We love highlighting scientists you may not have heard of, often with a gorgeous illustration by cartoonist and neuroscientist Matteo Farinella. We even developed a deck of cards to celebrate great, under-appreciated figures from the annals of science. You can order our tarot deck in the Massive Science Shop.

Meet Merit-Ptah, the ancient Egyptian doctor who didn't exist

Though created by accident, her story fit neatly with burgeoning 20th century feminism

Cassie Freund, Wake Forest University

August 11, 2020

Deborah Jin engineered new quantum states of matter — twice

Karmela Padavic-Callaghan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

August 7, 2020

Meet Lynnae Quick, NASA's hunter of space cryomagma

Maryam Zaringhalam, Molecular Biology

July 22, 2020

Meet Lady Mary Montagu, who brought smallpox inoculation to England

Dan Samorodnitsky

June 8, 2020

Meet Hertha Ayrton, the mathematician who cleared WW1 trenches of poisonous gas

Joan Meiners, Ecology

4 peer comments

June 5, 2020

Meet Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who figured out what the universe is made of

Arianna Soldati, Ludwig-Maximillians Universitat Munchen

Brittney G. Borowiec, Wilfrid Laurier University

May 9, 2020

Can you help identify unnamed women scientists of the past?

Karen Kwon, Chemistry

3 peer comments

April 16, 2020

Meet Betty Hay, the scientist who saw how cells grow and limbs regenerate

Luyi Cheng, Northwestern University

April 1, 2020

Meet Antonia Maury, astronomy's renegade who changed the way we classify stars

Dori Grijseels, University of Sussex

March 22, 2020

Meet Alice Wilson, the Canadian geologist who did the work of five people

She wasn't allowed to work at remote field sites, so she became the expert in her local rocks and fossils

Arianna Soldati, Ludwig-Maximillians Universitat Munchen

Cassie Freund, Wake Forest University

February 27, 2020

Meet Rebecca Lancefield, the revolutionary microbiologist whose work paved the way for antibiotics

Ashley Juavinett, UC San Diego

January 19, 2020

Five facts about Pamela E. Harris, Mexican-American mathematician and educator of "leaders of character"

Gabriela Serrato Marks, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

January 16, 2020

Elizabeth Rona, the wandering polonium woman, changed radiation science forever

Brittney G. Borowiec, Wilfrid Laurier University

December 29, 2019

Meet Chien-Shiung Wu, the nuclear physicist who developed revolutionary experiments

December 28, 2019

Meet Annie Jump Cannon, who cataloged and ranked over 300,000 stars by their hotness

JoEllen McBride, Astrophysics

December 26, 2019

Meet Dr. Gladys West, the hidden figure behind your phone's GPS

Lauren Mackenzie Reynolds, McGill University

December 25, 2019

Meet Maria Sibylla Merian, the naturalist who painted insects in living color

Lauren Sara McKee, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

November 4, 2019

Meet Émilie du Châtelet, the French socialite who helped lay the foundations of modern physics

Kelsey Lucas, University of Michigan

October 29, 2019

Meet Stephanie Kwolek, the woman who gave us bulletproof vests and yoga pants

The long-serving DuPont chemist invented kevlar and contributed to spandex

Dan Samorodnitsky

July 31, 2019

Four times that Margaret Mead challenged societal norms

Jennifer Tsang, Microbiology

July 28, 2019

Rear Admiral Amazing Grace Hopper taught computers English

Alyssa Shepard, The Scripps Research Institute

2 peer comments

July 11, 2019

Sister Miriam Michael Stimson turned early models of DNA inside out

Laura Mast, Georgia Institute of Technology

June 17, 2019

Bertha Parker, the trailblazing first Indigenous North American archaeologist, taught herself how to excavate a site

Ashley Marranzino, University of Rhode Island

June 6, 2019

Meet Olga Aleksandrovna Ladyzhenskaya: the Russian mathematician who pushed through the Iron Curtain

Farah Qaiser, University of Toronto

June 3, 2019

Meet Marjory Stoneman Douglas, champion and savior of the Everglades

Jenny Howard, Wake Forest University

May 31, 2019

Meet Nobel Prize winner Rosalyn Sussman Yalow, who let doctors see into your blood

Jordan Harrod, Harvard University

2 peer comments

May 12, 2019

Maria Goeppert Mayer discovered the magic numbers at the center of atoms

Lauren Mackenzie Reynolds, McGill University

May 6, 2019

Maria Kirch was the first woman to discover a comet, but her husband took the credit

Even 300 years later, Maria Margaretha Winkelmann Kirch is denied credit for her work

JoEllen McBride, Astrophysics

May 1, 2019

Meet mathematician Emmy Noether, mother of the most beautiful theorem in the world

Brittney G. Borowiec, Wilfrid Laurier University

April 13, 2019

Meet Maria Mitchell, the first American to discover a comet

Laetitia Meyrueix, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

April 9, 2019

Meet Elisa Izaurralde, who decrypted the mystery of messenger RNA

Kimberly McCoy, Biochemistry

April 1, 2019

Meet Katsuko Saruhashi, a resilient geochemist who detected nuclear fallout in the Pacific

Laura Mast, Georgia Institute of Technology

March 22, 2019

Meet Annie Easley, the barrier-breaking mathematician who helped us explore the solar system

Dan Samorodnitsky

November 26, 2018

Meet Grete Hermann, the philosopher of quantum physics

Meet Ada Lovelace, the world’s first computer programmer

Lauren Mackenzie Reynolds, McGill University

August 10, 2018

Meet Hypatia, the ancient mathematician who helped preserve seminal texts

Brianna Bibel, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

July 19, 2018

There was so much more to Rachel Carson beyond 'Silent Spring'

The trained zoologist and a bureaucrat pushed for environmental safety her whole life

Jenny Howard, Wake Forest University

July 12, 2018

Meet Mary Anning, a fossil hunter who changed the way we think about the history of life on Earth

Jerald Pinson, University of Florida

May 24, 2018

Meet Mary Golda Ross, one of the first Native Americans in engineering

Jenny Howard, Wake Forest University

May 17, 2018

Meet Barbara McClintock, who used corn to decipher 'jumping genes'

Yewande Pearse, LA Biomed

May 11, 2018

Meet Ynes Mexia, late-blooming botanist whose adventures rivaled Darwin's

Gabriela Serrato Marks, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

May 3, 2018

Three facts about Helen Rodríguez-Trías, pediatrician-turned-healthcare activist

Natalie Parletta, University of South Australia

April 26, 2018

Meet Jane Marcet, whose books made science accessible

Natasha Chrisandina, Georgia Institute of Technology

April 19, 2018

Three times Louise Slaughter used her microbiology training in Congress

Jennifer Tsang, Microbiology

April 12, 2018

Four facts about Jane Goodall, primatologist, anthropologist, and activist

Brittney G. Borowiec, Wilfrid Laurier University

April 5, 2018

Meet Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the astrophysicist who first noticed pulsars

Through sheer tenacity she has forged a career in a male-dominated field

Yewande Pearse, LA Biomed

March 29, 2018

Meet Katherine Johnson, the computer who helped send men to the moon

Jenny Howard, Wake Forest University

March 22, 2018

Five facts about Rita Levi-Montalcini, who figured out how neurons grow

Lauren Mackenzie Reynolds, McGill University

March 15, 2018

5 facts about Frances Hamerstrom, wildlife biologist, hunter, and savior of the prairie chicken

Ashley Juavinett, UC San Diego

March 8, 2018

Meet Vera Rubin, the stargazer who predicted dark matter

Brittney G. Borowiec, Wilfrid Laurier University

February 22, 2018

Meet Mamie Phipps Clark, the social psychologist who helped outlaw segregated schools

Lauren Mackenzie Reynolds, McGill University

February 16, 2018