Annie Easley

Annie Jean Easley was an American computer scientist, mathematician and rocket scientist. As one of NASA’s first African-American employees, she helped develop software for the Centaur rocket stage, which enabled several landmark spaceflights in the later 20th century. Over the course of her career, she also worked on technologies that foreshadowed the creation of hybrid vehicles, and developed computer code that later aided the creation of sustainable energy projects.

Easley was born on 23 April 1933 in Birmingham, Alabama. She majored in pharmacy at college in New Orleans, but her academic career was thwarted when she moved with her husband to Cleveland, Ohio, where there were no pharmaceutical schools. In 1955, aged 22, Easley read a newspaper story about sisters who worked as “computers” for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). She applied for a job at the NACA Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland and was hired within two weeks, becoming one of just four African-Americans among around 2,500 employees in her division.

At NACA, which became NASA in 1958, Easley was tasked with calculating complex mathematical functions for scientists. After electronic computers were introduced, her role switched to mathematician and computer technician. She taught herself computer programming languages and contributed to the development of battery-powered vehicles, precursors to today’s hybrid cars. She also started working directly on space research – contributing to shuttle launches and running simulations to help test and design a NASA nuclear reactor.

The most influential period of Easley’s career at NASA arguably began in the early 1960s, when she started work on nuclear-powered rocket systems. She was a leading member of the team that developed the Centaur rocket, the United States’ first high-energy upper stage (a launch vehicle used to propel aircrafts into exceptionally high orbits). The Centaur had its first successful launch in 1963 and without it later launches of historic space shuttles and satellites would not have been possible. These include exploratory spacecraft like the Surveyor, Pioneer, Viking and Voyager, as well as the Cassini-Huygens, the first probe to enter Saturn’s orbit.

NASA’s space programme faced huge cuts in the 1970s, and Easley – who had never completed her undergraduate studies – suspected she would need a degree to protect her position. She achieved a bachelor’s in mathematics from Cleveland State University in 1977, having worked full-time throughout her studies (NASA denied her the financial aid it gave other employees to further their education). She then began work on energy issues such as damage to the ozone layer, developing and implementing computer applications that were later used to discover more efficient energy conversion systems and viable solar and wind projects.

Easley retired from NASA and science in 1989, and died on 25 June 2011, aged 78. Four years after her death, she was posthumously inducted into the NASA Glenn Research Center’s Hall of Fame. On 1 February 2021, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) named a crater on the Moon in Easley’s honour, in recognition of her contribution to space travel.

Further Reading

• Annie Easley, Wikipedia
• Computer Scientist of the Month: Annie Easley, Isaac Computer Science
• Annie J. Easley (1933-2011), Jana Carpenter, Black Past, 13 March 2020
• Annie Easley helped make modern spaceflight possible, Nicole Lee, Engadget, 19 July 2019
• Meet Annie Easley, the barrier-breaking mathematician who helped us explore the solar system, Dan Samorodnitsky, Massive Science, 26 November 2018

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

Starstruck: A Memoir of Astrophysics and Finding Light in the Dark, Sarafina El-Badry Nance

Starstruck is an inspiring and beautifully crafted memoir by Egyptian-American astrophysicist Sarafina El-Badry Nance. It takes readers on a journey through her life, highlighting her remarkable path to becoming an astrophysicist whilst confronting significant challenges and experiences as a woman of colour in the scientific world, forging ahead to embrace her passion for the cosmos and her advocacy for women’s health.

Each chapter of Starstruck begins with captivating science lessons, offering the reader insights into the universe. In addition to her scientific pursuits, Sarafina candidly discusses the real-world challenges she has faced, including misogyny, racism, abuse, intergenerational trauma, anxiety, self-doubt, and her battle with cancer (along with her subsequent recovery). Starstruck is a testament to resilience, showing how one can pursue their passion for science and space exploration whilst navigating adversity. It resides at the intersection of cosmic exploration and the transformational power of perseverance. Sarafina’s story is honest and empowering, encouraging readers to embrace their dreams even in the face of societal barriers and personal hardships.

Ultimately, Starstruck is a compelling narrative of a woman who defied stereotypes and pushed through the boundaries of what was expected of her, all whilst exploring the wonders of the universe and encouraging others to overcome obstacles in pursuit of their dreams.

Order the book on Bookshop.org.uk. 

Hear Sarafina talk about her book here.

About the author

Sarafina El-Badry Nance is an Egyptian-American astrophysicist and women’s health advocate. Her fascination with space began in her Texas childhood, listening to StarDate on the radio and finding solace in the night sky, which ignited her passion for astronomy. 

She is currently pursuing her PhD at UC Berkeley; however, beyond her scientific pursuits, she is a dedicated science communicator, emphasising the importance of failure in science. She is also an advocate for women’s health, sharing her own experience with the BRCA2 gene and using social media to raise awareness about cancer testing and preventive measures.

In 2021, she was recognised by Forbes as one of 30 inspirational women, and was featured on the Arab American Foundation’s 40 Under 40 list. She has hosted the astronomy series Constellations on Seeker, showcasing her commitment to public engagement in science. Additionally, she has been awarded fellowships by the National Science Foundation, and her work has been featured by the BBC, NPR, and National Geographic. 

You can follow Sarafina El-Badry Nance’s work here:

Twitter: @starstrickenSF
Instagram: @starstrickenSF
LinkedIn: Sarafina Nance
YouTube: youtube.com/@sarafinananceSF
Website: starafina.com

With thanks to Synergy for their support.

Professor Idelisa Bonnelly de Calventi

Idelisa Bonnelly de Calventi was a marine biologist who pioneered the study of marine sciences in the Dominican Republic and created one of the first sanctuaries for humpback whales. Dubbed the “mother of marine conservation in the Caribbean”, she dedicated her career to protecting ocean biodiversity.

Bonnelly was born on 10 September 1931 in Santiago de los Caballeros, a city in the Dominican Republic. Reflecting on her childhood in 2010, she observed that she had always loved animals and “lived very close to the sea, which I saw as a challenge, a mystery that I wanted to unravel”.

Marine biology was not taught in Dominican universities when Bonnelly left school, and so she upped sticks for New York City, graduating with a BSc from Columbia University in 1956 and a master’s from New York University in 1961. During her postgraduate studies she worked as a research assistant in the lab at the New York Aquarium, monitoring the health of species including penguins and walruses.

When Bonnelly returned home, her lifetime’s mission – understanding and protecting the marine ecosystems surrounding the Dominican Republic – began in earnest. In 1962, she created the country’s first institute for the study of marine biology, now the Marine Biology Research Center (CIBIMA) of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD). She launched the Dominican Republic’s first biology degree programme four years later, and founded the nation’s Academy of Sciences in 1974.

When CIBIMA was first established, there was scant knowledge about how to manage ocean resources. However, Bonnelly could see that coastal areas around the Dominican Republic were deteriorating, while species were diminishing in number. CIBIMA spearheaded vital research on coastal wildlife, including studies to establish closed fishing seasons and improve the quality of marine food.

Over the course of Bonnelly’s career, many of her scientific papers helped inform environmental laws and became influential in the field of marine conservation. In 1986, for example, her research played a vital role in the creation of the Humpback Whale Sanctuary of the Banco de la Plata, the first such sanctuary in the North Atlantic. She was also known for her skill at building strong relationships with national Dominican institutions and marine science departments at other Caribbean universities.

Bonnelly became a professor emerita at UASD in 1990, serving as coordinator of graduate studies in biology for two more years. In 1991, she joined the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World and created the Dominican Foundation for Marine Research (Fundemar), which continues to promote the sustainable use of coastal marine ecosystems through research, education and conservation projects. As part of her work with the organisation, Bonnelly oversaw the Dominican Republic’s first dolphin study, and later worked on projects around climate change adaptation in coral reefs.

She published research until late in life, and was made an academic laureate of the Academy of Sciences of the Dominican Republic in 2007. Bonnelly died on 3 July 2022, aged 90. Science, she once said, “is about data, perseverance, discipline and often about love, and women know a lot about all this”.

Among many honours, Bonnelly was awarded the Marie Curie Medal from Unesco in 2009. The BBC recognised her as one of the 10 most important female scientists in Latin America in 2013, and in 2016 the Dominican Republic’s National Authority for Marine Affairs named a marine strait in her honour. Whales regularly pass through the strait, on their way to the crystalline waters Bonnelly loved so much.

Further Reading

• Idelisa Bonnelly, Wikipedia
• Idelisa Bonnelly (1931-2022), Mujeres Bacanas
• Idelisa Bonnelly de Calventi dies, Latin American News, 3 July 2022
• Idelisa Bonnelly: Dominican Republic, Odalis Mejía Perdomo, Women Scientists in the Americas, January 2013
• Reconocimiento a la Sra. Idelissa Bonelly, Revista Vita, 6 April 2010 [archived version accessed]

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

Dr Valeria de Paiva

Dr Valeria Correa Vaz de Paiva is a Brazilian mathematician, logician, computer scientist and computational linguist who introduced the concept of dialectica spaces, a way of modelling the linear logic that is used in advanced programming languages. She has spent many years working in industry at major natural language processing (NLP) labs, ensuring that “language technologies are taken seriously by the AI scientists and engineers and conversely that the engineer’s concerns are heard by the linguists.”

De Paiva grew up in Rio de Janeiro and initially started university studying both journalism and law. After moving on to physics, she eventually realised that what she “liked in physics was the mathematics underlying it”.

She earnt her PhD in mathematics from the University of Cambridge in 1988. Her thesis defined the concept of dialectica spaces, a new way of constructing models of linear logic, a logical form that has been influential in fields including linguistics, programming languages and quantum physics.

Since 2020, De Paiva has been the principal research scientist at the Topos Institute in Berkeley, California, a mathematical and computer science research lab that aims to “advance the sciences of connection and integration by looking at the mathematical frameworks of computation”. She is also a council member of the the Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science And Technology with the title Ambassador of Logic, and a lecturer in introductory logic and specifications at Santa Clara University.

Previously, De Paiva worked at top industry NLP labs in the US, including at Samsung Research America, Nuance, Deem, Cuil and Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). She was also a professor of theoretical computer science at the University of Birmingham in the UK and lectured at Stanford University.

De Paiva’s mathematics research involves work on logical approaches to computation, especially applying category theory (the study of mathematical structure and abstraction) to the logics of language. Among many other strands of logic, she has also worked on knowledge representation – how knowledge can be expressed in a computer-readable manner – and natural language semantics, or the study of grammatical meaning in human language. Her goal is to “build logics that reflect the way language is used”.

Encouraging more women into STEM fields, particularly logic, is a key priority for de Paiva. She plays a key role in Women In Logic (WIL), an organisation working to help foster gender parity in the heavily male-dominated field. De Paiva organised the first WIL workshop in Iceland in 2017 and maintains the organisation’s online presence. She also supports the ACM-W Scholarship programme, which enables women undergraduate and graduate students in computer science and related fields to attend research conferences. Her blog, Logic ForAll, aims to make the subject more accessible.

Her goal, she has said, is to build logics that reflect the way language is used and dealt with, “and whose proofs provide traces that make it understandable by people”.

Twitter: @valeriadepaiva
Website: vcvpaiva.github.io

Further Reading

• Valeria de Paiva, Wikipedia
• Valeria de Paiva, Topos Institute
• Valeria de Paiva, Mathematical Association of America
• Logic ForAll: A Tour, Vanessa Rivera-Quinones, AMS Blogs, 31 March 2020
• Valeria de Paiva, University of California Santa Cruz
• Valeria de Paiva: Advisory Board, University of California Santa Cruz
• Profile: Valeria de Paiva, American Statistical Association

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

How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures, Sabrina Imbler

A fascinating tour of creatures from the surface to the deepest ocean floor, inviting us to envision wilder, grander, and more abundant possibilities for the way we live.

A queer, mixed race writer working in a largely white, male field, science and conservation journalist Sabrina Imbler has always been drawn to the mystery of life in the sea, and particularly to creatures living in hostile or remote environments. Each essay in their debut collection profiles one such creature, including:

• the mother octopus who starves herself while watching over her eggs,
  the Chinese sturgeon whose migration route has been decimated by pollution and dams,
• the bizarre, predatory Bobbitt worm (named after Lorena),
• the common goldfish that flourishes in the wild,
• and more.

Imbler discovers that some of the most radical models of family, community, and care can be found in the sea, from gelatinous chains that are both individual organisms and colonies of clones to deep-sea crabs that have no need for the sun, nourished instead by the chemicals and heat throbbing from the core of the Earth. Exploring themes of adaptation, survival, sexuality, and care, and weaving the wonders of marine biology with stories of their own family, relationships, and coming of age, How Far the Light Reaches is a shimmering, otherworldly debut that attunes us to new visions of our world and its miracles.

Order the book here.

About the author

Sabrina Imbler is a writer and science journalist. Queer, mixed-race, and working in a largely white and male-dominated field, Sabrina has always been drawn to the mystery of life in the sea, and particularly to creatures living in hostile or remote environments. Currently, Sabrina is a staff writer at Defector, an employee-owned sports and culture website, where they write about creatures. 

Previously, Sabrina worked as a reporting fellow on the science and health desk of The New York Times. They have received fellowships or scholarships from Tin House, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and Jack Jones Literary Arts. Their work has been supported by the Café Royal Cultural Foundation, and their essays and reportage have appeared in various publications including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Catapult, and Sierra.

You can follow Sabrina Imbler’s work here: 

Twitter: @aznfusion
GitHub: simbler.github.io/ 

With thanks to Synergy for their support.