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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Ruth Howes: We wrote the e-book to tell their tales, and that was our hope: we would make positive they have been not shed.
Katie Hafner: This is Missing Women of all ages of the Manhattan Undertaking, a special collection of Dropped Girls of Science. I am Katie Hafner.
For the earlier few months, we have been bringing you tales of women who worked on the leading mystery task to establish the atomic bomb that would finish Entire world War II in 1945. For this collection, we relied intensely on 1 supply in unique. A book named Their Day in the Sun: Gals of the Manhattan Job. It is possibly, and I am not exaggerating, the most vital perform out there on the subject matter.
And this 7 days, we want to spend tribute to the two girls who wrote it, Ruth Howes, whose voice you just listened to, and Caroline Herzenberg.
In the early 1990s, Howes, a physicist at Ball Point out College in Muncie, Indiana, and Herzenberg, also a physicist performing at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, have been asked to contribute to a book on girls and the use of armed forces force. Their chapter was called Girls in Weapons Enhancement: the Manhattan Challenge. When their colleagues, gentlemen we presume, listened to about this, they stated: That’ll be a shorter chapter. What women? There were not any.
Howes and Herzenberg weren’t so certain.
Although they have been doing work on that chapter, they went to a meeting of the American Physical Modern society where by they bumped into a close friend, Melba Phillips, a distinguished physicist who was a single of Robert Oppenheimer’s to start with graduate pupils at UC Berkeley in the 1930s.
Phillips failed to do the job on the Manhattan Job, but she prompt they discuss to Naomi Livesey French, a mathematician whom by the way you listened to about a couple weeks back in a former episode. She was also at that meeting.
The quite subsequent early morning, Naomi sat down with Ruth for a 4 hour interview, in the system of which she gave Ruth names and addresses of gals who experienced worked at Los Alamos with her.
Ruth and Caroline then received in contact with those people ladies who experienced additional recommendations. And that was the starting. They determined to break up up the research.
Ruth Howes: Carol did Chicago. She realized people today at Argonne. And who had been at the Met Lab in the early days. And so she dealt with that conclude of it. I dealt with Los Alamos and finally Hanford.
Katie Hafner: In the end, by way of all this networking, they identified some 300 females and did scores of interviews.
In the ebook, the chapters are arranged by different fields: physicists, chemists, mathematicians, biologists, professional medical researchers, and professionals. An appendix lists the title of just about every single female and specifics what they did. Obviously, there were being lots of women.
For the earlier a few several years, we have been amassing names for the Lost Females of Science database, and girls who worked on the Manhattan Venture, thanks to what we discovered in Their Day in the Sun, have been involved from the start. In the spring of 2022, I went to pay a visit to Ruth Howes at her home in Santa Fe. She’s 78 now. A number of times later, we did a official interview.
Ruth informed me she was surprised by the sheer quantity of ladies they uncovered. On prime of the dozens and dozens of scientists with highly developed levels, Ruth explained.
Ruth Howes: If you rely the gals who ran the calculators at Los Alamos and the experts at Chicago, you get enormous figures.
Katie Hafner: But in experiences written right after the war, the women’s contributions ended up routinely lacking.
Ruth Howes: And most of the official histories of the undertaking dismiss the women of all ages completely.
Katie Hafner: Why do you consider they disregard the women of all ages?
Ruth Howes: Since they failed to look at physics a woman’s subject.
Katie Hafner: But the women of all ages were there in simple sight undertaking the operate. So why did they disregard the girls?
Ruth Howes: Goodness is aware, ladies are not scientists. You ought to know that by now.
Katie Hafner: Their Day in the Sunshine lays that fantasy to rest. It lists girl just after lady and their contributions, and the sheer total of work Ruth and Caroline place into it shines as a result of.
Karen Herzenberg: I know they spent 10 yrs on it.
Katie Hafner: Which is Karen Herzenberg, Caroline’s daughter. Caroline is 92 now. When I talked to Karen just lately, she mentioned she remembered when her mom was performing on the ebook.
Karen Herzenberg: Mom promptly gave me a copy as shortly as it came out. I believe that she gave them to all of us on Christmas, the yr that they had been posted.
Katie Hafner: That was 1999. The reserve obtained some awesome reviews. Library Journal advisable it for libraries’ history of science collections. And one particular critique praised it as a do the job of “empowerment” for ladies and girls contemplating careers in science. Now, two many years afterwards, even Ruth works by using the e book as a reference.
Ruth Howes: I’ve now forgotten. Most of what I knew when I was more youthful.
Katie Hafner: So when she requirements to refresh her memory, she goes to the e book. This, of study course, induced a considered. Could we preserve all the documents their investigate generated? The interview transcripts, the letters they been given, the letters they wrote, the notes they took. I could presently see the Misplaced Females of Science team descending on Ruth’s house in Santa Fe, scanners in hand, to make copies of almost everything she experienced and incorporating it to our Lost Girls of Science Archive.
But then… I asked her this.
Katie Hafner: Did you keep all your papers?
Ruth Howes: No, not all of them. Some of them.
Katie Hafner: Did you maintain any of the interviews, transcripts?
Ruth Howes: No. Oh, I will not think I did.
Katie Hafner: Oh, that is just devastating to listen to.
Ruth Howes: I am sorry. I didn’t know that any one would be interested in them.
Katie Hafner: So do you assume they ended up in a recycling bin?
Ruth Howes: Sure.
Katie Hafner: I asked the exact query of Caroline Herzenberg’s daughter, Karen.
Karen Herzenberg: No. Um, I, I have not witnessed something and I’ve been by a ton of papers on the last couple of a long time, so, sadly, however no.
Katie Hafner: It is in truth a tragedy, simply because the details that are in the guide make you actually want to know extra. In Their Day in the Sunlight, Ruth and Caroline remark that of the 300 females they tracked down, fifty percent were useless. Never forget, that was 1999. I am no actuarial skilled, but it is really my guess that considering that then, all of those people women have died. All we have, for the most component, is this just one trim but a must have useful resource.
Katie Hafner: So when you had been composing the reserve, what was your hope? did you hope you would achieve by bringing these girls to gentle?
Ruth Howes: Just that we might make guaranteed they had been not misplaced. So we wrote the book to inform their tales, and that was our hope, as I bear in mind it.
Katie Hafner: Following the movie Oppenheimer came out previously this summer months, articles begun showing up about the absence of ladies in the movie. And a great deal of people stories cited, you guessed it, Their Working day in the Sunshine. So the e book is having a little bit of a revival.
Karen Herzenberg stated she thinks her mom would respect the awareness the e book has been receiving considering the fact that the film arrived out.
Karen Herzenberg: I imagine she would be happy about it. I feel she would enjoy it.
Katie Hafner: And Ruth states she however receives royalty checks from Temple University Push, the publisher. That doesn’t mean the e book is super uncomplicated to get a keep of. Temple University Press sells it on its internet site. There are copies on Amazon but shipping and delivery can take a thirty day period, and you can borrow it, at least for now, from archive.org. When I went to check out Ruth in Santa Fe a calendar year in the past, I took my copy for her to sign.
Katie Hafner: It wasn’t uncomplicated to locate. In point, I experienced to obtain it from Abe Guides or some thing. And it is from the Hicksville, New York library.
Ruth Howes: Exactly. And you never would’ve discovered it if we hadn’t written it.
Katie Hafner: All through this sequence, we have been reading aloud the names of girls who worked on the Manhattan Challenge. We acquired the listing from the back again of Ruth and Caroline’s guide. And when we interviewed Ruth previous year, it dawned on me that reading the names aloud could be a great plan. All the names. So Ruth and producer Nora Mathison and I took turns examining them.
Due to the fact then, we have recruited a dozen or so supplemental audience of the names. But nowadays, I want to go away you with the voice of just one particular, Ruth Howes.
Ruth Howes: Helen Arson. Mary Dailey. Margaret Jane Nickson. Emily Leyshon. Ellen Weaver. Patricia Walsh. Lorraine Heller. Priscilla Duffield.
Katie Hafner: This has been Shed Ladies of the Manhattan Challenge, a specific sequence from Dropped Women of all ages of Science. This episode was made by me, Katie Hafner, with aid from Deborah Unger. Lizzy Younan composes our songs. Paula Mangin generates our artwork, Alex Sugiura is our audio engineer, and Danya Abdelhameid is our point checker.
Thanks too to Amy Scharf, Nora Mathison, Jeff DelViscio, Eowyn Burtner, Lauren Croop, Carla Sephton, and Sophia Levin. We are funded in element by the Alfred P. Sloan Basis and Schmidt Futures. We’re distributed by PRX and created in partnership with Scientific American. You can obtain a great deal more, including the all crucial donate button at lostwomenofscience.org.
Starting off next week, we’re bringing you a two-parter, a fresh seem at the physicist Lise Meitner by means of her correspondence with Otto Hahn.
He gained the Nobel Prize. She did not. We will be conversing about what those people letters reveal about the who, what, where, when and how of the discovery of nuclear fission. See you next 7 days.
Ruth Howes: Rosie Hunter, Reba Holmberg, Mary Newman, Josephine Hinch, Gertrude Nordheim.
Even more looking through:
Their Working day in the Sunlight: Women of the Manhattan Project, Ruth H. Howes & Caroline L. Herzenberg. Temple University Press, 1999. Paperback 2003.

https://tupress.temple.edu/books/their-working day-in-the-sun
Physics Today: Critique of Their Day in the Sun: Girls of the Manhattan Task, Ruth H. Howes & Caroline L. Herzenberg, Quantity 53, Problem 7, July 2000.

https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/report/53/7/59/411394/Their-Working day-in-the-Solar-Females-of-the-Manhattan
Voices of the Manhattan Undertaking, Ruth Howes’s interview, Atomic Heritage Foundation, Oct 12, 2016.

https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/voices/oral-histories/ruth-howess-job interview
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