Physicists Ruth Howes and Caroline Herzenberg’s ten-year research project ensured a place in history for the female scientists, engineers and technicians who worked on the atomic bomb
[New to Lost Women of Science? You can listen to our most recent Short here and our most recent multi-episode season here.]Ruth Howes: We wrote the book to tell their stories, and that was our hope: we'd make sure they were not lost.
In the early 1990s, Howes, a physicist at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, and Herzenberg, also a physicist working at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, were asked to contribute to a book on women and the use of military force. Their chapter was called Women in Weapons Development: the Manhattan Project. When their colleagues, men we presume, heard about this, they said: That'll be a short chapter. What women? There weren't any.
Ruth Howes: Carol did Chicago. She knew people at Argonne. And who had been at the Met Lab in the early days. And so she handled that end of it. I handled Los Alamos and eventually Hanford. Ruth told me she was surprised by the sheer number of women they uncovered. On top of the dozens and dozens of scientists with advanced degrees, Ruth said.
Katie Hafner: That was 1999. The book got some nice reviews. Library Journal recommended it for libraries’ history of science collections. And one review praised it as a work of “empowerment” for women and girls considering careers in science. Now, two decades later, even Ruth uses the book as a reference.Katie Hafner: So when she needs to refresh her memory, she goes to the book. This, of course, triggered a thought.
Ruth Howes: Just that we'd make sure they were not lost. So we wrote the book to tell their stories, and that was our hope, as I remember it. Since then, we've recruited a dozen or so additional readers of the names. But today, I want to leave you with the voice of just one, Ruth Howes.
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