women-of-science

[women-of-science]

it's always a good day to complain about English speakers

[women-of-science]

[women-of-science]

[women-of-science]

I think a lot about what it is to be a woman in science, but I have the inherent privilege that comes with being a white woman to shield me from the worst of it. I had an absolutely eye opening conversation with classmate of mine last year, and I’d like to share it with y’all.

This other lab member of mine became a great friend of mine around the time I decided to switch labs. She had a different PI and was a year ahead of me, so I was comfortable bringing my concerns to her. Her support was instrumental in my decision and my current happiness in my new lab. She presented in a lab meeting the day I went to the director of our grad school and requested a change in PIs, so I missed it. I knew she had been nervous (it was meant to prepare her for for her preliminary exam) so I asked her the next day how it had gone.

Now. To put this in context, I need to explain my old PI. He was an almost eighty year old white man, and if it wasn’t his opinion, it was wrong. He was very, very bad at being a PI. He was also probably worse at being a co-worker. I recall at least three lab meetings that devolved into him yelling with another PI, and several student presentations that he was terribly mean and unnecessarily fixated on insignificant details. So it comes as no shock that he went after my friend.

My old PI (who was not involved in bacteria research AT ALL) had taken some issue with the strain of bacteria she was using, one that was selected based on clinical relevancy. This had resulted in a dissolving of my friends presentation into him interrogating her about this strain, interrupting her explanations and generally getting louder and louder and louder until her PI stepped in. Upon hearing all of this, I apologized profusely for his behavior and asked how she was doing now. She expressed to me how she had struggled to remain calm, and how she was ultimately grateful to her PI for de-escalating the situation.

Now here’s the part that hit me hard: my friend explained to me that she was grateful mostly because she wasn’t sure how much longer she would have been able to withstand his nonsense without raising her voice, to which I responded, “he would have deserved it. You were right and he was wrong, and it’s beyond time he was put in his place. He’s not your PI, and he’s not on your committee, so I think you would have been wholly justified in standing up for yourself.”

“If I’d had raised my voice at him, even a little, I would have been labeled an angry black woman, and everyone in that room would have written me off as a stereotype of my race.”

Oh. Ohhhhh. OH that hit me in the heart and the brain and the soul and I’m shocked I didn’t get a bruise. My sweet, strong, smart friend, who was a mom and a wife and a brilliant student and a kind soul, had to weigh every word out of her mouth with a gravity I couldn’t understand, and had never considered until that moment. And it probably says a lot about my white privilege and my bubble I’ve grown up in that I was 24 years old before this came across to me. But this conversation has lived in my head ever since, and my perspective of the world shifted because of it. I think what made this particular incidence so eye opening to me was that being interrogated by this man over stupid details was something that happened to me regularly, and had just pushed me over the edge. Realizing some level of privilege had protected me all along from it being worse was enlightening.

I’ve benefitted my whole life from white privilege (a thing my family doesn’t think exists). I’m nowhere near perfect as an ally or a friend or a person, but I want to be better at standing up for and alongside those who need the protection my privilege offers. I share this now in case it resonates with someone else the way it did with me.

Black lives matter. Black people matter. Your hearts matter and your ideas matter and your feelings and your dignity and hurt and anger and fear. It shouldn’t require stating but it does, and I am so so sorry for your pain, for every situation I wouldn’t think twice in that you have to navigate carefully. I’m sorry, and I stand with you.

[women-of-science]

My artwork can also be found on Instagram at katybriantart

I am also in the process of setting up an etsy shop to start selling my work. If anyone is interested in anything specific, I'm happy to take commissions. (link to my shop will be posted here when ready)

[women-of-science]

If y'all are felling generous, my dad, along with his work colleagues, is trying to raise money to buy materials to produce PPE to be donated to anyone that needs it in the local community.

This is something they've been working out how to do for quite a while, initially looking at making ventilators, but they didn't have a set up that would allow them to do this. Instead, they'll be making PPE. Hopefully, they'll reach or even exceed their fundraising target!

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/teepee-ppe-fundraising?fbclid=IwAR3fimiZlSniAuB2BLFrv1SwA6yc3v7pJbBEpW-iuPOqxN9kr8wHPrU6D4A

[women-of-science]

i have so much respect for women in science. they are erased from history books, insulted time and time again, made out to be lesser than they are but they never stop.

they keep at it, they invent, they discover, they innovate, they create, they help and they lead for minimal appreciation. they deserve so much more recognition that it is painful. women in science are goddesses and nothing can change my mind.

[women-of-science]

Edward Charles Pickering (director of the Harvard Observatory from 1877 to 1919) decided to hire women as skilled workers to process astronomical data. Among these women were Williamina Fleming, Annie Jump Cannon, Henrietta Swan Leavitt and Antonia Maury. This staff came to be known as the Harvard Computers.

The first woman hired was Williamina Fleming, who was working as a maid for Pickering. It seems that Pickering was increasingly frustrated with his male assistants and declared that even his maid could do a better job. Apparently he was not mistaken, as Fleming undertook her assigned chores efficiently. When the Harvard Observatory received in 1886 a generous donation from the widow of Henry Draper, Pickering decided to hire more female staff and put Fleming in charge.

As a result of the work of the women “computers”, Pickering published in 1890 the first Henry Draper Catalog, a catalog with more than 10,000 stars classified according to their spectrum. Pickering decided to hire Antonia Maury, a graduate from Vassar College, to reclassify some of the stars. Maury decided to go further and improved and redesigned the system of classification. It was published in 1897, but was largely ignored. Afterwards Pickering decided to hire Cannon, a graduate of Wellesley College, to classify the southern stars. As Maury had done, Cannon also ended up redesigning the classification system of the spectra and developed the Harvard Classification Scheme, which constitutes the basis of the system used today.

Henrietta Swan Leavitt’s insight that all the variable stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud are roughly the same distance from Earth, led to her discovering a direct relationship between the period of Cepheid variable stars and their intrinsic brightness. This discovery, in turn, led to the modern understanding of the true size of the universe, and Cepheid variables are still an essential tool for the measurement of cosmological distance.

Source: [x]

Click HERE for more facts

[women-of-science]

Susan B. Horwitz (1955-2014) was a notable computer scientist. She is best known for her research in programming languages and software engineering.

She got her PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University in 1985. She later became a professor at the University of Wisconsin and published numerous paper in the emerging field of computer science.

[women-of-science]

Regarding the Amazon Rainforest

I barely have followers here, but here we go:

The Amazon Rainforest has been burning for the last 16 days straight. The Brazilian government says the wildfire is caused by the winter itself, since it doesn't rain a lot there... in a rainforest. It is actually, partially true. Winter is indeed a dry season and wildfires may happen, specially close to the Cerrado (a brazilian biome similar to the african Savanna), but what they're not telling us is that:

The deforestation has increased 80% since last year

The native peoples and animals are being slaughtered for their lands (legally protected green areas)

The government is hiding and lying about scientific data, saying that environmentalists and NGOs are communists trying to destroy the nation. They are brainwashing people to think that sustainability is terrible for the economy

Our Minister of Environment is couldn't care less about the environment and is only there to support the livestock producers and give them what they want. The President and his Minister won't put a single dollar on environmental safety

The wildfires are just so huge that its black smoke and ashes reached the skies of São Paulo, a state over 2.000 kilometers away from the Amazon.

We are hostages or our own government

I could just keep going all night about how our environment is being threatened by this new government. We need every single help we can possibly can.

Please don't let this go unseen. Search for yourself, talk to people about it, make noise, be angry and be scared. Let the world know about it and demand action. This is not about Brazil, is about the planet. The Amazon Rainforest is one of the most important biomes in the world, being responsible for the climate, rains, biodiversity, carbon sequestration and life itself.

[women-of-science]

Struggle with femininity

I wrote a thing about femininity cause gender ....

The struggle with femininity

Is I always cry when I’m angry

And somehow

That reduces how fierce I am

The struggle with femininity

Is people assume I’m straight

Because femme lesbians

Can’t date femme lesbians

The struggle with femininity

Is a lab coat is only seen as sexy

If the woman is naked underneath

Forgetting that her brain earned it

My struggle with femininity

Is that it exists

[women-of-science]

The science world is freaking out over this 25-year-old's answer to antibiotic resistance

[women-of-science]

Beatrice de Cardi (1914-2016) was a British archaeologist, a specialist in the area of the Persian Gulf and Pakistan. She was the world’s oldest practicing archaeologist.

She studied at University College London and later started working for the London Museum. She served as president of the British Foundation for the Study of Arabia, and as Secretary for the Council for British Archaeology.

[women-of-science]

Women in History Series

Lise Meitner

Lise Meitner (1878-1968) was a nuclear physicist who’s contributions were widely ignored in her time. She was born to a Jewish family in Austria in 1878. She attended the University of Vienna in 1901, studying physics. Eventually, she graduated with her doctorate degree and began her work.

Meitner worked closely with scientists Max Planck and Otto Hahn. Together, they co-discovered the element protactinium. In 1923, she discovered what is known as the Auger effect, named after the man that discovered it two years after she did. She was also one of the scientists credited with the discovery of nuclear fission. I use the term “credited” loosely, however; at that point she had been forced to flee due to German annexation, and when her colleague, Otto Hahn, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1944, she was conveniently left out. This was partly rectified in 1966 when she was given the Enrico Fermi Award. And in 1992, an element was named in her honor: Meitnerium.

Though her contributions to nuclear physics can’t be denied, they were largely dismissed while she was still living. Now, however, we can give her the recognition she deserves. What other women deserve recognition for their accomplishments? Let me know at @yesstrongwomen!

[women-of-science]

~ 8 incredible and courageous women whose work forever changed mathematics and the world ~

A couple of you have asked for a printable version of these, so if you are interested in printing these as posters for your class send us an email to lthmathematics@gmail.com so we can send you a pdf (easy for print).

[women-of-science]

Happy 98th Birthday to the late, great Rosalind Franklin! (Born July 25th, 1920)