Episode 4: A ‘Women’s Science’?

X-ray crystallography has long had a reputation for being a scientific field with a significant number of female practitioners, especially in the first half of the twentieth century when it was rare to find women in any scientific discipline. This episode looks at how ideas of ‘women’s work’ did – and did not – affect the lives of crystallography’s pioneering female scientists, with the help of our guest this week, science writer Georgina Ferry, whose writing is re-framing the issue of women in crystallography. We take a peak into the life of X-ray crystallographer Dorothy Hodgkin, who in 1964 became the only British woman ever to win a science Nobel Prize. Then we spotlight the work, across science and design, of a lesser-known X-ray crystallographer named Helen Megaw who spearheaded the Festival Pattern Group, which created spectacular patterns for household goods based on crystal diagrams all the way back in the 1950s. Find out more about this episode at

You can listen to Episode 4: A ‘Women’s Science’? online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Episode 4: A ‘Women’s Science’? is an episode from ATOMIC radio by ATOMIC radio.

This episode is 00:29:34 long.

This episode was published on Jun 14, 2014.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from ATOMIC radio when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.