By Maya Palit
A new design project called Beyond Curie is out to celebrate ‘badass women’ in science, including technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Its name is a tribute to Marie Curie, the Polish-French scientist who won the Nobel Prize twice for her research on radioactivity. The project includes the other 16 women who’ve won the Nobel Prize for science subjects since, but the idea is to create awareness in the public about scientists who might not have been decorated for their achievements.
So New York-based artist, design strategist, and former Neuroscience student Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, is designing a set of beautiful prints of these women, along with captions that explain their subject area. These include Chien-Shiung Wu, a Chinese experimental physicist, Katherine Johnson, one of the women who inspired Hidden Figures, a recent film about three African American mathematicians who did pioneering research for NASA, and an Irish surgeon named Margaret Ann Bulkley Collage, who pretended to be a man in order to pursue medicine.
In her quest to bring the spotlight back on to women scientists who’ve faded into anonymity, Phinbodhipakkiya might want to consider Indian women scientists too, and she would have to look no further than The Life of Science blog created last year by Aashima Dogra and Nandita Jayaraj. There isn’t any dearth of them either, and it would be great to have informative posters of women like Anindibai Joshi. In the meantime, you can learn more about her project here.