By Eleanor Garrigan Mattar July 2021 saw what would have been the 100th birthday of Rosalyn Yalow — a Nobel Prize-winning medical physicist. Despite Yalow’s development of the radioimmunoassay technique, which allows the concentration of substances in biological contexts to be measured and has impacted virtually every aspect of medicine and biology, her name, like that of many other female scientists, has been largely forgotten by history. Nonetheless, Yalow herself would object to any implied feminist slant here: were she reading this article, I suspect she would point out that Solomon Berson ..read more

By Helen Collins Friday 11th February 2022 celebrates the 8th International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Established in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly, the day aims to promote gender equality in access and participation in science, as part of the internationally agreed 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Currently, only a third of the global science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce is female, and women are often underrepresented in STEM subjects at university, including in the UK [1]. Additionally, in many countries around the world girls lack a ..read more

By Milda Folkmanaite The changes in public perception of mental health topics have been very clear in recent years where once a never-to-be-discussed topic has now become widely reported, discussed and recognised. The number of widely shared and heard discussions about anxiety and depression has been further increased by the coronavirus pandemic. This change can be witnessed everywhere starting from the individual level, where people are becoming more vocal sharing their personal mental health stories, to community and societal level where universities, workplaces and the government are implem ..read more

 Title image by Lizzie Daly By Sea Yun Pius Joung As one enters the quadrangle of our beloved Bodleian, one can’t help but notice the grandeur of it all—the ancient windows; the scent of old books; the archways leading into mysterious rooms such as the schola moralis philosophiae, the schola astronomiae et rhetoricae, or the schola musicae—and at the centre of it all, the grand archway leading into the Divinity Schools. The architecture of the Bodleian itself speaks of the fundamental understanding of the medieval worldview—that Theology is the regina scientiarum (queen of the scienc ..read more

Jin-Gyu Chang Think back to what you learnt in school about the history of racism, and you will find that it’s a very simplified and discontinuous narrative that goes something like this: slavery and empire (which is quite often portrayed as a good thing, or at least a necessary evil), the Nazis and WII and then finally the Civil Rights movement in the US which ended racism everywhere forever. Whilst there are a growing number of people that are critical of this narrative, the same criticism has not been levelled against the history of science.   Science was used as a tool of the West to ..read more

100 years ago, the Representation of the People Act 1918 allowed some women over 30 to vote in the UK. To celebrate this, Oxford University Museum of Natural History’s current exhibition, Women In Science, explores the life and work of 14 female scientists. From Marie Curie to Barbara McClintock, these women are among the most influential in their fields. Here, Madeleine O’Connor explores Mary Anning, and how she contributed to the scientific understanding reflected throughout the museum. Palaeontology is the field of science dedicated to unravelling the mysteries of ancient life, most often t ..read more

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but their concrete can withstand the ages: around 2 millennia to be precise. There are many intriguing stories of ancient materials with fascinating properties but long-forgotten methods of production, like Damascus steel, the supposed chromium plated blades of the terracotta army, and Roman concrete. However, more light has been shed onto Roman concrete recently, a material used for breakwaters and harbours by the Romans. Unlike modern-day concretes, when fully or partially immersed in seawater, Roman concrete’s mechanical properties improve with time, with a ..read more