Show Notes
Today, we take it for granted that you can buy a home pregnancy test at the pharmacy. Before the end of the 1970s, this was not the case. Then along came Margaret Crane, a young designer working for a pharmaceutical company. Looking at the rows of pregnancy tests in the lab one day in 1965, she thought, “Well, women could do that at home!” But Crane faced an uphill battle to convince the pharmaceutical companies, the medical community, and conservative social leaders that at-home pregnancy testing was safe and necessary. This podcast first aired in 2014, when Margaret Crane’s role in the development of the home pregnancy test was eventually recognized. Almost 10 years later, Crane’s experience remains relevant as women continue to fight for their reproductive rights. Making Contact is a radio show and podcast from Frequencies of Change Media. For a full list of the episode credits, go to: Buried History: The Feminist Birth of the Home Pregnancy Test.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
More from Lost Women of Science
In 1983, working with pencil and paper at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital, Svetlana Mojsov spotted what everyone else had missed: the active form of a newly discovered hormone called GLP-1. After three years of testing, she proved she was right. That molecule is the basis of blockbuster drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Despite her valuable contributions to endocrinology and peptide research, Dr. Mojsov’s name was reduced to a footnote in most of the stories about GLP-1’s discovery. Instead, the credit was given to the men around her. In this episode, we’ll explore how she fought back.
In high school, Isabella Karle had to take a science class to fulfill a prerequisite. She chose chemistry at random. Karle would go on to become one of the most important chemists of her time, doing groundbreaking research in the field of X-ray crystallography. Her discoveries in the mid 1950s are a key reason many modern-day pharmaceuticals are available on pharmacy shelves. But Karle’s collaborator–her husband, Jerome–would eventually receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work Isabella also achieved.
In this episode of Lost Women of Science Conversations, host Elah Feder explores the remarkable resurgence of I Who Have Never Known Men, Jacqueline Harpman’s 1995 novel that went largely unnoticed for decades before becoming an international sensation. Harpman was a psychoanalyst and her training informed the book’s speculative fiction, dystopian, and science fiction genres. Elah first speaks with award-winning translator Ros Schwartz, who translated the novel into English twice –once in 1997 and again in 2022, when a new edition helped introduce Harpman’s work to a new generation of readers. Later, Elah is joined by Susan Watkins, Professor of Women’s Writing at Leeds Beckett University, to discuss the novel’s themes of resilience, isolation, and survival, and why this once-overlooked book is resonating so strongly with readers today.
In 1856, decades before the term “greenhouse gas” was coined, Eunice Newton Foote demonstrated the greenhouse effect in her home laboratory. She placed a glass cylinder full of carbon dioxide in the sun, and found that it heated up much faster than a cylinder of ordinary air. Her conclusion: more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere results in a warmer planet. Several years later, a British scientist named John Tyndall conducted a far more complicated experiment that demonstrated the same effect and revealed how it worked. Today, he’s widely known as the man who discovered the greenhouse gas effect. There’s even a crater on the moon named for him! Eunice Newton Foote, meanwhile, was lost to history—until an amateur historian stumbled on her story.
En 1856, décadas antes de que se acuñara el término “gas de efecto invernadero”, Eunice Newton Foote demostró el efecto invernadero en su laboratorio casero. Colocó un cilindro de vidrio lleno de dióxido de carbono al sol y observó que se calentaba mucho más rápido que un cilindro con aire común. Su conclusión: más dióxido de carbono en la atmósfera da lugar a un planeta más cálido. Años más tarde, un científico británico llamado John Tyndall realizó un experimento mucho más complejo que demostró el mismo efecto y explicó su funcionamiento. Hoy en día, Tyndall es ampliamente reconocido como el hombre que descubrió el efecto invernadero. ¡Incluso hay un cráter en la luna que lleva su nombre! Mientras que Eunice Newton Foote fue olvidada por la historia… hasta que un historiador aficionado redescubrió su legado.