The International Day of Women and Girls in Science celebrated on 11 February, is implemented by UNESCO and UN-Women, in collaboration institutions and civil society partners that aim to promote women and girls in science. This Day is an opportunity to promote full and equal access to and participation in science for women and girls. Gender equality is a global priority for UNESCO, and the support of young girls, their education and their full ability to make their ideas heard are levers for development and peace. Tackling some of the greatest challenges of the Agenda for Sustainable Development—from improving health to combating climate change—will rely on harnessing all talent. That means getting more women working in these fields. Diversity in research expands the pool of talented researchers, bringing in fresh perspectives, talent and creativity. This Day is a reminder that women and girls play a critical role in science and technology communities and that their participation should be strengthened. We join in to celebrate #WomeninScience on #February11 with the international science community.
Here are some highlights from the books published by the imprints of Penguin Random House written by, and also celebrating, women in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math:
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, Lab Girl is Hope Jahren’s revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also a celebration of the lifelong curiosity, humility, and passion that drive every scientist.
In a world where women are often dissuaded from STEM careers, Broad Band shines a light on the bright minds history forgot, from pioneering database poets, data wranglers, and hypertext dreamers to glass ceiling-shattering dot com-era entrepreneurs.
In this beautifully observed book, Georgetown scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson tells the story of how she and other researchers have scoured Mars for signs of life, transforming the planet from a distant point of light into a world of its own.
In Handprints on Hubble, Kathyrn D. Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space, recounts her experience as part of the team that launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained the Hubble Space Telescope.
Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage
This graphic novel presents a rollicking alternate reality in which Charles Babbage, the unrealized inventor of the computer, and his accomplice, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, build the Difference Engine, an idea from her original footnotes on Babbage’s plans for an enormous mechanical calculating machine.
In The Plant Hunter, a leading medical ethnobotanist tells us her story in this uplifting and adventure-filled memoir that illuminates how the path forward for medical discovery may be found in nature’s oldest remedies.
The Smallest Lights in the Universe
In this luminous memoir, an MIT astrophysicist must reinvent herself in the wake of tragedy and discovers the power of connection on this planet, even as she searches our galaxy for another Earth.
Scientist and science writer Ainissa Ramirez examines eight inventions—clocks, steel rails, copper communication cables, photographic film, light bulbs, hard disks, scientific labware, and silicon chips—and reveals how they shaped the human experience.
Elegantly written and enriched by excerpts from letters, diaries, and memoirs, The Glass Universe is the hidden history of the women whose contributions to the burgeoning field of astronomy forever changed our understanding of the stars and our place in the universe.
Rachel Swaby’s vibrant profiles of 52 women span centuries of courageous thinkers and illustrate how each one’s ideas developed, from their first moment of scientific engagement through the research and discovery for which they’re best known.
In Finding the Mother Tree, Suzanne Simard, the world’s leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another, writes about her scientific quest and her own journey of observation and change.
More books on Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics
More books on Women and Technology
