Mathematics for Ladies

Jessy Randall: Sometimes the work they were doing was so perfectly lyrical and metaphorical that I felt the poems were not hard to see.

Carol Sutton Lewis: I'm Carol Sutton Lewis, a host for Lost Women of Science. And today, for this Conversations episode, we wanted to do something a little bit different. So far throughout this series, we've spoken to journalists and academics who've written histories about the extraordinary and often neglected stories of women in science. But for this episode, we're speaking with a poet who's turned the lives and work of women scientists into art. 

Her poems offer illuminating entry points into the lives of dozens of scientists, bringing us into the key successes, failures, and tensions they've experienced. And as we talk about the poems today, I want to unpack a handful of core themes that emerged throughout the collection, and throughout many of our own episodes as well.

And so, I'm delighted to welcome Jessy Randall, author of Mathematics for Ladies, Poems on Women in Science. Hi Jessy, thanks for joining me today.

Jessy Randall: Hi Carol, I'm so glad to be on Lost Women of Science.

Carol Sutton Lewis: And we are so happy to have you here. I just have to confess–as a former English major and a huge poetry fan–I have absolutely loved all that I have read to prepare for this, and so I'm excited for our conversation.

Jessy Randall: Well, that's a dream come true for me—the idea that we don't have to separate poetry and literature from scientific work.

Carol Sutton Lewis: So, Jessie, tell us, what's the story behind Mathematics for Ladies? How did this collection come to be?

Jessy Randall: I went to a talk by a physics professor at the college where I work. I'm a librarian at Colorado College. And Barbara Whitten was talking about the so-called “Pickering's Harem,” the uh, women who catalog stars at the Harvard Observatory. And a side story about Annie Jump Cannon really caught my attention. First of all, because that's a wonderful name, Annie Jump Cannon, but mostly because Professor Whitten showed an image of one of these cataloged stars and said that Annie Jump Cannon could identify these stars years and years after she cataloged them, even though she cataloged literally over 100,000 stars. That was so poetic without me even doing anything. It was just like handed to me. 

And so then I started researching Annie Jump Cannon and I thought maybe I could write, you know, 30 poems about Annie Jump Cannon and have a whole collection just about her. And of course, the poems about her led me to other women in the so called harem. And then outside of that, and pretty soon, I, I just couldn't stop, I was researching women in science. There were so many more than I ever dreamed. I knew of maybe a handful of women in science, before I started the project. And now I've got, you know, 150 or, or something, and there, and I have barely begun, I mean, I, I have to stop. So I, I, I'm trying, I'm now trying to stop.

Carol Sutton Lewis: So you found Annie Jump Cannon, you started writing poetry about her, you found others, and tell me how you were able to use poetry to talk about all of them. I mean, were there things about each of them that, that lent themselves to a poetic voice? 

Jessy Randall: That's exactly the question that I asked myself as the project went along. Why are some women getting a poem and some aren't? Why, why are some of them getting my attention? And mostly it had to do with, sort of built-in metaphors of the science and other STEM work that they were doing.

Um, At first I was really looking at their lives more than their work. And that story got a little repetitive. You know, young women from the, I don't know, 1700s, 1800s, 1900s, not allowed to go to school, not educated, just all the obstacles that these women faced, that was the story I kept seeing. And at some point I, I thought this is too depressing. It's not fun anymore to just write poems about women who kept being told no. And so then I started looking into, sometimes looking into their actual published work and using that within poems. Sometimes the work they were doing was so perfectly lyrical and metaphorical that I felt the poems were not hard to see.

And so often I could get this one little bite of their life. And it's so nice to write poems in the era of the internet. Because I can write a poem and I don't need to do a lot of explaining. People can look up this woman, and they can find out more. 

Carol Sutton Lewis: They sure can. And we'll hear your poetry in just a minute. But I was really struck while reading the collection that in all the poems, there's a hint of the science that pulls you in, but also in many instances, there's the hint of the person as well.

And in addition to the content, the structural and stylistic choices you make are really fascinating. For instance, sometimes you write in the first person, sometimes you write in the third person. How did you decide which way to go?

Jessy Randall: So I wanted to try to inhabit these women and, and feel what it would feel like to love science so much that you're willing to face so many obstacles, go up against so much trouble to do it. And that is not something I feel myself. I'm not a scientist. And so writing from the point of view of the scientists was a kind of shortcut to the emotions of being a woman scientist. However, I didn't always feel like I should or could do that. There are some scientists whose inner lives seem really far away from my own, and then I’d maybe would use third person instead.

Carol Sutton Lewis: That's a great segue into the first poem that I wanted to focus on. In the impressive list of scientists that you include, you have several that we at Lost Women of Science have featured, and I wanted to start with a poem about one of them.

So you've written a poem about Rebecca Lee Crumpler, and we did a full episode on her last fall. She's the first African American female medical doctor in the United States, and she's considered the first black person to publish a medical book. Can you please read that poem for us?

Jessy Randall: I would love to, Carol. 

Rebecca Lee Crumpler, 1831 to 1895. 

They call her

the first Black woman

to earn a medical degree.

She called herself doctress.

She called herself businesswoman.

She called herself being.

They say first, first, first,

as though everyone before her

lost.

Carol Sutton Lewis: That was really great. Thank you. Now this is a poem you wrote in the third person. Tell me about that choice.

Jessy Randall: Well, there's an early draft of that poem where the line was, “I call myself being,” and I thought this sounds as though I'm saying, I, Jessy Randall, am saying, oh, we're all just beings, we're all humans, we're all the same.

And, not honoring the different experiences of women of color. We, you know, we now, we now talk about intersectional feminism. I wanted to be careful not to gloss over the differences in what it would be like to try to get a medical degree as a black woman versus a white woman.

For me to say I call myself being in the voice of Rebecca Lee Crumpler, it would not be clear that she herself did call herself those things. So doctress, being, and businesswoman were how she described herself. And so I wanted to make sure it's clear that that's, that's factual and not my own interpretation of how she thought of herself.

Carol Sutton Lewis: Mm. So, the last lines of the poem, the last line of the poem, they say, first, first, first, as though everyone before her lost. That really stayed with me, actually, and, I love what it made me think about. I mean, this concept that the person that gets the title of first is, in fact, standing on the shoulders of so many other people that started and couldn't make it.

Am I correct in thinking that's the way that you were approaching it?

Jessy Randall: Yes, absolutely. With so many of the women in my book, they might have an entry in, in an encyclopedia, or have a whole book about them because they were first at something. And I really got curious about the women before who tried and didn't, didn't quite get there.

They're more lost because they don't have that word first in their biographies. There might be many more women in science than we know.

Carol Sutton Lewis: So speaking of first, let's stay on that concept just a little bit longer because I have to bring up the poem that you wrote on Marie Curie, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. And Marie Curie is a name that all of us are familiar with, or let's say that if people are familiar with the concept of women scientists, they're familiar with Marie Curie.

So can you read us the Marie Curie poem that focuses on this?

Jessy Randall: Marie Curie, born 1867. Dies 1934. 

Stop comparing me to every woman scientist!

Another Madame Curie this. A new Madame Curie that.

Stop re-naming women altogether!

We already lose our names to marriage.

We already receive unwanted nicknames

from male colleagues who are far from collegial.

Talk about toxic. Will the ticking

of my machine ever, ever stop?

Carol Sutton Lewis: That was really great. So what went into your thought process as to how to handle Madame Curie?

Jessy Randall: I really kind of wanted to leave Marie Curie out of the book because if I was talking poetry with other poets, or if I was talking science with people who do science, I would say, tell me your favorite woman scientist. And very often the only person people could think of was Marie Curie. And that really bums me out. Like, yes, she's amazing, but there should be so many more women that people come across in their regular lives without having to do a whole bunch of special research. At school, we shouldn't learn only about male scientists. I mean, that's such a no-brainer.

Like, I mean, so when I was a girl, I had the idea that I would be a doctor. It just seemed like the coolest job. I had a really terrific working mom who said, you can do anything, all that good support, and I thought, this is what I'll do. And somewhere along the line, I stopped thinking that, and in my version of my own life, I would say, oh, it's because the first time I had to dissect anything, it was gross and I didn't like it, and so I, I didn't want to do science after all. And that is the story I have told myself for many decades, but I wonder now if I had seen women doing science, if there had been posters of women scientists on the walls in my classrooms, I might have stayed. I don't know. I don't think the world lost a wonderful doctor when I decided not to do that, but, but it does make me wonder about all these girls growing up today. We, we know they're still getting pushed out.

Carol Sutton Lewis: Hmm. Thank you for sharing that. You know, it's a sad story and unfortunately a really common one. Coming back to Marie Curie though, I understand completely your desire to leave her out. But you can't leave out Marie Curie because when you think about women scientists, she's the one you think of. But I really love your approach to her.

I mean, this concept that her name should not be the only name. We all want to be inspired by someone like Marie Curie. But tell me, what do you think the problem is with just sort of defaulting to her as THE woman scientist?

Jessy Randall: It's defaulting that is the problem here. We need to look at more than just the one story. It's, it's better than nothing. But it's not the full picture, and It should be a gateway into other stories and not the end.

Carol Sutton Lewis: More after the break.

Carol Sutton Lewis: Next, I want to turn to another scientist we've covered on Lost Women of Science, Lisa Meitner. Lisa Meitner is one of the physicists who discovered nuclear fission, but she was robbed of the Nobel Prize for that discovery as it went solely to her collaborator, Otto Hahn, which, unfortunately, is not a new story.

Jessy, would you please read this poem for us?

Jessy Randall: Gladly. Lisa Meitner, born 1878, dies 1968. 

They barred me from the science labs

at the University of Berlin

for fear I’d set my hair on fire.

By “they” I mean men, the men in charge.

By “for fear” I mean they feared me.

That line about my hair! I had to laugh.

I laughed some more when the papers

mixed up cosmic with cosmetic.

I was in the newspaper, you see.

I was the mother of nuclear power

and I laughed all the way away

from the Manhattan Project, in which

I refused to participate.

In that project, the men who worried

about my hair created enough fire

to burn 200,000 bodies down to nothing.

Carol Sutton Lewis: That's a great example of your using humor, the concept that they were focused on her hair is laughable. But, but the humor quickly gives way to this seething anger. I mean, was that your reaction to the story?

Jessy Randall: Oh yeah. Working on the project, I lived in rage for years. And often had to laugh, some tiny kernel of humor, something funny, because everything else was so dark. As you can tell from interviewing me, I can talk and talk and blab all kinds of blabs. And the thing that I like so much about, about a poem is that I have to hold back and I, I can say the things without just exploding into a scream of anger, and convey something in a small space in a few words that obviously I could talk for five hours and bore everyone to tears and drive myself bananas.

So Lisa Meitner, the idea that these scientists wouldn't want her beautiful hair to be damaged, you know, that she's this delicate creature, and they're so gentlemanly, you know, and then there what they do is invent and design something that, that murders unimaginable numbers of human beings.

That's not very gentlemanly. It's that, a false kindness, a false protection. They're going to protect her hair from being burned while they push her out of science and do science their way.

Carol Sutton Lewis: Right. Their way, in a way that she didn't want to cooperate with.

Jessy Randall: Which is why we need more women in science. Women in science bring something to the work that apparently we need.

Carol Sutton Lewis: Mm-hmm. And as you say, and as we know, she was so troubled by the development of atomic weapons, and she believed that science and even her research should be used for the betterment of humanity, not for destruction, so to your point, you need that person at the table.

Now I want to turn to the poem about Mary Anning, who like Marie Curie is a name that many will recognize. Mary Anning was a paleontologist who made groundbreaking discoveries in Jurassic marine fossil beds in Dorset, England.

And I want to turn to this poem because I know it's a favorite of yours to discuss. So first, will you read it for us?

Jessy Randall: Mary Anning, born 1799, dies 1847. 

Things she sold by the seashore:

shells

fish-lizards

sea dragons

flying dragons

the story of being hit by lightning

Things she drew by the seashore:

Specimens

Things she knew by the seashore:

that the lightning story was a money-maker

Things she loved and lost by the seashore:

her dog, Tray, killed in a landslide

Carol Sutton Lewis: So, first of all, tell me, why is this one of your favorites and a go-to poem for you when you're reading?

Jessy Randall: Well, Mary Anning is someone that people in the United States don't often know about, but they do know the tongue twister, she sells seashells by the seashore.

Carol Sutton Lewis: Of course.

Jessy Randall: Which It's probably not about Mary Anning, but might be, could be, and this combination of the legends and the lore, alongside the true story of Mary Anning is really interesting to me and fun to think about because along with the scientific work she did, she had a great backstory. She was hit by lightning when she was a small child. And there's even an additional bit to that story where people say, oh, she was a sickly little baby, but after that lightning strike, she became strong and vibrant. So this is the kind of story that the tourists who visit Lyme, Regis, love to hear. It's more fun to buy a fossil from a woman with a cool backstory like that.

And so, The poem tries to get at that sense of the real Mary Anning and the storied Mary Anning, and the tension between the two.

Carol Sutton Lewis: Hmm. And it seems like, not just in this example, but throughout the poems in your book, you use the magic of poetry to go beyond the scientific facts of the person's work. And this is a great example with the tongue twister, she sells seashells, and your talk about sea dragons and flying dragons.

These details give the poem an almost fairytale-like quality.

Jessy Randall: Yes, and I think this is kind of what every poem is, what I'm trying to do here. Like, Mary Anning was a real person, but we can't know her because she's dead. And she did not write a memoir, she didn't leave us a lot to know about her. And so we have to use our imaginations. And I think there's, it's the whole idea of these lost women. We, we don't know what they thought so much because nobody asked them when they were alive and nobody understood what, what, they were doing, what they achieved. In some cases, because they were erased. In other cases, because they were ignored.

Carol Sutton Lewis: You know, it strikes me, just listening to you talk about this, how important it is that we have poetry to bring these scientists to life, when there's not much documentation, or there's not enough archival evidence to put their lives in the proper historical context. And yet, in using the language of poetry to bring what they've done to life, and to speculate thoughtfully on how they might have done this, it gives us, as I was saying earlier, the opportunity to peek into their lives.

It enables us to rediscover these lost women in ways that we are just not able to do if we're just going to rely on history books to find them.

Jessy Randall: Exactly, yes. When women have been erased, the only way to call attention to that is to imagine what they were. You can't dig under the erasure. 

Carol Sutton Lewis: So finally, I want to turn to a poem that isn't from Mathematics for Ladies. It's a poem from your upcoming collection, The Path of Most Resistance. Another great title.

So this will be a little sneak preview. This poem is about Flemmie Kittrell, another scientist we've covered on Lost Women of Science. Flemmie was the first African American woman to earn a PhD in nutrition, and her research paved the way for the establishment of the Head Start program. If you don't mind, I'd love to read this one.

Howard University lured me,

promising a new Home Ec building,

but academia has slow metabolism.

I’ve always said prejudice is

having your thoughts too soon.

I spent my whole career fighting

that kind of snap judgment. So maybe

it’s all right I never worked in the

building they promised. They did,

eventually, build it, after I

retired and moved away.

If not for me there’d be no place

for the galoshes and the zippers.

The crayons, the dress-up bin,

the nap mats, the small chairs, and yes,

even books, lots and lots of picture books, and

the children themselves, and the mothers and fathers

and grandparents and teachers and families and all that love.

Carol Sutton Lewis: Tell me, how'd you come across Flemmie Kittrell?

Jessy Randall: Early on, I, I realized that the books I was using tended to focus on white women. But I wanted to, I kind of wanted to find some women that weren't as well known. And I found this crazy typed-up list that someone created. It was, it was hundreds of women I just, I couldn't look up more information about every single one, and so I kind of went by interesting names, and Flemmie Kittrell was a wonderfully interesting name. I suppose it's similar to the Annie Jump Cannon moment. 

And so I, I looked into her life and found that this was just my kind of story. And different from what a lot of the other scientists had done.

Carol Sutton Lewis: I'm so glad you're including her in your next book. And so, wrapping up this conversation about poetry and women in science, have there been any big takeaways for you in writing this collection? And has it changed your perspective on women in science in any way?

Jessy Randall: I like all kinds of poems, but these research-based poems I mean, I got a little obsessed. I, I could not stop. I think now I'm slowing down. I seem to be able to, to turn my mind to other topics at this point, but for me, a lot of it was just about having somewhere to put my rage, in a way that I don't want to set anything on fire, I don't want to actually punch anyone. Do you know at one point when I was sending these poems out to magazines, I got a response from one editor who said, I don't publish rants. 

And, I mean, you can imagine the smoke coming out of my ears reading that rejection. I'm quite used to rejection, I know that that's part of being a writer. But the idea that my poems were rants…a rant is crazy person rants. Um, it's not crazy to be really angry about women and girls getting pushed out of STEM fields. It hurts everyone and being angry about it is, is necessary.

Carol Sutton Lewis: No, it's not crazy at all. Actually, it reminds me of the Lost Women of Science tagline: We're not mad, we're curious. Okay, we're a little mad. This is definitely something to be angry about.

And we're so grateful you're doing the work to bring these stories to light. Thank you so much, Jessy.

Jessy Randall: And thank you, Carol, for everything you do for Lost Women of Science.

Carol Sutton Lewis: This episode of Lost Women of Science Conversations was hosted by me, Carol Sutton Lewis. Our thanks go to Jessy Randall for taking the time to talk with us. Sophie McNulty was the producer and sound engineer.

Lexi Atiya was our fact checker, Lizzie Younan composes all of our music, and Karen Meverack designs our art. Thanks to Jeff DelVizio and our publishing partner, Scientific American. Thanks also to executive producers Amy Scharf and Katie Hafner, as well as to senior managing producer Deborah Unger.

Lost Women of Science is funded in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Anne Wojcicki Foundation. We're distributed by PRX. Thanks for listening, and do subscribe at lostwomenofscience.org so you'll never miss an episode.