Narrator: Imagine being barred from a science lab because the men in charge fear you might set your hair on fire. Now, imagine that those same men, years later, go on to create a fire powerful enough to burn 200,000 bodies to nothing. This is the staggering irony that defined the life of Lise Meitner, the brilliant physicist who was the mother of nuclear power but refused to help build the atomic bomb. Her story, and dozens like it, are the heart of a provocative collection of poems titled Mathematics for Ladies by Jessy Randall. The book unearths the hidden histories of women in science, challenging the narratives that have long erased their contributions and silenced their voices. It reveals a world of profound injustice, quiet defiance, and the relentless pursuit of knowledge against all odds.

Narrator: The book's title, Mathematics for Ladies, is not a celebration but an act of subversion. It originates from a derogatory term used in the 1920s Soviet Union. At the time, practical, applied mathematics like engineering was seen as valuable work for the new Soviet woman. Abstract fields, like the function theory studied by mathematician Nina Karlovna Bari, were dismissed as useless and trivial. They were mockingly called "mathematics for ladies," implying they were a frivolous pastime for the posh and unproductive, not the work of "real" mathematicians.

By adopting this title, Randall reclaims the insult. The book gives voice to women like Bari, who, despite the condescension, became the first woman admitted to the prestigious Luzitania mathematical school. It celebrates the very fields and the very women who were once dismissed, turning a historical slight into a banner of honor. It forces the reader to confront the long history of devaluing women's intellectual pursuits and reframes their stories as acts of profound defiance.

Narrator: A central theme of the book is the active and systemic erasure of women from the history of science. This erasure took many forms. For some, like the brilliant astronomer Caroline Herschel, their identity was completely subsumed by a male relative. Despite discovering several comets and compiling star catalogs, she was consistently known merely as "the sister of William Herschel." Her defiant internal thought, "My thoughts are mine," is a quiet rebellion against this erasure.

For others, their contributions were so profound they forced a change in the language of science itself, yet this origin story was forgotten. In the early 19th century, there was no gender-neutral term for a scientific practitioner; they were "men of science." But when Mary Somerville published her groundbreaking work unifying diverse scientific fields and even predicted the existence of Neptune, the philosopher William Whewell found the old term inadequate. He coined a new word specifically to describe her: "scientist." The very term we use today was born from the need to describe the work of a woman, a fact that has been largely erased from popular history.

Narrator: Even when a woman's genius was too great to be ignored, her very success could be used to diminish others. Marie Curie, the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different scientific fields, became the ultimate "exception that proved the rule." She was held up as the singular example of a great woman scientist, which inadvertently reinforced the idea that such women were rare anomalies.

The book gives voice to Curie's own frustration with this role. She is imagined to plead, "Stop comparing me to every woman scientist! Another Madame Curie this. A new Madame Curie that." Her plea is for other women to be allowed their own unique identities and achievements. By making her the sole benchmark, society created an impossible standard and overshadowed the work of countless other women, turning her into a tool for the very narrative of scarcity she defied.

Narrator: The book makes it clear that the barriers women faced were not limited to gender. Prejudice was intersectional, with race and religion compounding the challenges. Lise Meitner, a key figure in the discovery of nuclear fission, was not only a woman in a male-dominated field but was also Jewish in Nazi Germany. After being forced to flee, she was unjustly overlooked for the Nobel Prize, which was awarded solely to her male collaborator. When asked if being Jewish had damaged her career, Meitner's reply was devastatingly insightful: "Being a woman is such a huge handicap that my religion has never mattered."

This layered discrimination is a recurring theme. The pediatrician and activist Helen Rodríguez-Trías, a Puerto Rican woman, noted that "Over and over I’ve had to prove myself to white women," highlighting that prejudice could even come from within a marginalized group. Similarly, Evelyn Boyd Granville, one of the first African-American women to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics, was barred from attending a national conference because the hotel was "whites-only." Her brilliance could not overcome the brutal reality of racial segregation. These stories reveal that the fight for recognition was a complex battle fought on multiple fronts.

Narrator: Pursuing an intellectual life often came at an almost unimaginable personal cost. The poems paint vivid pictures of the extreme sacrifices these women made. Émilie du Châtelet, a brilliant 18th-century physicist, found herself pregnant and in a desperate race against time to finish her translation of Newton's Principia. Fearing she would not survive childbirth, she worked until five in the morning, keeping herself awake by plunging her arms into icy water.

In 19th-century Russia, women were forbidden from pursuing higher education without male permission. To escape this, mathematician Sofya Kovalevskaya entered into a "fictitious marriage," a platonic, legal arrangement that granted her the freedom to study abroad. This act of defiance enabled her career but led to a life of personal complexity and emotional turmoil. These stories reveal that for many women, the pursuit of knowledge was not a simple career choice but a life-altering, all-consuming struggle that demanded immense sacrifice and radical acts of personal defiance.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Mathematics for Ladies is that the history of science as it is commonly told is a fiction, written by erasing the contributions, struggles, and voices of half its participants. The book is a powerful act of historical correction, using the intimate and humanizing form of poetry to restore the names and narratives of women who were systematically overlooked, exploited, and dismissed. It reveals that their work was not a footnote but foundational, and their lives were not simple tales of achievement but complex sagas of defiance against a world determined to limit them.

This collection does more than just fill in the gaps of history; it challenges us to look at our own world. It forces us to ask: Who are the invisible figures in our own fields? Whose contributions are being dismissed as "inconsequential," and whose voices are being silenced? The book's ultimate impact is to inspire a more vigilant and just accounting of genius, wherever it may be found.