Christopher: Most people think scientific breakthroughs are about that 'Eureka!' moment. A flash of genius. But what if the real story of some of the biggest discoveries in history isn't about genius at all, but about theft, invisibility, and sheer, stubborn defiance? Lucas: Whoa, that’s a heavy accusation to level at science. Theft? Invisibility? That sounds more like a spy novel than a physics lab. What are you getting at? Christopher: It's the provocative world we're stepping into today with Jessy Randall's poetry collection, Mathematics for Ladies: Poems on Women in Science. Lucas: Mathematics for Ladies? That title sounds... a little dated. Is it from the 1800s? Christopher: Exactly! And that's the point. The title itself is an act of defiance. Randall, who's a poet and a curator, not a scientist, discovered that 'mathematics for ladies' was a derogatory term in the 1920s Soviet Union. It was used to dismiss pure, abstract math—the kind that didn't have an immediate, practical application—as frivolous, philosophical, and therefore, feminine. Lucas: Huh. So she's reclaiming a historical insult. I like that. It sets a certain tone right from the cover. Christopher: It really does. The book has been incredibly well-received, praised for its humor and its sharp feminist critique. Randall uses these short, punchy poems to give voice to dozens of women scientists, many of whom were systematically ignored, dismissed, or had their work outright stolen. It's a celebration, but it's also an indictment.

Christopher: And that theme of dismissal and erasure runs through the entire collection. Let's start with one of the most infamous examples of scientific injustice: the story of the 'mother of nuclear power,' Lise Meitner. Lucas: I've heard the name, but I don't know the story. Christopher: Well, Meitner was a brilliant physicist in the early 20th century. But as a woman, she faced absurd barriers. The book has a poem in her voice where she recounts being barred from the science labs at the University of Berlin. The official reason? The men in charge were afraid she’d set her hair on fire. Lucas: You cannot be serious. Her hair? Christopher: Her hair. But Meitner, in the poem, sees right through it. She says, "By 'for fear' I mean they feared me." Despite this, she collaborated for decades with a chemist named Otto Hahn. Together, their work led directly to the discovery of nuclear fission—the splitting of the atom. It was her theoretical work that actually explained what was happening. But then, the political climate in Germany became untenable. Meitner was Jewish and had to flee the Nazis in 1938. Lucas: Okay, so she did the foundational work and then was forced to run for her life. What happened to the discovery? Christopher: Hahn published the findings, and after the war, in 1944, he alone was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission. Lucas: Wait. He got it alone? For work they did together, where she provided the crucial theoretical explanation? Christopher: Alone. Meitner was completely overlooked by the Nobel committee. It's one of the most notorious snubs in science history. The poem captures her perspective with this absolutely devastating line. When asked if being Jewish had damaged her career, she replied, "Being a woman is such a huge handicap that my religion has never mattered." Lucas: That is just staggering. The sheer weight of that statement... And the hair-on-fire excuse becomes so much more sinister in that light. It’s not just a silly, sexist rule; it's the tip of an iceberg of erasure. Christopher: And the poem drives that irony home. Meitner reflects on her refusal to join the Manhattan Project, the American effort to build the atomic bomb. She says, "I was the mother of nuclear power and I laughed all the way away from the Manhattan Project... In that project, the men who worried about my hair created enough fire to burn 200,000 bodies down to nothing." Lucas: My god. That gives me chills. The men who thought she was too incompetent to be around a Bunsen burner without setting her hair ablaze went on to create the most destructive fire in human history. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. Christopher: It’s a recurring theme. This isn't an isolated incident. The book is full of them. Take Jocelyn Bell Burnell. As a graduate student in the 1960s, she was tasked with analyzing data from a new radio telescope she had helped build. We're talking, as the poem says, "literally miles" of paper charts. Lucas: That sounds mind-numbingly tedious. Christopher: Incredibly. But while doing this painstaking work, she noticed a tiny, repeating signal—a "scruff" of data that didn't fit. It was a pulse, incredibly regular. She describes it in the poem as "like something alive, being born." She felt this profound, personal connection to it, calling it "My eyes. My brain. My child." Lucas: And what was it? Christopher: It was the first-ever discovery of a pulsar—a rapidly rotating neutron star. It was a monumental breakthrough in astrophysics. Lucas: Wow! So she got the Nobel Prize for that, right? A graduate student discovering something so fundamental? Christopher: Her PhD supervisor got the Nobel Prize. She was not included. Lucas: Come on! Again? How does that keep happening? Christopher: The poem captures her feeling perfectly. She says the discovery was "Stolen away in a typical kidnapping." She and the other junior researchers were just "minions." But then she adds this line that just floors me: "I didn’t fight it. What mattered was the science, the growing." Lucas: That’s a level of grace I don't think I'd have. To have your "child" kidnapped, as she puts it, and to just say, "Well, at least the science moves forward." It's both inspiring and deeply, deeply infuriating.

Lucas: It's infuriating. It seems like to even get in the door, these women had to be twice as good and willing to be invisible. But the book isn't just about professional injustice, right? I get the sense it goes into their personal lives, and the price they paid there. Christopher: Exactly. And that's where the stories get even more personal and, in some ways, more heartbreaking. The professional erasure was just one part of the battle. To even get to a place where their work could be stolen, they had to lead these incredibly unconventional lives. Take the Russian mathematician Sofya Kovalevskaya. Lucas: Okay, what was her story? Christopher: In 19th-century Russia, women couldn't attend university or even travel abroad without their father's or husband's permission. Sofya was a mathematical prodigy, but she was trapped. So, she and a young paleontologist, Vladimir Kovalevsky, entered into a "fictitious marriage." It was a purely platonic arrangement, a legal loophole to get her a passport and the freedom to study in Germany. Lucas: A fake marriage for a math degree. That's some serious dedication. Christopher: It is. The poem notes, "We consummated our marriage four years after the wedding." But this solution created its own problems. Their relationship was always complicated, and she was torn between her groundbreaking work and the demands of a life she'd constructed out of necessity. She had a daughter she admits she neglected. The poem ends with her reflecting on the contrast between the clean, logical world of math and the chaos of her life. She says, "Rules work for numbers, most of the time. They don’t work for women, at least not now." Lucas: That line hits hard. She could master the rules of the universe but couldn't escape the arbitrary, unjust rules of society. It's a profound kind of tragedy. Christopher: And you see this theme of re-engineering one's life over and over. The book tells the story of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States. Her motivation was almost the inverse of Kovalevskaya's. Lucas: How so? Christopher: The poem, in her voice, says it all. She decided to become a doctor for one primary reason: "Because they tell me it is impossible." But there was a second, crucial part to it. She continues, "This way I can never marry... I can get inside him, take him all apart and bury him, never lose my name." She saw a medical career as a shield against the societal expectation of marriage, a way to maintain her independence and identity. Lucas: Wow. So for one, marriage was a tool for freedom, and for another, her career was a tool to avoid marriage. It's like they had to perform these complex social calculations just to do their work. Christopher: And the sacrifices were immense. During her training, Blackwell was treating an infant with gonorrhea and contracted an infection in her eye. She lost her sight in that eye, and with it, her depth perception. Her dream of being a surgeon was over. But her reflection on it in the poem is just... astonishing. She says, "Sex wrecked my eye. Don’t pity me. Pity the infant, sick with gonorrhea... She had no chance... I was not the thief. Gonorrhea took that baby’s life." Lucas: That's incredible. In the face of a life-altering injury that ended her dream, her first thought is empathy for the patient. It speaks volumes about her character. It really shows how, as the author Jessy Randall puts it in her feminist critique, these weren't just women who happened to be scientists; they were rebels who used science as their form of resistance.

Lucas: So after hearing all these stories—of erasure, of sacrifice, of these incredible, unconventional lives—what's the big takeaway here? Is this just a collection of sad stories, or is there a bigger message in Mathematics for Ladies? Christopher: I think the book argues that the history of science isn't a clean, linear progression of facts. It's a messy, human story full of struggle, injustice, and politics. But more than that, it's a story of incredible resilience. These women weren't just discovering new laws of physics or new species; they were discovering new ways to live—as scientists, as women, as rebels. Lucas: That’s a great way to put it. They had to invent the rules for their own lives because the existing ones were designed to exclude them. Christopher: Precisely. They created their own rules, their own paths. Whether it was Frances Hamerstrom, who felt most alive when her "brain was wild" and she was planting poison ivy, or Maria Sibylla Merian, who left her husband after twenty years to reclaim her name and dedicate her life to studying caterpillars. Each poem is a testament to a woman who refused to be a footnote. Lucas: It’s a powerful reframing. The book is highly acclaimed, and I can see why. It forces you to look at every "great man" of science and ask a different set of questions. Christopher: Exactly. You start to wonder: who was standing behind him, uncredited? Who was the graduate student analyzing the data? Who was barred from the lab for fear of setting her hair on fire? Who was the "wife" whose unpaid work made his career possible? The book makes you see the invisible ink. Lucas: And it makes you think about today. We'd love to hear from our listeners, especially those in STEM. Do these stories resonate? What's changed, and what hasn't? Find us on our socials and let us know. These stories feel historical, but I have a feeling the echoes are still very much with us. Christopher: I think you're right. The fight for recognition, for a room of one's own, is far from over. This is Aibrary, signing off.