Wishing a happy 80th birthday to physicist Shirley Ann Jackson, who after becoming the second Black woman to earn a PhD in Physics (1973), went on to a long research career at Bell Labs in the 1970s and 80s, and ultimately to the presidency of Rensselaer from 1999 to 2022. #BlackWomenInSTEM ⚛️

Computer scientist Frances Allen was a pioneer in the field of optimizing compilers. + 1st woman to win the Turing Award + Her research directly shaped compiler design, code optimization & automatic parallel processing Born #OTD in 1932 & died #OTD in 2020. #WomenInSTEM #CompSci

Wishing a happy 82nd birthday to immunogeneticist Georgia M. Dunston! Growing up in segregated Norfolk, Virginia, she earned her PhD in 1972, and by 1985 she was director of the Human Immunogenetics Lab, focusing on issues affecting organ transplant success in the Black community. #WomenInSTEM 🧬⚕️

Wishing a happy 56th birthday to the great DJ Spinderella. She was the DJ element of the pioneering rap group Salt-N-Pepa, driving the beats behind hits like "Shoop" and "Let's Talk About Sex". In 2025 she became the first woman DJ to be inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. #WomensHistory 🎵

Quaker ornithologist Graceanna Lewis was born 205 years ago today. Her early microscopic studies of plumage gave way to larger attempts to create new taxonomical systems based on factors like nesting plumage and egg structure. tinyurl.com/4psrv5wr #WomenInSTEM #WomensHistory #BirdSky 🐦

Summing the Natural Order: The Taxonomy and Ornithology of Graceanna Lewis, Quaker.

In the mid 19th century, American biological science was tentatively feeling its way forward along a half dozen different and contradictory directions as it gamely attempted to figure out just what it...

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Mary Poonen Lukose, the first woman to become a surgeon general in India, was born 140 years ago today. She was also the first woman to hold a legislative position in the state of Travancore, and founded one of the earliest TB sanatoriums in India. #WomenInSTEM #WomensHistory #MedSky ⚕️

A wonderful article on the newest Fields Medal winner, Hong Wang, sent our way by the legendary @ninabake2.bsky.social! A perfect way to start your Saturday, with a little reassurance that mathematics is still alive and well, and being pushed forward by some wonderful minds! tinyurl.com/2k3w7v34

Hong Wang Wins 2026 Fields Medal, the Third Woman Ever | Quanta Magazine

Focus, commitment, and insight resulted in a “once in a century” proof. Hong Wang is now just the third woman to win a Fields Medal.

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Astronomer Helen Sawyer Hogg was born 121 years ago today. Respected by the astronomical community for her work on globular clusters, she was beloved by the wider world for her articles, books, and television appearances bringing the wonders of the sky to the people. #AstroSky tinyurl.com/38b7runy

Before There was Sagan: How Helen Sawyer Hogg Brought Astronomy to the People

Before, ‘The cosmos is all there is, all there ever was, all there ever will be,’ there was, ‘The stars belong to everyone,’ the watch-phrase of a woman who spent three decades in energizing the wider...

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Elton John released "Honky Cat" 54 years ago today, in 1972. The song's jaunty intro, unique beats-akimbo piano style, and Bernie Taupin penned lyrics about the dangers of the big city went to #31 in the UK and #8 in the US. Give it a spin today! #Music #EltonJohn #BookSky

Wishing a happy 85th birthday to Dr. Charlene Drew Jarvis! The daughter of blood bank pioneer Charles Drew, she had her own medical research career from 1965 to 1978, when she began a political career, serving on the city council of DC for 21 years, helping expand access to med care. #WomenInSTEM

And HERE is Wuthering Heights, the song by Kate Bush, who turns 68 today, about the seminal novel by Emily Bronte, who was born 210 years ago today! How about that for a little historical synergy?? www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1pM...

Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights - Official Music Video - Version 1

YouTube video by KateBushMusic

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Wishing a happy 68th birthday to one of the greatest songwriters and recording artists of the last half century, Kate Bush! Her albums of the late 70s through early 90s pushed vocal and thematic experimentation into the pop realm in ways still fresh today. #WomensHistory #MusicSky #BookSky

Today is also the 210th anniversary of Emily Brontë's birth! Her 1847 debut, Wuthering Heights, created many of the tropes that we now expect as a matter of course in our romantic literature of today! #WomensHistory #LitSky #BookSky

Astronomer Louise Elizabeth du Pierry was born 280 years ago today! She published works on the impact of refraction on celestial observation, tables of day and night length for the general public, eclipse computations, as well as works on chemistry. #AstroSky #WomenInSTEM #WomensHistory

Yesterday was KS Chithra's 63rd birthday! A legend in her time as one of India's most beloved playback singers, she has recorded 25,000 songs in a dozen languages over the course of a half century, and received more awards than it is possible to list here. We wish her all the best! #WomensHistory

Today we celebrate the 160th anniversary of Beatrix Potter's birth. Before she became the world-beloved creator of Peter Rabbitt, she was a promising naturalist and scientific illustrator who was pushed out of the field by men whose ideas she challenged. tinyurl.com/4427xzsu #WomenInSTEM #BookSky

Mushrooms, Fossils, and a Pen to Draw Them With: Beatrix Potter, Naturalist.

"I don't know what to write to you, so I shall tell you a story about four little rabbits whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter." In 1893, when Beatrix Potter set these words, and the ...

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Jeanne Baret, the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, was born 286 years ago today. She pretended to be a man for as long as she could on the voyage, while also carrying out scientific documentation and collection of the plant life the ships discovered on their journey. tinyurl.com/2bnhdv7y

Jeanne Baret: The Two Stories of the World’s First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe.

Told one way, the story of Jeanne Baret is an essentially inspiring tale: a woman born a peasant, raised with the expectation of seeing nothing more in her life than the next town over who became a fi...

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Alexandre Dumas fils was born 203 years ago today. In an era that was largely defined by its sprawling three volume novels, he published Camille, a perfectly realized tragic romance in one volume that in turn became the basis for Verdi's La Traviata. #RomanceReader #BookSky

Wishing a happy 88th birthday to living legend, jazz pianist JoAnne Brackeen, who played with Stan Getz and Joe Henderson before forming her own ensemble, releasing a series of 20 albums over the course of the late 1970s, 80s, and 90s. #WomensHistory #WomenInMusic

Author Elizabeth Hamilton was born 270 years ago today. Her Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800) was a romantic satire aimed at undermining what she saw as the dangers of Enlightened thought. #BookSky #RomanceReader

Pioneering psychologist Margaret Floy Washburn was born 155 years ago today. Her book The Animal Mind was for decades THE textbook on comparative psychology, and her ideas about what the brain does when observing tasks were eerily prescient of what mirror neurons actually do! tinyurl.com/mwf6zvjv

Margaret Floy Washburn and the Motion of Thought.

Margaret Floy Washburn (1871-1939) was the first American woman to receive a PhD in psychology (though not, as we learned from our time with Ladd-Franklin, the first to earn one), and was among the mo...

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Frances Kelsey, the FDA official whose work in the early 1960s kept thalidomide from ravaging the US population as it had the European and Canadian ones, and led directly to the Kefauver-Harris Amendment, was born 112 years ago today. Her story is more important now than ever. tinyurl.com/4zh9e9p6

Between the Children and Catastrophe, A Woman: Frances O. Kelsey’s Victory Over Thalidomide.

In September of 1960, the American pharmaceutical company Richardson-Merrell submitted their application to the FDA for the approval of Europe’s new wonder drug, thalidomide, to be introduced to the A...

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Today I would like to take you all back to 1982 and celebrate that lost gem, "Heatwave", by the Welsh band Fay Ray, as headed by vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Sheila Macartney. It's worth remembering from time to time! #WomensHistory #WomenInMusic www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bzL...

Fay Ray - Heatwave (1982)

YouTube video by Carl Thames

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Chemist Emma Parry Carr was born 146 years ago today. A wizard of UV absorption spectrometry, she was able to use this method to determine molecular structure before x-ray crystallography had reached it maturity and was an important early researcher in molecular orbital theory. tinyurl.com/644tdkhu

Probing the Ultraviolet: The Spectroscopic Marvels of Emma Perry Carr

In its externals the life of Emma Carr (1880-1972) bears many similarities to that of fellow physicist Margaret Maltby (1860-1944). Both were born in the latter half of the 19th century, in the state ...

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Estelle Bennett (right) was born 85 years ago today. As a member of the Ronettes, she hit the top ten in 1963 with "Be My Baby", but suffered a life of mental health woes and intermittent homelessness after the band broke up in 1966. She passed away in 2009 from colon cancer. #WomensHistory

Wishing a happy 90th birthday today to mathematician Geraldine Darden. In 1967, she became just the 14th Black woman to earn a PhD in mathematics, inspired by the new opportunities in STEM created by the Space Race, and was mentored by Marjorie Lee Browne at NCCU! #BlackWomenInSTEM #MathSky 🧮

Sara Carter, whose melancholic voice expressed the woes of a nation during the Great Depression, was born 128 years ago today. The Carter Family sold hundreds of thousands of records in the 1930s, driven by Sara's distinctive vocals and Maybelle's unique guitar technique. #WomensHistory #Music

Today we celebrate the life and career of Pamela Ronald, whose work uncovering genetic defense mechanisms in bacteria-resistant rice strains won her the Wolf Prize in Agriculture in 2022 and has meant a future of greater food stability for those most in need. tinyurl.com/yc3zk5n3 #WomeninSTEM 🧬🌱

Going With the Grain: Pamela Ronald, Rice Savior.

It is almost impossible to overstate the importance of rice for the human species. More than a fifth of all the calories consumed by humans are in the form of rice. In terms of nutrition, it is the gl...

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Happy 88th birthday Jo Ann Campbell! We hope it is filled with laughter and memories of all the happiness you brought to people through your music.

Dale DeBakcsy@daledebakcsy.bsky.social · 2w ago

Wishing a happy birthday to Rockabilly pioneer Jo Ann Campbell, who turns 88 today! She began her career in 1956, but her biggest hit came in 1962 with "I'm the Girl from Wolverton Mountain", the same year she was featured in the film Hey, Let's Twist! #WomenInMusic #WomensHistory

Astronomer Julie Hansen was born 136 years ago today. The first Danish woman astronomer, she went on to become editor of the Nordic Astronomy Review, and First Astronomer at the University of Copenhagen's observatory, where she worked until her death in 1960. #WomenInSTEM #AstroSky 🔭