Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: An Autobiography and Other Recollections

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

Work with love, embrace the unexpected, let no one else make intellectual decisions for you, always remain in direct touch with the fountain-head, and more advice to the young from pioneering astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin:

Collected Poems: 1950-2012

Adrienne Rich

“I am bombarded yet I stand.”

Astrophysicist Janna Levin reads Adrienne Rich’s sublime tribute to Caroline Herschel, the first professional woman astronomer.

Dark Matter: Poems of Space

Judith Palmer

Pioneering astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell reads “Halley’s Comet” by Stanley Kunitz:

Ada Lovelace, Poet of Science: The First Computer Programmer

Diane Stanley

A lovely children’s book about the world’s first computer programmer and how she came to be who she was:

Infinity: Beyond the Beyond the Beyond

Lillian R. Lieber

The brilliant, forgotten mathematician Lillian Lieber on art, science, infinity, the meaning of freedom, and what it takes to be a finite but complete human being – unusual, absolutely wonderful read from the 1950s:

Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel (Classic Reprint)

Mrs John Herschel

Hooked on the Heavens – the story of how Caroline Herschel, the first professional woman astronomer, nearly died by meathook in the name of science:

Seduced by Logic: Émilie Du Châtelet, Mary Somerville and the Newtonian Revolution

Robyn Arianrhod

“One must know what one wants to be. In the latter endeavors irresolution produces false steps, and in the life of the mind confused ideas.”

Trailblazing 18th-century mathematician, who popularized Newton and paved the way for women in science, on gender and the nature of genius:

The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars

Dava Sobel

The remarkable story of how a team of 19th-century female astronomers revolutionized our understanding of the universe decades before women were allowed to vote:

Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie

Barbara Goldsmith

Marie Curie, ambulance driver – the little-known story of the trailblazing scientist’s humanitarian heroism and her life-saving mobile X-ray units:

Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics

Ruth Lewin Sime

“Science makes people reach selflessly for truth and objectivity; it teaches people to accept reality, with wonder and admiration, not to mention the deep joy and awe that the natural order of things brings to the true scientist.”

How pioneering physicist Lise Meitner discovered nuclear fission, was denied the Nobel Prize, but went on to pave the way for women in science nonetheless:

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

Margot Lee Shetterly

The untold story of the black women mathematicians who powered early space exploration – a heartening testament to “the triumph of meritocracy” and to the idea that “each of us should be allowed to rise as far as our talent and hard work can take us.”

Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World

Rachel Ignotofsky

An illustrated celebration of trailblazing women in science – Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie, Jane Goodall, Mae Jemison, and more pioneers who conquered curiosity against tremendous cultural odds:

Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos

Priyamvada Natarajan

Beautiful read on cosmology, the essence of science, and the strange story of how the term “black hole” was born:

Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe

Lisa Randall

Harvard physicist and cosmologist Lisa Randall—one of a handful of women in the entire history of science to have risen to this level of influence—tells a thrilling cosmological detective story of how the universe evolved and what made our very existence possible, linking dark matter to the extinction of the dinosaurs:

Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: A Selection from the Letters of Lord Byron’s Daughter and Her Description of the First Computer

Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer, on the nature of the imagination and its three core faculties: