Maryam’s Magic: The Story of Mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, Megan Reid and Aaliya Jaleel

As a little girl, Maryam Mirzakhani was spellbound by stories. She loved reading in Tehran’s crowded bookstores, and at home she’d spend hours crafting her own tales on giant rolls of paper.

Maryam loved school, especially her classes in reading and writing. But she did not like maths. Numbers were nowhere near as interesting as the bold, adventurous characters she found in books. Until Maryam unexpectedly discovered a new genre of storytelling: In geometry, numbers became shapes, each with its own fascinating personality – making every equation a brilliant story waiting to be told.

As an adult, Maryam became a professor, inventing new formulas to solve some of math’s most complicated puzzles. And she made history by becoming the first woman – and the first Iranian – to win the Fields Medal, mathematics’ highest award.

Maryam’s Magic is the true story of a girl whose creativity and love of stories helped her – and the world – to see math in a new and inspiring way.

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About the Author

After receiving her MA in English Literature, Megan acquired and edited several bestselling and award-winning books as an editor at Simon and Schuster’s Touchstone and Emily Bestler Books imprints before joining FX Networks as a development and literary executive.

A graduate of Northern Arizona University and The Ohio State University, her writing has been featured on Elle, Refinery29, BuzzFeed, LitHub, and FastCompany. She published her first picture book biography, Althea Gibson: The Story of Tennis’ Fleet-of-Foot Girl in 2020, and has followed it with $9 Therapy: Semi-Capitalist Solutions to Your Emotional Problems and Who Did It First? 50 Icons, Luminaries and Legends Who Revolutionized the World.

You can follow her work here:

Twitter: @meg_r
Instagram: @meg_er/
Website: meganreid.co

About the Illustrator

Aaliya Jaleel is a Sri-Lankan American illustrator, designer and visual development artist.

Some of her past works include the books Amazing Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Who Inspire Us All, Under My Hijab and Muslim Girls Rise. She has also worked on projects with Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, and Penguin Random House. In addition to being an illustrator, Aaliya works as a storyboard artist at Wild Canary, including the Disney Junior show Mira, Royal Detective.

You can follow her work here:

Twitter: @aaliyamj
Instagram: @aaliyamj
Website: aaliyamj.com

Bertha Parker Pallan

Bertha Yeawas “Birdie” Parker Pallan was the first female Native American archaeologist.

Parker Pallan was born in 1907 to Beulah Tahamont, an Abenaki actress, and Arthur C Parker, an archaeologist and anthropologist who belonged to the Seneca tribe. It is said that she was born in a tent at one of her father’s digs. Although she accompanied her father to excavations, her early introduction to archaeology ended when her parents divorced in 1914.

After being rescued from an abusive marriage by her uncle, Mark Raymond Harrington, she joined him at an archaeological dig that he was directing at Mesa House in Nevada. He hired her as a cook and expedition secretary, and she rapidly learnt excavation techniques. In 1929, she discovered the pueblo site of Scorpion Hill, which she excavated and documented on her own. Her finds were displayed at the Southwest Museum, now the Autry Museum of the American West.

The following year, she worked at the Gypsum Cave excavation, located in the desert outside Las Vegas, although she became ill after exposure to large amounts of cave guano. Parker Pallan’s work involved cleaning, repairing and cataloguing finds, but in her spare time she explored the caves. Because of her petite stature, she was able to squeeze through small gaps into caves that were inaccessible to the rest of the team.

In one of these caves, she discovered 10,000 year old human tools alongside the skull of an extinct giant ground sloth, Nothrotherium shastense. This was the earliest record of human habitation in North America at the time, and was described as “the most outstanding anthropological find ever made in the United States.” It was also a find that attracted further institutional support for the expedition.

From 1931 to 1941, Parker Pallan worked for the Southwest Museum as an assistant in archaeology and ethnology, publishing a number of papers based on her research. She was also able to document the culture, traditions, history, and folklore of a number of Indigenous peoples, including the Maidu, Paiute, Pomo, and the Yurok tribes.

Her third marriage, to actor Iron Eyes Cody, led her to co-host a TV program on Native American history and folklore, as well as act and work as a consultant on Indigenous representation in Hollywood, advocating for and supporting Indigenous actors.

In 2020, the Society for American Archaeology created a scholarship in her name. The Bertha Parker Cody Award for Native American Women is awarded to Native American, Native Alaskans, and Hawaiian women who are undergraduate or graduate students in the fields of archaeology or museum studies.

Further Reading

• Bertha Parker Pallan, Wikipedia
• Bertha “Birdie” Parker, Suzie Birch, Trowelblazers, 8 May 2014
• Bertha Parker, the trailblazing first Indigenous North American archaeologist, taught herself how to excavate a site, Ashley Marranzino, Massive Science, 6 June 2019
• New Award Honors Bertha Parker Cody, First U.S. Native American Woman Archaeologist, Society for American Archaeology, 16 November 2020
• Bertha “Birdie” Yewas Parker, Lauren Rosenbaum, Museum of Native American History, 1 March 2021

This post was contributed by Chloe Rodgers and is an extract from her Highland Women in STEM project. 

Shraveena Venkatesh

Shraveena Venkatesh is a PhD student at The Rivers and Lochs Institute University of the Highlands and Islands, currently researching the impacts of fisheries and aquaculture on aquatic environments and their inhabitants. She is also exploring potential applications for environmental DNA (eDNA) – nuclear or mitochondrial DNA that an organism sheds into the environment. She obtained her MSc in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at Ghent University in Belgium, and took her original BSc in Zoology, Botany and Chemistry at Christ University in Bangalore.

She first became interested in marine animals aged 12 years old, spending much of her time at the beach. Venkatesh collected shells and examined crabs, pondering about other species in the ocean. Documentaries and books about marine animals strengthened this interest, and led to her pursuing her BSc. During this time, she developed an interest in conservation and exploring the effect of humans on marine environments and organisms.

Venkatesh’s PhD journey has allowed her to collaborate with many other PhD students and researchers, several of whom are also women like herself. She has found this a very rewarding and inspiring environment to be part of. When asked how she thought girls could be encouraged into STEM careers, she said:

“I think young girls should be inspired to read more and to be curious and critical. They should also be encouraged to play with more active toys at a young age, rather than passive ones that are traditionally considered more suitable for girls. As a society we need to resist stereotyping genders and assuming the characteristics or abilities of people based on their gender. Other women, successful in STEM, could be inspiring role models to young girls. Encouraging girls at school when they are interested in STEM subjects could give them the motivation and confidence to learn more and to persevere at succeeding in these fields.”

You can follow her work via her website, Twitter or LinkedIn.

When did you first become interested in your subject area?
I developed an interest in marine animals when I was about 12 years old. I spent time at beaches collecting shells, following crabs and wondering what other animals lived in the vast oceans. I watched a lot of documentaries about marine life and read a lot about the most charismatic marine animals too. While doing my bachelor’s and master’s degree this passion of mine strengthened. I also formed an interest in conservation and in the impacts of human activities on marine environments and organisms.

What do you love about your job/course?
My favourite thing about doing a PhD is that I learn something new and interesting every single day. It’s been a very exciting and rewarding journey so far. In the office and lab, there are other PhD students and researchers working on various subjects, each bringing a different perspective to our daily discussions and conversations and teaching me something new. Several of them are intelligent, capable, young women, successful in their fields, which makes it a very inspiring environment to be in.

What’s the most interesting thing you’ve learned recently? (STEM related!)
Orcas’ brains have limbic systems, like humans do. This means they can feel and process complicated emotions which affects their behaviour.

What do you think could be changed to better encourage more girls into your line of work/a STEM career?
I think young girls should be inspired to read more and to be curious and critical. They should also be encouraged to play with more active toys at a young age, rather than passive ones that are traditionally considered more suitable for girls. As a society we need to resist stereotyping genders and assuming the characteristics or abilities of people based on their gender. Other women, successful in STEM, could be inspiring role models to young girls. Encouraging girls at school when they are interested in STEM subjects could give them the motivation and confidence to learn more and to persevere at succeeding in these fields.

Beyond Coding: How Children Learn Human Values through Programming, Prof Marina Umaschi Bers

Today, schools are introducing STEM education and robotics to children in ever-lower grades. In Beyond Coding, Marina Umaschi Bers lays out a pedagogical roadmap for teaching code that encompasses the cultivation of character along with technical knowledge and skills. Presenting code as a universal language, she shows how children discover new ways of thinking, relating, and behaving through creative coding activities. Today’s children will undoubtedly have the technical knowledge to change the world. But cultivating strength of character, socioeconomic maturity, and a moral compass alongside that knowledge, says Bers, is crucial.

Bers, a leading proponent of teaching computational thinking and coding as early as preschool and kindergarten, presents examples of children and teachers using the Scratch Jr. and Kibo robotics platforms to make explicit some of the positive values implicit in the process of learning computer science. If we are to do right by our children, our approach to coding must incorporate the elements of a moral education: the use of narrative to explore identity and values, the development of logical thinking to think critically and solve technical and ethical problems, and experiences in the community to enable personal relationships. Through learning the language of programming, says Bers, it is possible for diverse cultural and religious groups to find points of connection, put assumptions and stereotypes behind them, and work together toward a common goal.

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

About the Author

Marina Umaschi Bers is professor at the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development with a secondary appointment in the Computer Science Department at Tufts University. She heads the interdisciplinary Developmental Technologies research group. Her research involves the design and study of innovative learning technologies to promote children’s positive development, and has been featured in the New York Times, NPR, CNBC, CBS News, Wall Street Journal and The Economist.

She is passionate about using the power of technology to promote positive development and learning for young children, and spoke at a 2014 TEDx talk on the topic Young programmers – think playgrounds, not playpens.  She has also written several books, including Teaching Computational Thinking and Coding to Young Children (2021), Coding as Playground: Programming and Computational Thinking in the Early Childhood Classroom (2018), The Official ScratchJr Book (2015), Designing Digital Experiences for Positive Youth Development: From Playpen to Playground (2012), and Blocks to Robots: Learning with Technology in the Early Childhood Classroom (2008).

You can follow her work here:

Twitter: @marinabers
Website: marinabers.com

Professor Irene C Peden

Irene C Peden is an electrical engineer who was the first woman scientist to live and work in the interior of the Antarctic, developing techniques for studying deep glacial ice using radio waves.

Born in 1925 in Topeka, Kansas, Peden graduated from the University of Colorado when she was 22 with a degree in electrical engineering, although she was often the only woman in her classes. She worked in industry as an engineer from 1947 to 1954, but returned to education to get a masters and PhD from Stanford University, becoming the first woman to get a doctorate in electrical engineering from them. She joined the electrical engineering faculty at the University of Washington in 1961, again the first woman to do so. She served as president of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society, and was awarded their “Man of the Year” award. She was promoted to a professor in 1971, associate dean in 1973, and associate chair of the department in 1983.

She visited the Antarctic in 1970 to investigate the electrical characteristics of glacial ice, becoming the first female engineer or scientist to carry out research there. Because of the US Navy’s prohibition on women travelling alone to Antarctica, she had to find another woman to go with her but the New Zealand geophysicist who was supposed to join her failed her physical. Instead, a Christchurch librarian Julia Vickers, who was also an alpinist, took the job.

Three years earlier, the US Army Cold Regions Research Laboratories had drilled a 2.16km hole in the ice, and Pedersen lowered a probe 1.67km into the hole to study how very low frequency radio waves travelled through the ice. Her instruments also measured the electrical properties of the ice.

Because of the Navy’s scepticism of women, Peden was told that if she didn’t produce and publish robust scientific results, they would not allow other women to travel to Antarctica. Peden’s experiments were successful, and she expanded her work to measure the thickness of the ice sheets, and used very high frequency radio waves to discover structures under the ice. In 1979, she spent the whole winter at the South Pole, again the first woman to do so.

In 1993, she was named the National Science Foundation’s Engineer of the Year and was included in the American Society for Engineering Education’s Hall of Fame. A line of cliffs in Antarctica have been named after her by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names.

Further Reading

• Irene C. Peden, Wikipedia
• Antarctic trip was tip of the iceberg for this alumna, University of Colorado Boulder: CU Engineering Magazine 1 May 2018
• Professor Emerita Irene Peden receives Diamond Award, University of Washington: Electrical and Computer Engineering, 4 June 2018
• Trailblazing Engineer Irene Peden Broke Antarctic Barriers for Women, Kristen Pope, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 June 2019