Headstrong by Rachel Swaby
Hi, I am Sarah. I am fourteen years old and an avid reader; it is one of my favorite things to do. Inspired by authors’ creations of magnificent places and surprising havens built by simple letters, I aspire to be an author and, meanwhile, nurture the love to write.
When you think of the word genius, who do you think of? Undoubtedly Albert Einstein comes to mind. If you think of genius scientist, maybe it’s Thomas Edison or Charles Darwin.
What do these popular geniuses have in common? They were men with the privilege of education, unharmed by societal norms that told them that they were incapable of learning. And because of this, it is these figures that hold the spotlight in the STEM field and our collective view of history.
Headstrong begins to change that.
This is a book about scientists who made major contributions to their field and entirely changed the world yet were buried under prejudice and patriarchal ideas of who is a scientist and who isn’t over something as simple as gender. As Hertha Ayrton, inventor, and physicist, put it, “Either a woman is a good scientist or not; in any case she should be given opportunities and her work should be studied from the scientific, not the sex, point of view.”
In Headstrong, Rachel Swaby celebrates the groundbreaking accomplishments of women in science, to even out the playing field and provide role models for girls aspiring to STEM fields. Now the next time you think about the word ITALIC genius, you’ll think about Jane Wright, the “mother” of chemotherapy, Mary Anning, a groundbreaking paleontologist, or Maria Agnesi, the unifier of algebra, geometry, and calculus. Undoubtedly, you will be inspired by all these women who beat the odds and impacted our world. I know I was.
