Karen Fleshman, Esq.of the interracial sisterhood coalition and I of Brave Sis Project are on the ballot for SXSW 27! Vote us in! This is a new program I’m super excited to launch. (You have to register to vote but it’s fast. Tell all your friends!!!) Voting closes August 23! Don’t delay! The session is called Solidarity Without Burnout: 8 Ways People Show Up
Celebrate STEM: Chien-Shiung Wu, Mary Golda Ross, Euphemia Lofton Haynes, and the Science of Being Overlooked
They built the bomb's physics and the blueprint for interplanetary flight. Neither one got the credit the men beside them did.
The fight over who belongs in science classrooms and labs is more urgent than ever. It's bad enough that for generations we have had to struggle for women and BIPOC women in particular to get credit for the work (Alice Ball is one I've written about, among others), but now we are in battles over who is allowed into the lab in the first place. You certainly know that diversity fellowships in STEM (and all other areas) are being cut or renamed out of existence, “DEI” has been turned into a political weapon against access and fairness, and the death of affirmative action has already begun to reshape who gets to study, train, and thrive in these spaces. What a mess.
At the same time, history and memory cannot and will not and must not be erased. As those of you who are long-time (and even brand new!) readers know, the issue has never been a lack of brilliance or a lack of talent, but systemic and societal barriers to access, support, and recognition, along with wavering institutional will to tell the truth about who did what.
So this issue of SistoryLessons honors three STEM Foremothers, Chien-Shiung Wu, Mary Golda Ross, and Euphemia Lofton Haynes. One performed the experiment that upended a fundamental law of physics, only to watch two men receive the Nobel Prize for her theory. Another helped shape humanity’s earliest ideas for reaching other planets, while spending decades as the only woman and the only Native American on the premises. And a third became the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics, then went on to challenge the school system itself by fighting the structures that sorted kids like her out before they had a fair shot. Let's meet them.
Chien-Shiung Wu (1912–1997) — The Woman Who Proved the Physicists Wrong
An Unusual Education, By Design
Chien-Shiung Wu was born on May 31, 1912, in Liuhe, a small town near Shanghai, back in a time when educating girls in China was still more the exception than the rule. But her engineer father had progressive ideas: he ran a school for girls and pushed his daughter toward science from the start. She graduated at the top of her class in physics from National Central University in Nanking in 1934, then left for the United States in 1936 to pursue graduate study. She ended up at UC Berkeley where she earned her Ph.D. in 1940 under Ernest Lawrence, who'd go on to win a Nobel Prize of his own. (Those of you who live in my former hometown are familiar with his name!) She later became the first woman hired to the physics faculty at Princeton.
Building the Bomb's Physics
In 1944, Wu joined the Manhattan Project at Columbia University, working on radiation detectors and the gaseous diffusion process that separated uranium-235 from uranium-238—a critical, and totally unglamorous piece of the machinery that made the atomic bomb possible. (I am not saying I am a fan of nuclear bombs; I spent my entire adolescence in Cold War-era terror over nuclear proliferation... let's not even talk about the madness presiding over us now that speaks about nuclear bombs as if they are a viable negotiating tool.... yes, I digress; it's not unnatural to do so...)
Wu went on to become one of the world's foremost experts on beta decay, the radioactive process by which an atom's nucleus emits an electron; her 1965 book on the subject is still a standard reference in nuclear physics.
The Experiment That Broke a Law of Physics—And the Prize She Didn't Get
In 1956, theoretical physicists Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang had a radical hypothesis. Even if you are not a science person (Lord knows I am not), stick with the concept if you can. They posited that the law of conservation of parity, a rule that had held for every known physical process, didn't apply to the weak nuclear force.
Let me try to explain the rule of parity even though I flamed out of science after 9th grade biology. In the system of physical processes, a mirror image means the same physical arrangement viewed after a left-right flip. But this theory said that the mirror image concept didn't apply to weak nuclear force. (And what is a "weak nuclear force"? It refers to the very short-range force that makes particles change type, like turning a neutron into a proton during radioactive decay. We are all so much smarter now!)
Anyway, these men needed someone who could actually test the theory. And that someone was a woman, Wu. Using radioactive cobalt-60 cooled to near absolute zero, she designed and ran the experiment that proved them right, upending a law of physics that had stood unchallenged for decades. In 1957, Lee and Yang won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the theory. Wu, who'd done the experimental work that proved it true, was left off the prize entirely. This slight has been debated as one of the starkest snubs in Nobel history ever since, and one that's hard to separate from the fact that she was a woman, and an immigrant, in an overwhelmingly white and male field.
Wu kept building a career that was nothing less than brilliant, even if too little-known. She was first woman president of the American Physical Society, recipient of the inaugural Wolf Prize in Physics, the National Medal of Science, and the first woman awarded an honorary doctorate by Princeton. People called her “the First Lady of Physics” and “the Chinese Madame Curie”—nicknames that, however admiring, still measured her against men, and against a white European woman, instead of just letting her be her own, new standard.
Chien-Shiung Wu died on February 16, 1997. She was honored on a commemorative U.S. Postal Service stamp in 2021.
Reflection: Where do you shine brightly, even if no one is looking?
Mary Golda Ross (1908–2008)—Designing the Future While Rooted in the Past
A Cherokee Education
Mary Golda Ross was born on August 9, 1908, in Park Hill, Oklahoma, in the Cherokee Nation, and she carried serious lineage: she was the great-great-granddaughter of John Ross, the Cherokee Nation's longest-serving Principal Chief. Cherokee tradition, unlike the mainstream American culture surrounding it, held a deep respect for the education of girls alongside boys, and Ross grew up with opportunity to shine. She enrolled at Northeastern State Teachers College in Tahlequah at age sixteen and earned a math degree in 1928, at twenty. After years teaching math and science in rural Oklahoma schools and working as an advisor for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, she earned a master's degree in mathematics in 1938, studying astronomy on the side because, as she'd later put it, she simply loved it.
Skunk Works
In 1942, wartime labor shortages opened doors for American women that had been bolted shut for, well, forever. Armament manufacturer Lockheed hired Ross as a mathematician, where she worked on structural problems for the P-38 Lightning fighter. After the war, she became one of the forty founding engineers of Lockheed's legendary Skunk Works advanced development program. She was the only woman on the team, and the only Native American person, period. In 1949, Lockheed sent her to UCLA, where she earned a professional engineering certification, becoming the first Native American woman to do so.
Designing How We'd Reach Other Planets
Ross spent the rest of her career doing genuinely science-fiction work grounded in real math: she used her research in hydrodynamics to develop early design concepts for uncrewed flyby missions to Venus and Mars, work that fed directly into NASA's Planetary Flight Handbook. She also worked on the Agena rocket program, which carried military, intelligence, and civilian payloads into orbit, and on the submarine-launched Polaris missile system. Dreaming of the stars, she designed pieces of how humanity would eventually reach other worlds.
Making Sure She Wasn't the Last
Ross leveraged her position as "the first" and "the only," spending decades recruiting the next generation of diverse STEM talent. She mentored young women through the Society of Women Engineers and Native students through the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (fun fact: I was AISES' Development Director once upon a time). Ross died in 2008 at age ninety-six. Ten years later, the U.S. Mint put her on the 2019 Native American $1 Coin—a small but pointed correction to a record that had mostly overlooked her while she was alive.
Reflection: What future are you designing, and who is it for?
Martha Euphemia Lofton Haynes (1890–1980)—The Mathematician Who Took Apart a Rigged System
A First Built on Four Degrees
Martha Euphemia Lofton Haynes was not known to me when I wrote my book, so I am especially glad to give her flowers in this edition of SistoryLessons. She was born on September 11, 1890, in Washington, D.C., the only daughter of a dentist and financier father and a kindergarten-teacher mother. She graduated valedictorian of M Street High School (long-term readers will recall this was one of the first public high schools for African Americans in the United States) in 1907, and then trained as a teacher at the Normal School for Colored Girls (now the University of the District of Columbia). After this, Martha earned an undergraduate math degree from Smith College in 1914, a master's in education from the University of Chicago in 1930. Finally, in 1943, she earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the Catholic University of America. In so doing, she became the first African American woman ever to earn a doctorate in the subject. She was fifty-two when she finished it, which is its own inspiration.
Forty-Seven Years in the Classroom
"Abbott Elementary" vibes in DC: Haynes spent nearly half a century teaching in Washington's public schools. She started with the first grade, moving up through Armstrong High School, and eventually chairing the math department at the storied Dunbar High School, one of the country's most academically rigorous Black public schools of the segregation era. Once she retired from the school system in 1959, she launched a second career, founding and chairing the math department at what's now the University of the District of Columbia. She built a program specifically geared to train the next generation of Black math teachers.
Taking Apart the Track System
In 1960, Haynes joined the DC Board of Education, and in 1966 became its first woman chair. From that seat, she took direct aim at DC's “track system,” which sorted students (disproportionately Black children) into rigid academic lanes that locked many of them out of college prep before they'd had a fair chance to prove themselves. Her advocacy helped build the case behind Hobson v. Hansen, the 1967 federal ruling that struck the track system down as unconstitutional. Her life's work is a shining example of how to use an actual seat of institutional power to dismantle bias, and in this case, the very kind of bias that tried to limit her own path back in the hardest times of the Jim Crow era.
The Last Lesson
Haynes died in 1980, and even her death kept influencing educational change. She left a trust of $700,000 to Catholic University to fund a professorial chair and a student loan program in its School of Education. This was an actual fortune, especially for a Black woman born in 1890. Smith College now awards an annual mathematics prize in her name, the American Mathematical Society gave her its Mathematical Educator Award, and a DC public charter school carries her name today. And yet, I hadn't heard of her until a few months ago. Look around your community and learn about some of the women behind the "names" of schools and streets. The discovery could be amazing.
Reflection: Where do you (or would you wish to) carry quiet authority, and how could (or would) you use it to change a broken system?
Reflection and Action: Journal Prompts for Everyone
Thinking of Chien-Shiung Wu, how do you persist when your contributions are overlooked? Describe a time your work was unrecognized, and how you pushed through this frustration.
Channeling Mary Golda Ross, how do you break new ground in your field? Write about a "first" you achieved or hope to achieve.
Following the example of Euphemia Lofton Haynes, think about a—a school, a workplace, an institution—that sorted, ranked, or stereotyped you. How did this experience shape what you believed you were capable of?
HerStory/OurStory: Journal Prompts for Women of Color
Inspired by Chien-Shiung Wu, what brilliance in your life has gone unrecognized? Celebrate a BIPOC scientist's achievements.
Honoring Mary Golda Ross, when have your ancestors' knowledge informed your innovations? Share the story of a BIPOC innovator in STEM.
In tribute to Euphemia Lofton Haynes, what beliefs did you inherit, implicitly—and how do they shape your worldview?
Activated Allies: Prompts and Actions for White Friends
Recognizing the legacy of Chien-Shiung Wu, challenge who gets remembered in STEM — share her story in a science space, and learn about (and support) other BIPOC women's contributions to the field.
In honor of Mary Golda Ross, highlight Native scientists in STEM celebrations, make sure their legacies aren't erased by whitewashing, and support STEM programs for Indigenous youth.
Celebrating Euphemia Lofton Haynes, learn how tracking, streaming, or “gifted” programs still sort students by race today, and advocate for equity in your local school district.
What These Women Knew, and What We Must Remember
Chien-Shiung Wu proved a law of physics wrong and watched the credit go to the men who'd only theorized it. Mary Golda Ross designed the earliest blueprints for reaching other planets while being the only woman and the only Native person in a lab full of engineers who'd been told people like her had no business there. Haynes earned credentials nobody could grab from her, then spent her power on the board that ran DC's schools tearing down the very system that tried to sort Black kids out of a future before they'd had a chance to reach for one. All three Foremothers persevered in their work because their mission was much stronger than their own individual achievement. Haynes particularly made sure the next generation wouldn't have to fight the same fight from scratch.
So here we are today, where STEM diversity programs are defunded and even in some instances, ridiculed. What talents and potential contributions do we collectively risk missing out on, if this is allowed to continue? Wu, Ross, and Haynes are our inspiration and well, rocket fuel, against sitting by while doors that were pushed open slam shut once again. Whose contribution or access are you going to make sure has a chance?
P.S.: More Foremothers of STEM
Wu, Ross, and Haynes are in excellent company. In addition to Alice Ball, who I already mentioned, look into Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, the NASA mathematicians whose orbital calculations and code helped put John Glenn into space (and whose story Margot Lee Shetterly finally told in Hidden Figures); Flossie Wong-Staal, the virologist who was first to clone HIV and prove it caused AIDS; and Patricia Bath, the ophthalmologist who invented a laser device that's restored sight to patients blinded by cataracts for decades. The history of American science is full of women like these—you just have to go digging. Let us know who else you discover!
Thanks for reading this edition of #SistoryLessons, a biweekly newsletter that uses the lessons from Foremothers who led the way as encouragement and guide for these times of resilience. The series is based on stories from my award-winning book, Our Brave Foremothers: Celebrating 100 Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous Women Who Changed the Course of History, and other, ongoing research.