by Hope Jahren
Philosophy
By the 5th century BCE ancient Greek civilization was flourishing, and contrary to modern impressions, women were prominent participants in philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. Take the philosopher Aspasia of Miletus, a quasi-contemporary of Theano. Her teachings are suggested to have influenced Socrates, and as a hetaera (a high-class courtesan) she advocated for Greek women in society. Although she is mostly remembered today as being Pericles’s lover and partner, few recall that it was she who authored his famous funeral oration. (Scholars have remarked on how structurally and thematically similar it is to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.)
Since hetaerae were meant to be well educated, in order to provide not only sexual companionship but also intellectual stimulation, Aspasia’s authorship of one of antiquity’s most cherished speeches shouldn’t, frankly, be that surprising.
There must have been far more women contributors to the architecture of science and civilization than we know of today. The ravages of time—and humanity—have unfortunately left us with mere scraps of their biographies and treatises, or references to ones lost. If I had a time machine, I’d volunteer in an instant to secure women’s vanished intellectual achievements—and I’d bet that the world would be a vastly different place if these ancient women got their due.
Contributors’ Notes
Becca Cudmore is a science journalist from Oregon. She holds an MA from NYU and her work has appeared in Audubon, The Scientist, Scientific American, and elsewhere. She will be a Peace Corps volunteer from 2017 to 2019.
Sally Davies is a writer, essayist, and senior editor at Aeon magazine. Previously she was the technology and innovation correspondent at the Financial Times in London and an associate editor at Nautilus magazine in New York. She’s currently preoccupied with feminist philosophy, theories of consciousness, and speculative fiction, and lives on Regent’s Canal in East London with her partner and their cat.
Robert Draper is a contributing writer for National Geographic and a writer at large for The New York Times Magazine. He is the author of several books, including the New York Times bestseller Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush. He lives in Washington, D.C.
David Epstein is a freelance science writer and investigative reporter and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Sports Gene, which was chosen by the Washington Post as one of the best books of 2013. He was previously an investigative reporter for ProPublica, where he worked with editor Tracy Weber on the story in this anthology. Prior to that he was a senior writer at Sports Illustrated. He has a master’s degree in environmental science.
Sarah Everts is a science journalist who was born in Montreal but is now based in Berlin. She writes regularly about chemistry, art conservation, and the history of science as a European correspondent for Chemical & Engineering News, and she freelances on occasion for Scientific American, Smithsonian, Distillations, and New Scientist magazines. Sarah is currently working on a book on the science, history, and culture of sweat.
Ann Finkbeiner is a freelance science writer living in Baltimore who writes mostly about astronomy and cosmology. She’s written three books and coauthored a fourth, all on wildly different subjects. She’s coproprietor of a splendid group science blog (splendid group, splendid blog) called The Last Word on Nothing: www.lastwordonnothing.com.
Azeen Ghorayshi is a science reporter at BuzzFeed News, where she reports at the intersection of science and culture. She has previously written for the Guardian, Newsweek, New Scientist, Wired UK, and other publications. She has won the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award and the Clark/Payne Award for Young Science Journalists and was a finalist in the Livingston Award’s national reporting category for her reporting on sexual harassment in science.
Chris Jones wrote for many years at Esquire, where he won two National Magazine Awards for his feature writing and wrote often about space. “The Woman Who Might Find Us Another Earth” was his first piece for The New York Times Magazine and is his first appearance in The Best American Science and Nature Writing.
Kathryn Joyce is a journalist and the author of The Child Catchers and Quiverfull. Her work has appeared in Highline, Pacific Standard, the New Republic, Mother Jones, and many other publications.
Tom Kizzia was a longtime reporter for the now-departed Anchorage Daily News. He is the author of Pilgrim’s Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier, a New York Times bestseller and Amazon top-ten book of the year. His first book, The Wake of the Unseen Object, explored the changing ways of rural Alaska Native culture in the modern world. He lives in Homer, Alaska.
Elizabeth Kolbert is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of The Sixth Extinction, which won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. She is also the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change, which grew out of a three-part series titled “The Climate of Man.” Kolbert is a two-time National Magazine Award winner and has received a Heinz Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and the Rose-Walters Prize. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Maria Konnikova is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, The Confidence Game, winner of the 2016 Robert P. Balles Prize in Critical Thinking, and Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, an Anthony and Agatha Award finalist. She is a contributing writer for The New Yorker and is currently working on a book about poker and the balance of skill and luck in life, to be published in 2019. Maria is also the host of the podcast The Grift from Panoply Media, a show that explores con artists and the lives they ruin. She graduated from Harvard University and received her PhD in psychology from Columbia University.
Adrian Glick Kudler grew up in New England but has lived in Los Angeles for a pretty long time. She is the West Coast features editor for Curbed.
Jon Mooallem is writer at large at The New York Times Magazine and a contributor to This American Life. He is the author of American Hippopotamus and Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America.
Omar Mouallem is a Canadian National Magazine Award–winning writer whose stories have appeared in NewYorker.com, Wired, and The Guardian. He coauthored a book about the 2016 Alberta wildfires, titled Inside the Inferno: A Firefighter’s Story of the Brotherhood That Saved Fort McMurray. He lives in Edmonton, Alberta, and tweets at @omar_aok.
Michelle Nijhuis writes for National Geographic and The Atlantic, blogs for The New Yorker, and is a longtime contributing editor of High Country News. She is the coeditor of The Science Writers’ Handbook and the author of The Science Writers’ Essay Handbook, and her reporting on conservation and global change has won several national awards. After 15 years off the electrical grid in rural Colorado, she and her family now live in White Salmon, Washington.
Tom Philpott is the food and agriculture correspondent for Mother Jones.
Michael Regnier is a science writer and editor at the Wellcome Trust. He has a degree in natural sciences and a master’s in science communication, which included a brief stint in Geneva helping to develop public exhibitions at CERN. Before writing about science for a living, he wrote plays, the best of which was Time Out’s Critic’s Choice when it was performed in London in 2002. He still enjoys theater and spent the opening weekend of the 2016 Edinburgh Festival writing “diagnoses” of shows relating to health for a Wellcome-funded project called “The Sick of the Fringe.” Michael lives in London with his wife, two daughters, and one cat.
Nathaniel Rich is a writer at large for The New York Times Magazine and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and The Atlantic. He is the author of three novels: The Mayor’s Tongue, Odds Against Tomorrow, and King Zeno (2018).
Sonia Smith is an associate editor at Texas Monthly. She has also written for Slate, the New York Times, Roads & Kingdoms, and the Kyiv Post. She lives in Dallas with her husband and two dogs.
Christopher Solomon (www.chrissolomon.net) has written for public
ations ranging from The New York Times Sunday Magazine to Scientific American to Food & Wine. He is a contributing editor at Outside and Runner’s World. His stories have appeared in The Best American Sports Writing and twice in The Best American Travel Writing. He lives in Seattle.
Emily Temple-Wood is a current student and future doctor. She is a Wikipedia editor, working to correct systemic bias against women through WikiProject Women Scientists. Emily lives in the suburbs of Chicago and owns far too many books.
Kim Tingley is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. She has been recognized with a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and a fellowship from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. She holds an MFA from Columbia University.
Nicola Twilley is a cohost of the award-winning Gastropod podcast, author of the blog Edible Geography, and a contributing writer at The New Yorker. She is deeply obsessed with refrigeration and is currently writing a book on the topic. She is also coauthoring a book about the past, present, and future of quarantine with Geoff Manaugh. In her spare time she makes smog meringues as part of an ongoing exploration of the taste of “aeroir” with the Center for Genomic Gastronomy. “The Billion-Year Wave” was edited by Anthony Lydgate.
Other Notable Science and Nature Writing of 2016
Selected by Tim Folger
JON LEE ANDERSON
An Isolated Tribe Emerges from the Rain Forest. The New Yorker, August 8 and 15
CHRISTIE ASCHWANDEN
Failure Is Moving Science Forward. Five Thirty Eight, March 24
FRED BAHNSON
The Priest in the Trees. Harper’s Magazine, December
MICHAEL BALTER
The Sexual Misconduct Case That Has Rocked Anthropology. Science, February 9
MARCIA BARTUSIAK
Einstein’s Symphony. Natural History, April
ERIC BENSON
The Iconoclast. Texas Monthly, November
DAVID BIELLO
The Carbon Capture Fallacy. Scientific American, January
GEORGE BLACK
Purifying the Goddess. The New Yorker, July 25
ERIC BOODMAN
Hog Jowls and Clementines: A Bid to Awaken Cancer Patients’ Ruined Sense of Taste. Stat, December 30
MIKE BRODIE
A Deeper Bloom. Orion, September/October
EMMA BRYCE
A Drive to Save Saharan Oases as Climate Change Takes a Toll. Environment 360, December 12
MACIEJ CEGLOWSKI
Shuffleboard at McMurdo. Idle Words, May 15
BRYAN CHRISTY
Inside the Deadly Rhino Horn Trade. National Geographic, October
WARREN CORNWALL
A Plague of Rats. Science, May 20
ANDREW CURRY
Slaughter at the Bridge. Science, March 25
JOSH DZIEZA
Sand’s End. The Verge, November 17
MICHAEL ENGELHARD
Least Force Necessary. NatureWriting.com, September 20
ATUL GAWANDE
The Mistrust of Science. The New Yorker, June 10
ANNE GOLDMAN
The Kingdom of the Medusae. Southwest Review, Spring
VERONIQUE GREENWOOD
How Science Is Putting a New Face on Crime Solving. National Geographic, July
Physicists at the Gate: Collaboration and Tribalism in Science. Undark, March 28
LIZA GROSS
Seeding Doubt. The Intercept, November 15
BERND HEINRICH
Conversing with a Sapsucker. Natural History, November
Synchronicity. Natural History, September
HAL HERRING
The Darkness at the Heart of Malheur. High Country News, March 21
ANDREW HOLLAND
Preventing Tomorrow’s Climate Wars. Scientific American, June
EVA HOLLAND
Cruising Through the End of the World. Pacific Standard, May 2
MATTHEW HUTSON
Trivers’ Pursuit. Psychology Today, January/February
FERRIS JABR
How Emily Dickinson Grew Her Genius in Her Family’s Backyard. Slate, May 17
BROOKE JARVIS
When I Die. Harper’s Magazine, January
LESLIE KAUFMAN
Sandy’s Lessons Lost. Inside Climate News, October 26
SAM KEAN
The Audacious Plan to Save This Man’s Life . . . The Atlantic, September
CHRISTOPHER KETCHAM
The Rogue Agency. Harper’s Magazine, March
LAURA KOLBE
Once Bitten. VQR, Summer
CAROLYN KORMANN
Land of Sod. Harper’s Magazine, September
RICHARD M. LANGE
Of Human Carnage. Catamaran, Winter
ALAN LIGHTMAN
What Came Before the Big Bang? Harper’s Magazine, January
BARBARA K. LIPSKA
The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind. The New York Times, March 12
JONATHAN B. LOSOS
The Routes Not Taken. Natural History, February
ROBERT MACFARLANE
The Secrets of the Wood Wide Web. The New Yorker, August 7
JAMES MCWILLIAMS
Citizen Canine, Comrade Cow. VQR, Summer
MELINDA WENNER MOYER
The Looming Threat of Factory-Farm Superbugs. Scientific American, December
JILL NEIMARK
Sex Is a Coping Mechanism. Nautilus, March 24
JAMES NESTOR
A Conversation with Whales. The New York Times, April 16
JUSTIN NOBEL
Everything Spirals Back Around. VQR, Spring
AMY NORDRUM
What Happens When Scientists Fall Sick with the Very Disease They Study? Newsweek, January 3
ALISA OPAR
Land of the Lost Birds. Audubon, Summer
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
The Great Unknown. Scientific American, September
HILLARY ROSNER
All Too Human. Scientific American, September
ELIZABETH ROYTE
Vultures Are Revolting: Here’s Why We Need to Save Them. National Geographic, January
CHARLES SEIFE
How to Spin the Science News. Scientific American, October
CHARLES SIEBERT
What a Parrot Knows About PTSD. The New York Times Magazine, January 28
MATTHEW SHAER
A Reasonable Doubt. The Atlantic, June
JULIA SHIPLEY
The Giving Tree. Orion, Winter
DOUGLAS STARR
The Carbon Accountant. Science, August 26
CHRIS SWEENEY
Behind the Scenes with the World’s Top Feather Detective. Audubon, Winter
PEG TYRE
The Math Revolution. The Atlantic, March
ERIK VANCE
Why Great Sharks Are Still a Mystery to Us. National Geographic, July
MOISES VELASQUEZ-MANOFF
When the Body Attacks the Mind. The Atlantic, July/August
LIZZIE WADE
Clues from the Ashes. Science, March 11
JESSICA WAPNER
Austin, Indiana: The HIV Capital of Small-Town America. Mosaic, May 3
CHRISTIE WILCOX
Zombie Neuroscience. Scientific American, August
KATE WONG
Mystery Human. Scientific American, March
SEEMA YASMIN
Ebola’s Second Coming. Scientific American, July
ED YONG
Most of the Tree of Life Is a Complete Mystery. The Atlantic, April
ISAAC YUEN
Me and Gravity. Orion, September/October
LINA ZELDOVICH
The Vertical Farm That Lifted a Family. Popular Mechanics, June
JOCELYN C. ZUCKERMAN
As the Global Demand for Palm Oil Surges, Indonesia’s Rainforests Are Being Destroyed. Audubon, Fall
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About the Editors
HO
PE JAHREN, guest editor, is an award-winning scientist and author. She is the recipient of three Fulbright Awards and is one of four scientists, and the only woman, to have been awarded both of the Young Investigator Medals given within the Earth Sciences. In 2016, Knopf published her memoir Lab Girl, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. She currently holds the J. Tuzo Wilson professorship at the University of Oslo, Norway.
TIM FOLGER, series editor, is a contributing editor at Discover and writes about science for several magazines. He lives in Gallup, New Mexico.
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