Ada Lovelace Day: Nature Research editors celebrate leaders in their fields – Part 1

This is the first of a three-part blog series to celebrate blogs to mark this milestone which will be published over three days. You can read more about Ada Lovelace’s legacy here. Juliane C Mossinger, Senior Editor, Nature  In the 1880s, when studying for a Ph.D. in geology, Florence Bascom had to take classes behind a screen so that she would not disturb her male colleagues. I wonder what she would have made of a news story in 2017 about a female Silicon Valley CEO, who dyed her blond hair brown and started wearing gender neutral clothing in order to be taken more seriously by investors? Florence Bascom became a leading expert in the classification of rocks and the process of mountain formation. She was the first woman hired by the U.S. Geological Survey, and the first woman elected to the Council of the Geological Society of America. But it was not just all her ‘firsts’ that paved the way for future generations of female geologists. She didn’t pull up the drawbridge behind her. On the contrary, she founded the geology department at Bryn Mawr College and personally trained a generation of successful female geologist during the early 20th century.  May Chiao, Chief Editor, Nature Astronomy Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell is very much in my thoughts. You see, next month is the 50th anniversary of the discovery of pulsars — rapidly spinning neutron stars that emit radio waves in the way that lighthouses sweep a light beam around. As a PhD student, she first notice...
Source: BioMed Central Blog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Publishing Ada Lovelace Day Source Type: blogs