The Silenced Women of STEM

So we’ve all pulled an all nighter before, or stayed up a little too late before having to wake up early. I am currently suffering the consequences of that action. But how important is sleep really, and how does losing it affect how we function? Today we are talking about Maria Manasseina- also known as Marie von manassein, and Marie de Manaceine -, a Russian doctor who was a pioneer in biochemistry and experimental somnology in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Sources:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20183211/

https://wineurope.eu/manasseina-2/

https://sruk.org.uk/lack-of-sleep-alcoholic-fermentation-and-other-untold-discoveries-by-maria-manasseina/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Manaseina

https://lab.gilest.ro/reviews-articles-and-books-etc/some-experimental-observations-on-the-effect-of-total-insomnia/

Computers originally actually referred to a person, a computator…a person who does computations… a computer. Today, we will be talking about the female human computers who programmed the world’s first digital computer.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC

https://www.computer.org/volunteering/awards/pioneer/about-women-of-eniac

https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/csep590a/06au/readings/00511940-frist.pdf

Today’s episode speaks of a woman who created a brand new drug that went through clinical testing almost entirely in secret in order to become one of today’s very popular treatments of breast cancer. Oh, and the worst part is...a man took all her research and never credited her.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_Richardson

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dora-richardson-took-her-research-underground-to-develop-lifesaving/

https://awis.org/historical-women/dora-richardson-phd/

https://oncodaily.com/insight/dora-richardson-197423

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/9785-tamoxifen

Today we're talking about an angel of life, actually an angel of the battlefield to be specific, a one Miss Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross.

Sources:

https://www.thenmusa.org/biographies/clara-barton/

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/clara-barton

https://www.redcross.org/content/dam/redcross/enterprise-assets/about-us/history/history-clara-barton-v5-4-19-23.pdf

https://clarabartonmuseum.org/bio/

https://www.clarabartonbirthplace.org/claras-life/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/phrenology

Giselle Perl, a Hungarian Jewish gynecologist who was imprisoned in Auschwitz and forced to be a doctor there while simultaneously being a prisoner. This is her story.

Sources:

https://mjhnyc.org/events/a-jewish-doctor-in-auschwitz-gisella-perl/

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200526-dr-gisella-perl-the-auschwitz-doctor-who-saved-lives

https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/pb-daily/gisella-perl-and-our-haunted-present

https://www.whisc.center/Gisella-Perl

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6115479/

https://www.auschwitz.org/en/history/auschwitz-iii/ig-farben

https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/the-camps/case-study-auschwitz-birkenau/

I have been seeing videos of people whose parents sold everything they had to send their child to the olympics, and even with full adult olympians how they work 6+ jobs to afford their sport or struggle to make rent. So today we are discussing Debi Thomas, a story of dedication, hard work, a fall from grace, and now hopefully a comeback story…and if you thought we forgot the STEM part…don’t worry, we didn’t.

Sources:

https://www.olympics.com/en/athletes/debra-thomas

https://aaregistry.org/story/debi-thomas-olympic-skater-and-surgeon/

https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/thomas-debi-1967

https://www.theroot.com/the-heartbreaking-fall-of-debi-thomas-from-olympic-sta-2000088488/slides/3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debi_Thomas

What would you do if you lived in Nazi Germany and knew what the government stood for, but speaking out could cost you your life? Would you stay silent, or would you dare to resist? Most people chose survival. Sophie Scholl did not. As a young university student, Sophie openly opposed the Nazi regime through her involvement in the White Rose resistance movement, using words and ideas as weapons against oppression. Her story forces us to confront an uncomfortable question: when faced with injustice, how much courage are we truly willing to show?

Sources:

https://whiteroseinternational.com/sophie-scholl-and-the-white-rose/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Scholl

https://mjhnyc.org/blog/remembering-resistance-sophie-scholl-and-the-white-rose/

Today's epidsode is about Louise Bourgeois Boursier! A royal midwife and the first woman to write an obstetrics textbook!

Sources:

https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/louyse-bourgeois

https://fn.bmj.com/content/89/2/F185

https://becker.wustl.edu/news/louise-bourgeois-and-the-first-obstetrics-book-published-by-a-woman/

https://hekint.org/2020/01/28/the-barber-surgeons-their-history-over-the-centuries/

https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/why-was-the-chainsaw-invented

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/12345-umbilical-cord-prolapse

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0091218281901415

https://barbersurgeonsguild.com/magazine/history-barber-surgeon/

What is a seismic wave?

Duh, it's the vibrations generated by an earthquake, explosion, or similar energetic source and propagated within the earth or along its surface.

Did you know u can better understand the Earth's structure with them? Today, we're going to talk about the woman who used math to better understand our world.

Sources

https://www.britannica.com/science/seismic-wave

https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/earth-inside-and-out/inge-lehmann-discoverer-of-the-earth-s-inner-core

https://oumnh.ox.ac.uk/learn-inge-lehmann

https://www.famousscientists.org/inge-lehmann/

What did you think women did back in the day for Gynecology? Going to the gynecologist is such a terrifying experience in 2025; I can't even imagine what it would be like before modern medicine. Well, back in the day, when scientific thought was just being birthed, little was known about people’s health, and even less was known about women’s bodies. Today we will be talking about Cleopatra Metrodora who some consider the “mother of gynecology”. She was a midwife, a surgeon, and obviously a gynecologist.

Sources:

https://www.schlagergroup.com/women-and-gender-in-the-ancient-world/

https://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/1/777777190170/

https://www.historyhit.com/facts-about-agnodice-of-athens/

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1553350613485304?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub++0pubmed

https://hekint.org/2025/01/23/metrodora-egyptian-physician-midwife-and-surgeon/

https://www.itmedicalteam.pl/articles/aspasia-and-cleopatra-metrodora-twomajestic-female-physician-surgeons-in-theearly-byzantine-era-108037.html