• Email Bluesky Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Whatsapp X Chemist Dorothy Hodgkin mapped the structures of molecules using X-ray crystallography. • Credit: Mondadori/Getty TraversalMaria PopovaFarrar, Straus & Giroux (2026) A mentor once told me that, when writing a research statement for a professorship, I had to start with the most ambitious pitch I could imagine - and then go ten times bigger. • It’s tricky enough to do this as a cosmologist, given that the topic of study is the entire Universe. • But there is a quest that is more ambitious still: to find out ‘what are we doing here?’ Against the odds: 12 women who beat bias to succeed in science Against the odds: 12 women who beat bias to succeed in science “Between the scale of atoms and the scale of stars,” Maria Popova writes in the prologue to her daring bookTraversal, “between the time of mayflies and the time of mountains, we exist as proteins lit up with purpose.” And she sets out to investigate just what this purpose is. • Popova is the acclaimed essayist behind the popular blog The Marginalian (formerly known as Brain Pickings). • What started as an eclectic weekly newsletter sent out to inspire her colleagues’ creativity has ended up in the archives of the US Library of Congress as a gem of cultural heritage.
Article Summaries:
- Traversal Maria Popova Farrar, Straus & Giroux (2026) A mentor once told me that, when writing a research statement for a professorship, I had to start with the most ambitious pitch I could imagine - and then go ten times bigger. It’s tricky enough to do this as a cosmologist, given that the topic of study is the entire Universe. But there is a quest that is more ambitious still: to find out ‘what are we doing here?’ Against the odds: 12 women who beat bias to succeed in science “Between the scale of atoms and the scale of stars,” Maria Popova writes in the prologue to her daring book Traversa
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