Frances Arnold wins the Millennium Technology Prize, Katherine Johnson’s Story is Told on the Big Screen

Two big wins for women in science this week: Frances Arnold, a Caltech biochemical engineer, became the very first woman to win the prestigious Millennium Technology Prize. And the New York Times told us about an upcoming movie based on the lives of the women that pioneered NASA’s space program. Whoa, what a week!

Arnold won the award for her work in directed evolution of proteins – she basically created the field of study. She thinks a lot about how we can replace toxic chemicals in manufacturing processes with enzymes to help protect the environment. And, as a side note, she was the first woman to be elected to all three branches of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Needless to say, she’s a force to be reckoned with.

In other exciting news, a recent New York Time’s article featured the forth-coming film “Hidden Figures”, staring Taraji P. Henson and Octavia Spencer. The movie recounts the story of African-American women like Katherine Johnson, who were the backbone of NASA’s space program in the 60s.

The film is based off the book “Hidden Figures” by Margot Lee Shetterly, which will be published in the fall. The author grew up knowing Katherine Johnson, but had no idea of Johnson’s impact on NASA’s operations.

“‘I thought, Oh my God, what is this we’re hearing here?’ Ms. Shetterly said, recalling the moment a few years back when her father, a retired research scientist, casually mentioned Ms. Johnson’s life work. Her next thought: why haven’t we heard about it before?” – New York Times

I couldn’t agree more, Ms. Shetterly. And I’m so grateful that the women of NASA will finally have their story told on the big screen. May their stories inspire people, young girls especially, around the world for generations to come.

Eugenie Clark: The Fearless “Shark Lady”

To get an idea of who marine biologist Eugenie Clark was, you need to know the following: she continued to deep-sea dive into her nineties, even after being diagnosed with non-smoking-related lung cancer. She once rode a 50-foot whale fish, the largest fish in the sea, and called it one of her most exciting journeys. And she once taught the former Crown Prince Akihito of Japan how to snorkel.

Clark was an adventurer who met every challenge that faced her.

Clark was born in New York City in 1922 to an American father and a Japanese mother. Her father died when she was just 2 years old and her mother remarried a Japanese restaurant owner.

Beyond her ocean-centered Japanese culture, Clark’s career in zoology was largely influenced by her experiences at the New York Aquarium. She would watch the large fish and imagine herself swimming alongside them – a dream that would become a reality later in her life. Her childhood home housed a 15-gallon tank with fish, toads, snakes and even a small alligator.

She was destined for the water. She learned to swim when she was two. Photographer David Doubilet who traveled with her for the articles she wrote for National Geographic once said, “Even when I was a younger man and she was older, I couldn’t keep up with her. She moved with a kind of liquid speed underwater.”

She was an oceanographer and an ichthyologist (one who studies fish), with a degree in zoology. She was a prominent marine biologist who spent her career using deep-sea diving as a tool for scientific research, a technique that was not widely used at the time. She discovered new fish species and spent a lot of her time fighting for coastal environmental protection. But what she is largely remembered for is embodied by her famous nickname: the Shark Lady.

She discovered that an excretion from a flatfish in the Red Sea worked as an effective shark repellent, the first of its kind. She also dispelled the widely held belief that sharks have to keep moving to breathe when she came upon “sleeping sharks” in undersea caverns along Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

She fought hard to change the public’s perception of sharks. She appeared in many television series, wrote three books, 80 scientific treatises, and lectured at countless universities in America and abroad. She once commented in a 1982 PBS documentary called “The Sharks” that people have more to fear from car accidents than they do from sharks.

“When you see a shark underwater you should say, ‘How lucky I am to see this beautiful animal in his environment.” – Eugenie Clark

She embraced the unknown challenges that the deep sea presents. Her book details encounters with 500-pound clams, giant squid, and man-eating barracudas. But she always pushed forward.

In the 1950s, she took a job as a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California. She was told that as a woman, she would not be allowed to go on overnight trips or even to the Galapagos with her fellow male researchers.

Once, a scientist at Columbia University told her, “If you do finish (your postdoctoral studies), you will probably get married, have a bunch of kids, and never do anything in science after we have invested our time and money in you.”

Boy, was he wrong.

Eugenie Clark died at the age of 92, in February of 2015 after an illustrious career as a legendary figure in marine biology and as the revered “Shark Lady”.