Lost Women of Science

Introducing Layers of Brilliance, a five-part season that brings to life the story of a woman whose discoveries in materials science quietly shape our everyday world – but whose legacy was long eclipsed by the famous scientist she worked with.In 1918, at just twenty years old, Katharine Burr Blodgett arrived at the General Electric Company’s industrial research laboratory in Schenectady, New York – a place known as the House of Magic. There she began a decades-long collaboration with Irving Langmuir, GE’s star scientist, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. While Langmuir became a public figure, Blodgett became something else: the mind and hands behind experiments so delicate they operated at the scale of single molecules.Blodgett’s work on films just one molecule thick would lead to multiple U.S. patents and form the basis of technologies embedded in today’s screens, optics, and electronics.Listen as we peel back the layers of Katharine Burr Blodgett’s life – how she made groundbreaking science inside a world built for men, how she struggled against profound personal challenges, and how a woman whose work helped shape modern materials science nearly disappeared from history. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Lost Women of Science by Melina Gerosa Bellows and Katie Hafner is an exciting book for young readers that brings to life the stories of ten remarkable women who changed the world of science but have been forgotten, or written out of history completely. Published by Penguin Random House’s Bright Matter imprint, the book transforms podcast episodes into a collection of inspiring biographies written for middle school readers. In this Lost Women of Science Conversation, Melina and Katie talk about their favorite female scientists and why their grit and determination can help inspire curiosity in the next generation of young female (and male) scientists. For parents, teachers or grandparents looking to spark a love of science in the young people in their lives, look no further than this book this holiday season. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In 2022, Susan Wojcicki was on top of the world—CEO of YouTube, parent to five kids, and running a few miles a day—when she received a shocking diagnosis: metastatic lung cancer. She soon resigned from YouTube and dedicated herself to fighting the disease and looking for answers. Why does the leading cause of cancer deaths receive less funding than some less lethal cancers? How could her lung cancer have progressed so far undetected? And how did Susan get lung cancer, when she had never smoked? This episode is dedicated to her. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In the 1910s, a relatively unknown cancer researcher named Maud Slye announced the first results of a study with the loftiest ambitions: to identify what causes cancer. To answer that question, the University of Chicago geneticist had bred tens of thousands of mice, enough to fill a three-story building. She carefully documented their ancestry and their morbidities and performed autopsies. And to Slye, her findings were clear: vulnerability to cancer was hereditary. If we wanted to, we could eliminate it. But Slye made some crucial mistakes along the way—and a number of enemies. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Composer Peter Hugh White and librettist Clare Heath join host Rosie Millard in front of a London audience to explore why the story of chemist and x-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin and the race to uncover the structure of DNA makes such a compelling subject for an opera.We hear excerpts that capture the contrasting personalities at the centre of this scientific drama — James Watson, the brash young researcher at the University of Cambridge; Francis Crick, his more measured collaborator; and Maurice Wilkins, an anxious biophysicist uneasy about being outshone by his brilliant colleague, Franklin.It’s a story of ambition, rivalry, and betrayal: Franklin’s departure from King’s College London and the subsequent publication of the double helix model by Watson and Crick, which was built on insights from her work — yet without giving her due recognition. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices