In high school, Carla Brodley was almost shut out of computer science when boys took over all the computers. But she rediscovered her love for the field in college and has made it her mission to open doors for others. At Northeastern University, she founded the Center for Inclusive Computing, which now partners with more than 100 institutions to make computer science more accessible. As a result of Brodley’s push to introduce more flexible degree programs, more women — and especially more women of color — have not only enrolled but stayed in the field. Now, with support from Pivotal, a group of organizations founded by Melinda French Gates, Brodley is aiming to scale up her efforts. Today she joins Lost Women of Science host Katie Hafner to share her journey, new paths to computer science, and how AI fits in.

Frances Glessner Lee discovered her true calling later in life. An heiress without formal schooling, she was in her fifties when she transformed her fascination with true crime and medicine into the foundation of a new field: forensic science. In the late 1920s, she drew inspiration from a family friend, a medical examiner involved in notorious cases— including the infamous Sacco and Vanzetti trial. For Glessner Lee, the puzzle of untangling the truth about violent deaths proved irresistible. She recognized that solving crimes demanded both rigorous methods and professional training. She funded and helped found the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard University. Her most unusual teaching tool: intricately crafted dollhouse dioramas depicting grisly crime scenes.

In this episode, Katie Hafner joins Alexis Pedrick and Mariel Carr to bring you The Mothers of Gynecology, part of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race, a podcast and magazine project produced by the Science History Institute that explores the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine.

Of all wealthy countries, the United States is the most dangerous place to have a baby. The maternal mortality rate is abysmal, and it's getting worse. And there are huge racial disparities: Black women are three times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. Despite some claims to the contrary, the problem isn’t race, it’s racism.

This episode, which first aired in April, 2023, explores the racial disparities in maternal health in the US rooted in 19th century medical exploitation of enslaved women.

Born in 1850, Sarah Loguen found her calling as a child, when she helped her parents and Harriet Tubman bandage the leg of an injured person escaping slavery. When the Civil War ended and Reconstruction opened up opportunities for African Americans, Loguen became one of the first Black women to earn a medical license. But quickly, racist Jim Crow laws prevailed. At the urging of family friend Frederick Douglass, Loguen married and, with her new husband, set sail for the Dominican Republic where more was possible for a person of color. This is her story.

This Best Of episode, which first aired in September 2023, is also available in a Spanish adaptation, narrated by Laura Gómez.

Nacida en 1850, Sarah Loguen encontró su vocación cuando era niña, cuando ayudó a sus padres y a Harriet Tubman a vendar la pierna de una persona herida que escapaba de la esclavitud. Cuando terminó la Guerra Civil y la Reconstrucción abrió oportunidades para los afroamericanos, Loguen se convirtió en una de las primeras mujeres negras en obtener una licencia médica. Pero rápidamente, prevalecieron las leyes racistas de Jim Crow. A instancias de un amigo de la familia, Frederick Douglass, Loguen se casó y, con su nuevo esposo, se embarcó hacia la República Dominicana, donde era posible más para una persona de color. Esta es su historia.

Carolyn Beatrice Parker provenía de una familia de médicos y académicos y trabajó durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial como física en el Proyecto Dayton, una parte fundamental del Proyecto Manhattan encargada de producir polonio. El polonio es un metal radiactivo que se utilizó en la producción de las primeras armas nucleares. Después de la guerra, Parker continuó su investigación y sus estudios en el Instituto Tecnológico de Massachusetts, pero murió de leucemia a los 48 años antes de que pudiera defender su tesis doctoral. Décadas más tarde, durante el apogeo de las protestas de Black Lives Matter, los ciudadanos de su ciudad natal de Gainesville, Florida, votaron para cambiar el nombre de una escuela primaria en su honor.

Carolyn Beatrice Parker came from a family of doctors and academics and worked during World War II as a physicist on the Dayton Project, a critical part of the Manhattan Project tasked with producing polonium. Polonium is a radioactive metal that was used in the production of early nuclear weapons. After the war, Parker continued her research and her studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but she died of leukemia at age 48, before she was able to defend her PhD thesis. Decades later, during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, citizens in her hometown of Gainesville, Florida voted to rename an elementary school in her honor.

This Best Of episode, which first aired in November 2024, is also available in a Spanish adaptation, narrated by Laura Gómez.

Emma Unson Rotor se tomó un permiso de su trabajo como profesora de matemáticas en Filipinas para estudiar física en la Universidad Johns Hopkins en 1941. Sus planes se vieron interrumpidos cuando el Ejército Imperial Japonés invadió y ocupó Filipinas. Incapaz de acceder a la beca que le había brindado el gobierno filipino para asistir a Johns Hopkins, se unió a la División de Desarrollo de Artillería del Buró Nacional de Estándares. Fue allí donde realizó investigaciones pioneras sobre la espoleta de proximidad, considerada “la primera arma ‘inteligente’ del mundo”, en palabras del físico Frank Belknap Baldwin, quien también colaboró en el desarrollo de dicha tecnología.