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First Desi Woman Graduate Student in the US

In 1883, before a packed house in Bengal’s Serampore College, with an audience that included the American Consul General, Anandibai Joshi, 18, declared her intention: “I go to America because I wish to study medicine," she said, speaking in English before the College Hall. “Ladies both...

The Power of Language

At the pediatrician’s clinic, a nurse told Viorica Marian, who is a native speaker of Romanian, to use only English with her American-born daughter. Speaking another language would “confuse” the child and hurt her long-term, the woman had said. This was a good decade ago....

Science at Sundance 2023

Illustration by Islenia Mil for Science This year I had a chance two science-related films screened at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah — two vastly different films, but both struck a chord. Poacher A gunshot pierces the skull of an adult male elephant, a tusker,...

Probably A (Possibly C, G or T)

Two decades ago, I worked on the Human Genome Project. All day, I scrutinized eye-glazing stretches of A’s, G’s, C’s and T’s, cloned bits from a composite human genome. Our team analyzed the sequence, closed gaps, and deposited the polished versions of those genomic bits...

The Atlas of Perfumes

The gods created scents; humans make perfumes. Naked and frail, they survive only by artifice (trickery). In the late 1960s, Jean-Claude Ellena, an apprentice perfumer in France, tried to reproduce Eau Sauvage, a cologne from the fashion house of Christian Dior. Ellena made good headway...

Coded Bias

IN HER first semester as a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab, Joy Buolamwini encountered a peculiar problem. Commercial face-recognition software, which detected her light-skinned classmates just fine, couldn’t “see” her face. Until, that is, she donned a white plastic mask in frustration. Coded Bias is...