ThinkHer

Since the Nobel Prizes were first awarded in 1901, more than 600 men have received the honour in the sciences—physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine—while fewer than 30 women have been recognised. The imbalance is particularly striking in physics, where, out of over 200 laureates, only four have been women: Marie Curie (1903), Maria Goeppert Mayer (1963), Donna Strickland (2018), and Anne L’Huillier (2023). That means women make up less than 2% of all Nobel laureates in physics—a field that still struggles with gender parity at every level, from classrooms to laboratories. In 2018, when the Nobel Committee announced Donna Strickland’s name, it had been 55 years since a woman last won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Strickland’s recognition didn’t just mark a scientific milestone—it became a moment of reckoning for the discipline itself, forcing the world to ask why it takes decades for women’s brilliance in physics to be acknowledged. Donna Stickland in her lab  Courtesy of Uni...

Natural history, at its heart, is an act of attentive recording. To identify a plant, you must first look—closely—at its leaves, its flowers, the way it branches and bends. You note the shape of a seed pod, the scent of a crushed stem, the soil beneath it. Identification today might involve a field guide, a herbarium sheet, or an app that matches images to species, but the essence remains the same: careful observation, naming, and preservation. These acts of noticing have long been the quiet foundations of science. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this quiet work opened a back door for women into a world that otherwise excluded them. Barred from universities and scientific societies, they contributed by collecting plants, shells, insects, and fossils, often for family members or for emerging museums (check Mary Anning 's work for example). These collections whether kept at home or sent to herbaria or a museum, were crucial to expanding scientific knowledge even though th...

The first semester during my undergraduate years, there was a  “History of Physics” course. The syllabus was basically a list of scientists stretched from Aristotle to Einstein, a sweeping arc of minds that had shaped the discipline. The biographies we read were neatly arranged on a timeline of progress, their personal lives mostly stripped of social context. It was a history of achievements, not of people. These were tales of individual brilliance, where obstacles existed mainly to be overcome. And in this, I first recognized the pattern of what scholars now call the “superscientist” narrative: an individual—usually male—who triumphs over adversity to push the boundaries of knowledge. When women did appear, their stories followed the same arc but with a twist. Their struggle wasn’t against poverty or bad luck, but against patriarchy itself. Think of how we tell the stories of Marie Curie, Janaki Ammal, or Rosalind Franklin—as models of resilience, who not only conducted pathbreaki...

Through the work we’ve done in ThinkHer, a pattern begins to emerge: a woman’s insistence on shifting what’s accepted as normal. Whether it’s in how they studied, taught, moved through institutions, or lived outside them, these women didn’t just make space for themselves—they redefined what that space could be. Belle da Costa Greene , Mary Somerville , Kamala Sohonie , Rukhmabai Raut —their names resurface time and again, not only for what they achieved, but for how deliberately they lived.  For women, even the most groundbreaking titles rarely ensured entry into the spaces they truly sought. Yet, these women, in their own ways, managed to shape and carve out those very spaces. Laura Maria Caterina Bassi Veratti (Laura Bassi), too, belongs in this line. Portrait of Laura Bassi by Carlo Vandi Laura Bassi’s career began at a time when the very idea of a woman engaging in scientific thought—let alone being recognized for it—was rare and often met with resistance. She was born in 1711 ...

I recently read ' What Stars Are Made Of ' , Donovan Moore’s biography of Cecilia Payne, and right from the prologue, I found myself pulled into the quiet intensity of her life. Moore describes Payne working late into the winter nights of 1924 in a cramped office at the Harvard College Observatory. The image is stark: a small desk, a full ashtray, mounting exhaustion, and the creeping anxiety of financial strain.  Reading this, I was reminded of a time when I was working in a lab with an uncertain finances, when everyday concerns like rent and groceries lingered in my mind, quietly pulling focus from the work at hand. Someone once told me, almost casually, that " science is the cure for all such issues ". I remember how that comment unsettled me. How was I supposed to lose myself in scientific curiosity when practical worries kept pressing in?  Reading about Payne didn’t just stir that anger again, instead it added something else: a deep, conflicted respect. She perse...

In the early 1900s, the subatomic world was full of mystery, invisible forces, and unanswered questions. Scientists were drawn towards this invisible drama. However, only a few had the courage and determination to explore these unknown worlds and unravel their mysteries for people like us. Bibha Chowdhuri was one such scientist who pioneered the study of cosmic rays, the high-speed space bullets that crash into Earth's atmosphere. Bibha means 'light' in Bengali. In both name and nature, Bibha was a radiant force in Indian science. Born in Kolkata in 1913 to Banku Bihari Chowdhuri, a doctor, and Urmila Devi, Bibha was the third child in a family of six children. She was encouraged to pursue education at a time when few women entered science. In 1936, she earned her M.Sc. in Physics from the University of Calcutta—the only woman in her batch. Her academic excellence naturally led her to the field of research. Made on Canva @ThinkHer Although she reached the doorstep of resear...

Some people change the world not with loud declarations or sweeping movements, but through quiet, persistent dedication to what they love. They follow their curiosity with discipline, shaping the future in ways that feel almost invisible—until history looks back and realizes the magnitude of their work. Maryam Mirzakhani was one such person. Through her deep engagement with mathematics, she transformed the field. In doing so, she broke multiple barriers: becoming the first woman, the first Iranian, and the first Muslim to win the Fields Medal, mathematics' highest honor. Her legacy lies not only in the concepts she explored, but in the glass ceilings she shattered by relentlessly following what she was curious about.  Maryam Mirzakhani  © Courtesy Stanford News Service Born in Tehran in 1977, Maryam Mirzakhani grew up during a turbulent period in Iran’s history, yet found solace in stories and books. As a child, she imagined herself becoming a writer, not a mathematician....

We have written a few articles already about the personal beliefs and political convictions of scientists—how these elements shaped not only their worldviews but also their contributions within and beyond their disciplines. Yet, for those of us within the scientific community, it is evident that much of the work, particularly in the physical sciences, is rarely undertaken with the explicit aim of societal benefit. Rather, it is often driven by something more elusive: the raw human desire to understand the world.   I am not trying to claim objectivity or detachment of science from the world’s politics, but to recognize that more often than not, the primary aspiration of science is knowledge for its own sake, and not for immediate technological gain or social application. And yet, this pursuit—so seemingly removed from politics and policy—can ripple outward, shaping our understanding of the universe and, at times, changing the course of history. Chien-Shiung Wu’s career sta...

In the world of higher education, knowledge is often separated into two approaches: the deep and the broad. The former focuses on a single discipline—often associated with the sciences—while the latter encourages connections across fields, a style more familiar to the arts and humanities. Science, in this model, becomes a specialized, linear pursuit, while the liberal arts embrace breadth and interdisciplinarity. Dr. Purnima Sinha’s life and work defied these binaries. Purnima Sinha with  Prof SN Bose and Prof. PAM Dirac (top right), playing tabla (top left), with students (bottom left), and Dr. Sinha's PhD Thesis (bottom right)  ©  www.peepultree.world Emerging in the early decades of postcolonial India, she worked in X-ray crystallography—a field  of modern physics that analyze the structure of various materials—and became t he first woman from Calcutta University to earn a PhD in Physics. Howe ver,   her understanding of science transcended its disciplinary s...