Engineering (General)

For most of the 20th century, American women had little encouragement to become scientists. In 1906, there were only 75 female scientists employed by academic institutions in the entire country. Despite considerable barriers, determined women have, however, decidedly distinguished themselves. Three examples of this are: astronomer Annie Jump Cannon, who discovered five novas and over 300 variable stars; mathematician and computer scientist Grace Hopper, who helped to invent the COBOL language; and anaesthesiologist Virginia Apgar who devised the universally used Apgar score to make a rapid evaluation of a newborn's condition just after delivery.

Location: Shapiro Science Library

Location: Hatcher Graduate Library

Celebrates the contributions of women engineers to every aspect of modern life.

This original graphic novel features famous women scientists including Marie Curie, Emmy Noether, Lise Meitner, Rosalind Franklin, Barbara McClintock,Birute Galdikas, and Hedy Lamarr. The stories offer a human context often missing when we learn about the discoveries attached to these scientists' names.

About half of the undergraduate and roughly 40 percent of graduate degree recipients in science and engineering are women. As increasing numbers of these women pursue research careers in science, many who choose to have children discover the unique difficulties of balancing a professional life in these highly competitive (and often male-dominated) fields with the demands of motherhood. Although this issue directly affects the career advancement of women scientists, it is rarely discussed as a professional concern, leaving individuals to face the dilemma on their own. To address this obvious but unacknowledged crisis--the elephant in the laboratory, according to one scientist--Emily Monosson, an independent toxicologist, has brought together 34 women scientists from overlapping generations and several fields of research--including physics, chemistry, geography, paleontology, and ecology, among others--to share their experiences.

In Paths to Discovery a group of extraordinary Chicanas trace how their interest in math and science at a young age developed into a passion fed by talent and determination. Today they are teaching at major universities, setting public and institutional policy, and pursuing groundbreaking research. These testimonios--personal stories--will encourage young Chicanas to enter the fields of mathematics, science, and engineering and to create futures in classrooms, boardrooms, and laboratories across the nation.

Author Diann Jordan took a journey to find out what inspired and daunted black women in their desire to become scientists in America. Letting 18 prominent black women scientists talk for themselves, Sisters in Science becomes an oral history stretching across decades and disciplines and desires. From Yvonne Clark, the first black woman to be awarded a B.S. in mechanical engineering to Georgia Dunston, a microbiologist who is researching the genetic code for her race, to Shirley Jackson, whose aspiration led to the presidency of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Jordan has created a significant record of women who persevered to become firsts in many of their fields.

Location: Copies available in Hatcher Graduate Library and Shapiro Undergraduate Library. Also available online.

Presents an introduction to engineering followed by biographies women engineers including Amy Alving, Cynthia Barnhart, Martha Gray, Jill Morgan, and Karen Zais.

Location: Copies available at Hatcher Graduate Library and Shapiro Undergraduate Library.

Location: Shapiro Science Library

This book is a unique collective biography of women scholars in the hard sciences at the University of Madras. As an ethnographic case study, it combines a comprehensive description of the lives and careers of individual women who struggle in a male-dominated workplace that marginalizes them with an analysis of the structures and organizational features that serve to maintain them in that peripheral position.

Location: Hatcher Graduate Library