5 Must-See Movies: Women Trailblazers in Science
The extraordinary lives of women scientists are rarely portrayed in movies. At least not in the form of biopics, dramas or documentaries. Far more common are female superheroes in science fiction movies or glamourized characters in a TV series. But for those of us who prefer to see the real lives of woman scientists depicted, here are five movies to see.
1. Radioactive (2019)
Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and the first and only woman to win the Nobel Prize twice, and in two scientific fields, Physics and Chemistry.
The film Radioactive stars Rosamund Pike as Marie Curie. With all of Curie's extraordinary scientific accomplishments, the film shows less about Curie's discovery of radioactivity and more about the negative effects of her discovery of radiation. We see flashbacks and montages of the bombing of Hiroshima, nuclear testing in Nevada, as well as her affair with Pierre Langevin, a married man. These jarring scenes interrupt the film's narrative and take away the significance of Marie Curie's accomplishments in science. Based on the book Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss.
2. Madame Curie (1943)
The jewel of a movie is a chronicle not only of Curie’s legendary achievements in science, but of how she manages to accomplish them.
Curie does her radioactive research for years in a leaky, run-down shed, which was her makeshift lab behind the School of Physics in Paris. We see her conduct four years of experiments as she melts down pitchblende to remove all the known components from the ore. Finally, after thousands of crystallizations in small bowls, Curie successfully isolates the substance of "radium." The breakthrough happens one night when Curie can't sleep. She ventures out in the middle of the night to visit her lab and expects to see another stain when she discovers the radioactive glow.
Made shortly after Marie Curie's death in 1934 and starring Greer Garson as Marie Curie, the film portrays Curie's tenacity, imagination, and her relentless lab work. It is based on the biography Marie Curie, written by her daughter Eve and published only four years after her death in 1938.
3. Still Alice (2018)
This is not a move about the life of a woman scientist but the life of a linguistics professor, Alice Howland, who is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease at the age of 50.
What is so unusual about this film is that it offers a first-hand perspective of a woman suffering from early onset Alzheimer's disease.
As Alice's memory begins to fade, she daydreams of her dead mother and sister. She memorizes words and asks herself a series of personal questions on her phone every morning and tries to answer them. As her disease advances, she becomes unable to give focused lectures and loses her job.
Still Alice is based on a novel written by a neuroscientist Lisa Genova, whose grandmother's developed Alzheimer's disease.
The neuroscientist and author refused to give up on her book after a year of rejection letters from literary agents. After she was told that the audience for a book about Alzheimer’s disease would be too small, Genova decided to self-publish the book in 2007. The result? Still Alice is a best-selling novel. As for the film, Julianne Moore won an Academy Award for her performance as Alice Howland.
4. Hidden Figures (2016) Levantine Films
Women scientists are often unrecognized and underestimated by their male peers.
This is especially true if you're a Black female mathematician in the 1960s.
Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan are the real-life mathematicians who
worked at NASA's Langley Research Centre at a time when their workplace was segregated by race and gender. These women were called "computers" back then and their job was to work out the math to advance the space program. The movie highlights Katherine Johnson's highly complex calculations to determine the safest trajectory for astronaut John Glenn’s first space flight in 1962.
While these Black women had to overcome the racial hurdles of using separate bathroom facilities, they also overcame challenges of having their brilliant intellects and accomplishments recognized by their white colleagues and supervisors. Based on Margo Lee Shetterly's 2016 book by the same name.
5. Gorillas in the Mist (1988)
This is a story of a primatologist pursuing science against all odds. In this case, the odds are gorilla poachers in Rwanda. Diane Fossey helped save the extinction of gorillas by devoting 20 years of her life to the study of these primates in the mountains of Rwanda until her murder in 1985. The movie is based on Fossey's book, Gorillas in the Mist, which tells of her research at Karisoke Research Center. Sigourney Weaver stars as Dian Fossey.
These movies capture the blood, sweat and tears of famous female scientists on the big screen in a rare and realistic way. Make one of these your next film to watch!
Do you have another inspiring or insightful movie that changed the way you think about women in science? If so, please share in the comments section.