They Remembered the Lost Women of the Manhattan Project So That We Wouldn't Forget

Lost Women of Science

In the early 1990s, two physicists, Ruth Howes and Caroline Herzenberg, began looking into a question that had aroused their curiosity: Just who were the female scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project?

Nearly ten years and hundreds of interviews later, they documented hundreds of women across a broad spectrum of scientific fields — physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics — who played crucial roles in the top-secret race to build a nuclear weapon that would end World War II.

Since the film Oppenheimer came out earlier this summer, Their Day in the Sun: Women of the Manhattan Project has enjoyed a revival of sorts as new attention is paid to the women for whom recognition is long overdue.