Sciencebrunch

No guest of honor today. Instead, we talk about some of the interesting happenings in the modern science world. And Katie tells us about her fossil dig!

You may have never heard of him, but African-American chemist Percy Lavon Julian is the guy you should thank for your hormonal birth control. And life is just better when nerds name things!

Mary Agnes Chase struggled to begin her career in botany, so when she finally made the big time, she turned around to help other women and minorities succeed in the field.

Botanist Carl Linnaeus had a noble goal: to create a new standardized system of naming all living creatures on the planet. But he was only human, after all, and couldn't resist immortalizing his enemies' names in some of the gross stuff he found in nature.

Margaret Mead traveled the world to study and compare different cultures, in a quest to find out which parts of us are driven by nature and which by culture.

Richard Feynman was a brilliant theoretical physicist who won a Nobel Prize and inspired his younger sister to a career in STEM -- but is he worthy of hero worship?

"Birdman of India" Sálim Ali spent nearly 80 years observing and documenting bird species in India, yet he still considered his research a drop in the bucket.

Cytogeneticist Barbara McClintock proved chromosomal crossover in meiosis long before anyone in her field understood it.

Qian Xuesen is known as the father of China's missile and space program. He helped transform China into a world-class military power but started his career in the United States, working in the WWII war effort.

Vera Rubin's observations of galaxy rotations showed that we can only actually see about 5% of the universe.

After leading the United States' successful scientific effort to become the first nation to develop the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer spent the rest of his life advocating for international arms control.

German mathematician Emmy Noether came up with theorems to elegantly describe the workings of the universe.

Persian mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam created a calendar that lasted 1000 years, but the Western world only remembers him for his depressing poetry.

Yvonne Brill was a brilliant rocket scientist whose work made modern satellite and spacecraft missions possible. However, most people only know about her because of one terribly sexist obituary.

Jacques Cousteau started out as a bit of a careless sea explorer, but became a conscientious conservationist and revered science communicator.

In her time, Mary Anning was known as the go-to person if you wanted an interesting fossil from the Jurassic period. But the most many people know about her is the tongue-twister she inspired, not her contributions to paleontology or even her name.

Things computer scientist and US Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper kept in her purse: wallet, tissues, lip balm, and a bundle of nanoseconds.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal is considered the "father of modern neuroscience" for his study and illustration of neurons -- work for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize.

Sara Josephine Baker saved hundreds of thousands of infant lives with a basic concept: start treating them BEFORE they start dying. Revolutionary!

Nikola Tesla was a great inventor overflowing with amazing ideas, but he wasn't very successful in business.