Rosalind Franklin and Unsung Women in Science
Read Co-Executive Producers Katie Hafner & Amy Scharf's New York Times Letter to the Editor, May 9, 2023
In 1965, a team of doctors at Rockefeller University announced what sounded like a miracle—they’d found a treatment for heroin addiction that actually seemed to work.
For nearly two years, the researchers had been running an experiment with a small group of men, aged 19 to 37, who’d been using heroin for several years—and the results were astonishing. Men who’d been transfixed by heroin cravings for years, who had tried to quit before and failed, were suddenly able to return to their lives. One started painting. Another finished high school and got a scholarship to go to college.
The key to these transformations was a drug called methadone. But the treatment was controversial, and one of the doctors on the team already had a bit of a reputation as a bold, and possibly even reckless, defier of convention: Marie Nyswander.
This season, we bring you her story and the radical treatment that would upend the landscape of addiction for decades to come.
Art credit: Graphic design by Janice Fung
Here at Lost Women of Science, it is our goal to rescue female scientists from the jaws of obscurity, but we need your help! If there’s a woman you’re aware of who achieved something remarkable but has been omitted from the historical record, we want to know. Leave a brief message at (415) 754-0625 and we’ll be sure to get back to you! Be sure to leave your full name, where you're calling from, and the best way to reach you, as well as the scientist's full name and her scientific field. Alternatively, you may use our contact form. We appreciate your support in bringing the stories of trailblazing female scientists to light!
This season, we bring you Marie Nywander's story and the radical treatment that would upend the landscape of addiction for decades to come.
We’re excited to introduce Shorts, a new season from Lost Women of Science. Each 30-minute episode is like a mini season that tells the story of one scientist.
Yvonne Y. Clark, known as Y.Y. throughout her career, made groundbreaking achievements as a Black female mechanical engineer.
The first modern-style code executed on a computer was written in the 1940s by a woman named Klára Dán von Neumann–or Klári to her family and friends.
Listen to our inaugural seasonabout Dorothy Andersen, a physician and pathologist who solved a medical mystery when she identified and defined cystic fibrosis in 1938.
Katie Hafner was a longtime reporter for The New York Times, where she continues to be a frequent contributor. Katie is uniquely positioned to tell the stories of lost women of science. Not only does she bring a skilled hand to complex narratives, but she has been writing about women in STEM for nearly 30 years. She is the author of six books of non-fiction, and her first novel, The Boys, was published in July 2022 by Spiegel & Grau. Katie is also the host and executive producer of Our Mothers Ourselves, an interview podcast that celebrates extraordinary mothers.