Have you ever doubted your knowledge or expertise? Noticed, if you're a woman, that you receive less recognition than your male colleagues do, that your ideas were unheard in a discussion until they were echoed by a man - who then received credit for them? Have you observed a gendered division of labour in your workplace; a pay gap; gender, racial or class prejudices? Have you felt pressured to choose between being a wife, a mother and a scientist? Most women in science have.
The his­to­ry of sci­ence, like most every his­to­ry we learn, comes to us as a pro­ces­sion of great, almost exclu­sive­ly white, men, unbro­ken but for the occa­sion­al token woman-well-deserv­ing of her hon­ors but seem­ing­ly anom­alous nonethe­less. "If you believe the his­to­ry books," notes the Time­line series The Matil­da Effect, "sci­ence is a guy thing. Dis­cov­er­ies are made by men, which spur fur­ther inno­va­tion by men, fol­lowed by acclaim and prizes for men. But too often, there is an unsung woman genius who deserves just as much cred­it" and who has been over­shad­owed by male col­leagues who grabbed the glo­ry.
Darleane Hoffman was a trailblazing nuclear chemist whose work helped to extend the periodic table and deepen our understanding of the heaviest elements. The transuranic elements - those with an atomic number higher than uranium's 92 - are all unstable and radioactive. Her discovery of naturally occurring plutonium-244 overturned the long-held premise that uranium-238 was the heaviest element found in nature. Her research influenced our understanding of nuclear fission, advanced cancer therapies and improved nuclear-waste-management protocols. She has died aged 98.
The Invisible Mammal tells the captivating story of a dedicated team of women scientists as they strive to protect North America's bats against a deadly disease rapidly spreading across the continent. The film, directed by San Francisco filmmaker Kristin Tièche and produced by Matthew Podolsky (Sea of Shadows) follows a team of women bat biologists into underground habitats as they work to save a rapidly disappearing species: the little brown bat.
"It was not uncommon for boxes of 10 books at a time to arrive from the library, and her office could be the model for any illustration of books and articles literally spilling off tables and shelves."
