Her Space, Her Time
Shohini Ghose MIT Press £27 • HB
How many women scientists can you name? A 2017 US study showed that less than one per cent of people surveyed could name a living woman scientist. Have you sat in a lecture and been greeted with ‘good morning, gentlemen’, despite there being women in the audience? Sad, but unsurprising. That’s why we need books like Shohini Ghose’s Her Space, Her Time.
This book shines a light on all the women scientists that history and (in most cases) Nobel committees have overlooked. There are some familiar names like Marie Curie and Vera Rubin, but have you heard of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Lise Meitner or Bibha Chowdhuri? Payne-Gaposchkin determined the chemical composition of the Universe, Meitner nuclear fission and Chowdhuri’s work paved the way for the discovery of two fundamental particles.
This book is not a biography. Instead,
