The Highest of All Ceilings: Astronomer Cecilia Payne

06/22/23 • 29 min

Cecilia Payne was in her early 20s when she figured out what the stars are made of. Both she and her groundbreaking findings were ahead of their time. Continuing the legacy of women working at the Harvard Observatory, Cecilia charted the way for a generation of female astronomers to come. This episode of Lost Women of Science: shorts follows Cecilia’s journey of discovery, journals her drive and determination against all odds, and takes you to the Harvard Observatory itself to walk in Cecilia’s footsteps.

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What's in a Street Name? Everything.

In 1992, a Dutch doctor named Josh von Soer Clemm von Hohenberg wrote a letter to Henning Voscherau, the mayor of Hamburg, Germany, requesting that a street be named after Marie Nyswander.

The doctor had never met Marie, but he had founded a clinic for treating people with drug addiction, and he’d seen methadone treatment — co-developed by Marie — save lives. Four years later, doctors gathered on a street in northwest Hamburg to celebrate that street’s new name: Nyswanderweg. We’re investigating how German streets get their names, and why so few of them honor women like Marie, who have made historic achievements.

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From Our Inbox: Alessandra Giliani, 14th-century Italian anatomist

Welcome to the first in our From Our Inbox series, in which we give listeners a taste of the mail we get from folks wanting to bring a particular forgotten scientist to our attention. Here’s the story of Alessandra Giliani, brought to us by Barbara Quick, an author and poet in the San Francisco Bay Area.

There’s a persistent myth in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy about Alessandra Giliani, a 14th-century girl who defied the laws of Church and state to attend medical school. The most concrete evidence of her existence comes in the form of illuminated manuscripts depicting an assistant to anatomist Mondino de Liuzzi who appears to be a cross-dressed woman. In this episode, associate producer Mackenzie Tatananni speaks with author Barbara Quick about Alessandra’s discoveries, which were well ahead of their time.

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