A woman scientist in pursuit of truth: A rising trend of representation with Chernobyl

Sky/HBO’s miniseries Chernobyl (2019) tells a human story behind the catastrophic disaster that had begun with an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine on 26 April 1986. Over the course of five one-hour episodes, Chernobyl dramatizes the incidents that paved the way to the massive explosion, such as the Cold War era, the dysfunctional Soviet bureaucracy and the power issues among the male political and scientific establishment. The highlight of the miniseries is female agency being the symbol of scientific approach, rational thought and common sense. This article analyses Chernobyl and the character of a Belarusian nuclear physicist named Ulyana Khomyuk (played by Emily Watson) by focusing on women’s representation on popular television in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. It also questions whether Chernobyl is one of the very few examples in popular culture of changing patterns of women’s representation in STEM.

First person – Dipanjana Ghosh

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Dipanjana Ghosh is first author on ‘ PLP2 drives collective cell migration via ZO-1-mediated cytoskeletal remodeling at the leading edge in human colorectal cancer cells’, published in JCS. Dipanjana is an independent DST Woman Scientist-A researcher at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal, India, investigating cancer cell metastasis at the proteome-wide level.

Woman-scientist, paleontologist

The article is devoted to the scientific activities of one of the first Russian women geologists, paleontologists — Tatyana Alekseevna Dobrolyubova in connection with the anniversary date — the 130th birthday anniversary. A whole stage in the history of geological studies of the natural resources of the Northern Urals, as well as paleontological studies of the Carboniferous and Permian corals of the Russian Platform and the Urals, are associated with her name. The most important directions of her research and the most significant achievements, as well as the stages of her life, are briefly highlighted.

The biography and scientific work of the Soviet microbiologist Z.V. Yermolyeva: historiographic characteristics of post-Soviet publications

This paper provides a brief analysis of works that consider the main stages of the scientific biography of the famous Soviet scientist-microbiologist, academician of medicine Zinaida Vissarionovna Yermolyeva (18981974). Among the most famous achievements of the scientist are the receipt of the first Soviet penicillin and the prevention of the cholera epidemic in Stalingrad during the Great Patriotic War. Her scientific interests had a fairly wide range: from cholera and antibiotics to lysozyme, interferon and other biologically active substances. Speaking about Z.V. Yermolyeva, the famous Soviet microbiologist and epidemiologist, academician N.F. Gamaleya noted that she as a researcher is characterized by a desire to work in the area that is currently the most urgent for socialist health care. Indeed, getting acquainted with the biography of this amazing woman scientist, it becomes clear why she switched from one research direction into another this was her ability to quickly respond to the needs of the country and the challenges of the time. Given a great importance to the figure of Z.V. Yermolyeva in the history of Russian science, it seems relevant to establish a degree of study of this problem. The author of this paper has already carried out a brief analysis of the historiography of the works in the Soviet period on the history of Zinaida Yermolyevas scientific activities; therefore this paper is its logical continuation.

First Woman

This book, based on the life and work of Joanne (Gerould) Simpson (1923–2010), charts the history of women in meteorology and the history of tropical meteorology in the context of her long and productive career as pioneer scientist, project leader, and mentor. In 1943 women had no status in meteorology, tropical weather was largely aer incognita, and Joanne Gerould, a new graduate student at the University of Chicago, had just set her sights on understanding the behavior of clouds. Establishing her career in an era of overwhelming marginalization of women in science was no easy matter, and Joanne (who published under three married names and raised three children) had to fight every step of the way. Under the mentorship of Herbert Riehl, she received a PhD degree from Chicago in 1949. Later, while working at Woods Hole, she collaborated with Riehl on their revolutionary and controversial “hot tower” hypothesis that cumulonimbus clouds were the driving force in the tropical atmosphere, providing energy to power the Hadley circulation, the trade winds, and by implication, the global circulation. The mechanism of hot towers alludes to the incessant battle between buoyancy and entrainment in tropical convection, valorizing those clouds that successfully break through the trade wind inversion to soar to the top of the troposphere. The metaphor of hot towers points to the incessant battles Joanne waged between her sky-high aspirations and the dark psychological and institutional forces dragging her down. Yet she prevailed, reaching the pinnacle of personal and professional accomplishment, especially in her years at NASA, as she conditioned the atmosphere for further breakthroughs for women in science. She is best remembered as a pioneer woman scientist, the best tropical scientist of her generation.

Star Trek Discovers Women

Women scientists are often seen as anomalous exceptions in the fictional (and indeed real) world of white, male dominated scientific research. Even in the supposedly race and gender blind future of Star Trek, a black woman science specialist is considered revolutionary. Science and technology are a backdrop for the Star Trek universe. The theory and practice that gives the narrative a spectacular speculative frame is often perceived as neutral (or at least benevolent) as Starfleet explores the universe. Star Trek idealises science and the scientist, and throughout much of its history the science future it imagines has been distinctly white and male. This chapter argues that Star Trek has historically given women the space to be scientists, but Discovery goes further than previous entries into the canon by taking a black woman scientist from the margin to the centre of the story and offering a future when neither race nor gender present a barrier.

Una científica ilustrada que luchó por su visibilización: Madame de Châtelet=An enlightened woman scientist who fought for her visibility: Madame de Châtelet

<p align="left"><strong>Resumen</strong></p><p>A lo largo de la historia, los nombres y los hechos de mujeres fueron invisibilizados en todos los ámbitos por el patriarcado, que fue deformando la construcción científica y cultural, al dar por válidos y neutrales una historia y unos resultados sesgados y parciales. Los mecanismos para invisibilizar a las mujeres son múltiples: borrarlas, opacarlas minimizar su obra, tergiversar su vida, desvalorizar o robar su trabajo… La lucha por la visibilización suele ser un trabajo de recuperación a posteriori y es habitual que la propia mujer —siendo consciente de las dificultades que tenía en razón de su sexo— haya tratado de que su nombre no se extinguiera. Este es el caso de una mujer ilustrada, Madame de Châtelet, que en varias ocasiones reclamó, defendió y protegió su nombre como científica, frente a los que querían usurparle la autoría, marcando así un hito en la historia de las mujeres científicas.</p><p align="left"><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p>Throughout history, the names and facts of women were made invisible in all areas by the patriarchy, which deformed the scientific and cultural construction, by giving biased and partial results as valid and neutral. The mechanisms to make women invisible are multiple: erase them, overshadow them, minimize their work, misrepresent their lives, devalue or steal their work... The struggle for visibility is usually a post-recovery work and it is not usual that the woman herself — being aware of the difficulties she had because of her sex — to have tried that its name was not extinguished. This is the case of an enlightened woman, Madame de Châtelet, who repeatedly claimed, defended and protected her name as a scientist, against those who wanted to usurp her authorship, thus marking a milestone in the history of women scientists.</p>