Women Discoverers: Top Women in Science

by Christelle Pécout, Christelle Pécout (Illustrator)

From Ada Lovelace (computing) to Marie Curie (Physics and Chemistry), these exceptional women enabled the world to advance in all fields of science including space exploration (Mae Jamison), telecommunications (the actress also genius discoverer Hedy Lamarr), and Biology (Rosalind Franklin). An inspiration going counter to preconceived notions about women and science, presenting a diverse group from around the world.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Nonfiction, History, Science, Biography, Comics, Feminism

96 pages, Hardcover

First published June 14, 2019

Reviews

[Przemysław Skoczyński · Rating 1 out of 5]

W przedmowie do "Odkrywczyń" napisano, że są "dziełem wybitnym zarówno jeśli chodzi o scenariusz, jak i ilustracje". To ja tylko dodam, że naprawdę dawno nie czytałem tak niedzisiejszego komiksu i tak nieatrakcyjnego dla młodzieży, do której pewnie miał trafić. Te skrótowe historie streszczające biografie znanych naukowczyń nie mają w sobie krzty polotu. Wszystko jest strasznie formalne, bohaterowie wygłaszają swoje kwestie jakby byli beznamiętnymi automatami, a rysunki bardzo mocno trącą myszką. Czyta się to jak jakiś komiks edukacyjny z minionej epoki.

[Oneirosophos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very VERY poor execution. 5 extremely short biographies interrupted by other discovereres who were unlucky enough to have only their bio and not a short comic.

Not recommended. Another NBM comic biography disappointment...

[TheLifeTheFife · Rating 2 out of 5]

So Much Promise…So Little Execution

As someone who was taught very little about women in STEM growing up, I was so excited to read this book, however it fell flat for me for two reasons. The first is quite simple: out of the five featured scientists, only one is a woman of color, and very few of the notable mentions are either. For a book that is specifically designed to showcase one minority in STEM (women), how could they so easily forget about others?

The second reason I couldn’t quite connect with this book centers on the way it was written and illustrated. Both the words and the images in this book didn’t seem to be all that concerned about telling any stories, only on relaying facts to the reader. Because of this, you get very little feel for who these women actually were outside of their research, which makes it hard to connect and empathize with them. If we want our girls to look up to these amazing women as role models, we need to show them as full human beings, not just single-minded researchers.

[Kristjan Wager · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good introduction to some significant women in science. Don't expect independent biographies but rather a quick overview of who they are.

[Claire Saim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Il fallait n’en choisir que 20... Quand on sait combien l’apport des femmes à la science a été précieux, voilà qui n’a pas dû être facile à déterminer. Si certains noms s’imposaient comme une évidence (Sophie Germain, Marie Curie, Irène Juliot-Curie...) d’autres sont véritablement moins connues du grand public et pour la plupart, c’est qu’on les a privées du succès de leurs découvertes.

On pense tout particulièrement à Rosalind Franklin, pionnière de la biologie moléculaire et de la recherche sur l’ADN, ou encore Hedy Lamarr, actrice mais surtout inventrice de talent dans le domaine des méthodes de transmission. Des destins extraordinaires et sublimes aussi, à l’image de l’afro-américaine Mae Jamison, astronaute, née pauvre dans une petite ville de l’Alabama...

Certaines figures font l’objet d’un long développement, et la partie qui concerne leurs découvertes est relatée en bande-dessinée, d’autres sont juste mentionnées dans une page biographique assez détaillée, et toujours illustrée par un magnifique portrait.

Un livre très inspirant, qui appelle forcément un tome 2 !

[Israa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you Edelweiss for an advanced copy. Unfortunately, in the Kindle version I received, the words were not laid out in the speech bubbles, so it was difficult for me to follow along. I appreciate the authors featuring diverse women, but I didn't feel the focus was on their extraordinary achievements. There was a lot of focus on their relationships, which took away from the women's strengths. I would love to see a hardcopy, but this wouldn't be a reference book for schools.

[Marilyn]

(Use French keyboard and re-do with accents)

"The bells never sound the end of discovery." ~ Colette

"While countless women throughout history have made enormous contributions to the fields of science and technology, many of them, unfortunately, are not synonymous with the words "discovery" and "invention" in the minds of the general public." 3

TOC:
Marie Curie (Poland/France - Physics/Chemistry
Francoise Barre-Sinoussi (France-Biology)
Donna Theo Strickland (Canada- Physics)
Dorothy Vaughan (USA-Math/Computing)
Ada Lovelace (UK-Math/Computing)
Emilie du Chatelet (France-Math)
Emmy Noether (German-Math)
Grace Alele-Williams (Niger-Math)
Hedy Lamarr (Hungary/USA-Engineering)
Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson (USA-Math)
Marthe Gautier (France-Pediatrics)
Maryam Mirzakhani (Iran/USA-Math)
Rosalind Franklin (UK-Physics/Biology)
Sophie Germain (France -Math/Physics
Irene Joliot-Curie (France- Physics/Chemistry)
Jocelyn Bell Burnell (UK-Astrophysics)
Mae Jemison (USA-Medicine/Space Exploration)
Stephanie Kwolek (USA-Chemistry)
Grace Murray Hopper (USA-Computing)
Xie Yi (China-Chemistry)

[Cale · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's lots of good information here, giving some insights into untold stories of Women in Science. But at some point you have to ask, why is it being told in a graphic novel format? None of the stories really do much to justify the medium, instead providing some pretty average comics. I will say that they do manage to present a lot of information in their compressed forms (and plenty of the women are highlighted in single page summaries rather than in graphic novel format), and I definitely learned new things about people I was either not at all familiar with, or only loosely recognized. Some of the biographies felt a little... I hate to say unjustified, but some of the women highlighted didn't seem to have done anything super memorable, making me wonder why they were selected over some other women with more illustrious successes.
Still, if you're interested in learning more about women in Science (and how often their work wasn't appropriately credited to them), this is a good resource.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Over promises and under-delivers. There are a lot of really interesting women included, but only a handful of very well known ones featured. I think we could have skipped re-doing Ada Lovelace again. I would have really liked this book to focus more on expressing the stories of the women between the comics sections --who primarily only got snippet (2 paragraphs) biographies. There is so much potential to explore those lesser known scientists and mathematicians. It feels like there were a list of names and they just didn't finish the comics in time to make all of them.

Also, quite a few of the featured women were technically mathematicians --I know "STEM" but this book would have been so much better as a more focused series on Mathematicians, Chemists, Engineers, etc. Certainly doable since they had so many mini biographies crammed in there.

I'll say for non-math folks, some of the mini biography women might be new to them and open a door to explore their works and understand them better, which is really nice; but this book could have been that door with more work put into it.

[Cress · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was excited to read this book because students don't learn about many women in stem. Mostly it's just dead white men, and, yes, they are important, but these women are also significant and have many accomplishments and discoveries. As a girl who would like to go into a STEM field in the future, I was looking forward to learning more about these women. Instead of learning about the person's lives and how they got to the point of success, the book simply relayed the facts. Five discoverers had stories told about them in a graphic novel format which was interesting, but it felt like it was focusing more on their relationships and not them. The other scientist's descriptions were just facts and the year they were born. Overall, this was interesting but I was expecting a lot more.

[MK · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read a few of these types of books now, I am now very familiar with the stories of the 5 women who get full biographies in this book: Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace, Hedy Lamarr, Rosalind Franklin, and Mae Jemison. However, the art work is lovely and the story is so detailed that I still learned a few things I didn't know. What really makes the book shine is the pages in-between these stories which highlight other prominent women, many I have never heard of. Was happy to see Donna Strickland included. Each of these women get a page that sums up their background and achievements, along with a profile illustration and an illustration of them at work.

If I wanted to introduce people to women in science, I'd start here.

[Laurie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading about the various scientists, and the sections that provided longer and more in depth stories were fascinating. It made me want to read a biography of one of the women such as Marie Curie or Rosalind Franklin. Those longer biographies gave enough information that I was disappointed not to read more about all the rest who only merited a single page. Even the one page wasn't a full page but only 3-4 extremely brief paragraphs. I realize this book is basically a children's book and not meant to be a comprehensive study of women scientists, but at 98 pages it is simply too brief.

[Hanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this book! It gave a lot of additional information about famous women scientists (like Ada Lovelace and Marie Curie) and also introduced me to famous, more contemporary women scientists that I had never heard of before (like Sophie Germain). The illustrations were beautiful. One unique thing was that some of the more famous scientists got multiple pages, and the lesser-known scientists got just one page (with text only and no illustrations). Th is book was translated from French (it seems like a lot of graphic novels are translated)…so it had a heavy emphasis on French women scientists.

[Timothy Grubbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Biographies of important female scientists across two centuries…

Women Discoverers: Top Women in Science by Christelle Pecout and Marie Moinard is a graphic novel covering several notable women.

Sizable comic stories cover Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace, Mae Jemison, Hedy Lamarr, and Rosalind Franklin. I was familiar with most of the material aside from the story covering Franklin.

Additional mini-biographies cover over a dozen other major figures.

Worth checking out if you aren’t familiar with the big five or want to learn about others that might not be on your radar…

[kaitlphere · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an anthology highlighting the contributions of 20 women in science and math. 5 women have quick biographies of the lives and careers presented as comics in the books. The rest of the women get one-page overviews of their contributions with one comic panel.

I enjoyed reading about this many women, but it didn't feel right to only give many of them one page of mostly prose content. I feel like giving the other women even a 2- or 4-page comic would have added a lot of value to this book as a work of graphic nonfiction.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the concept of this book and have another one very similar to it. The artwork was fantastic and I learned of some women in STEM I've not heard of before. However, this book really only covered the lives of five women, and then included blurbs of fifteen others even though it was marketed as showing the lives of twenty women. Still, this was a great introduction and jumping off point to learn more about these incredible women and their lives and careers.

[Vincent · Rating 3 out of 5]

Toujours une bonne chose de représenter les femmes dans les carrières scientifiques pour susciter des vocations. L'ouvrage a sa place dans tout établissement scolaire. Un bémol peut-être sur le caractère du "génie", souvent mis en avant et à un âge précoce, rendant un peu spéciaux les destins présentés : bien pour inspirer au meilleur, mais peut-être difficile de s'y identifier pour toutes.

[Kati · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a decent starting place if you want to find women to learn more about, but I don’t feel like the book itself really gave much information about the women or their accomplishments. Some bios were just a couple paragraphs and the illustrated part dealt with unrelated snippets of their lives. It was just an odd choice of what to include for each person.

[Jennisen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to be able to read an ARC of this book through the ALA Midwinter 2021 conference. The graphic novel format is a nice way to share some information of these important women. I look forward to sharing this with students.

[Lisa]

There's a lot to like here, but I wish the scientists were depicted a bit more how they actually looked. I recognize the depictions here are a bit cartoonish, but I would have preferred that they were at least shown at different ages. The French-skewing was also a little odd.

[Léa B]

Pour un public ado ou pré-ado je pense que c'est bien, parce que c'est court et présente plusieurs femmes
dommage que tous les portaits ne soient pas tous dessinés et plus approfondis, ça manque un peu de diversité

[Andréa]

Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss.

[Cleym · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un roman graphique sur des femmes ayant révolutionné le monde scientifique ou technique.

[Karri Albanese · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was so excited to pick up this book but was so disappointed with the limited information. Such a great idea, I just wish there were more

[Whitney Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was actually one of the prettiest books I've ever read, and it does a beautiful job at summarizing these women's stories and lives. It's very inspiring and thought provoking.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75 stars

[Raj Bowers-Racine · Rating 2 out of 5]

So disappointing. Some of the most fascinating lives in history summarized in stilted dialogue and wooden art.

[Tania · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun graphic novel.

[Carla · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection providing an overview of some of the amazing women of science and mathmatics, with deep dives into some of their lives in the form of comics. The illustrations are lovely, and the stories are well portrayed. I wish more of the women got comics, especially the BIPOC women, and I also wish there was a little more diversity (more BIPOC, asian, LGBTQ, and disabled women, for example).