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 pre-order our tarot deck in the Massive Science Shop.

Sister Miriam Michael Stimson turned early models of DNA inside out

Not everyone thinks of a Catholic nun when they think “scientist.”

Laura Mast, Georgia Institute of Technology

June 17, 2019

Bertha Parker, the first Native 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

JoEllen McBride, Astrophysics

May 1, 2019

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

Brittney Borowiec, McMaster 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

She made big contributions to our understanding of tiny cellular machinery

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'

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'

Through meticulous crossbreeding, she showed that DNA is far more complicated than scientists originally thought

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 Borowiec, McMaster University

April 5, 2018

Meet Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the astrophysicist who first noticed pulsars

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

As a kid, she dissected blue jays and built a garden whose path was lined with poison ivy

Ashley Juavinett, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

March 8, 2018

Meet Vera Rubin, the stargazer who predicted dark matter

Brittney Borowiec, McMaster University

February 22, 2018

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

Lauren Mackenzie Reynolds, McGill University

February 16, 2018

Six facts about Gertrude Elion, a legend in drug discovery

Gregory Logan-Graf, Carnegie Mellon University

February 9, 2018

Four facts about Marie Tharp, the woman whose art mapped the bottom of the sea

Cassie Freund, Wake Forest University

February 1, 2018

Remembering Ursula K. Le Guin, an inspiration to scientists

January 26, 2018

Meet the barrier-breaking physicist hunting gravity with lasers

Prabarna Ganguly, Northeastern University

November 23, 2017

5 facts about Marie Curie, chemist, physicist, and Nobel legend

Lauren Mackenzie Reynolds, McGill University

November 9, 2017

The prolific life of Wang Zhenyi, autodidact, astronomer, and poet

Devang Mehta, University of Alberta

November 3, 2017

5 facts about Hedy Lamarr, star, inventor, wartime code maker

“Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid”

Elle O'Brien, Computational Neuroscience

October 27, 2017

5 facts about Marjorie Lee Browne, African American math prodigy and pioneer

Ashley Juavinett, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

October 20, 2017

5 facts about Rosalind Franklin, DNA pioneer

Alireza Edraki, University of Massachusetts Medical School

October 13, 2017

5 facts about Jean Bartik, expert programmer of the world's first computer

Ashley Juavinett, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

October 6, 2017

Five facts about Mae Jemison, doctor, dancer, and the first woman of color in space

Anastasia Gorelova, University of Pittsburgh

September 29, 2017

Five facts about Mary Putnam Jacobi, medical pioneer and suffragette

Ashley Juavinett, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

September 22, 2017

Five facts about Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space

September 15, 2017

Five facts about Linda Buck, olfactory pioneer

September 8, 2017

Meet the astronomer who changed how we see the stars

July 27, 2017

Maryam Mirzakhani’s mathematical legacy lives on

The first woman to win a Fields Medal was only 40 when she died, but she revolutionized mathematics

July 17, 2017

Meet the "First Lady of Physics," "Queen of Nuclear Research," and destroyer of natural laws

June 2, 2017

Meet the chemist who engineered the first effective treatment of leprosy

May 26, 2017

4 incredible fossils found by paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey

April 28, 2017

Meet Sau Lan Wu, the physicist who helped discover three fundamental particles

April 5, 2017

Meet the first black woman to earn a PhD in chemistry

March 31, 2017

Meet the botanist who made sugarcane sweeter and snuck a squirrel into England

March 17, 2017

3 incredible stories from the life of nanoscience pioneer Mildred Dresselhaus

March 10, 2017