Composer Peter Hugh White and librettist Clare Heath join host Rosie Millard in front of a London audience to explore why the story of chemist and x-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin and the race to uncover the structure of DNA makes such a compelling subject for an opera. We hear excerpts that capture the contrasting personalities at the centre of this scientific drama — James Watson, the brash young researcher at the University of Cambridge; Francis Crick, his more measured collaborator; and Maurice Wilkins, an anxious biophysicist uneasy about being outshone by his brilliant colleague, Franklin. It’s a story of ambition, rivalry, and betrayal: Franklin’s departure from King’s College London and the subsequent publication of the double helix model by Watson and Crick, which was built on insights from her work — yet without giving her due recognition.

Although initial clinical trials of tamoxifen as a treatment of breast cancer were positive, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) did not believe this market would be commercially viable. The company had hoped for a contraceptive pill – tamoxifen didn’t work for that – not a cancer treatment. In 1972 the higher-ups at ICI decided to cancel the research.‍ But Dora Richardson, the chemist who had originally synthesized the compound, and her boss, Arthur Walpole, were convinced they were on to something important, something that could save lives. They continued the research in secret. Tamoxifen was eventually launched in 1973 and went on to become a global success, saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Dora Richardson’s role in its development, however, was overshadowed by her a male colleague and all but forgotten. This Best Of episode first aired in October 2024 to coincide with Breast Cancer Awareness month. It is now also available in a Spanish adaptation, narrated by Laura Gómez.

Aunque los ensayos clínicos iniciales del tamoxifeno como tratamiento del cáncer de mama fueron positivos, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) no creía que este mercado fuera comercialmente viable. La compañía esperaba una píldora anticonceptiva (el tamoxifeno no funcionó para eso), no un tratamiento contra el cáncer. En 1972, los superiores del ICI decidieron cancelar la investigación. ‍ Pero Dora Richardson, la química que originalmente había sintetizado el compuesto, y su jefe, Arthur Walpole, estaban convencidos de que estaban en algo importante, algo que podría salvar vidas. Continuaron la investigación en secreto. El tamoxifeno se lanzó finalmente en 1973 y se convirtió en un éxito mundial, salvando cientos de miles de vidas. El papel de Dora Richardson en su desarrollo, sin embargo, fue eclipsado por su colega masculino y casi olvidado.

In the early 1960s, Dr. Dora Richardson synthesized a chemical compound that became one of the most important drugs to treat breast cancer: tamoxifen. Although her name is on the original patent, her contributions have been lost to history. In the first episode of this two-part podcast, Katie Couric introduces us to Dora’s story, and we show how Lost Women of Science producer Marcy Thompson tracked down Dora’s firsthand account of the history of the drug’s development. This document, lost for decades, tells the story of how the compound was made and how Imperial Chemical Industries, where Richardson worked, almost terminated the project because the company was hoping to produce a contraceptive, not a cancer therapy. This Best Of episode first aired in October 2024 to coincide with Breast Cancer Awareness month. It is now also available in a Spanish adaptation, narrated by Laura Gómez.

A principios de la década de los sesenta, la Dra. Dora Richardson sintetizó un compuesto químico que se convirtió en uno de los medicamentos más importantes para tratar el cáncer de mama: el tamoxifeno. Aunque su nombre aparece en la patente original, sus contribuciones fueron olvidadas por la historia. En el primer episodio de este podcast de dos partes, les contamos la historia de Dora y de cómo Marcy Thompson, productora de Lost Women of Science, rastreó su relato en primera persona sobre el desarrollo del medicamento. Este documento, perdido durante décadas, narra cómo se creó el compuesto y cómo la empresa Imperial Chemical Industries, donde trabajaba Richardson, estuvo a punto de cancelar el proyecto porque buscaba desarrollar un anticonceptivo, no una terapia contra el cáncer.

In high school, Carla Brodley was almost shut out of computer science when boys took over all the computers. But she rediscovered her love for the field in college and has made it her mission to open doors for others. At Northeastern University, she founded the Center for Inclusive Computing, which now partners with more than 100 institutions to make computer science more accessible. As a result of Brodley’s push to introduce more flexible degree programs, more women — and especially more women of color — have not only enrolled but stayed in the field.  Now, with support from Pivotal, a group of organizations founded by Melinda French Gates, Brodley is aiming to scale up her efforts. Today she joins Lost Women of Science host Katie Hafner to share her journey, new paths to computer science, and how AI fits in.

Frances Glessner Lee discovered her true calling later in life. An heiress without formal schooling, she was in her fifties when she transformed her fascination with true crime and medicine into the foundation of a new field: forensic science. In the late 1920s, she drew inspiration from a family friend, a medical examiner involved in notorious cases— including the infamous Sacco and Vanzetti trial. For Glessner Lee, the puzzle of untangling the truth about violent deaths proved irresistible. She recognized that solving crimes demanded both rigorous methods and professional training. She funded and helped found the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard University. Her most unusual teaching tool: intricately crafted dollhouse dioramas depicting grisly crime scenes.

In this episode, Katie Hafner joins Alexis Pedrick and Mariel Carr to bring you The Mothers of Gynecology, part of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race, a podcast and magazine project produced by the Science History Institute that explores the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine. Of all wealthy countries, the United States is the most dangerous place to have a baby. The maternal mortality rate is abysmal, and it's getting worse. And there are huge racial disparities: Black women are three times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. Despite some claims to the contrary, the problem isn’t race, it’s racism. This episode, which first aired in April, 2023, explores the racial disparities in maternal health in the US rooted in 19th century medical exploitation of enslaved women.

Born in 1850, Sarah Loguen found her calling as a child, when she helped her parents and Harriet Tubman bandage the leg of an injured person escaping slavery. When the Civil War ended and Reconstruction opened up opportunities for African Americans, Loguen became one of the first Black women to earn a medical license. But quickly, racist Jim Crow laws prevailed. At the urging of family friend Frederick Douglass, Loguen married and, with her new husband, set sail for the Dominican Republic where more was possible for a person of color. This is her story. This Best Of episode, which first aired in September 2023, is also available in a Spanish adaptation, narrated by Laura Gómez.

Nacida en 1850, Sarah Loguen encontró su vocación cuando era niña, cuando ayudó a sus padres y a Harriet Tubman a vendar la pierna de una persona herida que escapaba de la esclavitud. Cuando terminó la Guerra Civil y la Reconstrucción abrió oportunidades para los afroamericanos, Loguen se convirtió en una de las primeras mujeres negras en obtener una licencia médica. Pero rápidamente, prevalecieron las leyes racistas de Jim Crow. A instancias de un amigo de la familia, Frederick Douglass, Loguen se casó y, con su nuevo esposo, se embarcó hacia la República Dominicana, donde era posible más para una persona de color. Esta es su historia.

Carolyn Beatrice Parker provenía de una familia de médicos y académicos y trabajó durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial como física en el Proyecto Dayton, una parte fundamental del Proyecto Manhattan encargada de producir polonio. El polonio es un metal radiactivo que se utilizó en la producción de las primeras armas nucleares. Después de la guerra, Parker continuó su investigación y sus estudios en el Instituto Tecnológico de Massachusetts, pero murió de leucemia a los 48 años antes de que pudiera defender su tesis doctoral. Décadas más tarde, durante el apogeo de las protestas de Black Lives Matter, los ciudadanos de su ciudad natal de Gainesville, Florida, votaron para cambiar el nombre de una escuela primaria en su honor.

Carolyn Beatrice Parker came from a family of doctors and academics and worked during World War II as a physicist on the Dayton Project, a critical part of the Manhattan Project tasked with producing polonium. Polonium is a radioactive metal that was used in the production of early nuclear weapons. After the war, Parker continued her research and her studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but she died of leukemia at age 48, before she was able to defend her PhD thesis. Decades later, during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, citizens in her hometown of Gainesville, Florida voted to rename an elementary school in her honor.  This Best Of episode, which first aired in November 2024, is also available in a Spanish adaptation, narrated by Laura Gómez.

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.

Corre el año 1897 y Annie Maunder, una astrónoma aficionada, aborda un barco de vapor con destino a la India desde Inglaterra. Su objetivo: fotografiar un eclipse total de sol. Maunder estaba fascinado por los secretos del sol y estaba decidido a viajar por el mundo y descubrirlos. Comprendió que los pocos minutos de oscuridad durante un eclipse solar presentaban una oportunidad especial para explorar la naturaleza del sol. Sus observaciones condujeron a una mayor comprensión de cómo el sol afecta a la Tierra, pero al igual que muchas de las primeras científicas, sus contribuciones y logros han sido olvidados.

Esto es Lost Women of Science - Mujeres Olvidadas de la Ciencia. Laura Gómez, conocida por su papel de Blanca Flores en la exitosa serie de Netflix “Orange Is the New Black”, es el narradora del podcast Lost Women of Science en el que contamos las historias de destacadas científicas cuyo trabajo cambió nuestro mundo, pero cuyos nombres fueron prácticamente olvidados y casi borrados de la historia. La semana que viene estrenamos una nueva temporada en español, en la que contaremos la historia de una mujer victoriana que viajó por todo el mundo para perseguir eclipses, de una científica forense que descifró misterios para la policía,de la descubridora de uno de los medicamentos que más vidas ha salvado en este planeta... ¡entre otras!

After the success of our bilingual season about the first female doctor trained in the Dominican Republic, The Extraordinary Life and Tragic Death of Evangelina Rodríguez Perozo, we are adapting more of our episodes in Spanish. Starting next week, listen out for the stories of astronomer Annie Maunder, physicists Emma Unson Rotor and Carolyn Parker, and chemist and forensic scientist Mary Louisa Willard in Spanish and English.  As we always say, for every Marie Curie or Rosalind Franklin whose story has been told, hundreds of female scientists remain unknown to the public at large. So, we illuminate the lives and work of a diverse array of groundbreaking scientists who, because of time, place and gender, have gone largely unrecognized. And now these stories are available in Spanish too.

In the mid-1940s, a teenage June Bacon-Bercey saw the image of a nuclear explosion on the cover of Time magazine and immediately had questions. How would the particles in the mushroom cloud move through the air? What effect would this have on our atmosphere? To find the answers, she set out to study atmospheric science, just as the field of meteorology was coming of age. Her career would take her to places few Black women had gone before: the Atomic Energy Commission as a senior researcher; a TV news station in Buffalo, New York, as an on-air meteorologist; and even a TV game show. As a Black woman entering a STEM career at the height of the Civil Rights movement, June’s goal was always to be a role model for women and people of color. And she marched through life to the tune of her favourite composer, John Philip Sousa, who just happened to help her answer the $64,000 question.

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?