CSWS Calderwood Seminars

Impact: Student Reflection

Over this term I was assigned several different readings that I was tasked with dissecting and reformatting into different writing styles: book review, youth-facing piece, and an op-ed. These readings were focused on woman struggles and the pressures of society that they have endured, and was a refreshing change to the euro centric white male narrative that most history classes follow. I have taken several writing classes and even more history classes, so I really enjoyed earning about women's struggles and being able to focus on my own theme for the op-ed. —Lash Eversole

Outcome: Student Work

“Science and Suppression”
by Lash Eversole

Science has come a long way as it accelerates in its own diverse ways and has shown no sign of slowing down; in fact, it's quite the opposite. We can communicate with people across the world, transplant organs to save lives, and travel to and from space with mind blowing precision and speeds. We take so many of these advancements for granted: devices that give us instant gratification, travel, and breakthroughs in medical fields, but the greatest thing we take for granted are the women in science who have gone unrecognized for their work for so long. Women who revolutionized and made the world we see today possible, many of them giving their lives, and even some who created life while saving lives. 

This field has been, and still is, so heavily dominated by men that most people don’t recognize names like Mileva Marić, even though she was a brilliant physicist and mathematician who influenced Einstein, her husband, during moments like his miracle year when he wrote such groundbreaking papers that revolutionized: physics, our understanding of the universe, and influenced countless others since.  

Our understanding of DNA (the double helix) and waves of medical fields advancements all together is thanks to Rosalind Franklin, who unknowingly sacrificed her life by experimenting with X-rays resulting in her developing ovarian cancer leading to her death at only 37. The credit for her work and Nobel Prize going to James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins in 1962. Her work was not even recognized until Watson’s memoir in 1968 mentions her contributions and was more often presented as a vague acknowledgement than the praise she so rightly deserved.

We look at the world around us and the remarkable things we can do at speeds people only dreamed about in a not so far past, and when we look at who was awarded and given credit to these great advancements, we see a long list of men with little to no mention of the women who made these achievements possible. It is a brutal and saddening truth how many wondrous minds and their work have been suppressed by men, but it's well past time these women are brought into the limelight and given credit and praise, even after death.

Judith Love Cohen is another name with a beautiful jaw dropping story. She was an: author, ballerina, film producer, aerospace engineer, and scientist that very few people know of. While in labor, she brought a printout of the math problem she was working on for the abort guidance system for Apollo 13; which is the backup navigation system that safely brought the astronauts safely back to solid ground after a catastrophic malfunction. Cohen refused to stop her work and once finished she called her boss to report that she had solved the problem mid labor, and then proceeded to give birth to Jack Black. This amazing woman was going through intense waves of pain while working mind boggling math equations to save lives, and then gave birth to a new life, a healthy boy whose name is more famous than her own. Jack Black may have made us laugh, but his mother’s name and lifesaving work deserves to be known and put on blast just as much, if not more than his. The media has a sad way of keeping stories like Cohen’s out of the public eye and ear, and then quickly forgotten over time. This is another form of suppression in science that women have had to endure and work with the knowledge that they may never receive the credit or admiration they so rightly deserve.

While the Nobel Prize award was not started until 1901, Marie Curie is the ONLY woman to have ever earned 2 Nobel Prizes; her first in physics (1903), and then her second in chemistry (1911). In this case she wasn’t even considered for her first, but her husband Pierre Currie insisted that she be recognized alongside himself and Henri Becquerel. After Pierre's death she had an alleged relationship with physicist Paul Langevinher, a married man, leading to her groundbreaking work being severely impacted and pushed under the rug by the press, calling her a homewrecker and more. These attacks on her personal life were traumatic and clearly a systemic gender bias in a male dominated institution. Calls were even made to try to deny her second Nobel Prize despite her groundbreaking scientific research. This is the woman who discovered new elements (polonium and radium) and coined the term radioactivity, and a prime example of gender biased suppression in science. An amazing woman and scientist who gave her life for science through working with radiation that led to her death.

The gender biased suppression of women needs to be called out and recognized as toxic and villainous in all institutions. The institution of science is just one of many, and it’s well past due that women such as those listed above are recognized for their work and spoken about in classrooms and media, and not something we should have to dig up to learn about. The way we go about our daily lives and perceive the universe would not exist if it wasn’t for women like this, and the world deserves to know about them and praise them for their hard work and sacrifices.