Rachel
Swaby’s Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science - and the World is
filled with 3 to 5 page summaries about the lives and accomplishments of
remarkable women in the fields of medicine, biology and environment, genetics, physics,
astronomy, math, and invention. Swaby
purposefully does not include Marie Curie, arguing that she needs no
introduction and embodies our stereotypical view of a women scientist. Instead
she writes about Curie’s daughter, Irène Juliot-Curie, who also won a Nobel Prize.
Profiles primarily feature American and European scientists such as Virginia Apgar,
Mary Anning, Rachel Carson, Grace Hopper, Maria Mitchell, and Sally Ride. I am sad to say that I did not readily recognize
many other names which underscores an exciting opportunity to learn from this collection.
Those were frequently the most
interesting sections, such as one about Jeanne Villepreux-Power who invented
the aquarium.
The cover looks as though this is geared to younger readers, but the
language is fairly sophisticated and Library Journal is recommending it for
smaller academic libraries. To me, it’s the perfect book to pick up and leaf through,
to find an interesting person and then decide to use other resources and learn
even more. Middle and high school students will find much of interest as they
contemplate possible careers and course selections. I love that there are 52
vignettes – one per week for a whole year of investigating and exploring!
I also wanted to add these links (already mentioned elsewhere)
about innovation from both men and women: Maria Popova at Brain Pickings
created a terrific visual review of 100 Ideas that Changed the Web
by Jim Boulton (check out #27 about Hedy Lamarr’s contribution
to wi-fi type communication; she is also profiled in Swaby’s Headstrong). Or look into The Gentleman who made Scholar and be sure to investigate 12 Lesser-known Google Projects that are Absolutely Amazing.
