Appreciate the unappreciated.
They changed the world. Someone else got the credit.
Honouring ignored women of STEAM — art included — with monumental discoveries that have changed our world for the better. 24 women, researched in depth — what they discovered, who took the credit, and why you were never taught their names.
The shape of the problem
The gap is not talent. It never was.
of the United States STEM workforce is made up of women
Men make up the remaining 65%.
Source: U.S. National Science Foundation, Diversity and STEM report, 2023is women's share of the engineering workforce
In computing and mathematics it is 26%; in the physical sciences, 25%.
Source: U.S. National Science Foundation, NCSESNobel Prizes in physics, chemistry or medicine have gone to women
Out of roughly 650 awarded since 1901. Marie Curie accounts for two of them.
Source: The Nobel FoundationOur geniuses
Start with six of them.
Each profile covers what she actually discovered, exactly how the credit went elsewhere, a timeline, and the details that make the story stick.
1819–1888
Eunice Newton Foote
In 1856 she filled a glass cylinder with carbon dioxide, put it in the sun, and wrote the first sentence in human history predicting global warming. A man read it aloud for her, because women did not speak at the conference.
Read her story
1861–1912
Nettie Stevens
She discovered that sex is decided by a chromosome. Her own PhD supervisor won a Nobel Prize partly on the strength of it, and wrote her obituary without quite giving her the credit.
Read her story
1878–1968
Lise Meitner
She explained nuclear fission while a refugee from the Nazis, working from a letter and a walk in the snow. Her collaborator took the Nobel Prize alone. She was nominated 49 times and never won.
Read her story
1892–1916
Alice Ball
At twenty-three she solved the problem that had defeated leprosy treatment for six hundred years. She died at twenty-four, and the dean of her college published her method under his own name.
Read her story
1914–2000
Hedy Lamarr
Hollywood sold her as the most beautiful woman in the world. Between takes she co-invented frequency hopping — and the Navy told her to go sell war bonds instead.
Read her story
1920–2006
Marie Tharp
Banned from the research ships, she drew the floor of the Atlantic from other people's data, found the rift that proves continents move — and was told it was "girl talk".
Read her story“The time is long overdue to encourage more women to dream the possible dream.”Sheryl Sandbergformer COO of Facebook
“Feminism isn't about making women stronger. Women are already strong. It's about changing the way the world perceives that strength.”G.D. Andersonwriter
“I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves.”Mary Wollstonecraftauthor of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792
Help me appreciate the unappreciated.
Learn their names. Say them out loud. Send one of these profiles to someone who should know. That is the whole project.