Ada Lovelace Day! Kiss a girl scientist!

So maybe you’ve heard about this, all around the world today folks are getting together to write about women in science who’ve done profound things to change the world from a tech point of view.  Hats off and kudos girlfriends, first round is on us!

Here’s the general idea…

Recent research by psychologist Penelope Lockwood discovered that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones. That’s a relatively simple problem to begin to address. If women need female role models, let’s come together to highlight the women in technology that we look up to.

and folks behind the movement took up a pledge drive looking for 2,000 blog posts about women in the sciences… if you’d like to check out other posts (of depth and grammatically sound!) check out www.findingaida.com .  All of this makes sense to me and I think that men and women could benefit from a healthy dose of perspective.  There were a lot of great folks to choose from and I thought originally about posting on Sally Ride, who influenced me a lot as a young woman, but then it hit home…

Our first role models are our parents, my mom got her degree in microbiology and went on to run a company which serviced water filtration systems utilizing reverse osmosis technology.  Our dinner conversations usually centered around the family business, which didn’t completely enthuse me, but I had a great respect for.  When I was very little 3 or four, my mom was a lab tech at a medical office, when I was sick she took my throat culture and she would bring me home petri dishes to grow things in and empty tubes to play with.  Strange things sat on the tops of desks and shoved in the back of drawers, having a real working microscope to play with wasn’t a “planned activity” but just something which was available.

That’s what resonates with me- my parents left stuff about, paint brushes, typewriters, books and calculators, they made time for my questions.  Growing up there was never a question of what I could or couldn’t do, had sciences been my passion, I would have been indulged completely.  I remember my mom coming in to judge the 6th grade science fair at my school, even though I didn’t enter.  I was so happy to see her that day, she talked to my friends and really took their work to heart.  It was important for me to see that she valued these things in my peers even if they weren’t things which I took a personal interest in, she was raising not just a child but a community.

She was here last week and playing with the beloved grandchildren who have a dinner place-mat of the periodic table of elements,  “Grandma what’s lithium plus chloride?”…” it’s a battery sweetie, now eat your peas..” and it all sounded so familiar and so perfect, my first science teacher giving another lesson, as for keeping her lunch in the cadaver drawer in the morgue, that’s another story for another time…