Howdy AskHistorians!

We are Leila McNeill and Anna Reser. We are historians of science, technology, and medicine. Together we are the editors of Lady Science, a magazine and podcast about women in the history and popular culture of science, and the authors of the brand new (came out yesterday!) book Forces of Nature: The Women Who Changed Science.

Forces of Nature is a history of women in science from the ancient world to the present. We focus on putting women scientists in context, and better understanding their immense contributions to science, technology and medicine. We hear a lot about how women were “hidden” or “overlooked” and in some times and places that is true. And in some times and places, women were actively prevented from participating in science. But many were central to the development of their disciplines, some were quite famous, and many have only been silenced after the fact by neglect, or deliberate omission from our understanding of the development of science. More than that, even those women who were not famous or even notable in their own time put the lie to the idea that women are simply scarce in the long history of science and only emerged as investigators in the modern period. You can read more about our approach to this history here.

Leila McNeill (u/Leila_Sedai): I’m a writer, editor, and historian of science, and an Affiliate Fellow in the History of Science at the University of Oklahoma. I have been a columnist for Smithsonian.com and BBC Future, and I’ve been published by The Atlantic, The Baffler, JSTOR Daily, amongst others. I'm working on a book about Henrietta Swan Leavitt and the period/luminosity relationship in astronomy and cosmology.

Anna Reser (u/DrAnnaReser): I’m a historian, writer, and postdoc at the University of Oklahoma. In my work outside of Lady Science and Forces, I study the history of the American space programs of the 1960s, focusing on place, environment, gender, images, and American culture.

Today from 1ET we’re answering your questions about women and gender in the history of science! Ask us anything!

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Edit 4:45 ET: Thank you all so much for the questions! We will keep answering them as they come in!