Physics

Content type
Collection
Studio portrait of actress Mirra Eitingon standing in a black dress

Mirra Burovsky-Eitingon

Mirra Burovsky was the first Jewish actress to star in the mainstream Russian theater. Her stormy life and career brought her to center stage of Jewish cultural, intellectual, and social ferment in Tsarist and revolutionary Russia, Weimar Germany, and mandatory Palestine. Her third marriage, to psychoanalytist Max Eitingon, and the career of her son Yuli Khariton, “the father of the Soviet atomic bomb,” created the background for a continuing espionage controversy.

Miriam Rykles in her office, 1968
October 17, 2019

Knocking on Harvard's Glass Ceiling

Elana Spivack

In 1962, Miriam Rykles applied to work in Harvard University’s physics department. This is her story.

Topics: Education, Physics
2016-2017 Rising Voices Fellow Maya Jodidio Pipetting DNA into a Gel
September 6, 2017

To Girls Taking Their First STEM Classes

Caroline Kubzansky and
Maya Jodidio
If you’re a female-identifying teen and you attend high school, chances are good that you take, or will take, a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) class. Physics, biology, and chemistry are the usual suspects. We’re writing to share some collective wisdom with you from our own high-school experience.
Topics: Feminism, Schools, Engineering, Inventors, Natural Science, Physics

Eileen Pollack

Discouraged from a promising career in science, Eileen Pollack published her 2015 memoir The Only Woman in the Room to unravel the many instances of sexism, large and small, which push women like her out of STEM fields.
Joan Feynman

Joan Feynman

Astrophysicist Joan Feynman shaped our understanding of solar winds, auroras, and sunspots, and her battle to open scientific bastions to women transformed the field for those who followed.
November 6, 2013

Women in Science: Reflecting with Dr. Joan Feynman

Jordyn Rozensky

Dr. Feynman fought an uphill battle—she had the smarts and the ability, but she was living in a world that wasn’t able to support or encourage a woman in science. Realizing the realities of the academic culture, she relegated her ambitions to being an assistant to a male physicist. Luckily for all of us—and for the field of theoretical physics—the support of her brother helped her set her goals at being a “high-medium physicist.”

Topics: Feminism, Science, Physics
Steve Benson on the Death of Elsa Neumann Thumbnail

Death of Elsa Neumann, first female doctoral graduate of University of Berlin

July 23, 1902

Death of Elsa Neumann, first female doctoral graduate of University of Berlin

Kepler's Supernova Remnant
July 18, 2012

Women as Wave, Women as Particle: The gender-racial politics of the male-female gaze

Gabrielle Orcha

Who are you?

I mean really . . .

Who are you . . . when you are alone and no one is watching?

What is your wave state?

Topics: Feminism, Politics and Government, Physics
Rosalyn Yalow, 1977

Rosalyn Sussman Yalow, 1921 - 2011

Ultimately, RIA created “an explosion of knowledge” in every aspect of medicine and was used in thousands of laboratories in the United States and abroad.

Mattie Levi Rotenberg

Mattie Levi Rotenberg, 1897 - 1989

One Erev Pesach my grandmother demonstrated physics at the University of Toronto for three hours, went to the radio studio to tape a live broadcast, taped two more broadcasts for the upcoming days of Yom Tov, and came home to make seder.

Dr. Rosalyn S. Yalow

Dr. Rosalyn S. Yalow becomes first American-born woman to receive Nobel Prize in science

December 8, 1977

On December 8, 1977, Rosalyn Yalow became the first American-born and American-trained woman to receive a Nobel Prize in science when she accepted

Rosalyn Yalow

Rosalyn Yalow

Rosalyn Yalow made a breakthrough contribution to medical research with the discovery of radioimmunoassay, which contributed to major advances in diabetes research and other medical conditions. She won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1977. At a time when it was rare for a woman to have a career in science, she defied gender barriers and pursued both a career and a family.

Science in Israel

In Israel, awareness has grown recently that only through proactive effort can gender equality in scientific fields can be realized. Thorough investigations of inequalities have taken place, and actions are being taken to catalyze policy and systematic action to further women in science and technology.
Mattie Rotenberg

Mattie Rotenberg

The first woman and the first Jew to be granted a doctorate in physics at the University of Toronto, Mattie Rotenberg also founded Toronto’s first Jewish day school in 1929 to educate her five children. She went on to embark upon a successful second career in journalism.

Olga Taussky-Todd, 1932

Olga Taussky-Todd

A self-proclaimed “torchbearer for matrix theory,” Olga Taussky-Todd made the previously little-known field essential for scientists and mathematicians.

Ruth Sperling

Ruth Sperling

Ruth Sperling s an esteemed Israeli scientist. Her work with her husband included a revolutionary discovery of the 3-D structure of spliceosomes, the cell's "machinery" for chopping up and re-attaching pieces of DNA to create its requisite assortment of functional proteins.
Elsa Neumann at Her Graduation from the University of Berlin, 1899

Elsa Neumann

Elsa Neumann was the first woman to receive a doctoral degree from the University of Berlin. She became prominent in Berlin’s scientific community, carrying out research for the newly established airship industry. In 1900 Neumann established a highly successful association that gave grants to female students.

Helene Metzger's Reader's Card

Hélène Metzger

Hélène Metzger was a French historian of chemistry and a philosopher of science, whose work remains influential today. Her independence and drive brought her great recognition, despite the lack of credibility given to her as a woman.

Lise Meitner standing at a table beside an atomic model, holding a purse and briefcase in one hand

Lise Meitner

Lise Meitner’s influential work concerning radioactivity in the early 20th century made her a target of the Nazis. She fled to Sweden in 1938, and it was there that she discovered the power of the fission reaction. Even though Meitner never worked on nuclear weapons, her 1939 research was essential in the research of nuclear power.

Lillian Lieber

Lillian R. Lieber

Frustrated with the way math is taught in schools, Lillian R. Lieber created unconventional, popular books to excite young readers and incite their curiosity.

Hilde Levi

Hilde Levi was an exceptional physicist who worked first in Germany and later in Denmark, where she became a prominent researcher. She belonged to the second generation of women scientists in Germany, who were able to participate on a relatively equal basis in scientific institutions and in academia.

Hedwig Kohn, 1912

Hedwig Kohn

Born in Breslau, Hedwig Kohn was one of the early woman pioneers in physics. After a narrow escape from Nazi Germany, she went on to teach at Wellesley College and pursue independent research at Duke University in the field of flame spectroscopy, measuring absorption features of atomic species in flames.

Joyce Kaufman

Joyce Jacobson Kaufman

A pioneer in the field of physical chemistry, Joyce Jacobson Kaufman did groundbreaking work in the fields of jet propulsion fuels used in the space program, psychotropic pharmacology, and drug design. Kaufman also discovered a novel strategy for using computers to predict drug reactions and the trajectory of a significant number of carcinogens.
Sulamith Goldhaber, October 18, 1963

Sulamith Goldhaber

Sulamith Goldhaber’s family immigrated from Vienna to Palestine, and Goldhaber later moved to the United States to complete her education and begin her career. Her pioneering work with particle accelerators put her at the forefront of a seismic shift in the research of particle physics. She was also renowned for her work concerning nuclear emulsions.

Gertrude Goldhaber

Gertrude Scharff Goldhaber

Throughout a career limited by her gender, her religion, and her marital status, physicist Gertrude Scharff Goldhaber helped ensure other women scientists would not face the same hurdles.

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