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Born in 1848, Caroline Still Anderson completed high school at 15. When she enrolled at Oberlin College, she was the only Black student in her class.

Anderson went on to become a physician, driven to improve the social & political conditions of Black people. She also served as a prominent a social reformer in Philadelphian society.

http://stillfamily.library.temple.edu/stillfamily/exhibits/show/william-still/historical-perspective/biography-of-caroline-still-an #HistoryRemix #history #science

Portrait of Caroline Still Anderson, from "Who's Who in Philadelphia" by Charles Frederick White. Anderson was one of the first black women physicians in the United States.


Cleopatra VII died in 30 BCE & the Great Pyramid of Giza was completed ~2560 BCE.

In other words, the charismatic Egyptian queen lived closer in time to the invention of #Mastodon than to the building of the Great Pyramid. #history

Cleopatra and Ceasar by Jean-Léon Gérôme portrays the scene in which Cleopatra emerges from the carpet—probably somewhat disheveled, but dressed in her best finery—and begs Caesar for aid, the gesture that won over Rome's future dictator-for-life. With his help Cleopatra regained Egypt's throne. Image Source: Wikimedia Commons


A rare 2500-year-old saw, the first of its kind, discovered in Anatolia


Early Iron Age Tool

#History #Archarology #Hittites #Anatolia #Çorum #UNESCOWorldHeritageSite #Turkey #Hattusha


Born in 1917, Egyptian physicist Sameera Moussa studied radioactive isotopes used to create medical images. Her work “laid the groundwork for a revolution in the affordability & safety of nuclear medicine.”

Concerned about the potential use of nuclear weapons during WWII, Moussa organized the Atomic Energy for Peace conference.

She was likely assassinated at age 35 in a case that remains unsolved. https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/04/the-strange-tragic-story-of-egypts-foremost-female-nuclear-scientist/ #science #history

Sameera Moussa, Egyptian nuclear scientist (1917 - 1952)


They referred to her as “Moses” for guiding the enslaved from the South to freedom in the North. But, Harriet Tubman’s resistance to slavery extended beyond her role in the Underground Railroad. As a Union Army soldier and spy during the Civil War, she made history by becoming the first woman to lead an armed U.S. military mission.

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Image: “Harriet Tubman,” by Mark Fredrickson

Blog: https://open.substack.com/pub/400years/p/will-we-believe-our-lying-eyes?r=1pv9e3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Videos:
https://youtube.com/@400YearsUNLeashed?si=DCP_AUYj-_7PrZWS

https://youtube.com/@BlackBiographics?si=kEV7S1ZL70qlLFCK

#History #BlackMastodon


About 250M years ago, 90% of species on Earth died during the Permian extinction. All of that loss created a lot of vacant niches to fill. And not long after, the first mammals, our ancestors, appeared.

Life on this pale blue dot will continue to be resilient - whether or not we’re part of it. #Thanksgiving #science #history

Earthrise re-created by NASA. “The surface of the Moon is based on LRO data. Earth’s cloud patterns are based on the Environmental Science Services Administration 7 satellite as it observed our planet on December 24, 1968. The land surface is based on the Earth Observatory’s Terra MODIS Blue Marble. This high-fidelity re-creation shows the rising Earth as it must have looked to Anders, Borman, and Lovell 45 years ago. The western coast of Africa is visible along the lower part of the globe, with Antarctica in the upper left and South America along the top.”


Born in 1918, Gertrude Elion faced discrimination in #science, unable to get a job as a woman. So she volunteered as a lab dishwasher, earning enough $ for grad work at NYU, where she was the only woman in chemistry classes.

Eventually Elion helped revolutionize medicine w George Hitchings. They figured out how to interfere with cell growth, leading to effective drugs for treating leukemia, gout, malaria, herpes & more, earning a 1988 Nobel Prize. https://www.acs.org/education/whatischemistry/women-scientists/gertrude-elion.html #HistoryRemix #history

Gertrude Elion


“Man the Hunter has dominated the study of human evolution for nearly half a century & pervaded popular culture. [But] it was the arrival of agriculture that led to rigid gendered roles & economic inequality. Hunting belonged to everyone.”

The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt & Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-theory-that-men-evolved-to-hunt-and-women-evolved-to-gather-is-wrong1/ #science #history


Mary Anning was born in 1799 in Great Britain. Her family lived in poverty, selling fossils to make ends meet.

Scientists of Anning’s day could not believe that a poor young woman could posses her knowledge & talent. She has been described as 'the greatest fossilist the world ever knew' yet many people are still unaware of her incredible contributions.

The majority of Anning’s discoveries ended up in museums & collections without credit. https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/anning.html #science #history

Mary Anning, 1799-1847


Just 600 years ago, nine species of enormous, flightless birds called moas wandered around New Zealand. Some of these magnificent big birds grew up to 12 feet tall, which would tower over Sesame Street’s most famous resident.

Moas had thrived for millions of years. And suddenly - shortly after humans arrived on the islands - they went extinct.

Coincidence? #Science says no. https://www.science.org/content/article/why-did-new-zealands-moas-go-extinct #history

Last of the moas. Humans killed off the giant birds by overhunting, a new study says, although the hunters did not use bows and arrows. HEINRICH HARDER (1858-1935)


Educator, scientist & writer Ana Roqué de Duprey was born in Puerto Rico in 1853.

Known as the “Flower of the Valley” for her work in botany, Roqué wrote the Botany of the Antilles, the most comprehensive study of flora in the Caribbean & was instrumental in the fight for the Puerto Rican woman’s right to vote.

Roqué founded several girls-only schools & the College of Mayagüez, later the Mayagüez Campus of the University of Puerto Rico. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/ana-roque-de-duprey #HistoryRemix #history #science

Educator, scientist & writer Ana Roqué de Duprey


A woman. An immigrant. A scientist.
A Nobel Prize winner. And thanks to her pioneering research, a #COVID19 vaccine.

Dr. Katalin Karikó. https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-once-dismissed-idea-became-a-leading-technology-in-the-covid-vaccine-race/ #HistoryRemix #science #history

Katalin Karikó, as a PhD student chemically synthesizing RNA in 1980 while working in the RNA laboratory of Biological Research Center of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.


Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī was born ~780. He not only revolutionized algebra, but his contributions in mathematics, astronomy & geography have been central to hundreds of years of scientific advances.

Known as the father of algebra, al-Khwārizmī became one of the most influential thinkers of all time. The terms algebra & algorithm are derived from his name & work. https://www.loc.gov/item/2021666184/ #HistoryRemix #history #science #math

Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī Shutterstock / German Vizulis


“Vote NO on Woman Suffrage” 🙄

Not ancient #history, but just a century ago.

Source: State Archives of North Carolina

BECAUSE 90% of the women either do not want it, or do not care. BECAUSE it means competition of women with men instead of co-operation. BECAUSE 90% of the women eligible are married, and can only double on their husband’s votes. Because it can be of no benefit commensurate with the additional expense involved. Because in some states, more voting women than voting men will place the government under petticoat rule. Because it is unwise to risk the good we already have for the Evil which may occur.votes of women can accomplish no more than votes of men. Why waste time, energy, and money, without result?

National Association opposed to Woman Suffrage, New York and Washington DC, post-1911. Equal Suffrage Amendment Coalition, Private Collections, State Archives of North Carolina


Born in 1896, Ida Noddack was the first scientist to suggest the principle behind nuclear fission. But Otto Hahn demonstrated this (with Lise Meitner! & Fritz Strassmann) & he won the Nobel prize.

Noddack also discovered rhenium (atomic #75) & predicted #43, but couldn’t confirm it experimentally, so Segrè & Perrier were later credited.

She tried to speak up that the ideas for fission & #43 began with her, but it lost her credibility. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsnr.2014.0009 #HistoryRemix #history #science

Ida Noddack in her laboratory at the University of Freiburg, where she and Walter Noddack worked from 1935 to 1941. She is standing in front of her X-ray spectrograph. (Date and photographer unknown; courtesy of University Archives, KU Leuven, Archive Walter and Ida Noddack-Tacke, nr. 51.)


You’ve probably heard of “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” bc of her heroism on the Titanic, but there’s so much more to her story.

Margaret Brown (her real name) fought for workers’ rights, women’s rights, education & even ran for the Senate - before women could vote. She established Titanic’s Survivor's Committee & helped erect the DC memorial.

And yet, Brown wasn't allowed to participate in the congressional Titanic hearings simply bc she was a woman. #history

Margaret "Molly" Brown, survivor of the Titanic, three-quarter length portrait, standing, facing right, right arm on back of chair.	

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, George Grantham Bain Collection.



Born in 1897, Janaki Ammal was a pioneering botanist who studied plant breeding, genetics & cytogenetics.

Ammal overcame both gender & caste discrimination & was the first Indian woman to obtain a Ph.D. in botany in the U.S.

Her research was crucial for developing high-yield varieties of sugarcane, eggplant & magnolias. Ammal also promoted conservation & was a pioneer of indigenous approaches to the environment. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pioneering-female-botanist-who-sweetened-nation-and-saved-valley-180972765/ #HistoryRemix #science #history #plants

Janaki Ammal


The "Lost Women of Science" podcast just did a 2 part episode about her, part of their "Lost Women of the Manhattan Project" series.

(transcripts available)

Part 1: https://www.lostwomenofscience.org/season-6-episodes/lise-meitner

Part 2: https://www.lostwomenofscience.org/season-6-episodes/why-did-lise-meitner-never-receive-the-nobel-prize-for-splitting-the-atom-part-2

#Science #History #Women #Podcast #ManhattanProject


One positive that's come out of the recent SNS shake-ups is encountering new and deeply insightful voices I wouldn't have found in a more stable social network clusters/hierarchy. This article on letter writing philosophers, for example:

https://helendecruz.substack.com/p/letter-to-robin-waldun-on-reviving

Similar concept of less formal research letters is something I'd love to see revived for the modern age!

#writing #philosophy #history


“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”

- Albert Einstein, 1919

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/einstein-famous-quote-misunderstood/ #science #history


Sleepy prince.👑 1955. #CatsOfYore #Cat #Cats #History #catsodon #catsofmastodon #catcontent #ilovecats #vintage https://www.gettyimages.ie/detail/news-photo/sleeping-kitten-wearing-a-miniature-crown-news-photo/3323448
Black and white photo of a short or medium haired tabby kitten with white paws. It is sleeping sitting up on a dark prop in a studio setting. He has a very elaborate tiny crown on his head, the kind that is trimmed on the bottom in white ermine.


Physicist John Tyndall is often credited w discovering the greenhouse effect, which he wrote about in 1859.

But Eunice Foote published a paper - 3yrs earlier - demonstrating how atmospheric water vapor & CO2 affected solar heating. She theorized that heat trapping gases in Earth’s atmosphere warm its climate.

Tyndall was widely read. And Foote, being a woman, wasn't even permitted to present her own work. http://www.climate.gov/news-features/features/happy-200th-birthday-eunice-foote-hidden-climate-science-pioneer #history #science #ClimateChange

Drawing by Carlyn Iverson at NOAA Climate.gov.

Born on July 17, 1819, Eunice Newton Foote was an amateur scientist and a women's rights campaigner who was friends with American suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Foote's experiments with atmospheric gases and her insights about past climate were overlooked for more than a century.


Born in 1910, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin perfected X-ray crystallography, a type of imaging using X-rays to determine a molecule’s three-dimensional structure.

She determined the structures of insulin, penicillin & vitamin B12, leading to tremendous advances in medicine.

Hodgkin was awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964. She also advocated for world peace, campaigning against both the Vietnam War & nuclear weapons. https://www.nobelprize.org/womenwhochangedscience/stories/dorothy-hodgkin #HistoryRemix #science #history

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin in the 1920s.


Alan Turing was a mathematician & cryptographer who was a leading code-breaker in the team that decrypted Nazi Germany’s Enigma machine during WWII. He inspired modern computing & what became AI.

Instead of being hailed as a genius & hero, Turing was convicted as a homosexual & forced to endure chemical castration. He died by suicide at 41 in 1954.

The British government didn’t apologize until 2009 & Queen Elizabeth II finally pardoned him in 2013. #history #science

Alan Turing


Beaches are places of intertidal liminality. Transient, impermanent and ever changing. To be the first person to walk on the sands as the tide retreats, is to find the world remade.

#Galloway #Scotland #History #blackandwhitephotography

Atmospheric, long exposure, black and white photo of backwash moving around sea groynes under an overcast sky.


In 1916, 23 yr old chemist Alice Ball discovered a breakthrough in treatment for Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease). She was the 1st woman & 1st Black chemistry professor at UHawaii.

Tragically, Ball passed away months after her discovery due to complications from a lab accident.

What happened next? Arthur Dean, head of her dept, continued the work publishing Ball’s process as “Dean’s method.”

Fortunately, a colleague spoke up & the name was changed to “Ball’s method.” #HistoryRemix #science #history

Alice Ball. Credit: Wikimedia Commons


Katherine Esau, born in 1898 in Ukraine, was a pioneering botanist who studied plant anatomy & viruses.

Esau began studying agriculture in 1916 in Moscow. Her family fled to Berlin & ultimately arrived in the US in 1922.

Esau earned a PhD & her research on plant structure spanned 7 decades. She wrote 6 textbooks & was the 6th woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

In 1989, Esau received the National Medal of Science. https://ccber.ucsb.edu/ucsb-natural-history-collections-library-and-historical-information-katherine-esau/life-katherine #HistoryRemix #science #history

Katherine Esau Esau & a friend with bicycles on the UC Davis campus.


About 250M years ago, 90% of species on Earth died during the Permian extinction.

Tragic? Perhaps. But it also created a lot of vacant niches to fill.

And not long after, the very first mammals, our ancestors, appeared.

#Life on Earth is resilient & will continue to be, whether we're part of it or not. #history #science

This photograph of the Earth was taken on Dec. 7, 1972, by the crew of the final Apollo mission, Apollo 17, as they traveled toward the moon on their lunar landing mission. Credit: NASA


Born in 1861, Nettie Stevens received her PhD in 1903. She went on to discover sex chromosomes in mealworms. Until then, it was believed that the mother or environment determined males & females.

But... Edmund Beecher Wilson published first. He may have seen Stevens' results & also didn't quite get everything right.

Stevens' work had the correct conclusion, but Wilson is most often credited with this discovery.
https://www.vox.com/2016/7/7/12105830/nettie-stevens-genetics-gender-sex-chromosomes #HistoryRemix #history #science

Nettie Maria Stevens (July 7, 1861 - May 4, 1912), early American geneticist


Born in 1838, Margaret Knight invented a machine that could efficiently build paper bags with a design that made packing easier.

And right on cue - for those who follow #HistoryRemix - a man tried to steal credit.

Charles Annan glimpsed her prototype & filed a patent. Thankfully, many people had seen Knight's invention + she had the blueprints.

Knight took Annan to court & won! She received her patent in 1871 & went on to receive dozens more. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/meet-female-inventor-behind-mass-market-paper-bags-180968469/ #history #design

Margaret E. Knight in 1912. Image Credit: Boston Sunday Post. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons


I haven’t been sharing interviews here, but it was an absolute delight to join Kate Lister on #BeTwixtTheSheets to talk about the #history & #science of kissing.

Yes, I’m a scientist focused on policy, sustainability & communication, but 12 years ago, I wrote a book called The Science of Kissing. We contain multitudes.

https://play.acast.com/s/betwixt-the-sheets/history-of-kissing-why-do-we-lock-lips


Physicist Lise Meitner’s brilliance led to the discovery of nuclear fission. But her long time collaborator Otto Hahn, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry without her in 1944, even though she had given the first theoretical explanation.

Albert Einstein called Meitner “our Marie Curie." She also adamantly refused to work on the atomic bomb during WWII. https://whyy.org/articles/lise-meitner-the-forgotten-woman-of-nuclear-physics-who-deserved-a-nobel-prize/ #science #history

Lise Meitner was left off the publication that eventually led to a Nobel Prize for her colleague.


🆕 blog! “Bryan Adams lied to you”

I'm always interested in when anachronistic technology pops up in the media. Whether it's Kelly Rowland trying to send an email using Excel, or people in spaceships developing film photographs, or futuristic moonbases which use BS 1363 plugs - I just love it! So, I was watching that absolute banger of a tune "When You're […]

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/07/bryan-adams-lied-to-you/

#history #phones #technology #video

A white plastic desktop phone with QWERTY keyboard and a video screen.


"Christopher Nolan's #Oppenheimer explores the work of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer & colleagues to create the atomic bomb.

Yet, the film fails to depict a key part of the story, using 2 female scientists as stand-ins for ALL of the women who contributed."

Hundreds of women were essential to the Manhattan Project, including Nobel Prize winning physicist Maria Goeppert Mayer. But they are largely absent in the #film.

https://www.businessinsider.com/women-manhattan-project-christopher-nolan-oppenheimer-completely-ignored-2023-7 #HistoryRemix #science #history


Born in 1928, Vera Rubin set her sights on Princeton, but they wouldn’t accept female grad students in astronomy. So she earned her master’s from Cornell & PhD from Georgetown.

In 1965, Rubin became the 1st woman allowed to observe at the Palomar Observatory. She went on to find evidence for the existence of dark matter.

In 1993, Rubin was awarded the National Medal of Science. But curiously, she was not awarded a Nobel Prize. https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/04/18/vera-rubin-interview-women-in-science/ #HistoryRemix #science #space #history

Ver Rubin, 1928-2016

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