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The Women of Space Science

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GabrielleRab edited this page Feb 5, 2019 · 7 revisions

Tell the Story of a Prominent Female Scientist, Explorer, or Researcher in Earth and Planetary Sciences or Astronomy

Help us tell the world about the prominent female scientists who have studied physical science, planetary science and astronomy at the museum by creating compelling interactive narratives and visualizations of stories, imagery, and data from AMNH.

This is an open-ended challenge. Your project can come in the form of a visualization, an infographic, or some other type of interactive media on a web page or even a mobile app.

Background

Please note: this challenge is exclusively for high school and Brown Scholars teams. Each team will pick one female scientist to work on.

Museums contain incredible collections of cultural and natural heritage, and the American Museum of Natural History is a prime example; however AMNH has also been an active research and education institution throughout its nearly 150 year history. The museum has collected over 200,000 samples related to Earth and Planetary Sciences and hosted the development of theories, techniques, and investigations into the nature of our planet and the other objects in our solar system.

But who are the scientists, explorers, and researchers doing the collecting and investigating? This challenge is all about the women who chart the frontiers of planetary and astronomical science, and understanding their roles and contributions at the museum.

In collaboration with the AMNH Research Library, the aim of this challenge is to explore the scientific significance of female scientists' work, both in the past and today, and also to place their work in social and political contexts and examine the difficulties of working in the sciences as a member of an underrepresented group. We hope that an extensive biographical exploration will highlight aspects of the female scientists' passion for the subjects they study, as well as revealing supporting and/or opposing influences on their work.

Below is a list, which is by no means exhaustive, of the more prominent women in earth and planetary sciences and astronomy who have an association with AMNH.

* Marian Lockwood        * Dorothy Bennett         * Catherine E. Barry     
* Nathalie Goodkin       * Ruth Angus              * Jacqueline Faherty

Solutions

The AMNH Research Library, its online resources, its new Metasearch tool and its API Portal will be invaluable for this challenge as you dive into the past. You will be able to integrate the new REST API provided by the Library to display all catalogued information related to these female scientists. Critical to note: it is very important to provide proper citations from primary sources that are verified, like the Research Library (not Wikipedia or other online media outlets). An orientation session will be scheduled with all high school teams on Saturday afternoon of the Hackathon to explain in detail.

Ultimately we would like to understand more of the historical or contemporary info about these prominent museum female scientists, and create metadata for the scientific discoveries they have made, what exhibitions or facilities they have helped develop, and how their work has contributed to major milestones in their field. We would like it if their research could somehow be highlighted; this could be: listing the investigations that they conducted, showing the number of and links to the publications they produced, or something else notable, like the development of programming for the Hayden Planetarium.

Assistant Curator Marian Lockwood with group of children in the Copernican Planetarium, Hayden Planetarium, 1940

Try to think about these topics while you explore the context of the lives of these female scientists and researchers. You can start with the questions below, and by downloading and using the biographical template document in the challenge repository:

  • AMNH expeditions - Can you gather a historical overview of your chosen scientist's explorations or investigations - where did her specimens come from and are they now on display? What were the goals of her expedition(s)?
  • AMNH exhibitions - Is the work of your chosen scientist part of an earlier exhibition, are her specimens still being displayed?
  • AMNH research - Can we understand how particular investigations conducted by a your chosen scientist contributed to science by finding reference to them in subsequent scientific papers?

Some possible solutions might be:

  • An interactive app, visualization, or series of infographics that depicts your chosen scientist, data about her investigations, and her impact on the museum. What's the best way to present this data about her career?

  • Develop a microsite which tells the story of the life and career of your chosen scientist. What can we learn about her and why she was/is interested in the particular topics she studied/studies? What would others find interesting about the type of research she pursued?

  • Anything else you can think of!

PLEASE NOTE: Each team will have access to a virtual server at the Hackathon where they can host their projects. Details about how to connect to those servers will be provided to teachers at their orientation! We expect that team members will be bringing their own laptops.

Resources

SNAC, International cooperative for entities

SNAC is also a database for entities using EAC-CPF. It has been called the "Facebook for dead people" because of the relational networks it creates between people. The current beta prototype includes hundreds of thousands of records, mostly derived from catalog and finding aid (archives) descriptions. Because there is no automated way to pull records, this site may not be helpful to incorporate programmatically into your challenge, but you could potentially search it to learn about your scientist's relationships to other people, and the Museum could ultimately contribute information about the women scientists from your work into their database.

Challenge owner: Gabrielle Rabinowitz

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