ThinkHer

The popular practices in history of science narratives still carry the legacy of Eurocentric approaches shaped by European colonialism. For example, the centuries between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of European universities are frequently imagined as a long intellectual dusk, an age of theological dominance, institutional fragility, and scientific slowdown. Yet the same centuries contain a, parallel arc of knowledge-making that unfolded across Baghdad, Cairo, Córdoba, and Samarkand. Between roughly the eighth and thirteenth centuries, these cities formed a dense network of translation, observation, and mathematical innovation that modern historians refer to, cautiously and retrospectively, as the Islamic Golden Age. The contrast is not simply one of “stagnation versus progress,” as older narratives suggest, but of uneven institutional geography. While parts of Western Europe were reorganising after the collapse of Roman administrative systems, Abbasid Baghdad deve...

  Did you know the word 'computer' originally referred to a person, not a machine? Before electronic computers existed, a 'computer' was someone whose job was to compute, meaning to perform calculations. Governments, observatories, banks, and scientific institutions hired people specifically to compute mathematical problems by hand. The machine we know as a computer today inherited this name later. So long before desktops, laptops and touchscreens, 'computers' sat in crowded observatories like the Harvard College Observatory, with pencils, rulers, and stacks of star charts. And Henrietta Swan Leavitt was one of them. Henrietta Swan Leavitt ©BBC Born in 1868 in Massachusetts, Henrietta Swan Leavitt was curious and academically brilliant. She studied art, philosophy, language, and mathematics at Radcliffe College. In her final year, she took a course on astronomy. Somewhere between studying stars and solving equations, she found her interest. But astronomy at that...

There is a question that quietly lingers beneath many attempts to celebrate women in science. Does a woman entering a male-dominated institution automatically make her a feminist figure? Does surviving sexism naturally create solidarity with other women? The answer is not always simple. Many women fought their way through hostile systems without necessarily trying to change those systems for others. Some saw their success as personal achievement. Others understood it as responsibility. Rukhmabai Raut , for instance, did not separate her medical career from her critique of child marriage and women’s lack of autonomy. Her professional life itself became part of a larger political struggle around women’s education and consent. Bertha Lutz moved constantly between science and organized feminist activism, arguing that women’s participation in public and intellectual life required structural and legal change. Wangari Maathai similarly understood environmental destruction, democracy, and wo...

For decades, the image of flight has been quietly gendered. Little boys are handed toy aeroplanes and told to dream of the cockpit, while girls are more often nudged toward the aisle—graceful, composed, and smiling as flight attendants. Even today, when we speak of aviation, the figure of the pilot still carries a certain masculine weight: authority, control, technical mastery. Women, when imagined in the skies, are often placed in roles defined by appearance rather than command. But what happens when a woman decides to subtly change it, redefine it in her own terms?  Wang Zheng ©Wikipedia That quiet defiance sits at the heart of Wang Zheng’s story. As a child, she too imagined becoming a flight attendant, drawn by what she later described as a kind of “beauty” associated with the role. And to be fair, being a flight attendant is far from just about appearance, it demands precision, care, emotional intelligence, and the ability to manage people and emergencies at 30,000 feet. But ...

In the early 20th century, one of biology’s biggest mysteries was: What determines whether an organism is male or female? For centuries, this question wasn’t just scientific; it was deeply social. Across cultures, the sex of a child was often seen as the responsibility of the mother, with women praised or blamed for what was, in truth, beyond their control. At a time when answers were still speculative, a quiet yet determined scientist looked deep into the microscopic world for clarity and found it.   Nettie Stevens   did not just contribute to genetics; she helped dismantle a long-standing misconception. Nettie Stevens Born in 1861 in Vermont, Nettie Stevens grew up in a time when opportunities for women were limited. Though she showed early academic promise, her path into research was delayed not by lack of ability, but by circumstance. For years, she worked as a schoolteacher, saving money and supporting herself. Many would have accepted that as the final destination. But S...

How do you write the biography of someone who lived only 28 years? Not long enough, in conventional terms, to gather disciples, build institutions, or leave behind a lineage that carries their name forward. The usual markers of legacy feel inadequate. And yet, some lives resist that arithmetic. They do not stretch across decades but deepen within them, compressing intensity, curiosity, and conviction into a brief span of time. The question shifts from duration to depth. How deeply did they touch the world? J. Vijaya ’s life demands that question. J. Vijaya, PC@ Sactuary Nature Foundation Much of what we know about her comes through the recollections of those who worked alongside her. They remember her as someone who did not inherit a discipline, but helped shape one. At a time when herpetology (a branch of zoology that studies reptiles and amphibians) in India was still emerging, and when it was rare for a woman to enter such a field, Vijaya stepped in with quiet certainty. As a st...