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.

Emma Unson Rotor took leave from her job as a math teacher in the Philippines to study physics at Johns Hopkins University in 1941. Her plans were disrupted when the Imperial Japanese Army invaded and occupied the Philippines. Unable to access her Philippine government scholarship to attend Johns Hopkins, she joined the Ordnance Development Division at the National Bureau of Standards. It was here that she did groundbreaking research on the proximity fuze, the “world’s first ‘smart’ weapon,” in the words of physicist Frank Belknap Baldwin, who also helped develop the technology.

The year is 1897 and Annie Maunder, an amateur astronomer, is boarding a steamship bound for India from England. Her goal: to photograph a total solar eclipse. Maunder was fascinated by the secrets of the sun and was determined to travel the globe and unlock them. She understood that the few minutes of darkness during a solar eclipse presented a special opportunity to explore the nature of the sun. Her observations led to our greater understanding of how the sun affects the earth, but like so many early female scientists, her contributions and achievements have been forgotten.