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 Sophie Germain, the amateur mathematician who worked on number theory's toughest problem

Germain, or "Monsieur LeBlanc" to her professors, took a bold and creative approach to life and math

Rebecca Lea Morris, Freelance

March 23, 2021

Women scientists are bearing the brunt of COVID-19's impacts

Kristen Vogt Veggeberg, University of Illinois at Chicago

February 11, 2021

Meet Jane Colden, the 18th century botanist snubbed by Linnaeus

Brittany Kenyon-Flatt, North Carolina State University

February 9, 2021

Meet Virginia Apgar, the unlikely anesthesiologist who saved newborn babies

Shannon Casey, Biology

January 18, 2021

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

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, Senior Editor

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

Stifled by sexism in Europe, she made foundational discoveries in astronomy after coming to the US

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

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, Massive Science

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

A century later, her system is still used today

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

Dan Samorodnitsky, Senior Editor

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

Meet Grete Hermann, the philosopher of quantum physics