Chatham High School Students Bring Awareness to Women in Science

Have you noticed the colorful posters displayed in the windows of downtown Chatham businesses? Over the past few weeks, Chatham High School Juniors Amudha Krishnan, Charlotte Siow, Zaina Qureshi, and myself, Kat Xikes, enlisted the help of Borough Council Member Karen Koronkiewicz to hang up posters of famous women in STEM in honor of Women’s History Month.

Council Member Koronkiewicz stated, “I am thrilled to be a part of this project increasing awareness for the many women in science and their amazing accomplishments. Growing up and in college, there was scant mention of women in science beyond Madame Curie. These role models can provide inspiration to many young people to follow their dreams even in the face of opposition.”

On March 8th, for the first time in Chatham history, the Borough Council issued a proclamation celebrating March as National Women’s History Month. They commemorated the role and impact women have played in our society, and acknowledged the difficulties women have had to overcome throughout their careers and lives. The global pandemic that has plagued our nation over the past year has brought to light the importance and prominence of women in science. Kizzmekia Corbett is one of the female scientists working at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to help produce the Moderna coronavirus vaccine. Yet even with today’s advancements in media and communication, there are very few people that can recognize her name. This under-representation of women in science has been a common trend throughout history.

The stories behind the women featured in these posters are a few of countless examples of this. Rosalind Franklin’s work, using x-ray crystallography was the basis for the discovery of the structure of DNA, yet she was not recognized and passed away before her male colleagues were awarded the Noble Prize. Emmy Noether is only now widely recognized for her contributions to mathematics that form the underpinnings of modern physics. She was banned from teaching, yet she was instrumental in helping develop the solutions to Einstein’s equations. Bibba Chowdhuri is still a mostly unknown physicist, whose work was instrumental in the discovery of mesons that eventually lead to a Noble Prize for someone else. Hedy Lamar is well known as an actress, but her invention of frequency hopping is now the basis for our modern cell phone system. If you would like to read more stories, take a look at the posters hanging up downtown!

Businesses enthusiastically embraced the idea of putting up posters in their shop windows. Matthew Koenig, who permitted us to display all of the posters in an empty shop window in his building, remarked “As a local business owner and a father, I am thrilled to support women in science as part of Chatham’s celebration of Women’s History Month. I look forward to future opportunities to support the Chatham community as we begin the long awaited redevelopment of 246 Main Street”.

It is our hope that by displaying the posters, we will spark the interest of the public and raise awareness of the significant contributions of women scientists. We hope that young girls see them and are inspired to pursue careers in STEM.

Handing out posters around Chatham and hearing the reactions of storeowners has inspired us as well, and we hope to launch a poster contest for next year. Local students will be challenged to make a poster depicting a woman in science. Similar to the biographies coupled with the posters along Main Street, the students will also write a short bio about the woman in their poster in order to learn about and share her unique story. Students can choose any scientist they find inspiring, whether its Andrea Ghez, the recent Physics Nobel Laureate or Dasia Taylor, the high school student who invented sutures that change color if a wound becomes infected.

As a young girl in grade school, I wrote a biography about Albert Einstein. In that simple assignment, I learned about the joy of discovery, and it inspired me to love science. I was lucky to have my mom, a scientist who works in genomics, as a role model for me growing up. Not every child gets to learn and experience science in the same ways I did, so I am hoping that our efforts show young girls that they are represented in STEM and have the ability to achieve great things.

A special thank you to the Perimeter Institute for creating the Forces of Nature Poster Series and making them available to the public. (https://resources.perimeterinstitute.ca/collections/posters)

Kat Xikes

Chatham Borough