Badass Women in Science: Uncovering Forgotten Pioneers

In this episode of Wildly Curious (formerly For the Love of Nature), co-hosts Katy Reiss, Laura Fawks Lapole, and Kim celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science by exploring the lives and achievements of some of the most badass women in scientific history. From Hedy Lamarr, the Hollywood actress who helped invent technology that paved the way for Wi-Fi, to Brenda Milner, the pioneering neuropsychologist still teaching at over 100 years old, and Alice Ball, the chemist who revolutionized leprosy treatment, these women left a lasting impact on the world. Join the hosts as they share fascinating stories of perseverance, innovation, and brilliance, shedding light on the overlooked contributions of these extraordinary women.

Perfect for science enthusiasts, history buffs, and anyone looking to be inspired by trailblazing women. Tune in to uncover how these women reshaped science and continue to influence our world today.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to For the Love of Nature, a podcast where we tell you everything you need to know about nature and probably more than you wanted to know. I'm Laura.
I'm Katy.
And I'm Kim.
Kim, we have Kim's back. All right, so today we're gonna be talking about badass women in science. And so we did one, what was the idea?
Oh, cause we did the survival. That's what it was.
And that it should be coming out right around this day. The women in science.
Yes, so February 11th is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.
Yes, which is what we wanted to all push because of course we are all women in science.
Yep, and so whenever we talked about the, whenever we were looking up days that coincide with episodes, we were talking about, I brought up again about Laura's badass survival story that she did in what, season one, which was nuts. And so we're like, man, we should do this one, badass women in science. That's what we're gonna be talking about today.
Who wants to be the brave soul that goes first?
Oh, I'll go.
Laura's like, I'll go. I'm ready. Go Laura.
I was searching around, and of course there's a plethora of awesome women in science.
There really is. There really is.
So there wasn't like a lack of choice, but I ended up choosing a name that I recognized, but didn't know anything about her. And it's Hedy Lamarr. That name sounds familiar.
The name sounds familiar. She was a insanely famous actress from the 1930s. That's what it is.
Hedy Lamarr, yes. They make fun of her in Blazing Saddles, and she's referenced in a lot of things. So she's really cool.
So let me give you a little bit of bio on her, and then why is she a badass scientist? Because she's an actress. So her original name was Hedwig Eva Keisler, or Kessler, Keisler.
Hedwig, awesome name. But she was born in Vienna, Austria in 1914 to a well-off Jewish family, although she denied her ancestry even to her own children. So it's a little disappointing.
But so this whole love of science and engineering goes back to when she was just a little kid. Her dad, who was a bank director, clearly very intelligent man, used to go on walks with her and talk about how things worked, like machines specifically, like printing presses and trolleys and things like that. So he was just a nerd and liked that kind of stuff and then got her into it.
And because of this, she started disassembling and reassembling her music box when she was five.
Why not?
Right. Like she just was mechanically inclined as a kid. On the other hand, her mother was a pianist, like a famous concert pianist.
So she taught little Hedwig the arts. So by age 10, Hedwig could speak four languages, which, okay, she's European.
Yeah.
That's surprising.
But I was just gonna say, I was like, I mean, I want to give her credit, but she is from Europe. So they're leaped and bound among us Americans that are born and stay with one language.
I'm assuming English, German, Austrian, and not French.
She could dance and play the piano. So by age 17, she was an acclaimed beauty. As disappointing as it is, but as a surprise to no one listening, as any women listening, she was most renowned for her beauty, not her brains.
Even though she was freaking intelligent.
Right, but she is called often the most beautiful woman in film and even the most beautiful woman in the world at the top, like at least at the time. And if you look at her picture, she is gorgeous. She has like big brown eyes, long eyelashes, beautiful hair, flawless skin, beautiful.
Before Photoshop was Photoshop. Before you could, it was natural beauty.
Just naturally gorgeous. She actually, fun fact, she was the inspiration for how Snow White looked. Okay, okay, I did know that.
The original Catwoman in the comic books. So kind of think like a dark exotic beauty, although Snow White had very pale skin, but that kind of look. So what's kind of sad is that she didn't view her appearance as very important in the beginning.
But as she aged, she started to undergo plastic surgery when she was older because it became a big deal. But at the beginning, she also was just like, she said anybody can be gorgeous, you just have to stand around and look stupid.
So she reached stardom because she is a famous actress due to a movie, a Czech movie called, well, it's Ecstasy, but in Czech, in 1932. And let me tell you, ladies, just this makes her a badass before even the science, because she appeared in this movie was groundbreaking. It is the first feature film in which a woman appeared nude and simulated an orgasm.
I watched the scene.
It's very tastefully done, as it makes sense for the thirties. It's very much cut, cut, cut, cut. But the whole scene is on her face as things are happening.
And I mean, wow. So that, of course, got her a lot of attention. Of course.
Although she was actually really pissed about it, because it was in the fine print that she was going to have to appear. And she didn't know that. And then it was too late because she'd already signed the contract.
So she becomes this famous actress. She immediately, like at age, like seven. Actually, she might have been.
This movie probably came out when she was 18.
I was like, hold on. I mean, before back then, no, back then.
Nothing about that. I'm just thinking timeline in my head, because she also got married at the same time to a munitions dealer, so like a guy who deals in ammunition.
He was so this is 1932 in Austria. There and he's a munitions dealer.
So he was working with the Nazis.
He sold to the Nazis, we'll see.
Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
She was expected to be the perfect housewife. She hosted dinner parties. She actually they hosted and dined with Mussolini.
So they were uppity-up. They were uppity-up though.
Yeah, very rich.
Her heritage. Although, funnily enough, her husband was also Jewish. They were both Jewish.
So they didn't do as much with the Nazis, but they did do a lot with Mussolini. But he was an insanely jealous possessive husband. He tried to buy and destroy all copies of that movie that she appeared in.
And he made her stop acting. So she was married for four years and then got the F out of there. She ran away to London.
She just left him. But she had kept all the things she learned while she was married for those four years, which will come into play later.
Yeah, I was like, I don't know what she learned.
Yeah, well, munitions stuff. So she was discovered by MGM, went to Hollywood in 1937, was made to change her name, which is just messed up, probably because they were like, your name sounds too much like a German name. So she chose Hedy Lamarr.
She started in over 30 films in 28 years and was like top of the line actress alongside Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, yadda yadda.
I feel like I need a stage name. Just want one name. Whenever somebody says my real name, they're all like, oh, I did not know that.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, your pseudonym.
Yeah, I need a stage name. We need to work on that. Continue.
Yeah, we'll workshop that. So right around that time, she's just become a famous actress in America now, and she's starting to produce movies. So this is where you learn that she's more than a pretty face, which I've alluded to when she was a little kid.
She started really messing with machines. So she was dating Howard Hughes, which is another name that might ring some bells. Very famous man.
He was a businessman and a pilot. He was all about her using her creativity, which is cool of him. He gave her a small set of tools to use in her trailer in between takes where she tinkered and invented things.
He showed her the workings of his airplane factories, and he wanted faster planes, which he mentioned to her. She actually designed a faster plane for him. Yeah, she got the inspiration by combining the fins of the fastest fish and the wings of the fastest bird, and that became the fastest plane.
What else did she create at that time? She created a dissolvable soda tablet that can make any drink, like water, taste like coke.
Wait, why don't we still have that?
Right? I think that sounds nice, too. Also, like Alka-Seltzer?
I don't like.
Also, let's be clear, because when was this now? This was in the, what have been in the 30s?
Yeah.
So is it Coca-Cola or like Coke?
I don't know. She did get addicted to pep pills, which I don't even know what that means. But she also created an anti-aircraft shell with a proximity fuse.
So there's where the munitions stuff comes into play. And then here's where like this puts her down in history forever. So in 1940, right as World War II is like really in swing and everything, she and George Anfill, who's a composer, they must have just started talking, and they both were like, you know what?
We should do something to help the war effort. Let's make something. I guess he was also mechanically inclined.
I don't know. According to Women's History website, Hetty said that she did not feel very comfortable sitting there in Hollywood and making lots of money when things were in such a state. Good for her.
Understandable, yeah.
So they decided to invent a new communication system to guide torpedoes. They called it the secret communication system. Cool.
I also like that that's what they thought of in their free time.
Actress and composer.
This is what we should do.
We'll combine those things. We'll invent something that uses sound. Yeah.
So it was her design, and he built the practical model, which makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. So what it did, it's a transmitter and a receiver that would hop frequencies together, which would prevent them from being intercepted by enemies and allow the torpedo to hit its intended mark.
Wow. This is also known as frequency hopping. So it was patented by the Navy.
The Navy never implemented it. They said it was too cumbersome. But so she was like, well, forget this.
I'll just do something else. So she ended up selling $25 million in war bonds, which is crazy for the time. She started a letter writing campaign to servicemen and signed GI autographs.
But the Navy, who bought the idea, shared it with a contractor. Right. They created a sono buoy to detect submarines in the 50s, which all ships had during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Their patent expired, and neither she nor George ever saw a dime from this. And not only did they not receive any money from it, she didn't even receive recognition for the idea until 1997. She was still alive.
It's so in tune with history and how it happened.
You invented something really important, but we're going to hide it under the rug, and we won't mention you.
Because you're a woman. Yes, because you're a woman.
And so when the Electronic Frontier Foundation, they jointly awarded she and Anthel with the Pioneer Award. She became the first woman to receive the Invention Convention's Bowlby Nass Spirit of Achievement Award, and she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for the development of frequency hopping in 2014. Why is frequency hopping so important?
Well, she's dubbed the mother of Wi-Fi, as this technology is essential to wireless communication. Frequency hopping, that concept, that idea, is worth $30 billion.
That's crazy.
It is a component in present-day cell phones, Bluetooth, and satellites. Basically, it allows multiple users to be on the same frequency with little interference, and if there is, it immediately hops to another frequency.
Or just like everything we do nowadays, literally everything.
That was her idea. And then of course, some people were like, she just got that idea from her husband, or something like that. Come on, whatever.
So she did it. Never got any credit for it until far later in life. But we couldn't even be doing what we're doing right now with our podcast or anything without it.
And she continued to invent things even into her old age. She invented a fluorescent dog collar, modifications to the concord.
Like torpedo bombs, also fluorescent dog collars.
Just random.
We need better stoplights.
But it also sounds like, and I do this all the time, when you're just out and about going about your normal day, maybe not the torpedo thing, but you're going out and about your normal day, and then you're like, oh, you know what? That doesn't work efficiently. I can do it better.
And then she does it better.
So she did some incredible things in her life. And her personal life is a little sad, because, I mean, ultimately, she aged out of the movie business because she got older. So she finished her movies.
She was only in it for 28 years. Then she became a recluse. People didn't hear about her.
She actually got in trouble for shoplifting twice. She got in trouble for shoplifting when she invented a $30 billion idea.
Obviously, bad-tasted men. And died in the year 2000. Lived a good long time.
Did some amazing things. But unfortunately, kind of lost to history.
Yeah, and I feel like unfortunately too, whenever your life is thrown into the spotlight like that, all too often, that's the story. They have all this fame, everything.
Well, right, and really, she was only reviewed as a sex object.
Exactly. That's what I was going to say. It's the industry of the time.
She was like a sexy actress. They always put her in roles. She's most famous for her role as Delilah in Samson and Delilah.
That was the highest grossing film she was ever in. So right, that kind of role. She even started her own production company to try and get better roles.
And then eventually just fell back into like, whatever, fine, I'll just rock this angle.
Dang. That's awesome, but also sad. I did, whenever I was looking up Women in Science, I did come across that name, and then I didn't because I was just like, I don't know, I don't know.
I just skipped over it. It wasn't that I...
Yeah, I just, my parent, I grew up watching movies on Turner Classic movies. So I've definitely seen her in something. And I was like, oh, interesting.
And you're right, just the fact that she like developed all this crazy. She's, I don't know why. Again, it's horrible, but it's so natural for us to be like, oh, but she's so beautiful.
I never knew she was so smart.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, that's a surprise.
Shoot, what's her name? The actress, first of all, I am horrible.
Natalie Portman.
Well, Natalie Portman, but who's the actress on Big Bang Theory? Amy Farrah Fowler. So Amy Farrah Fowler is the same thing.
She by occupation was a neuroscientist. Oh, no, sorry. And the show was a neuroscientist.
But her name, okay, so Amy Farrah Fowler was the fictional character name, and she's portrayed by Mayim Balik, I think is how you pronounce it. Again, I am horrible. And she is actually a see, they don't insist.
So you go to Wikipedia real quick, and they don't even say what she actually is.
Well, right. Natalie Portman has a Ph.D. from Harvard.
So does she. So yeah, she's also a neuroscientist in real life. Okay, I thought so.
Yeah, so she's a neuroscientist, and all the time she'll have people who will interview her and be like, Oh, well, how did you prepare for the role? And she's like, I am the role. Like, I am a neuroscientist.
Yes, I know the information. That would be like us getting like super famous from this podcast. And then being like, well, how did you prepare?
I was tortured in four years of undergrad school, followed by a graduate degree. And here I am. So yeah, dang.
Underappreciated.
Who's next? More women. I'll go.
I'll go next. So mine is a little bit more into a different spin. Mine is a little bit more like heavier topic.
Well, not a topic, just dense of a topic. So I did mine on Brenda Milner. So takes about around the same time frame as yours, Laura.
And I think that is the peak time of underappreciated women. I really feel because they were like always behind the scenes doing because what is that? The movie Hidden Figure.
That is like, well, that and there's a lot of other women in science at that time.
Yeah, pioneers that were pioneers on behind the curtain that was men and were hidden. So Brenda Milner was definitely one of them. So born Brenda Langford, she was born in 1918 in England.
Milner's father was a musical critic, journalist and teacher. And her mother was a singing student, which I'm not entirely sure if that's a career is being a singing student. But I guess lifelong learners have it figured out.
So although Milner was a daughter to two musically talented individuals, she herself had absolutely no interest in music. Her father, though, tutored her a lot in mathematics and the arts until she was about the age of eight. And she even started after that, you know, she started college studying mathematics thinking this is the way I'm going to go ahead and go.
And she had a scholarship in the mid 30s. However, after realizing math just wasn't her thing, Milner changed her field of study to psychology, which is the complete opposite side of your brain. And she was later quoted as saying, if you're in the wrong career, don't hesitate to change.
I could be a mediocre math teacher in a high school today. So she was just like, knew she needed to change. Was like, I'm not very good at this.
I'm going to end up being a high school math teacher, which there's nothing wrong with high school math teachers.
She just wanted, she already at that age, more than mediocre, which I think is interesting.
Yeah, she already was like, I just have to set myself up. I have to be the best. And so once she was in psychology, she started to, she started with studying brain lesions, which is interesting.
So similar to yours, after she graduated, she was then awarded a scholarship to continue her studies at the university she was in. But as a result of World War II, everything was stopped at the university almost overnight, and every effort was applied to doing research on of her. She was applied to doing the research of selection of air crew, which again, this is like one of those things I'm like, you never, one, you never would think that this was a thing.
So Milner's position was to create perceptual tasks for future use in selecting air crew. So pretty much aptitude test for figuring out who would be better at fighter pilots from bombing pilots. And she could, she figured out tests on how to distinguish between the two.
I mean, that's kind of cool.
It's so interesting.
It is very useful. But like creating like a profiler.
And I mean, they essentially use an ASVAB test now. It's called the ASVABs to figure out what field you should be. And if you're more mechanically inclined, if you're more.
And that's how a lot of times they go off your ASVAB score for selecting your career within the military. And a lot of times you have to have a certain ASVAB score to get certain jobs. And so this is kind of like the early ASVABs.
So later in the war from 1941 to 44, she worked in Malvarn as an experimental officer for the Ministry of the Supply, investigating different methods of display and control to be used by radar operators. And so this is like, and I know at this point in time, like a lot of women were just brought in to do anything and everything to help with war efforts, especially over in Europe. But again, she kept...
All the men were gone.
Yeah, because they were all gone. And this one too is like another one of those like back burners. We have no idea that this is going on behind the scenes, but like it's like all these pieces that were set up to help win the war in a way.
Oh, yeah, yeah. That's like the whole Rosie the Riveter thing here in the US.
Yeah.
Like...
You don't know.
But of course it was, because all the men are gone, we have to have somebody do the job.
Might as well be women.
Because I can't use kids too much.
Yeah, they would rather... And that's so terrifying. Yeah, they would rather use children than admit that women are good for something.
Like, that's just so sad. Anyway, in 1941, that's when Brenda met her husband, Peter Milner, and both Brenda and her husband were working on radar research together, so that's how they met. And then his work eventually took him to Canada, and she went along and she began teaching psychology at the University of Montreal, where she stayed for seven years.
In 49, then, Milner graduated with a master's in experimental psychology in Cambridge. And in Montreal, then, she started to... She became a PhD candidate in...
Hold on, I'm going to mess this up. Physiological psychology at McGill University. So in 54, then, she started to study the intellectual function of the temporal lobes, which, again, okay, that doesn't sound like much, but let's just pause for a second.
One, we're still in the 50s, and she is doing research on brains, which at that point we really don't... We know enough, but not a ton. And so she started to review animal studies of neural function and compared it to human neuroscience work.
So she really was, like, on the cutting edge of anything that had to do with psychology, brains, functions, and her publication then, it was so groundbreaking that it started to discourage many neurosurgeons from completing surgeries that they normally would have because she proved that some of these surgeries and some of the things that you could be doing could have a negative impact on the individual's life. And so because of her research and the way she was able to prove, like, hey, we can't... Because you can figure back that in brain surgery, it was slice and dice.
Right, you can't just take that piece. It's essential.
Yeah, it's kind of important. And she was sort of the first one to be like, guys, listen, you can't just go in there and start hacking up this person's brain.
Lobotomy is not always the best thing.
Yeah, lobotomy is not good. Let's just slow down, study the brain a little bit, and figure out what we actually can and cannot take away. And so she was the first one that kind of pushed all of that.
And people, neurosurgeons, did listen to an extent. They did listen to it. And what really put her on the map, though, was she was the pioneer in the field of neuropsychology and the study of memory and other cognitive functions in humankind.
So she was invited at one point to Hadford to study a gentleman named Henry Mollison. He, if you read anything about him historically, he was just known as Patient HM. That's it.
And he's become one of the most famous patients in cognitive neuroscience. I do remember reading about HM in undergrad, for sure. So he had undergone a bilateral temporal lobotomy that included removal of major portions of his hippocampus, all because he had epilepsy, and it was so bad that they were trying to fix it.
However, because it was in the 50s and they really didn't know what they were doing back then before all of her research, he essentially had zero long-term memory whatsoever. So he has the surgery done, he could do things, and it was all short-term because it was literally a lobotomy that just slice and dice scrambled everything up there. However, his motor memory was not affected at all.
So if you taught him like a new drawing skill, he could perform it, even if he had no memory of learning how.
That's crazy.
Yeah, so he could be like, oh yeah, I could totally draw this whatever, but he doesn't remember when he was taught that. And so Milner was the one that concluded that there were two types of memory, the episodic memory, which involved recalling autobiographical details, and procedural memory, which is the ability to remember and perform tasks without conscious awareness.
Like what we call muscle memory.
Yes, exactly, exactly. So then she started to show other patients with similar brain injuries to HM, ones that where the hippocampus was damaged and had trouble consciously recalling events, but could learn new physical skills where, again, remember that time frame, a lot of these people, they were just pushed off into sane asylums, pushed off into hospitals, and kind of forgotten about. She kind of showed that they're not completely out of there.
So it was more of like a human compassion side, rather than just, hey, let's shove them off and let's not do anything with them. It was, you know, they're not...
Quality of life is still there.
Yeah, it's definitely still there, and she was kind of the one to prove that. So later in her research, it showed that brains could sometimes recognize themselves to allow people to regain skills lost after traumatic brain injuries and other brain damage, which really did offer people hope for rehabilitation for the first time. And before that, again, it was like, you have a brain injury, boom, you're done.
We're not going to deal with you anymore and move on. And she did say at one point, she was quoted, she said, I remember clearly to this day, the excitement sitting there with HM and watching him beautifully learning curve development right in front of me. I knew very well I was witnessing something important.
So even as she's doing her research, she's like, this is going to change lives amazingly. And so she knew, thankfully, and pushed forward despite being a female in the field. Again, just did not, people did not focus on her.
So she did a lot of crazy, amazing things. However, born in 1918, she is still teaching. To this day, she's still teaching.
So she is 103 right now, and she's still a professor.
What a badass, by definition.
Just to one, have the memory recall. You know what I mean? Because typically, she turned to 100 in 2018, of course.
And so she still is actively a key in neuroscience and neuroscience and cognitive research. Whoa. So I'm trying to see here.
So in more recent times, she started to expand the study of brain activity and normal subjects. So at first, it was all traumatic brain injury and things like that. And she truly made them or gave them the case for, like you said, the compassion, that there's quality of life here.
And now she started to, and when I say now, it's like she's well past her prime and still doing all this work. No, she's not a spring chicken. And she's just like pushing on because she's like, I'm going to keep making an impact.
I'm going to keep working. I'm going to keep doing this. So she started studying the brain activity and normal subjects using functional magnetic renaissance imaging, FMRI, and posturing emission technology, which is the PET scans.
So those studied on identifying brain regions associated with spatial memory in language, including the neuro substrates of monolingual and bilingual speech processing. Yeah. And so as of 2017, so she's 99, she's still been teaching and researching.
She's a Dorothy J. Kilman professor at the Montreal Neurological Institute, professor of the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University. One of Milner's current collaborators is Denise Klein, an assistant professor in the Neurology Cognitive Neuroscience Unit at McGill, which she's also a huge name with in neuroscience.
And in 18, she celebrated her 100th birthday with about 30 friends, including fellow researchers. And although she was never expected, of course, to live that age, she said she has every intention of continuing for many more birthdays and continuing to do what she can. So her awards and honors overall is like huge, because it's just insane the amount of...
I can't even... If I had to guess, it has to be at least two, three dozen awards that she has gotten over her lifetime. And there are pictures...
That's when you really know that like, this is not her career. It's her passion.
It's her passion for changing.
She's never going to be done.
Yeah, she will never be done. And so, I mean, obviously, given her age, it has slowed down, but she, for a long time, was traveling, speaking, doing whatever she can. I mean, up until like even 2017, she was speaking, teaching, traveling, doing as much as she can just to shine a light on the research that she has done.
So she's, like I said, she's still doing the work, still out there, and 70 year plus terrain, like you said, it's definitely turned into a lifestyle more than anything. So that is the insane, incredibly, I don't know, just to be that age and still being like, I'm doing this.
I hope she's being kept safe during the pandemic. I was right. Someone better be keeping her safe.
What a treasure.
Right. So, and there are, there was a book, there are several books written about her and stuff like that. But yeah, so Brenda Milner, crazy, crazy, crazy.
That's amazing. Well, I have, I have someone who, unlike Katy, did not live quite as long on this earth. But in the time she had, I really hit a big spoiler, but in the time she had, it made a great impact in the scientific community.
So I'm going to talk about Alice Ball. Have we heard of Alice Ball?
I don't think so. I mean, maybe if you talk more in my jogging memory.
Sure, sure. Yeah, I am the definition, I mean ADHD, but the definition of horribly done with...
Well, I never knew of her before, because this is not something I typically read about or research or even learn about, but she's just so fascinating. So she was born in July 24th of 1892.
So yeah, she's still kind of a contemporary of our ladies.
Right, yeah. And she was born in Seattle, Washington. She was three or four children and apparently had a fairly tight-knit family.
Some of her family members were photographers. Her grandfather, good old JP Ball Sr. was one of the first African Americans in the United States to learn daguerreotype, which is the first publicly available form of photography processing. So think like classy, old-timey photos in a locket.
That is exactly what that is. Took forever. Yeah, took forever.
I got sidetracked and learned a lot about that.
So she was around that, and you had to use chemicals and other stuff in order to process the photos. And so that's kind of how she got an interest in science, is watching her grandfather do that. In 1902, poor old grandpa J.P.'s in poor health, so the family moves to Hawaii.
They're thinking warm climate, fresh breeze, going to get better health.
Better health, yeah. Most people just go to the seashore.
Yeah, for like a week.
Yeah, right. And so unfortunately, JP doesn't make it two years later. He passes away.
The family moves back to Seattle.
And that's a far distance to travel in that time.
What could Hawaii even have been like in 1900?
The woods.
Right, untouched.
Yeah, essentially.
So Alice goes on to earn degrees in pharmaceutical chemistry and pharmacy from the University of Washington, but something about Hawaii spoke to her, and she returns there for graduate school.
Cool.
She becomes the first woman and the first African American to earn a master's degree in chemistry from College of Hawaii, which is now...
Not surprised.
Right? And College of Hawaii then, now it's University of Hawaii. And her thesis was all about identifying the active components of the kava root.
So this is important for her actual... I've heard of kava root. Yeah, I had to Google so much stuff.
I was like, what is a kava root? I felt very just lame American at that moment.
So her scientific contributions deal with understanding active components of plants and stuff like that. So I delved into this, and as someone who went to college for English and journalism, this is already cool for me. You're just doing science is already cool for me.
You're doing science, this is great.
Yeah, you're doing science.
I wish I had somebody... I wish you were my hype person in undergrad, because just somebody to follow me around and be like, you're doing science, Katy, congrats. I'm like, yes, I am doing science, thank you.
I would have been a great hype person. I would have been a terrible lab partner. Like, all I remember from chemistry class is like, potatoes are catalysts for something.
It was bubbling. That's it. That's all I remember.
And I broke a beaker.
I broke a beaker.
Anyway, Alice becomes a professor at College of Hawaii, University of Hawaii. First African American professor, obviously. She's just, you know.
And she is, I believe, about 23 years old.
She's tall.
Her professional career takes off when Dr. Harry T. Hallman, he's an assistant surgeon at Kaua'ihi.
It's Hawaiian, I'm sure. Try your best.
Yeah, I apologize to all of the Native Hawaiians. So basically, he works there, and they have a lot of leprosy patients. And he asks for her help in finding a better way to treat leprosy or Hansen's disease.
I keep trying in my head to guess how she dies. Because you've already told me.
This has got to be it. It's got to be leprosy. But also, why are there so many lepers in Hawaii?
Did they get sent there? Was there an outbreak? We're going to have to research this.
Continue. There had to have been an outbreak. There had to have been an outbreak.
For somebody coming and bringing it in.
Right. But the thing is, really, it's not that transmissible. But I don't think people knew how to not transmit it at that time.
Gotcha.
So at that point, they were using seeds from the Chau Mu retinue?
There was a settlement there of lepers. So there was an intentional settlement for lepers.
So they put people with leprosy there.
More than 8,000 people have been banished there over the years because they had leprosies.
Oh no, I'm sad.
Yeah, dang. I guess, although I tell you what, if I had to end somewhere, Hawaii?
Right.
There are many worse places. So at this point, they were just treating symptoms of leprosy, and they were using seeds from the Chalamuga tree. I have a Latin name.
I'm not going to try pronouncing it.
I mean, I've sound like a bigger idiot pronouncing more names than I think anyone will ever do on this show, so.
I think it's Hydrocarpus Whitianus.
Just sound very confident. Give it one more try. It just sounds very confident.
Sure, it's Hydrocarpus Whitianus.
See, there you go. I'm going to take your word for it, Kim.
It's basically, if you want to envision in your head, think Tropical Evergreen.
Oh, okay.
And so they made an oil for topical, oral, and intravenous use. And it was helping, but kind of. Not really.
I also feel like this is pretty on par for Hawaii as well. Because I feel like they were for a much longer time tied to the island, because that's all you really had. So you had to use the resources that were there.
Whereas in America, even at the same time frame, we're like, let's just ship it over from London. And we still have that mentality now. Continue.
They really understood how to work with the land. And you can see that with Indigenous tribes in continental US as well. Everywhere, really.
So she was tasked to figure out how to make an injectable form with this oil.
That's also terrifying.
Right. And also, bear in mind, this is the turn of the century. Right.
So how's it being tested?
On the lepers?
Probably.
So I'm going to read directly, because this is science stuff. So she successfully isolated, and she did this in less than a year, mind you. She successfully isolated the oil into fatty acid components of different molecular weights, so she can manipulate it into a water-soluble injectable form.
Which for the time was insane.
I want to say no pun intended, but I don't know if bananas grow in Hawaii. Continue.
Pineapples, absolutely pineapples.
Absolutely pineapples. Super successful, alleviated a lot of symptoms. For listeners who don't know, leprosy can be very disfiguring and very painful, and affects all the life.
Yeah, because it's from a bacteria, yeah. It's not a good time. So she did this, it was awesome.
It was so great. But then, plot twist, she dies.
Does she have leprosy?
No.
I looked at so many different sites to get a conclusive answer, so they think that she died of chlorine poisoning.
What?
She was teaching a lab.
I would be so pissed if that's how I went out.
Right?
And so she was teaching a lab and teaching students how to use, properly use gas masks, I believe. And because she did not properly use, labs were not properly ventilated at that time, she was around all this chlorine gas, it made her very ill, she ends up dying.
Yeah, mad if that's the way I go.
And she's 24. I was gonna say she's so young.
I told you guys, I told you guys about, okay, listen, if you're gonna go, especially when you're that young, you gotta make it good, like don't make it, you know what I mean, like something that dumb. No, well, listen, so I think I can't remember if I talked about this on the podcast before, but my eighth grade English teacher, he always said, if I get to be of ripe old age, put me down to toboggan and push me down Mount Everest. That was his way of going out.
No one wants to go out when you're young.
Yeah, no one wants to go out when you're young, but if you're gonna be old and like, you know, just push me down to toboggan on Mount Everest, I mean, fun, fulfilling, and yeah, you are gonna die, but man, it's the boss. Yeah, all right, just forever gone.
No thanks. I don't even think the tobogganing would be so until you'd break like every bone in your, like it's pain, and then hypothermia.
But chlorine poisoning, that had, okay, I don't want it to.
Yeah.
What?
It hurt.
Well, that's what I was gonna say, it would be hurt, it would be, you would have, there's no way that that was quick.
Well, I mean, if you've ever inhaled bleach, true, like fumes, true, it would be fast, you probably just pass out. Well, that's what I was gonna say, yeah, maybe pass out, yeah, but it probably would hurt for a few seconds.
Well, she definitely, it was described as she fell ill and went home, so she was sick for a significant amount of time before she actually died. I don't quite remember.
One of it damaged her lungs, like it was.
Yeah, something. Dang.
And so she dies, yeah, dies on December 31st, 1916. Doesn't get to her findings yet.
Don't even tell me some man did.
Oh, just you wait. So, this ding dong, Dr. Arthur Dean, he continues her research, and then I believe he publishes it, doesn't give her credit at all.
Of course. Which, which, okay, listen, even back in the time, I mean, I know that we're not going to do it for the time, but listen, even if you're that arrogant, just give a mention, but then just say, you know what, she started this, but I made it so much better. You know what I mean?
Like, if you're going to She started it, but then she died.
She died, and I made it better, and I made it so much better. Okay, we could take that, but do not say anything at all. You're a tool.
Totally sweeps it under the rug. It takes six years after she dies for our buddy, Dr. Holman, to specifically note that she he called it the ball method in some sort of paper that he wrote, and he gave her specific credit. Probably the only reason we know that she did it.
And so, and they say even so, she was still forgotten from scientific history until recently. Ah, right. So fast forward to 2000, the year 2000.
Yeah. Yeah. So the better part of a century, she's basically forgotten.
And then finally the University of Hawaii, like, places of plaque underneath the Chalamuga tree on their campus to be like, hey, you were really important. Thanks for doing what you did. And they also declared February 29th Alice Ball Day, which is very sweet.
Wait a minute. Until you realize that's only every four years.
Right.
We were going to celebrate her, but we're going to remember that we forgot her.
For three years. What is like, is it better to have a day or not at all?
Yeah, that's tough.
Because it's just such like a backhanded thing.
Ouch.
It's not like they ran out of days.
Correct, right?
We're doing it over the 29th. We'll remember every four years.
That's fine.
It's plenty.
Every four years. We're good.
We already forgot about her once.
Just do it again. It's fine.
Right. So yeah, a little bit of a bummer, but they also awarded her with the Regents Medal of Distinction. At the university.
And I believe in 2017, they created an endowed scholarship for students at the University of Hawaii that were pursuing degrees in chemistry, biology, microbiology, acknowledge and kind of remember her work. So in short, she did an amazing thing by figuring out this injectable treatment for leprosy. And I believe that it was used for almost two decades until the 40s when they found, yeah, better like an antibiotic.
Yeah, I forget they definitely had some advancements then that made her treatment not so useful anymore. But like almost 20 years to be like the best thing. Yeah, it's amazing.
So she was really cool. Super bummer that she was only 20. She was only 24 when she passed because I think she could have been just a kid.
Yeah, he knows what she would have done.
Right? I know.
Fascinating. Wow, what great ladies.
Right?
So cool. Different areas too.
Yeah, that's right, and we didn't even do that intentionally. Our inventor, our psychologist and our chemist.
That is a nice mix. And I also too, there was a lot that I passed up that were very recent. Like a lot of women that are doing very recent things, just because I think a lot of the women of the past were so hidden behind everything.
That was a little bit easier to jump in on. But at the same time, it's like sad that one, it's fascinating that we even know as much as we do about these women because they very easily could have been completely erased by history. So at least at some point, we were figuring out that these people did exist and that it wasn't just completely lost because published wise, it is, most of it's just men, especially during that time because women were expected to stay home.
I mean, nowadays, we all have careers. You know what? We're all women in science, we have careers.
Back then, it was incredibly frowned upon.
At least your ladies were able to go to college at the time, which is pretty progressive.
Especially for Alice, being a woman of color, at the turn of the century, going to college is unbelievable and just amazing. Yeah.
Really fought a lot of uphill battles. And it's nice, too. I mean, it's inspirational to give anybody just be like hope for, you know, you can do this kind of stuff.
It's not just men figuring out all this. So, man, oh, man. Well, that was a good episode, guys.
Yeah.
Yeah. For all you girls out there listening, don't forget to celebrate International Women of Women and Girls in Science Day.
And if you need Kim to be a hype person, you can do science.
Remember, everyone, potatoes are catalysts.
Thank you, Kim.
You, too, can be learned science at any age.
All right, everyone. We will talk to you next week.
Bye, everyone. See ya.