Florence Nightingale and her Geeks Declare War on Death
In this episode from the Cautionary Tales podcast, Harford teams up with actor Helena Bonham Carter, a distant relative of Florence Nightingale, to tell the story of how the ‘“Lady with the Lamp” revolutionized public health with a pie chart. Nightingale was a statistician as well as a nurse, and it was her use of data graphics that led hospitals to introduce hygiene measures that we now take for granted. Her charts convinced the establishment that deaths due to filth and poor sanitation could be averted, saving countless lives. But did Nightingale also open Pandora’s Box by showing that graphs persuade, whether or not they depict reality?
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46:01
Lost Women of Science Conversations: Air-borne
Air-Borne: the Hidden History of the Air We Breathe by Carl Zimmer charts the history of the field of aerobiology: the science dealing with airborne microorganisms. In this episode, we discover the story of two lost pioneers of the 1930s, physician and self-taught epidemiologist Mildred Weeks Wells and her husband sanitary engineer William Firth Wells, who proved that infectious diseases could be spread long distances through the air. But the pair had a reputation as outsiders and they failed to convince the scientific establishment, who ignored their findings for decades. What the pair figured out could have saved many lives from tuberculosis, SARS, COVID, and other airborne diseases. Mildred and her husband’s contributions have been all but erased from history — until now.
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33:48
Buried History: The Feminist Birth of the Home Pregnancy Test
Today, we take it for granted that you can buy a home pregnancy test at the pharmacy. Before the end of the 1970s, this was not the case. Then along came Margaret Crane, a young designer working for a pharmaceutical company. Looking at the rows of pregnancy tests in the lab one day in 1965, she thought, “Well, women could do that at home!” But Crane faced an uphill battle to convince the pharmaceutical companies, the medical community, and conservative social leaders that at-home pregnancy testing was safe and necessary.This podcast first aired in 2014, when Margaret Crane’s role in the development of the home pregnancy test was eventually recognized. Almost 10 years later, Crane’s experience remains relevant as women continue to fight for their reproductive rights. Making Contact is a radio show and podcast from Frequencies of Change Media. For a full list of the episode credits, go to: Buried History: The Feminist Birth of the Home Pregnancy Test.
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30:05
Lost Women of Science Conversations: The Elements of Marie Curie
In The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science Dava Sobel celebrates the many women who came to Paris to work with Marie Curie after she won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics. Many of these women went on to become experts in radioactivity, creating their own networks to support female scientists. Among others, we meet Norwegian Ellen Gleditsch, who was the first person to introduce the science of radioactivity to Norway and Canadian Harriet Brooks, who eventually gave up her stellar scientific career to marry. In retelling the story of Marie Curie, Sobel also shows how the women she mentored contributed to completing the periodic table in the early 20th century.
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28:54
In Evangelina's Footsteps | 5
After Evangelina Rodríguez Perozo died in 1947, the Trujillo regime did its best to erase her legacy, while at the same time appropriating her ideas. Yet those who had known and loved Evangelina in San Pedro de Macorís, where she spent most of her life, kept her memory alive, sharing stories of her kindness and her work. After the assassination of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo in 1961, Dominicans across the country started to recover her story. Laura Gómez follows in Evangelina’s footsteps across Santo Domingo, the city where Evangelina studied medicine, and visits the memorials that are testament to Evangelina’s role in the fight for women's health and reproductive rights, a struggle that continues in the Dominican Republic to this day.
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For every Marie Curie or Rosalind Franklin whose story has been told, hundreds of female scientists remain unknown to the public at large. In this series, we illuminate the lives and work of a diverse array of groundbreaking scientists who, because of time, place and gender, have gone largely unrecognized. Each season we focus on a different scientist, putting her narrative into context, explaining not just the science but also the social and historical conditions in which she lived and worked. We also bring these stories to the present, painting a full picture of how her work endures.
South Africa