Introducing IDEAS | How a historian found the lost women of science
4/28/202655 min
IDEAS, hosted by Nahlah Ayed is a weekday podcast that explores how ideas shape our world.
“One of your tribe is enough.” That’s what Margaret Rossiter was told when she said she wanted to study female scientists in the ‘70s. Nevertheless, Rossiter persisted. She found and documented hundreds of women whose contributions to science had been overlooked, under-credited and misappropriated. Then she made history herself by coining the term “The Matilda Effect” to describe why those women failed to get the credit they deserved.
Who is Matilda? Matilda Joslyn Gage was a suffragist erased from history. She was known as being too radical for Susan B. Anthony. This episode of IDEAS shares her story.
You can find more episodes of IDEAS wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/IDEASxQQ
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
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Katie Hafner· Guest0:29
This is a CBC podcast.
Bob McDonald· Host0:33
[instrumental music plays] Hi, I'm Bob McDonald, host of Quirks & Quarks. We have a special episode for you today from Ideas, hosted by Nahlah Ayed, a weekday podcast that explores how ideas shape our world. This episode tells the story of the groundbreaking science historian Margaret Rossiter. In the 1970s, her male supervisors at Yale University told her there was no point in studying women in science. They said that other than Marie Curie, there were no women scientists. Rossiter proved them wrong. She persisted with her research and wrote three books about overlooked female scientists in America. Then she coined a phrase to describe why the women failed to get the credit they deserved, the Matilda Effect, inspired by a 19th century suffragist who championed women inventors and ended up being written out of history by her peers. Have a listen