From the ancient world to the present women have been critical to the progress of science, yet their importance is overlooked, their stories lost, distorted, or actively suppressed. Forces of Nature sets the record straight and charts the fascinating history of women's discoveries in science.
In the ancient and medieval world, women served as royal physician ... Show More
Jan 13
Dagomar Degroot, "Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean: An Environmental History of Our Place in the Solar System" (Harvard UP, 2025)
Our solar system is a dynamic arena where asteroids careen off course and solar winds hurl charged particles across billions of miles of space. Yet we seldom consider how these events, so immense in scale, influence our fragile blue planet: Earth. In Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean: ... Show More
1h 15m
Jan 11
Alison Bashford, "Decoding the Hand: A History of Science, Medicine, and Magic" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Why did Isaac Newton read books on chiromancy, the occult science of hand reading that revealed the secrets of the soul? Why did Charles Darwin claim that the hand gave humans dominion over all other species? Why did psychoanalyst Charlotte Wolff climb into the primate cages of t ... Show More
45m 19s
Jan 10
Kenneth Aizawa, "Compositional Abduction and Scientific Interpretation: A Granular Approach" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
How do scientists reason when they posit unobservables to explain their observed results? For example, how did Watson and Crick reason that DNA had a double-helix structure when they observed Franklin’s image 51, or how did Hodgkin and Huxley reason that sodium ions carried the c ... Show More
1 h
Mar 2013
De Sofia Kovalevskaya à Dorothy Hodgkin : Les femmes scientifiques en Europe, Annette Vogt, version audio
Femmes et sciences du 6 janvier 2011. De Sofia Kovalevskaya à Dorothy Hodgkin : Les femmes scientifiques en Europe, Annette Vogt
Le sujet « Femmes et Sciences » est sorti de l'ombre en France au milieu des années 1990, lorsque le problème de la place des femmes en politique a été ... Show More
57m 18s
Aug 2023
How to get more women in science, with Athene Donald
In the latest episode of Nature hits the books, physicist Athene Donald joins us to discuss her book Not just for the boys, why we need more women in science. We discuss how science has historically excluded women, the barriers to entry and retention that remain prevalent, and wh ... Show More
32m 14s
Jun 2012
Science et plafond de verre : diversité des parcours et des approches, Claudie Haigneré et Jacqueline Laufer, version audio
Cycle Femmes et sciences. Conférence du 5 mai 2011.
Le sujet « Femmes et Sciences » est sorti de l'ombre en France au milieu des années 1990, lorsque le problème de la place des femmes en politique a été soulevé. Depuis, la crise des vocations scientifiques s'est fait jour : puis ... Show More
1h 11m
Feb 2020
Science Stories - Mary Somerville, pioneer of popular science writing
Mary Somerville was a self-taught genius who wrote best-selling books translating, explaining and drawing together different scientific fields and who was named the nineteenth century's "queen of science". Born Mary Fairfax in 1780, she was an unlikely scientific hero. Her parent ... Show More
27m 33s
Oct 2023
'This doesn't just fall on women': computer scientists reflect on gender biases in STEM
In this Podcast Extra, two computer scientists, Shobhana Narasimhan and Sana Odeh, join Nature's Anne Pichon to discuss the barriers that women and gender-diverse people still face when working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.They share their experiences and p ... Show More
14m 57s