The Sky Is for Everyone: Women Astronomers in Their Own Words

Astronomy professors Trimble (Visit to a Small Universe) and Weintraub (Life on Mars) bring together essays by women who reached for the stars in this uplifting anthology. In “Inspired by a Maths Dress,” Carole Mundell, the first woman chief scientific adviser in the U.K.’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, describes how careers for women were once considered “mere stop gaps until marriage” and argues that “we must... be inclusive across and beyond gender and race, and create much-needed diverse pathways into science and science-related careers.” France Anne Córdova reflects in “The Learn’d Astronomer Discovers the Policy World” on how there was “nothing in [her] early background that illuminated a path to the stars—no scientists, no teachers who believed that women could become scientists,” and Shazrene S. Mohamed describes in the title essay becoming the first person in her family to go to university and leave Zimbabwe: “I climbed aboard a plane for the first time, drenched in tears, not knowing when I would see my family again.” The collection’s greatest strength is in the diversity of experiences it has to offer. Filled with moving testimonies and awe-inspiring discoveries, this is a wonderful tribute to the joys of science and the tough road many women had on the way to forging their careers. Photos. (June)