Del 17 al 27 de junio, un grupo de comunicadoras vascas hemos estado en Honduras, de la mano de la ONG Alboan y acompañadas por el equipo de ERIC-Radio Progreso, conociendo la realidad del país: la lucha territorial y luchas comunitarias que se están librando frente a la industria extractiva, la contaminación del agua, las diferentes violencias que afrontan…

Si me tuviera que quedar con una única palabra para resumir todo lo escuchado, visto y vivido, sería la de acuerpar. Era un término desconocido para mí que, sin embargo, se repitió muchas veces esos días. Su significado, según la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, es apoyar una persona a alguien o a algo, como una iniciativa o una propuesta. Pero, sin duda alguna, se trata de un concepto mucho más amplio: es poner el cuerpo (literalmente, porque muchas y muchos se juegan la vida) por la casa común, por lo colectivo, por las demás. En palabras de la feminista comunitaria indígena, Lorena Cabnal:

“Nombro como acuerpamiento o acuerpar a la acción personal y colectiva de nuestros cuerpos indignados ante las injusticias que viven otros cuerpos. Que se auto convocan para proveerse de energía política para resistir y actuar contra las múltiples opresiones patriarcales, colonialistas, racistas y capitalistas. El acuerpamiento genera energías afectivas y espirituales y rompe las fronteras y el tiempo impuesto. Nos provee cercanía, indignación colectiva pero también revitalización y nuevas fuerzas, para recuperar la alegría sin perder la indignación.”

Y es que, como decía la lideresa hondureña Berta Cáceres Flores, «no hay mayor acto de rebeldía que defender la alegría». Esta activista ambiental fue asesinada en 2016. Su lucha sigue viva a través del COPINH (Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras) y los pueblos que no se rinden ante la impunidad de criminales, porque está sembrada en el corazón de todas la rebeldías.

Como Berta, 1.910 personas han sido asesinadas en el mundo por su activismo climático, medioambiental y de defensa de la tierra, en la última década, según el último informe de Global Witness. Sólo en 2022, a 177 personas les arrebataron la vida, una cada dos días, cuando trataban de proteger el planeta, principalmente en América Latina. Uno de cada cinco asesinatos se dio en un territorio amenazado por el extractivismo y la colonización de tierras para ganadería, explotación maderera y macrocultivos intensivos.

Honduras es rica en minerales, bosques, agua. Pero esa riqueza supone, en ocasiones, una condena para su pueblo, que pone el cuerpo para la defensa de la tierra. La violencia, impunidad y represión por parte de actores estatales y no estatales han sido características comunes en el país, creando un ambiente hostil para quienes defienden los derechos humanos. Esos días pudimos escuchar a algunas de esas personas que nos hablaron de dos amenazas: una, la lucha territorial y luchas comunitarias que están liderando en contra de la industria extractiva. La otra, el acaparamiento de tierras en muy pocas manos y la implantación de monocultivos.

El monstruo de múltiples cabezas

El caso Guapinol es un referente en la lucha por la justicia ambiental y los derechos humanos, y un recordatorio de los desafíos que enfrentan las comunidades al defender sus territorios frente a intereses económicos poderosos. Este conflicto en el departamento de Colón, se originó debido a la oposición de la comunidad a un proyecto minero operado por la empresa Inversiones Los Pinares, que planeaba extraer óxido de hierro en el Parque Nacional Carlos Escaleras, un área protegida.

Las comunidades de Guapinol y el Sector San Pedro se organizaron para protestar contra el proyecto minero porque temían que la minería contaminara los ríos y fuentes de agua vitales para su subsistencia. Los ríos Guapinol y San Pedro eran especialmente importantes para la comunidad. En 2018, establecieron un campamento en defensa del agua y la vida cerca del sitio del proyecto minero para bloquear las operaciones y atraer la atención sobre sus preocupaciones. Las protestas pacíficas fueron respondidas con represión violenta por parte de las fuerzas de seguridad del Estado y la empresa minera. Varios líderes comunitarios y defensores del medio ambiente fueron detenidos y acusados de diversos delitos, incluidos daños a la propiedad, incendio y privación injusta de la libertad. Ocho defensores del medio ambiente de Guapinol fueron encarcelados preventivamente durante más de dos años, hecho que subraya el problema de la criminalización de activistas de derechos humanos y ambientales en Honduras. En febrero de 2022, después de años de detención y de una fuerte presión nacional e internacional, fueron liberados.

Este megaproyecto, que favorece a una familia que históricamente ha saqueado y despojado a la ciudadanía del Valle del Aguán (el matrimonio formado por Ana Facusse y Lenir Pérez), tiene más piezas que la concesión minera, por eso lo denominan el monstruo de las múltiples cabezas. Ese mineral se traslada a una fábrica de peletizado de hierro, que se construyó dentro del Parque Nacional y que también es de su propiedad. Y, desde 2023, están en un proceso de promoción de una planta termoeléctrica a base de coque, un residuo de petroleo altamente contaminante que no está regulado en el país, para poder abastecer esa fábrica de peletizado de energía. Para que la termoeléctrica pueda funcionar, necesitan de tres concesiones de agua (Río Guapinol, Río San Pedro, Quebrada La Ceibita), dejando sin ella a las comunidades. Un plan maestro en el que unos pocos se enriquecen a costa de la biodiversidad, de las vidas de la población, el despojo y el desplazamiento forzado de las familias.

Aceite manchado de sangre

Tras adentramos en la defensa ambiental que enfrenta Honduras con el caso Guapinol, es crucial abordar una segunda amenaza que se cierne sobre el país: el acaparamiento de tierras en muy pocas manos y la implantación de monocultivos.

En nuestro viaje al departamento de Colón, las plantaciones de palma africana nos acompañaron todo el trayecto. Se trata de un monocultivo que se ha apoderado de la región, trastocando la cultura alimenticia hondureña. Estas plantaciones consumen mucho agua y dejan la tierra baldía tras su tala (deben pasar unos 5 años para que se recupere). Su fruto se usa para producir aceite de palma, manteca e incluso cosméticos.

Ese aceite de palma que usamos, está además manchado de sangre debido al acaparamiento de tierras por parte de las oligarquías. En 1974, la ley de reforma agraria reparte las tierras entre los campesinos (las mujeres no fueron beneficiarias de esa reforma). Sin embargo en 1992, con la ley de modernización agrícola, se despoja a las cooperativas de las tierras. El campesinado es obligado a vender (en algunos casos bajo engaño y falsas promesas y en otros, tras amenazas y asesinatos). Pero el plan perfecto por parte de esas oligarquías había comenzado años antes de esa reforma y de despojarles de sus tierras, pues les habían convencido para plantar la palma y que así asumieran los 5 años que tarda en crecer, y por tanto, no tener producción durante ese tiempo. Una vez ya expandida por el territorio, es cuando usurpan sus tierras. Por eso dicen que es un cultivo impuesto.

Pero las cooperativas resisten. Están en la lucha de recuperar sus tierras, de diversificar el cultivo más allá de la palma, poniendo sus cuerpos y vidas en ello, pues siguen en permanente amenaza, criminalización y persecución. Más de 200 líderes y lideresas han sido asesinadas en el Aguán.

Acuerpar es también sanar

Muchas de las defensoras de nuestra casa común son mujeres, mayoritariamente indígenas que, además de los asesinatos, sufren otras muchas formas de violencia. Son perseguidas, discriminadas, maltratadas y violentadas física y psicológicamente.

Vuelvo de nuevo a la importancia de la lucha colectiva de ese acuerpamiento para poder plantar cara a estos monstruos con muchas cabezas en gobiernos, instituciones, empresas, comunidades… Pero me quedo además con otra parte del concepto que recoge la periodista y escritora del libro “Mexicanas en Pie de Lucha”, Daniela Rea:

“Acuerpar es convertir el abrazo en palabra, es hacer comunidad con otras lo que involucra procesos de cuidado y acompañamiento (…) se pone el cuerpo para caminar con otras, para trabajar con otras, para resistir.”

Porque acuerpar es también sanar y poner los cuidados en el centro. En la memoria de las que han caído, en el abrazo solidario de las que permanecen, y en el coraje de las que se alzan, encontraremos la energía para seguir adelante y acuerparnos, aunque sea en la distancia. ¡Resistan!

The post Cartas desde Honduras: Acuerpadas first appeared on El Blog de Loretahur.



“I was captured for life by chemistry and by crystals.”

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin

(Egypt, 12 May 1910 – United Kingdom, 29 July 1994)

“Oxford housewife wins Nobel”. That was the headline in certain British newspapers when Dorothy Hodgkin won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964.

Hodgkin revolutionised the field of X-ray crystallography, by using this technique to study the three-dimensional structure of proteins. As a result, she discovered the crystal structure of insulin and also of penicillin and vitamin B12. But her achievements resonated beyond their practical applications, pushing the boundaries of scientific knowledge.

The power of x-rays

Our protagonist was born in Cairo in 1910, when Egypt was still a British colony. Both her father and mother had a keen interest in archaeology, a passion they passed on to their daughter, which gave her the opportunity to discover and analyse many minerals. The whole family spent winters in Africa and summers in England. When World War I broke out Dorothy Hodgkin and her sisters were forced to move to the UK when she was only four years old.

At 10, she met Dr. A. F. Joseph, a family friend, who sparked her interest in minerals and crystals by giving her a gift of analytical equipment. Her mother also played an important role in igniting her passion by giving her a book by Sir William Henry Bragg called “Concerning the Nature of Things” (1925). This book discussed how X-rays could be used to see atoms and molecules.

In England she attended Sir John Leman’s primary school in Beccles, where she struggled to attend a chemistry class that was traditionally reserved for boys (she was one of only two girls). She would later begin studying chemistry at Somerville College in Oxford where she would meet very few women along the way. Their participation was also very restricted. For example, they could not enter the dining hall unless accompanied by a male student.

During her first year she combined chemistry and archaeology. Fascinated by this field, after graduation she joined John Desmond Bernal’s laboratory for a PhD at Cambridge University. Bernal was a charismatic and progressive man, and in his lab women and men worked as equals.

She returned to Oxford in 1934, where she spent the rest of her long scientific career. Around this time she met Thomas Hodgkin, whom she would marry in 1937 and have three children. Although she was offered a career break, she continued her research and was the first person in academia to receive paid maternity leave, years before this was introduced in the UK.

Shortly after the birth of her first child, she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, a progressive joint disease. Despite the suffering, she never let it get in the way of her research.

The queen of structures

Until that time, X-ray crystallography was only used to study mineral or inorganic crystalline structures. It was Bernal’s idea that the technique could also be used to understand biomolecules. But Hodgkin painstakingly established the parameters that made its use possible, laying the foundations for protein crystallography and structural biology. Her imaginative mind with a skill for understanding the patterns around her gave her a unique sensitivity for computing information from X-ray data. It took her 4 years to confirm the structure of penicillin (which facilitated the manufacture of this miracle drug) and 8 years to confirm the structure of vitamin B12. Finally, she resumed her work on insulin, which, with its 788 atoms, took the longest, but after 34 years of hard work she cracked the structure in 1969! Which she describes as one of the happiest moments of her life.

In 1964 she became the third woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (after Marie Skłodowska-Curie and her daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie) for her achievements, which not only solved some mysteries but also helped to tackle diseases such as diabetes, anaemia and infections. For these discoveries, she was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and awarded the Order of Merit by Queen Elizabeth II of England.

Ambassador for peace

Hodgkin was also a strong advocate of nuclear disarmament and fought for the cause as chair of the Pugwash Conference (a global organisation working to reduce armed conflict). She donated most of her Nobel Prize money to causes such as scholarships for international students in the UK and the establishment of nurseries for university students and staff.

Hodgkin left us in 1994, aged 84, after suffering a heart attack. But what will always live on are her discoveries, which had a huge impact on the health and lives of millions of people.

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin is one of the scientists who appears in our board game Nobel Run. More info: Gearing Roles launches the Nobel Run board game to give visibility to women in science.

Text by Lorena Fernández (@loretahur).
Illustrations by Iñigo Maestro (@iMaestroArt).

The post Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin – Nobel Run Stories first appeared on El Blog de Loretahur.

Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated.”

Rosalind Elsie Franklin

(London, 25 July 1920 – London, 16 April 1958)

She made essential contributions to the understanding of DNA, RNA, viruses, carbon and graphite, and was one of only four people to discover the molecular structure of DNA. However, it took many years for Franklin’s important contribution to be recognised through X-ray diffraction imaging.

Her education

Franklin was born in London on 25 July 1920, into a wealthy family. She was an outstanding student. In the words of her younger sister, “as a very young girl, she refused to accept a statement or a belief for which there was no logic or proof to show it to be valid“. At 18, she enrolled at Newnham Women’s College, Cambridge University, where she studied chemistry and physics. She received a scholarship to work in the lab, but the lack of a close relationship with her supervisor, Norrish, kept her away. This led her to do pioneering research for her doctoral thesis on the molecular structure of carbon.

In 1946, she moved to Paris, where she studied X-ray crystallography, a powerful tool to understand the structure of molecules and how they bend X-ray beams. Although she loved the Parisian lifestyle, after four years she returned to London where she worked at King’s College. There she met Maurice Wilkins, with whom she worked on the search for the structure of DNA. Their personalities were opposites and immediately clashed, leading them to work separately. Wilkins sought company at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, where his friend Francis Crick was working with James Watson to build a model of the DNA molecule. Franklin, on the other hand, was alone. She was also not allowed access to the department’s common coffee and break room because she was a woman. “It may seem trivial but it’s more important than it sounds, because this is where her fellow researchers met and where they discussed their work in a more informal way. And she was excluded from all of that” said the scientist’s sister.

Photograph 51

Franklin was involved in the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, but Francis Crick and James Watson only quoted her in the last paragraph of their Nature article:

We have also been stimulated by a knowledge of the general nature of the unpublished experimental results and ideas of Dr. M. H. F. Wilkins, Dr. R. E. Franklin and their co-workers at King’s College, London.

In fact, Nature published three articles under the single title “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids”. The first, by Crick and Watson, is the star of the revelation of the scientific discovery, the structure of DNA. The second is by Maurice Wilkins with two other colleagues. The third, by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling, a PhD student who was collaborating with her department.

And this is where the controversy comes in: Wilkins, behind Franklin’s back, had shown Watson the decisive photos she had taken with Gosling (the famous “Photograph 51”), the results of which she had not yet published. That was the essential piece of the puzzle that Watson and Crick were missing.

Years later, to commemorate the centenary of her birth, the UK mint released a 50 pence piece featuring her “Photograph 51”.

But this is only a small part of her legacy, as she also made important advances in carbon science and became an expert in the study of viruses that cause disease in plants and people.

Invisibility and sexism in science

In 1956, just as her career was at its peak, it was tragically cut short when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and she died two years later at the age of 37. After her death, her collaborators Aaron Klug and John Finch published the structure of the poliovirus, dedicating the paper to her memory. Klug would go on to win the 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in elucidating the structure of viruses.

Watson, Crick and Wilkins also received the Nobel Prize in 1962 (it is never awarded posthumously and cannot be received by more than three people), but they did not give her the visibility she deserved. In fact, Watson repeatedly described her in sexist terms in his book The Double Helix (1968), criticising her “choice” not to “emphasise her feminine qualities” and her lack of “even a slight interest in clothes”. It took many years for Franklin’s important contribution to be recognised through images taken with the X-ray diffraction technique. Indeed, she died without ever knowing the extent to which Crick and Watson’s work had depended on her research.

As we can see, our protagonist gradually gave up (and was sometimes robbed of) her accomplishments and the limelight so that others could receive recognition. Time has brought her back into the spotlight, and thanks to progressive nature of science, many research teams today can use tools such as DNA sequencing and X-ray crystallography to investigate viruses such as SARS-CoV-2.

SCIENTIST

In the centre of Rosalind Franklin’s tombstone in London’s Willesden Jewish Cemetery is the word “SCIENTIST”, followed by the sentence: “Her research and discoveries on viruses remain of lasting benefit to mankind.”. Thank you so much.

Rosalind Elsie Franklin is one of the scientists who appears in our board game Nobel Run. More info: Gearing Roles launches the Nobel Run board game to give visibility to women in science.

Text by Lorena Fernández (@loretahur).
Illustrations by Iñigo Maestro (@iMaestroArt).

The post Rosalind Elsie Franklin – Nobel Run Stories first appeared on El Blog de Loretahur.

“In addition to role models such as Marie Curie, society needs normal, everyday role models to generate scientific vocations in girls.”

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

(Belfast, Reino Unido, 15 de julio de 1943)

Jocelyn Bell Burnell is an astrophysicist who co-discovered the first pulsar radio signal while still a PhD student. She published this finding together with her thesis supervisor -Antony Hewish- and Martin Ryle. Hewish and Ryle received the Nobel in Physics but Bell did not. If that weren’t upsetting enough, she had to convince Hewish the discovery was worthwhile pursuing, as initially, he was initially skeptical and thought pulsar radio signals were human-produced.

From domestic science to radio astronomy

Susan Jocelyn Bell was born in Belfast on 15 July 1943. From an early age, she showed great interest in science and knew she wanted to be an astronomer, but it wasn’t always easy. When she was in secondary school, one day the boys were sent to the laboratory to learn science while the girls were sent to the cookery room to learn how to be good housewives. Our protagonist protested to her domestic science teacher, but she ignored her. That evening, when she told her family, they were furious. The next science class, she went to the lab with the boys.

In her father’s library she found the book ‘Frontiers of Astronomy’ by Fred Hoyle. After reading it, and before finishing school, she became passionate about radio astronomy, which made her want to study the radiation emitted by celestial bodies in the radio frequency spectrum. To do so, she enrolled at Glasgow University, the only woman in a class of 50. She endured many humiliations, such as the “tradition” that when a woman entered the lecture theater, all the guys whistled and banged their desks. If Bell wasn’t so driven, she probably would have taken a different path.

The impostor syndrome

After finishing up at Glasgow, she applied to Cambridge, one of the world’s leading places for radio astronomy. But as she says, the imposter syndrome set in, making her think she wasn’t smart enough for Cambridge: “Oh, they’ve made a mistake admitting me. They are going to discover their mistake and throw me out.” This made her try twice as hard to rebel against a whole system that had implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) told her that this was not her place.

There she met Professor Antony Hewish, whose interest was finding quasars (very compact objects of very small volume that emit radio waves). So her first job was to build the radio telescope, alongside other students, that they were going to use in this work. Again, Bell was the only woman on the team, except for the secretaries. It took two years to complete. After that, it was just Hewish and herself on the project: he was the person who had come up with the idea and got the funding for the construction, and she, who was doing her PhD, was the one who managed the telescope and analysed the data (almost 30 metres of paper every day by hand).

Pulsars

One day, while searching for quasars, she detected a signal she had not seen before. She went to show it to Hewish but he told her it was an interference. Surely she had wired up the radio telescope wrongly and it was something to do with that. But Bell knew better and kept observing. It was her perseverance that led to the discovery of the first radio signal from a pulsar (a neutron star that emits very intense periodic radiation at short, regular intervals).

Hewish announced the discovery at a lecture in Cambridge, where even Fred Hoyle himself, who had inspired our lead character, was present. But at the time, he didn’t even mention Bell.

In 1968, a paper announcing the first pulsar was published in the journal Nature. This article produced enormous media interest. But while the press asked Hewish about astrophysics, Bell was asked how many boyfriends she had had at once, whether she described herself as blonde or brunette, what her measurements were… Photographers asked her to undo some buttons on her blouse, and the headlines referred to her as “the girl” instead of calling her a scientist.

In the same year, she became engaged to and later married to Martin Burnell. She received more congratulations then, than when she made one of the most exciting discoveries in astronomy. After she got married, she left Cambridge.

In 1974, it was announced that the Nobel Prize in Physics would, for the first time, be awarded to someone in the field of astrophysics. But the winners were Anthony Hewish and Martin Ryle, head of the Cambridge Radio Astronomy Group. They had forgotten Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Even Fred Hoyle was furious about the Academy’s decision.

A role model for girls and young women

50 years later, she won the Breakthrough Special Prize in Fundamental Physics for being the true discoverer of pulsars, for her scientific achievements and inspirational leadership. She donated the $3 million she won to the Institute of Physics for research grants aimed at making science a more diverse field with more representation. Today she continues to lecture and be a role model for women everywhere.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell is one of the scientists who appears in our board game Nobel Run. More info: Gearing Roles launches the Nobel Run board game to give visibility to women in science.

Text by Lorena Fernández (@loretahur).
Illustrations by Iñigo Maestro (@iMaestroArt).

The post Jocelyn Bell Burnell – Nobel Run Stories first appeared on El Blog de Loretahur.

Don’t let people put obstacles in front of you, but understand you also have to put in the work.”

Raye Jean Montague

(Arkansas, 21 January 1935 – Arkansas, 10 October 2018)

Raye Jean Montague was an American naval engineer credited with creating the first computer-based ship design software in the early 1970s. She also broke the glass ceiling in the US Navy by becoming the first ship programme manager, earning the civilian equivalent of the rank of captain. Many of her designs are still in use today.

She did not take “no” for an answer, often fighting against the racism and sexism of her time. Any barriers she faced she would call ‘challenges’ because she said she could find a way around anything that got in her way.

Overcoming challenges. Making the impossible possible

Her mother, who raised her alone, warned her from an early age that she would constantly face three prejudices in life: “You’re female, you’re black and you’ll have a Southern segregated school education. But you can be or do anything you want, provided you’re educated.” When Montague was seven years old, she began to understand those words.

Her grandfather took her to see a German submarine captured during World War II. She was fascinated by the vessel and asked one of the people present what she had to study to do something like that. The answer was, “Oh, you’d have to be an engineer, but you don’t have to worry about that” alluding to her being a black girl. She would soon prove him wrong.

The next challenge she faced was in college. In the 1950s in Arkansas, African-Americans were not allowed to study engineering, so she had to pursue a degree in business. But her love of science and mathematics kept her going. She moved to Washington and got a job as a clerk-typist in the Navy. She learned engineering and programming by attending night classes, becoming a digital computer systems operator and systems analyst, a field dominated by men. Years later, although she was unable to obtain an engineering degree, she was recognised as an engineer in the United States and Canada.

Another new challenge came when she asked her boss for a promotion. He told her that if she wanted it, she would have to work at night. This made Montague’s life very difficult because, at those hours, there was no public transport and she didn’t have a car. In fact, she didn’t even know how to drive. But she bought a Pontiac and taught herself, leaving home at 10 p.m. and creeping along the roads until arriving at work for the midnight shift. Eventually, she got that promotion and went back to work during the day.

The project that became her crowning achievement seemed like an impossible task when she was given the assignment: to create a programme to design ships by computer. Her boss, who wanted to see her fail, gave her only six months to get it done, without telling her that his department had been trying for years without success. Montague taught herself the existing computer system and told her superior that to install her programme she would have to tear down the Navy’s computer and rebuild it. That would mean working at night. He told her she could only do it if there was someone else with her, but made it clear that he would not pay for overtime. And what did our protagonist do? She brought her mother and her 3-year-old son. Finally, her boss relented and gave her extra staff. Montague met the deadline.

During the Vietnam War, when President Nixon learned of this breakthrough, and because he wanted the Navy to build ships more quickly, he requested that she prepare a sketch of a warship within a month (a task that normally took two years of work on paper). To do this, he gave her unlimited staff and budget. But Montague and her team needed only 18 hours and 26 minutes to produce the first computer-designed warship in history. For this feat she received the Navy’s Meritorious Civilian Service Award in 1972. The Navy began using her system to design all of its ships and submarines. Her achievement garnered her a lot of attention and she began advising other government agencies and the private sector, including the automotive industry.

Her last navy project was the nuclear-powered Seawolf submarine, which could operate silently at twice the speed of previous boats.

Another “Hidden Figure”

Like the important role played by NASA’s “Hidden Figures” Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan and Katherine Johnson, Montague was one of a group of black women who, from the 1930s onwards, made major contributions to the US government, but were invisible to the general public and often to their colleagues. In fact, despite the Navy award, she was not recognised by society until 2012, when The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette wrote an article about her.

In 2017 she was inducted into the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame. She died of heart failure on October 10, 2018, at the age of 83.

Raye Jean Montague is one of the scientists who appears in our board game Nobel Run. More info: Gearing Roles launches the Nobel Run board game to give visibility to women in science.

Text by Lorena Fernández (@loretahur).
Illustrations by Iñigo Maestro (@iMaestroArt).

The post Raye Jean Montague – Nobel Run Stories first appeared on El Blog de Loretahur.

“Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.”

Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler

(Vienna, November 9, 1914 – Florida, January 19, 2000)

Hollywood actress and inventor, Hedy Lamarr was a woman who wanted to make her mark on the world, but that world could not see past her beauty. Alongside George Antheil she invented and patented the first version of the frequency-hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) that would enable long-distance wireless communications. When Hedy Lamarr tried to join the National Inventors Council, her director, Charles F. Kettering, told her that she could better serve her country by promoting war bonds, belittling her invention that is now the basis for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies. International Inventors’ Day is celebrated in his honour on 9 November.

A movie life

Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler was born in Vienna in 1914 into an upper-class Jewish family. She was a very bright child and her teachers thought she was gifted. From an early age she became interested in science and acting and began to take piano, dance, performing arts and engineering lessons. But she abandoned engineering to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. At the age of 16 she began her film career.

Her fifth film, Ecstasy (1933), created a public scandal as she become the first woman in the history of cinema to appear nude and having an orgasm on screen. The film was condemned by the Leagues of Decency and Pope Pius XI. It also made Friedrich Mandl, an arms tycoon and friend and ally of the fascists, infatuated with her. He managed to arrange a marriage of convenience with her parents, against Lamarr’s wishes, thus starting one of the most painful chapters of her life.

Her husband, a sickly jealous man, tried to collect and destroy all copies of Ecstasy, subjected her to strict control by locking her in the house and only let her undress or bathe in his presence. He also forced her to accompany him to all his social events and business lunches so as not to let her out of his sight. Lamarr took advantage of this situation to resume her engineering studies and gather any information she could muster about the Nazi regime’s weapons and technology from dinners organised by her husband, which she was forced to attend.

One day, when her situation became too unbearable, she decided to escape in an almost cinematic manner. There are two versions of the story: one says that she fled through the window of a restaurant and the other says that she gave her maid a sleeping pill and left the house disguised as her. She fled to Paris, then to London and from there to the United States. During the boat trip, she met Louis B. Mayer, founder of the industrial empire Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and before she reached port, she had already signed a contract to work in Hollywood. But with a small price to pay: Mayer asked her to change her name so that she would not be associated with Ecstasy. So she renamed herself Hedy Lamarr, in memory of the silent film star Barbara La Marr.

The press called her “the most beautiful woman in the world”, she inspired the characters Snow White and Catwoman, and in the 1940s plastic surgery patients frequently requested her profile.

Her inventor side

Lamarr’s passion for inventing began at the age of 5, when she disassembled a music box and reassembled it. Throughout her life, however, she was praised for her beauty and underrated for her intelligence. In fact, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, but it was not until 2014, 14 years after her death, that she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

She designed an aeroplane for Howard Hughes that was much faster than those that existed at the time, she invented a pill that could be dissolved in water to give Coca-Cola a flavour, she created a system prior to the surveillance drone… And, of course, the frequency-hopping spread spectrum, that is now the basis for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies.

Lady Bluetooth

In the early years of World War II, the use of submarine-launched missiles was very important. But radio contact between the torpedo and the ship from which it was launched had a weakness: if opposing forces worked out what frequency they were communicating on, they could jam it and divert the projectile’s course.

Lamarr and George Antheil, a friend who was a piano composer, solved this problem by creating a system that allowed the torpedo and the ship to communicate by hopping between different radio frequencies, which prevented them from being intercepted by the enemy. She came up with the initial idea and he created the practical model of a device that would allow the radio homing transmitters and torpedo receiving systems to hop frequencies simultaneously, evading rival attacks.

In 1942, they patented the system, giving the US Navy their invention, but unfortunately, they were not taken seriously. The US Navy said the invention was too cumbersome and not a useful military technology. But what they really wanted to convey was that it was unlikely that an actress and a musician had invented a technology that would help them. In fact, they told Lamarr that she could support the war effort more efficiently as a pin-up: pushing war bonds, entertaining troops and selling kisses. This development could have shortened World War II by a year. And she turned down films like Casablanca to develop what is now known as the “frequency-hopping” technique.

Although the patent did not expire until 1959, they never received adequate recognition for this idea, now estimated to be worth $30 billion. It was not until 1997 that they both received the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award. Upon hearing of her award, Lamarr responded, “It’s about time.”

Her last years

Our protagonist kept inventing until the end of her life: a new traffic light, fluorescent collars for pets… She died at the age of 85 at her home in the United States. Today, International Inventors’ Day is celebrated on 9 November, commemorating her birth.

Hedy Lamarr is one of the scientists who appears in our board game Nobel Run. More info: Gearing Roles launches the Nobel Run board game to give visibility to women in science.

Text by Lorena Fernández (@loretahur).
Illustrations by Iñigo Maestro (@iMaestroArt).

The post Hedy Lamarr – Nobel Run Stories first appeared on El Blog de Loretahur.

Artículo publicado en la Revista Deusto Nº 149 (julio 2022).

Salvador Dalí dijo en una ocasión la ya famosa frase “no tengas miedo a la perfección, nunca la alcanzarás”. Lo que quizás no se imaginaba el pintor es que en 2022 tendríamos una red neuronal llamada DALL·E generando imágenes a partir de frases escritas en lenguaje natural y que rozan esa perfección. De hecho, el nombre de esta Inteligencia Artificial (IA) proviene de la combinación de su nombre y el robot de Pixar Wall-E.

Si bien la primera versión que sacaron en 2021 dejaba mucho que desear, solo un año después hace ya auténticas virguerías. Puedes pedir que te genere una ilustración de un “bebé panda tocando el piano al final de la galaxia en formato de arte digital” y uno de los resultados es la imagen que acompaña este artículo. Como vemos, no solo se puede indicar el objeto o sujeto, sino también la acción que tiene que representar y el estilo artístico. Además de generar diseños que respondan a nuestras ideas con solo escribirlas, también nos permite editar imágenes existentes, agregando nuevos elementos así como sustituir los que ya aparecen, teniendo en cuenta luces y sombras, texturas o reflejos. Esta increíble evolución en tan poco tiempo es prodigiosa y nos invita a imaginar qué será capaz de hacer en 5 años, por ejemplo. La herramienta, aún solo disponible para un limitado grupo de personas, revolucionará el estándar de ilustración, diseño y edición de imágenes. No solo porque en solo segundos genera lo que hemos conceptualizado en nuestra cabeza, sino porque cambiará el paradigma de un mismo contenido para muchas personas. En el futuro tendremos elementos exclusivos creados a la carta para cada persona y gusto, que además habrá aprendido tras el análisis de nuestra baba de caracol digital. Es decir, un planteamiento muy parecido a BEN (Branded Entertainment Network), que aplica datos, segmentación e IA para adaptar los productos que se muestran en pantalla al perfil de la persona que está viendo una serie de televisión o una retransmisión deportiva, por ejemplo. Es decir, se muestran unos productos u otros en función de nuestros hábitos de consumo.

La organización que está tras este proyecto es OpenAI, creada por empresarios como Elon Musk, cofundador de Tesla y SpaceX, y Reid Hoffman, cofundador de LinkedIn (entre otros). En sus orígenes, se trataba de una organización sin ánimo de lucro cuyo objetivo era investigar y democratizar el acceso a la IA en general. Sin embargo, en 2020 se convirtió en una empresa, asociándose con Microsoft. Otro de sus proyectos estrella es GPT-3, que permite generar lenguaje escrito a partir de un párrafo que el propio sistema se encarga de completar de la forma más coherente posible.

Google no se queda a la zaga en este ámbito y también ha presentado en mayo su proyecto Imagen, un modelo de difusión de texto a imagen con un grado de fotorrealismo sin precedentes y un profundo nivel de comprensión del lenguaje.

Tanto Google como OpenAI, son conscientes de las amplias posibilidades de uso, pero también de los desafíos sociales y éticos que estos nuevos modelos de difusión pueden ofrecer. Por ello aún no han abierto estas tecnologías a todo el mundo. Por ejemplo, tendrán que hacer frente a los sesgos aprendidos por esta IA o la proliferación de fake news (o paparruchas, como recoge nuestro diccionario). En el primer caso, ya se ha alertado de que las imágenes que genera DALL·E cuando se le pide que represente “nurse”, “personal assistant” o “flight attendant” corresponden solo a mujeres. Sin embargo, cuando las palabras son “lawyer” o “CEO”, solo aparecen hombres. Y es que estás IAs aprenden de grandes conjuntos de datos extraídos de la web, en su mayoría no seleccionados. Si bien este enfoque ha permitido avances algorítmicos rápidos en los últimos años, los conjuntos de datos de esta naturaleza a menudo reflejan estereotipos sociales, puntos de vista opresivos y asociaciones despectivas o dañinas con grupos ya marginados. Solo un grupo con privilegios tiene capacidad de crear más contenido digital y sirve como ejemplo para crear patrones, representando desde esos privilegios a toda la sociedad en su conjunto. Estos sesgos no son solo de género. También hay raciales, de edad, clase social, religión… e incluso de ubicación. Por ejemplo, hay estudios que muestran cómo sistemas de reconocimiento de objetos como Google Cloud Vision, Amazon Rekognition o IBM Watson tienen un 15% más de precisión al analizar fotografías cotidianas de objetos (como el jabón de manos) tomadas en Estados Unidos, que cuando se tomaban en lugares como Somalia o Burkina Faso.

Según las predicciones del Foro Económico Mundial, en 2025 casi la mitad del trabajo existente en la actualidad será para las máquinas. Pero hasta ahora, cuando hablábamos de que venía el lobo a destruir empleos, solíamos dejar fuera a los que tenían algún vínculo con la creatividad. Esta evolución de la IA nos mueve los cimientos de nuestras creencias, generando además sentimientos encontrados al reducir la creatividad humana a modelos estadísticos encapsulados en “unos y ceros”. Ahora bien, parece claro que este modelo digital, que convivirá con el analógico, viene para quedarse. ¿Seremos capaces de hacer frente a los retos que nos plantea?

The post La IA creativa first appeared on El Blog de Loretahur.

Minerales en conflicto

La semana siguiente a nuestra vuelta, en Ekoetxea Meatzaldea, Caddy Adzuba, abogada, periodista, activista y Premio Príncipe de Asturias de la Concordia 2014, nos pidió que levantáramos la mano si teníamos un smartphone o un coche eléctrico / híbrido. No hubo nadie que tuviera bajado su brazo. “Entonces mantenéis un hilo con nosotras”. Y es que RD Congo sufre la llamada “maldición de los recursos naturales” (odio esta expresión porque la Naturaleza no es precisamente un recurso, sino que formamos parte de ella, aunque se nos olvide).

Por ejemplo, para fabricar nuestros móviles se necesitan cuatro minerales que vienen de ese país: el oro (que se usa para cubrir el cableado), el coltán del que se extrae el tantalio (que almacena la electricidad para que suene), la casiterita de la que se extrae el estaño (que se usa para soldar los circuitos) y la wolframita de la que se extrae el wolframio (que hace que vibre).

Sin ir más lejos, el 80% de las reservas mundiales de coltán se encuentran allí. De hecho, los dos estados donde hay más abundancia son RD Congo y Colombia, que tienen algo más en común: son lugares donde se viola a las mujeres, donde son asesinadas, masacradas, esclavizadas, a cambio de que el capitalismo se haga más fuerte.

Adzuba nos volvió a interpelar: “La culpa no es vuestra directamente. Yo también tengo un smartphone. Es de la política internacional, del capitalismo… Pero cuando la casa del vecino arda, seamos todas bomberas. Porque todas tenemos algo que hacer en esta partida.”

La violencia como herencia de guerra

El este de la RD Congo se ha sumergido en una crisis humanitaria, social, política y económica que no hace más que aumentar año tras año y que cuenta con la implicación de un gran número de grupos militares y rebeldes armados, locales y regionales que luchan por controlar los recursos minerales de la zona. Estos grupos entran en las comunidades sabiendo a quién tienen que atacar: las mujeres. No es aleatorio. Por ejemplo, nos cuenta Adzuba que en una comunidad donde había 10 defensoras de los derechos de las mujeres que tenían identificadas, las enterraron vivas por dar voz y proteger esos derechos. También nos cuenta cómo, cuando los grupos armados llegaban a los poblados, los hombres huían y dejaban a las mujeres solas con las niñas y niños. Entonces las violaban e incluso hacían que los niños violaran a sus madres y hermanas.

En este contexto de inseguridad e inestabilidad, las mujeres necesitan huir. Por eso hay mucho desplazamiento interno. Y a lo largo del proceso migratorio siguen sufriendo violencia. “Las mujeres salen de la miseria pero se encuentran con una miseria mayor. Y un ejemplo de esto es la minería.” Se enfrentan a prostitución forzada, a trabajar sin sueldo, a amenazas y abusos constantes.

Esto mismo nos contaron las mujeres de la mina artesanal de Kadumwa (Luhwindja), minería hecha con las manos a través de pico y pala, cincel y martillo. Yoel (22 años) es viuda y tiene a su cargo 4 hijos. Todas las mañanas, cuando tiene algo de dinero, baja para que los chicos/hombres le vendan una piedra extraída de uno de los pozos por $ 2. Ella la picará y lavará, y si tiene suerte y encuentra algún mineral, lo venderá por $ 4. Si no, ese día se irá a casa con las manos vacías. Tiene dolencias físicas en espalda y manos por su trabajo, pero aún así dice que su situación ha mejorado mucho porque antes trabajaba transportando piedras. Su sueño es conseguir el dinero suficiente para volver con su familia, con la que lleva más de 5 años sin poder comunicarse.

Pero no todas las mujeres tienen recursos para comprar piedras. Muchas otras tienen que trabajar cosiendo ropa, recogiendo agua para limpiar el mineral o poder beber (nos cuentan que tienen que transportar hasta 20 bidones al día para obtener el mínimo que sustente a sus familias)… y a la prostitución.

A los pozos solo pueden entrar hombres a picar (las mujeres tienen prohibido el acceso porque existe la creencia de que su presencia “gafa” la producción de minerales). Así que son ellos los que deciden qué piedras venden a las mujeres y muchas veces las estafan, dándoles las peores que pueden tener menos minerales. Algunas de las personas con las que nos encontramos, nos dicen por lo bajo que, aunque no los veamos, también hay niños trabajando en los pozos. La activista y coordinadora de Synergy of Women for Victims of Sexual Violence, Justine Masika, nos cuenta que hay una frase de aviso (“va a llover, va a llover”) que usan para que esos niños se escondan cuando viene gente de fuera. También nos dice que es falso que se respete el código minero que prohíbe que mujeres embarazadas trabajen (cosa que nos había asegurado el jefe del comité de las minas). Habla de manera directa y sin tapujos. Pero esto también tiene un alto coste para ella: en 2012 tuvo que exiliarse y vive permanentemente amenazada.

Tecnología Libre de Conflicto

Adzuba cerró su conferencia en la zona minera vasca diciéndonos que: “Hoy os convertís en nuestras aliadas, nuestros altavoces, ya no vale decir que no sabéis lo que está ocurriendo.” Tú, que lees esto, también lo sabes ahora. Y al igual que ese aleteo de mariposa que puede tener efecto a millones de kilómetros, en nuestras manos hay mucho que podemos hacer:

• Incidencia política. Presionar para que exista una cadena de trazabilidad que obligue a las empresas a mostrar de dónde salen los materiales que emplean. La minería industrial transnacional delega en la minera artesanal local la extracción. De manera que “cumplen” las leyes, dejando las vulneraciones de derechos en manos de la artesanal.
• Alargar la vida de nuestros smartphones y reciclarlos. También tenemos marcas que hacen una apuesta por el mínimo impacto negativo posible para las personas y el planeta.
• Incidencia social en nuestro entorno y ser una voz más que visibilice esta realidad.

Por todo ello, te animo a seguir de cerca la campaña Tecnología Libre de Conflicto (TLC) de la ONG ALBOAN, para romper los vínculos entre tecnología y violencia.

The post De RD Congo a tu bolsillo first appeared on El Blog de Loretahur.

Durante una semana, Alboan y Entreculturas han hecho posible un viaje de comunicadoras de Euskadi a Kivu Sur (RD Congo), para encontrarnos con agentes de transformación locales y conocer de primera mano la mirada de mujeres desplazadas forzosas, supervivientes de la violencia directa (física, sexual, psicológica), cultural (intrafamiliar, social, estatal) y estructural (conflictos armados). Toda una espiral de violencias que se superponen en origen, tránsito y destino a lo largo y ancho del espacio y del tiempo. Y donde el cuerpo de las mujeres se ha convertido en campo de batalla. Se viola y mata por poder, porque el terror es negocio: lo genera y lo amplía. Pero, como en otras partes del mundo, hay personas que, cuando todo se derrumba a su alrededor, tienen el valor de desafiar al sistema establecido y cambiarlo. Ellas han sido nuestras anfitrionas.

La Asociación de Mujeres de los Medios de Comunicación AFEM (Association des Femmes des Médias) es una organización sin ánimo de lucro, formada principalmente por mujeres congoleñas, cuya misión es promover los derechos de las mujeres, niñas y niños, trabajar por garantizar la igualdad de género y la construcción y consolidación de la paz a través de los medios de comunicación.

AFEM nace en 2003 para romper el silencio de las mujeres en un contexto en el que, según un estudio de 2011, cerca de 1,69 a 1,80 millones de mujeres reportaron haber sido violadas a lo largo de su vida —entre 407.397 y 433.785 mujeres admitieron haberlo sido en los últimos 12 meses— y aproximadamente casi 3,37 millones de mujeres declararon haber experimentado violencia sexual con sus parejas. Todo esto aparece en los datos censados, es decir: son la punta de un iceberg más profundo, porque estas violencias no suelen ser denunciadas ni comunicadas para escapar de la deshonra, ya que se sigue culpabilizando a las mujeres de sus agresiones. Tal era el silencio en RD Congo, que la palabra violación no existía en ninguna de sus lenguas (la tuvieron que importar de Tanzania).

“Hubo silencios o sobresaltos en algunos diálogos que hablaron más que palabras”.
Informe Mujeres en marcha.

El enfoque del trabajo de AFEM es comunitario: crean puntos de información (personas de referencia que han sido formadas) distribuidos en las diferentes comunidades, y ellas son sus ojos y oídos en terreno. Por ello, tienen organizados diferentes clubs de escucha comunitaria, tanto urbanos como rurales, talleres de denuncia y encuentros participativos con los principales grupos de interés de cada comunidad. También trabajan en las comunidades la promoción de la equidad de género y realizan ejercicios de escucha activa sobre las necesidades, demandas y preocupaciones de las mujeres. De estos clubes surge en 2016 su principal instrumento para la incidencia y difusión: Mama Radio.

Femme au Fone

Uno de esos proyectos de AFEM para romper el silencio es Femme au Fone (FaF, “Mujeres al teléfono” en francés), un sistema de alerta comunitaria en el que, a través de mensajes SMS, las mujeres pueden denunciar, visibilizar o alertar de una situación de potencial peligro. Una forma muy sencilla de usar las tecnologías que les son más accesibles, para que las mujeres participen sin intermediación en la construcción de su propia seguridad, actuando desde la capacidad de acción sobre sus propias vidas.

FaF es una evolución Kivufoon, un proyecto original de la Fundación WorldCom-LolaMora Producciones (WCLM) y Radio Maendeleo, emisora comunitaria de cobertura regional situada en Bukavu. Como en el resto de los espacios públicos, también aquí las mujeres estaban muy poco representadas en los grupos que mandaban datos a través de SMS, y para atacar este silencio, AFEM entra en el proyecto, junto con la red de organizaciones de mujeres en Norte y Sur de Kivu, Sinergia de mujeres por la Paz y la Reconciliación (SPR).

A partir de aquí, ellas lideran el proceso, son suyas las voces y las capacidades.

El sistema FaF es sencillo y eficiente. Tienen un módem pull de tarjetas SIM con tres compañías diferentes (Airtel, Orange y Vodafone) que se conecta a un ordenador, que hace las veces de móvil para recibir esos mensajes, y adicionalmente, también puede mandarlos. En ese ordenador hay un servicio web que recoge las 24 horas las alertas, las registra, almacena y clasifica automáticamente por palabras clave. Luego, un equipo las procesa y arranca la verificación. Hay un equipo de seguimiento de alerta que llama a la fuente, a personas cercanas, al hospital si se denuncia un ingreso, a la policía, la sociedad civil…

Los números se difunden por las comunidades y a través de Mama Radio para que cualquiera pueda escribir. Si no tienen recursos o no saben usar un teléfono móvil, se envían créditos de teléfono a la persona de referencia de la comunidad o club de escucha, para que ella misma envíe los mensajes. Estas lideresas locales han sido formadas previamente, por ejemplo, para borrar un mensaje tras enviarlo y evitar así que deje rastro.

Se reciben unos 20 o 30 mensajes al día. Las alertas más frecuentes en los últimos meses son: acusaciones de brujería (las mujeres están siendo quemadas por ello), violencia sexual, doméstica y económica, embarazos precoces, abandonos familiares de hombres, no acceso de las mujeres a la herencia, inseguridad ligada al conflicto o pobreza feminizada. Fuimos testigos de ello: mientras nos mostraban el proyecto, se recibió el mensaje de una niña de 16 años violada por su padre.

Cuando se reciben muchos mensajes de un mismo tipo en una zona concreta, el equipo de proyecto se desplaza a terreno para hacer diálogos comunitarios e interpelar a las autoridades locales, para mediar. El material recibido a través de FaF se traslada a Mama Radio, y es la base de programas que buscan hacer incidencia, sensibilizar y dar voz a las preocupaciones y propuestas de las mujeres. Se cierra así el circulo: escuchar, entender, difundir y sensibilizar, a través de temas de debate que, sin esta herramienta, no formarían parte de la agenda social. En las zonas donde la radio no tiene cobertura, esta concienciación se realiza a través de SMS. Es “curioso” cómo la mayoría de los mensajes que se reciben como alerta provienen de mujeres, mientras que la mayoría que se reciben como reacción al programa de radio es de hombres. Por ahora, el alcance geográfico es Kivu Sur, pero tienen como reto ampliarlo a Kivu Norte y Kivu Este.

Mujeres protagonistas de su destino

Estas mujeres llevan el peso de la sociedad congoleña sobre sus espaldas. De manera literal, cuando transportan a sus hijas e hijos o pesadas cargas de ladrillos, agua, leña… pero también de manera figurada, porque en sus cuerpos se despliegan todas las violencias. Y, sin embargo, ellas insisten y nosotras confirmamos: avanzan a paso firme, lento pero constante, para transformar la realidad. No hay marcha atrás: tienen voz y tienen quien les escuche. Empiezan a ser, por fin, protagonistas de su destino.

The post Cartas desde RD Congo: Mujeres en marcha first appeared on El Blog de Loretahur.

Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.”

Marie Skłodowska-Curie

(Warsaw, 7 November 1867 – Passy, 4 July 1934)

A pioneer in the field of radioactivity, she was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the first person to receive two in different categories (Physics and Chemistry). She discovered polonium and radium with her husband, Pierre Curie. Despite these accomplishments, she suffered from the Matilda effect, as the first Nobel had been awarded only to her husband, Pierre. However, Pierre stood up to the Academy and told them that either they would grant the award to both of them or to neither. In 1906, after the death of her husband, she took up her professorship at the Sorbonne, becoming the first female lecturer there. However, in 1911 she was denied a seat at the French Academy of Sciences because she was a woman, a foreigner, a widow and in a relationship with a married man.

Awakening a passion for science

Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie was born in Warsaw in 1867, into a family that had lost all its possessions during the Polish nationalist uprisings. Leading her to have a harsh and restricted childhood. Maria inherited her passion for mathematics and physics from her father, Władysław Skłodowski, who was a professor of mathematics and physics.

At the time, women were not allowed to enrol in higher education, so she entered the clandestine ‘floating university’, a Polish patriotic institution that admitted female students. At the end of 1891 she went to Paris to continue her studies in physics, science, chemistry and mathematics, this time at the Sorbonne, where out of the 776 students in the Faculty of Science, only 27 were women. She studied during the day and taught at night for very little money, surviving on tea, bread and butter.

In 1893 she received her degree in physics and began working in an industrial laboratory, but continued to study at the University of Paris, where she obtained a second degree in 1894. That same year she met Pierre Curie. Their love of science brought their lives together, and they married just a year later. At her wedding she wore her navy blue laboratory attire, instead of a white wedding dress.

“It would be a fine thing, in which I hardly dare believe to pass our lives near each other hypnotized by our dreams, your patriotic dream, our humanitarian dream, and our scientific dream.”
Letter from Pierre Curie to Maria Skłodowska.

Radioactivity

Her next challenge was to obtain a doctorate, so she began research on radioactive substances. The Curies had no laboratory of their own and most of their work was carried out in a poorly ventilated and permeable shed. They were not yet aware of the harmful effects their work was having on them due to the constant exposure to radiation.

In July 1898, the couple announced the existence of an element they named polonium, after Marie Skłodowska’s homeland. Months later, on 26 December of the same year, they published the existence of a second element, which they called radium, derived from a Latin word meaning lightning. Their research led to the word radioactivity.
In 1902, they obtained the first gram of radium after processing 8 tonnes of the mineral known as pitchblende. In 1910, they succeeded in isolating radium in its pure state and discovered that when humans are exposed to radium, diseased and tumour-forming cells are destroyed faster than healthy ones.

On 25 June 1903, Marie Curie managed to successfully defend her doctoral thesis, supervised by Becquerel, cum laude. That month, the Curies were invited by the Royal Institution of Great Britain to give a speech on radioactivity, but only Pierre was allowed to because she was a woman.

Radium became a very profitable business, but as the Curies had not patented their discovery, they made little financial gain. Their unusual but intentional decision allowed the scientific community to research it without hindrance. During this time, the Curies also began to suffer the first health complications from their continued exposure to radioactivity.

The Nobel Prize

In 1903, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics alongisde her husband and Henri Becquerel, making her the first woman to win the prize. But it was not easy, as the selection committee had initially refused to recognise her. One of the members of the Academy, the mathematician Magnus Gösta Mittag-Leffler, alerted Pierre to the situation and he said he would refuse the prize if Marie’s work was not recognised. This led her to be included in the nomination.

On 19 April 1906, Pierre died in an accident in Paris. While walking in the pouring rain, he was struck by a horse-drawn carriage and fell under the wheels, resulting in a fatal skull fracture. In the following years after his death, Marie suffered from depression.

On 13 May 1906, the Physics Department of the University of Paris decided to offer her the teaching post that had been created for her husband. She accepted in the hope of creating a world-class laboratory as a tribute to her husband. This post made her the first woman professor at the Sorbonne and the first director of a Sorbonne laboratory. She gave the inaugural lecture to a hall full of students and onlookers.

However, in 1911 she was denied a seat at the French Academy of Sciences because she was a woman, a foreigner, an atheist, a widow and in a relationship with a married man. She became embroiled in a journalistic scandal because the press revealed that, after her husband’s death, she had had a brief affair with the physicist Paul Langevin, a former student of Pierre’s, who was married. The tabloids labeled her a “foreign Jewish home wrecker”. When the scandal started, she was at a conference in Belgium. On her return, she found an angry mob outside her home and had to take refuge with her daughters at a friend’s house. More than half a century later, in 1962, Marguerite Perey, who discovered francium, was the first woman to be elected as a member of the French Academy of Sciences. On Perey’s first day in the lab, a very kind lady approached her. Marguerite thought it was the secretary, but it was none other than Marie Curie.

In 1911, she was awarded the second Nobel Prize in Chemistry, becoming the first person to receive two in different categories (Physics and Chemistry). This prize was “in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element”. But she was not free from controversy, as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences wrote to persuade her not to go to Stockholm to receive it because an “adulteress should not shake hands with the Swedish king”. To which Marie replied: “The prize has been awarded for the discovery of radium and polonium. I believe that there is no connection between my scientific work and the facts of private life”.

Years later, the curium, a radioactivity unit, was named after her and her husband. Although the commission that decided on the name never clearly stated whether they did so in honour of Pierre, Marie or both.

World War I

During the war, field hospitals lacked experienced staff and proper X-ray machines, so Marie invented mobile radiology units, which she called “radiological ambulances” (although everyone knew them as petit Curie), to assist battlefield surgeons, saving thousands of lives on the front line.

Assisted from the outset by her daughter Irène, then aged 18, and a military doctor, she directed the installation of twenty mobile X-ray units and two hundred other radiological units in the temporary hospitals. Later, she began to train other women as assistants. In July 1916, she was one of the first women to obtain a driving licence to personally operate mobile X-ray units.

Her legacy

She died on 4 July 1934 of aplastic anaemia, probably contracted from prolonged exposure to radiation, the effects of which were unknown at the time. In fact, it was common for her to carry test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pockets. Because of this, her work is still kept today in lead-lined boxes.

In 1995 her remains were transferred, together with those of Pierre, to the Panthéon in Paris. There her tomb is also lined with lead to protect against radiation. Albert Einstein, a close friend of our heroine, commented that Marie Curie was probably “the only scientist who was not corrupted by fame”. Her great scientific contributions continue to save lives.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie is one of the scientists who appears in our board game Nobel Run. More info: Gearing Roles launches the Nobel Run board game to give visibility to women in science.

Text by Lorena Fernández (@loretahur).
Illustrations by Iñigo Maestro (@iMaestroArt).

The post Marie Skłodowska-Curie – Nobel Run Stories first appeared on El Blog de Loretahur.