyped an idea she had for a full-body umbrella. This sparked a rich future for Lisa, setting her down a path of invention that has culminated in over 400 patents, making her the most prolific female inventor in IBM history. Every child deserves the chance to encounter the same spark—especially girls, whose rich curiosity is often underserved due to lack of exposure to female role models in STEM careers. That’s why IBM is working with the Ad Council and four other major companies on the “She Can STEM” campaign. It encourages girls to get involved in science, technology, engineering and math by promoting the accomplishments of role models like Lisa. We’re encouraging every woman in a STEM career to post a picture of their younger self juxtaposed with their current picture, showing young girls that “If she can STEM, so can you.” IBM believes sparking girls’ futures starts with showing them that their great ideas can take them anywhere they’d like to go. Join the #SheCanSTEM conversation on social with leaders like Lisa today.
How do you become a Women in Technology (WIT) Woman of the Year Award Honoree? Ask IBMer Neera Mathur, and she’d probably tell you there’s more to it than a passion for enterprise data solutions, which she has. There’s more to it than deep technical knowledge, business understanding, and strong communication skills, all of which she has. There’s even more to it than essential experience leading a core team of IT architects, IT specialists, business analysts, and software engineers—experience that she, of course, has. No, what Neera might say is that to achieve an honoree status like WIT Woman of the Year, you must constantly re-invent yourself and inspire the next generation. Neera might advise you to take an active role in the community, like she has, dedicating time to the self-empowerment of elementary and middle school girls to choose careers in tech. Or she might recommend leading volunteer teachers for Girls Who Code or mentoring students in the non-profit organization Cool Girls, as she has. Whatever Neera might say, we’re proud that we, at IBM, can not only say she’s one of us, but that she’s been a role model during her entire thirty-five year tenure at IBM.
72-year-old British Nobel laureate Sir Tim Hunt has a distinct opinion about female scientists’ role in the lab: Namely, that they are distracting, emotional and shouldn’t work alongside men. Thankfully, Vagenda and others on Twitter are here to show him how wrong he is.
Nobel Prize winner Tim Hunt told a room full of journalists that the trouble with “girls” in the lab is that “they fall in love with you and when you criticize them, they cry.”
Rosalind Franklin always liked facts. She was logical and precise, and impatient with things that were otherwise. She decided to become a scientist when she was 15. She passed the examination for admission to Cambridge University in 1938, and it sparked a family crisis. Although her family was well-to-do and had a tradition of public service and philanthropy, her father disapproved of university education for women. He refused to pay. An aunt stepped in and said Franklin should go to school, and she would pay for it. Franklin’s mother also took her side until her father finally gave in.
…
She spent three years in France, enjoying the work atmosphere, the freedoms of peacetime, the French food and culture. But in 1950, she realized that if she wanted to make a scientific career in England, she had to go back. She was invited to King’s College in London to join a team of scientists studying living cells. The leader of the team assigned her to work on DNA with a graduate student. Franklin’s assumption was that it was her own project. The laboratory’s second-in-command, Maurice Wilkins, was on vacation at the time, and when he returned, their relationship was muddled. He assumed she was to assist his work; she assumed she’d be the only one working on DNA. They had powerful personality differences as well: Franklin direct, quick, decisive, and Wilkins shy, speculative, and passive. This would play a role in the coming years as the race unfolded to find the structure of DNA.
Franklin made marked advances in x-ray diffraction techniques with DNA. She adjusted her equipment to produce an extremely fine beam of x-rays. She extracted finer DNA fibers than ever before and arranged them in parallel bundles. And she studied the fibers’ reactions to humid conditions. All of these allowed her to discover crucial keys to DNA’s structure. Wilkins shared her data, without her knowledge, with James Watson and Francis Crick, at Cambridge University, and they pulled ahead in the race, ultimately publishing the proposed structure of DNA in March, 1953.
The strained relationship with Wilkins and other aspects of King’s College (the women scientists were not allowed to eat lunch in the common room where the men did, for example) led Franklin to seek another position. She headed her own research group at Birkbeck College in London. But the head of King’s let her go on the condition she would not work on DNA. Franklin returned to her studies of coal and also wrapped up her DNA work. She turned her attention to viruses, publishing 17 papers in five years. Her group’s findings laid the foundation for structural virology.
While on a professional visit to the United States, Franklin had episodes of pain that she soon learned were ovarian cancer. She continued working over the next two years, through three operations and experimental chemotherapy and a 10-month remission. She worked up until a few weeks before her death in 1958 at age 37.
Ocean alien - this mesmerizing creature is glaucus atlanticus, or the “blue dragon” nudibranch. Rather than crawl along the seafloor like other sea slugs however, these little dragons really do soar across the seas - those winglike appendages create surface tension that allows them to adhere to the underside of the water’s surface, with currents and wind patterns carrying them across large distances. Despite this grand way of living, g. atlanticus only reaches up to a few centimeters long!
This one’s for every student who was made to feel stupid by their teachers and peers, for every kid treated like a lost cause in education. This is a fuck you to everyone who thought I’d never achieve anything like this. Yesterday I graduated with an MSc degree with Merit in Crime Science from UCL, one of the most prestigious and most difficult universities in the world. I’d love to see teachers who kicked me out of class for asking for help, and the students who called me stupid on a daily basis, try that now. After being bullied badly through many of my years in education, it destroyed my confidence and made me believe that I was an idiot. Not only have I proved them wrong, I’ve proved to myself that I’m capable of anything I put my mind to. #ThisIsWhatAsexualLooksLike
The bad hospital experience that led Aminta Kouyate to become a doctor.
Going to the hospital isn’t fun, it’s when people are typically at their most vulnerable.
And for many people of color, traumatic encounters with the health care system are a reason to avoid going to the doctor. But for UC medical student Aminta Kouyate, it sealed her decision to become a physician.
Aminta was an undergrad at UC Berkeley, tackling general chemistry and physics, when she woke up at 5 a.m. with debilitating abdominal pain. Doctors first suspected appendicitis — but when the imaging showed her appendix was fine, “the tone in the room changed immediately,” Kouyate said. She was left for five hours by an open exit door in a hallway in just a thin patient gown.
“I was told I could leave at any time because they were not going to give me what I was looking for,” she said. “They thought I was there to seek pain medication, that I did not actually have a medical emergency.”
Finally, a Black nurse noticed her sitting in the hall and made sure the doctors addressed her problem and gave her the care she needed. But the experience left its mark.
“Nobody should ever have to have to feel this way,” she said. “I thought to myself, ‘If I have anything to do with it, nobody’s ever going to treat another patient like this again.’”
This is just one reason why Women exercising is important, and exercising for other reasons than just to look pretty.
Of course, “Because I want to/like it/want to get beefy” are all valid, but I want to highlight this story as something that was previously barred from Women. When Women were able to have the experiences that Men take for granted, it had a net positive effect by opening up many more opportunities for many more Women who would go on to do great things, like Sally Ride did.
The sex bias in my field hits me the most when I realise that out of the 10 women that share the same two supervisors as I, only two of us want to continue in research (industry or university).
Everyone else wants to be clinicians and are using master degrees and PhDs as stepping stones for med school and clinical psychology.
I leave for a major conference on Tuesday and for once between my lab and the one I collaborate the most with, I am not the only woman. But we are still just 2 women for 7 men, not counting graduated male lab members that will join the group once the conference starts.
I never really noticed it until now because my research focus has psychological components and my back ground is in psychology, the cohort in my undergrad was predominantly women and I always worked with the female professors. But in my new department I only know one female professor. 1 for an entire department, it’s eye opening and depressing. I hope more is done at the university to increase the ratio between men and women.
Each necklace sports the profile (or cameo) of a different woman who pioneered science in her own way. Available in silver, copper, or bronze with different finishes. So many phenomenal women, I can’t choose just one!
Summary: Caroline Elizabeth Whitney (1899-1928) graduated from Washington University Medical School in 1924 and the following year became the first female intern at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis. She taught at Washington University Medical School until her death from tuberculosis in 1928
Rosalind Wulzen (b. 1886) Physiology professor Rosalind Wulzen (b. 1886) discovered a factor (the “Wulzen factor”) that protects the joints of mammals from calcification. She taught at the University of California during the 1920s [Link to data base record]
In 1921, the Marine Biological Laboratory’s Biological Bulletin listed Ruth Winkley as a clerk in the laboratory supply department; she graduated from University of Michigan in 1925, where she studied invertebrate zoology. This is probably Ruth L. Winkley, the daughter of scientist Henry W. Winkley
This cameo necklace features the silhouette of Dame Jane Goodall, DBE. She is a British primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist, and UN Messenger of Peace.
This elegant cameo necklace makes a great gift for feminists, scientists, animal lovers, history buffs, or anyone who likes a great conversation piece!
Summary: In 1972, Tsai-Ying Cheng was at the Institute for Cancer Research, Philadelphia, and in 1978, joined the Department of Chemistry, University of Oregon
in media, we often see the main heroine reject “girly” things in order to participate in an intellectual/sporty activity that is associated with men. they don’t care about clothes or makeup and they absolutely hate the idea of shopping. femininity and girliness are often looked down upon because they are considered as stupid. in “the queen’s gambit”, i thought it was incredibly refreshing to see that the main heroine, beth harmon, fully embraces her “girlier” side while completely demolishing every single one of her rivals in chess.
when she finally earned money to buy herself a chess board, we see her also buying a beautiful dress. she bought herself the shoes all the other girls were wearing because she wanted to. she didn’t scoff at the idea of going to the spa with her mother, she was happy to do it. we see her not only become a chess champion, but also become an unapologetic young woman. beth harmon is a badass girly girl in a male dominated field who never compromised her femininity. and i absolutely loved every single moment of it.
Funny, I just saw almost the exact opposite take on this show recently. I’m not saying either of you are entirely wrong, just that it’s interesting to see such divergent perspectives. I can’t seem to find the post I read that opinion on, but basically the person was saying that as a woman in STEM, they put a lot of effort into their appearance and being “hot”, and for a time they felt they were proving something by being smart and sexy, but in the end it just meant they were conforming to society’s expectations that women be perfectly put-together in order to be respected.
Star Trek Voyager’s Kate Mulgrew and Robert Picardo chat (video).
Star Trek Voyager’s Kate Mulgrew and Robert Picardo chat (video).
Kate Mulgrew and Robert Picardo chat together about their time on Star Trek Voyager for half an hour. I hope I age half as well as these two TV legends. Let’s take that starship home, baby.
![[marine] bio studyblr](https://64.media.tumblr.com/avatar_6b8d8b41243d_30.gif){kind=avatar}
