Ivory And Bone: Agatha Christie And Her Three Decades Of Archaeology
In a tent in Iraq, an Englishwoman attempts to sleep as mice crawl over her body and cockroaches look on from the walls. She is exhausted, having divided...
Dale DeBakcsy
From The Plumage Of Birds To The Classification Of The Natural Kingdom: The Life Of Ornithologist Graceanna Lewis
In the mid 19th century, American biological science was tentatively feeling its way forward along a half dozen different and contradictory directions as it ga...
Naval Engineer Raye Montague And The Tale Of The World’s First Computer-Designed Naval Vessel
In March 1971, a computer science whiz with an unlikely background was given six months to complete a seemingly impossible project for the United States Navy: ...
Catalysts And Photoreactivity: Discoveries From The Life Of Elizabeth Fulhame, Europe’s First Woman Chemical Researcher
Sometimes, the presence of a third party allows two people to accomplish something they either could not pull off, or would take an agonizingly long time to ac...
Biplanes, Airships, Submarines: My Talk With Dr. Nina Baker About The Engineering Legacy Of Hilda Lyon
One of the great things about writing this column is the fact that, from time to time, I get to talk with remarkable people about other remarkable people. ...
Our Endogenous Retroviruses, Ourselves: The Life And Legacy Of Dr. Anna Marie Skalka
In 1970, everybody knew, or believed they did, how the flow of genetic information in a cell works. The Central Dogma of genetics dictated that DNA is transcr...
Through A Satellite’s Gaze, The Past: The Career Of Space Archaeologist Sarah Parcak
It is an axiom in business that the more mundane the job, the more grandiose the title. Executives seem to believe that we will feel more resigned to a l...
Steering The Future Of Women In Science: The Institutional Wizardry Of Microbiologist Rita Colwell
One of the exciting and daunting things about doing science in the Twenty-First century is the sheer number of competencies it demands. It is no longer e...
The Lady Of The Engine Room: Victoria Drummond, Britain’s First Woman Marine Engineer
It is August 25, 1940, and the Panamanian ship Bonita, sailing alone in war-torn waters with its cargo of clay bound for the United States, is suddenly attacke...
Dale DeBakcsy
Dale DeBakcsy is the writer and artist of the Women In Science and Cartoon History of Humanism columns, and has, since 2007, co-written the webcomic Frederick the Great: A Most Lamentable Comedy with Geoffrey Schaeffer. He is also a regular contributor to The Freethinker, Philosophy Now, Free Inquiry, and Skeptical Inquirer. He studied intellectual history at Stanford and UC Berkeley before becoming a teacher of mathematics and drawer of historical frippery.