Professor Isabella Aiona Abbott

Isabella Aiona Abbott was a phycologist, ethnobotanist and educator from Hawaii. The first Native Hawaiian woman to receive a PhD in science, she was a leading expert on Pacific marine algae and the first woman and person of colour to be appointed as a full-time biology professor at the University of Stanford. Over the course of a long career, she was credited with discovering hundreds of species of seaweed.

Abbott was born Isabella Kauakea Yau Yung Aiona in Hana, Maui, on 20 June 1919 (Abbott was her married name). When she was young, her mother opened her eyes to the diversity and uses of Hawaii’s native plants – particularly seaweed, edible varieties of which they used in recipes at home. After a bachelor’s degree and master’s in botany, Abbott gained her PhD in algal taxonomy from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1950.

By the time she earned her doctorate, Abbott was 31 and married. Academic posts were not forthcoming for female scientists in the early 1950s, and Abbott took a break from her research career when her daughter was young. But in 1966, she was hired as a research associate and lecturer at the Hopkins Marine Station in California, run by Stanford University – making her the university’s first Native Hawaiian faculty member.

Abbott went on to build a formidable reputation as one of the world’s foremost experts on algae, especially that found in the Pacific marine basin. In 1972, Stanford promoted her directly to full professor of biology. Drawing on Native Hawaiian knowledge and oral histories, a rarity in the academic study of oceans at the time, Abbott’s research uncovered ancient uses for newly-named marine algae. She was one of the first scientists to highlight the vital role seaweed forests play in healthy marine ecosystems.

Today, Abbott’s work is recognised as laying the foundations for modern research into seaweed, covering everything from its use in human nutrition to its potential for sequestering carbon and limiting ocean acidification. She was the GP Wilder Professor of Botany at Stanford from 1980 before retiring in 1982 and moving back to Hawaii with her family. The University of Hawaii appointed her professor emerita of botany, and she continued to research algae and native plants and established an undergraduate degree in ethnobotany (the interaction of humans and plants). Abbott was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1998.

By the time she passed away on 28 October 2010 at the age of 91, Abbott had single-handedly discovered more than 200 species of seaweed. Many were named after her, including the red algae genus of Abbottella. She had also authored over 150 scientific publications and eight books, including the influential Marine Algae of California. Several of her specimens remain part of the botany collections in the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

Abbott was awarded the Darbaker Prize by the Botanical Society of America in 1969, the Charles Reed Bishop Medal in 1993 and the Gilbert Morgan Smith Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 1997. In 2005, she was named a “Living Treasure of Hawaiʻi”, and received a lifetime achievement award from the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources for her studies of coral reefs in 2008.

Further Reading

• Isabella Abbott, Wikipedia
• Trailblazing marine botanist Isabella Aiona Abbott honored at Hopkins Marine Station, Chris Peacock, Stanford Report, 26 May 2022
• How the ‘First Lady of Seaweed’ Changed Science, Shoshi Parks, Atlas Obscura, 11 March 2022
• Marine Botanist Isabella Aiona Abbott and More Women to Know this Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Healoha Johnston & Sara Cohen, Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, 3 May 2021

Written by Moya Crockett, with thanks to Stylist for their support.

Dr Frances Wagner

Dr Frances Wagner was a Canadian palaeontologist and one of the first female scientists to carry out field research for the Geological Survey of Canada (GCS). Over the course of a long career, she became a distinguished expert in the use of micropaleontology – the study of microscopic fossils – to study marine geology.

Wagner was born into an outdoorsy family in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1927. Her parents had a holiday cottage in Muskoka in the Canadian Shield, a region notable for its exposed precambrian rocks, and Wagner’s love of nature was sparked by a childhood spent learning about the area’s flora, fauna and geology. She studied palaeontology during her bachelor’s degree at the University of Toronto before embarking on a master’s in invertebrate palaeontology. Her MSc research, conducted at an Ordovician limestone sequence near Ottawa, was the start of a lifetime’s delight in field studies.

Halfway through her master’s, Wagner was hired by the GSC – Canada’s national organisation for geoscientific information and research – to catalogue fossil samples. She started working full-time for the GSC on her 23rd birthday in May 1950, becoming only the third female research scientist to do so. At the time, women were not generally considered physically or mentally strong enough to take part in geobiological field research. Wagner disproved this view during her first field excursion, which saw her travel by canoe to the remote Moose Factory Island in northeastern Ontario.

After a year in the field, Wagner went to Stanford University, earning her PhD in micropaleontology in 1954. The study of tiny remains of animals, plants and single-celled organisms in order to unlock the secrets of biogeological evolution, micropaleontology continues to inform modern-day resource development, including in the hydrocarbon industry. Wagner’s specialism was marine micropalaeontology. Over the course of countless expeditions, she became an expert on ancient seas in Canada and the microbiota of the Arctic and Atlantic continental shelves, with her fieldwork taking her to the Caribbean and the Canadian Maritimes.

Aged 40, Wagner moved to Nova Scotia to work at the esteemed Bedford Institute Laboratory (now the Bedford Institute of Oceanography), where she spent many years. From late 1969, she studied microorganisms from the CSS Hudson – a new research vessel and the first ship to circumnavigate the Americas – for almost a year as it travelled the treacherous Northwest Passage. She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in 1973, in recognition of her achievements and scientific research.

In 1979, Wagner co-authored a definitive study on the holocene marine environment of the Beaufort Shelf, helping to illuminate how even small interferences with natural processes  – such as those caused by hydrocarbon drilling – can cause profound disturbances in Canadian Arctic waters. Five years later, after a career defined by countless field investigations, she retired from the GSC. She died on 8 November 2016 in Falmouth, Nova Scotia, aged 89.

Further Reading

• Frances Wagner, Wikipedia
• Frances Wagner, Brigid Christison, Trowelblazers, 29 September 2020
• Dr. Frances Wagner: Adventurous micropaleontologist flouted convention, Bill Atkinson, The Globe and Mail, 7 December 2016

Written by Moya Crockett, with thanks to Stylist for their support.

Fire and Ice: The Volcanoes of the Solar System, Dr Natalie Starkey

The volcano is among the most familiar and perhaps the most terrifying of all geological phenomena. However, Earth isn’t the only planet to harbour volcanoes. In fact, the solar system, and probably the entire universe, is littered with them. Our own moon, which is now a dormant piece of rock, had lava flowing across its surface billions of years ago, while Mars can be credited with the largest volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons, which stands 25km high. While Mars’s volcanoes are long dead, volcanic activity continues in almost every other corner of the solar system, in the most unexpected of locations.

We tend to think of Earth volcanoes as erupting hot, molten lava and emitting huge, billowing clouds of incandescent ash. However, it isn’t necessarily the same across the rest of the solar system. For a start, some volcanoes aren’t even particularly hot. Those on Pluto, for example, erupt an icy slush of substances such as water, methane, nitrogen or ammonia, that freeze to form ice mountains as hard as rock. While others, like the volcanoes on one of Jupiter’s moons, Io, erupt the hottest lavas in the solar system onto a surface covered in a frosty coating of sulphur.

Whether they are formed of fire or ice, volcanoes are of huge importance for scientists trying to picture the inner workings of a planet or moon. Volcanoes dredge up materials from the otherwise inaccessible depths and helpfully deliver them to the surface. The way in which they erupt, and the products they generate, can even help scientists ponder bigger questions on the possibility of life elsewhere in the solar system.

Fire and Ice is an exploration of the solar system’s volcanoes, from the highest peaks of Mars to the intensely inhospitable surface of Venus and the red-hot summits of Io, to the coldest, seemingly dormant icy carapaces of Enceladus and Europa, an unusual look at how these cosmic features are made, and whether such active planetary systems might host life.

Order the book on Bookshop.org.uk here and your purchase will support a local independent bookshop of your choice!

About the Author

Natalie Starkey is a science communicator and writer, and is Science Media Producer for Chemistry World at Royal Society of Chemistry. Following a PhD at University of Edinburgh studying the geochemistry of Arctic volcanoes, Natalie’s post-doctoral work at The Open University shifted her research focus to comet and asteroid samples. It was at this time she got the chance to analyse samples returned by the NASA Stardust and JAXA Hayabusa space missions.

Natalie’s passion for her research makes her a keen science communicator. She received a British Science Association Media Fellowship in 2013, and regularly appears on television and radio internationally, as well as being a science host on Neil deGrasse Tyson’s popular StarTalk Radio. Her writing includes her previous book Catching Stardust: Comets, Asteroids and the Birth of the Solar System as well as numerous articles for The Guardian, BBC Focus, All About Space and New Scientist. Additionally, she is a regular contributor to The Conversation.

You can follow her work here:

Twitter: @starkeystardust
Instagram: @StarkeyStardust
Facebook: @StarkeyStardust
YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCkh10OlCcH4rpwN7FrcypbA
Website: nataliestarkey.com

The Caring Scientist, Adriana Wolf & Nikoline Borgermann

Laboratories are leaving behind a massive ecological footprint that isn’t exactly improving the state of our planet. But what can wet-lab scientists do to reduce their environmental impact? And is it possible to go green in the lab without compromising research? In this podcast, Adriana Wolf & Nikoline discuss obstacles and solutions related to sustainability in science, and give you hands-on tips on how to reduce the environmental impact of your lab work without compromising research.

Recent episodes covered: 

• Nikolaj Lervad Hansen and Ann Schirin Mirsanaye from the University of Copenhagen to talk about how they adjusted their freezer temperature from -80C to -70C.
• Hannah Johnson from Green Labs Netherlands talks about how the network started and what they are doing. 
• Raj Patey from My Green Lab talks about sustainable products and procurement
• CEO of the non-profit organisation Seeding Labs, Melissa Wu, discusses how donating surplus lab equipment helps ecological sustainability and social equity in science. 
• A discussion of sustainable conferencing and air travel in academia with Kate Whitfield, sustainability expert at ISGLOBAL, and Teun Bousema, Professor at Radboud University Medical Centre Nijmegen.

You can:

Listen on Spotify
Follow on Twitter: @caringscientist @AvaSustain @AdrianaWolfPer1 

Reaching for the Moon: The Autobiography of NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson, Katherine Johnson

As a young girl, Katherine Johnson showed an exceptional aptitude for math. In school she quickly skipped ahead several grades and was soon studying complex equations with the support of a professor who saw great promise in her. But ability and opportunity did not always go hand in hand. As an African American and a girl growing up in an era of brutal racism and sexism, Johnson faced daily challenges. Still, she lived her life with her father’s words in mind: “You are no better than anyone else, and nobody else is better than you.”

In the early 1950s, Johnson was thrilled to join the organisation that would become NASA. She worked on many of NASA’s biggest projects including the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first men on the moon. Johnson’s story was made famous in the bestselling book and Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures. In Reaching for the Moon she tells her own story for the first time, in a lively autobiography that will inspire young readers everywhere.

Order the book on Bookshop.org.uk here and your purchase will support a local independent bookshop of your choice!

About the Author

Mathematician and computer scientist Katherine Johnson was born in 1918 in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Her mother was a teacher and her father was a farmer and janitor. From a young age, Johnson counted everything and could easily solve mathematical equations. She attended West Virginia State High School and graduated from high school at age fourteen. Johnson received her BS degree in French and Mathematics in 1937 from West Virginia State University. Johnson was one of the first African Americans to enrol in the mathematics program at West Virginia University.

After college, Johnson began teaching in elementary and high schools in Virginia and West Virginia. In 1953, she joined Langley Research Center as a research mathematician for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), where she put her mathematics skills to work. She calculated the trajectory for Alan Shepard, the first American in space. Even after NASA began using electronic computers, John Glenn requested that she personally recheck the calculations made by the new electronic computers before his flight aboard Friendship 7 – the mission on which he became the first American to orbit the Earth. She continued to work at NASA until 1986, combining her mathematic talent with electronic computer skills. Her calculations proved critical to the success of the Apollo Moon landing program and the start of the Space Shuttle program.

Johnson, who co-authored twenty-six scientific papers, was the recipient of NASA’s Lunar Spacecraft and Operation’s Group Achievement Award and NASA’s Apollo Group Achievement Award. On 24 November 2015, she received the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from President Barack H. Obama. She died in 2020, aged 101.