Octavia Butler is one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time, known more recently for practically predicting the presidency of Donald Trump, and yet she did not become a New York Times Bestseller until long after she died, in September 2020. Today, we're talking about the brilliance of her words and concepts and we hope that you, too, will finally discover the incredible legacy of Octavia Butler.
Read MoreSacheen Littlefeather is an Indigenous activist who is most famous for delivering the speech on Marlon Brando's behalf, turning down the Oscar he won for the Godfather. But Sacheen's accomplishments are many and varied - she studied Native health and was responsible for assisting hospitals with accommodating Native health practices. She has worked on many documentaries regarding Native American cultures and even helped found an organization whose aim was amplifying the presence of Indigenous actors in Hollywood. To this day she brings awareness to Native issues and is an elder in her community.
Read MoreChien-Shiung Wu was a groundbreaking Chinese American physicist who made several remarkable contributions to the study of physics during the span of her career and was the only woman in a top scientific role within the top-secret Manhattan Project. She did work integral to a study that later won the Nobel Prize - though she, in typical misogynistic fashion, was not honored alongside her male partners. Still, she continued to make huge strides for physics and women in STEM until her death, and is still celebrated as one of the great minds of physics.
Read MoreYou've probably never heard of Gladys West, but without her, GPS would not look the way it does today. This woman was born on a sharecropping farm and made the decision early on not to live the rest of her life there. She worked so hard in school that she earned one of two scholarships to Virginia State University, a historically Black university. Once there, she was so good at everything that she almost couldn't decide what to do! But she chose math, because it was the most challenging thing she could think of, and the rest is, well, history.
Read MoreDuring World War 2, scientists developed a machine called THE ENIAC that they thought might be able to take the burden of computing intricate ballistics computations off of the human "computers", usually women, hired for the task. The problem was, they needed someone to program the machine, and that had never been done before. Enter the ENIAC programmers - six women computers hired to take on the task of programming the very first machine computer. Little did they know the impact this job would have on society, and the pure fact that a group of six women quite literally invented computer programming was lost to history - until now. Their names are: Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Jean Jennings Bartik, Frances Snyder Holberton, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Frances Bilas Spence, and Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum.
Read MoreIf you had an ailment in the early 1900's. Linda Hazzard had a solution for you. That solution was fasting, a process she helped you complete in her private Washington Sanatorium, where she would oversee your meals (or lack thereof), your "treatments" (which included enemas and extreme body massages), and, in some cases, your wealth. She claimed her method of fasting could detox the body, cure disease, and make a person feel good as new...unless it killed you.
Read MoreAgnodice practiced gynecology and medicine at a time when the law expressly forbade women from doing so - by pain of death. When she was discovered, her patients rallied to prevent her from getting the death penalty. While her story is epic, there's one thing no one can agree on - whether or not Agnodice even existed.
Read MoreWilliamina Fleming was a Scottish maid in Boston, who began working for Edward Pickering at Harvard University as a computer, and ended up a Harvard Astronomer herself, long before women were even allowed to go to school there. She catalogued stars, named nebulae, and discovered white dwarves - years later, her discoveries were found and catalogued by the school, and she was finally given credit for her work. She was one seriously good witch.
Read MoreThis week Hannah tells Deanna about Madeleine L'Engle and how she inspired Janice Voss to become a record-setting female astronaut.
Read More
