Women in Science and Engineering

WAMC's special radio programming on women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (made possible through support from the National Science Foundation).

Listen to the inaugural season, “The Pathologist in the Basement,” about Dorothy Andersen, a physician and pathologist who solved a medical mystery when she identified and defined cystic fibrosis in 1938. A passionate outdoorswoman, a “rugged individualist” and a bit of an enigma, Andersen changed the way acute lung and gastrointestinal problems are understood in young children.

The first modern-style code executed on a computer was written in the 1940s by a woman named Klára Dán von Neumann–or Klári to her family and friends. And the historic program she wrote was used to optimize nuclear weapons. This season, dive into this fascinating moment in postwar America through Klári’s work. Explore the evolution of early computers, the vital role women played in early programming, and the inescapable connection between computing and war.

Yvonne Y. Clark, known as YY throughout her career, has also been nicknamed “The First Lady of Engineering,” because of her groundbreaking achievements as a Black female mechanical engineer. Season 3 of Lost Women of Science traces her trajectory, from her unconventional childhood interest in fixing appliances to civil rights breakthroughs in the segregated South; from her trailblazing role at historically Black colleges and universities to her work at NASA. What can YY teach us about what it means to be the first in a scientific field, especially as a Black woman in America?

A new mini-series of 30-minute short episodes, each devoted to the story of one overlooked female scientist,

In 1965, a team of doctors at Rockefeller University announced what sounded like a miracle—they’d found a treatment for heroin addiction that actually seemed to work, a drug called methadone. But the treatment was controversial, and one of the doctors on the team already had a bit of a reputation as a bold, and possibly even reckless, defier of convention: Marie Nyswander. This season, we bring you her story and the radical treatment that would upend the landscape of addiction for decades to come.