Happy Ada Lovelace Day - a celebration of women science writers

Not Exactly Rocket Science
By Ed Yong
Oct 16, 2012 10:51 AMMay 17, 2019 9:26 PM
Happy Ada Lovelace Day

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It’s Ada Lovelace Day, in which people round the world celebrate the legacy of a legendary woman by “sharing stories of women— whether engineers, scientists, technologists or mathematicians — who have inspired you to become who you are today”.

I’m taking a slightly different tack. I’m sharing the names of women who tell stories – science writers whose work I admire. (If anyone’s wondering, here's the intensely scientific method I used to compile the list: I sat down, wrote names, and stopped when I got to 15) Each name is accompanied with a brief reason why I think they’re awesome and some links to past work. And as I’ve said before, this is not a list of top female science writers; this is an all-female list of top science writers.

Helen Pearson is the last person who’ll tell you this, but she’s one of the most accomplished feature writers around. Check out this profile of protein-resurrector Joe Thornton or this award-winning story about the study of a lifetime or this classic day-in-the-life piece about Bob Langer. A masterclass in longform right there.

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