Women are frequently overlooked in discussions of inventors and innovators. Among the little known but noteworthy women is Ada Lovelace (1815-52), who was daughter to Lord Byron but also a talented mathematician who made contributions of her own. In Ada’s Algorithm: How Lord Byron’s Daughter Ada Launched the Digital Age James Essinger challenges the customary presentation of Lovelace as a tutor of Charles Babbage, and instead reveals her to have been a colleague to Babbage and the first of the two to realize the potential of the analytical engine. Margot Lee Shetterly’s Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race expands the discussion to include not only women but race. Shetterly details the struggles against organizational segregation and discrimination on the part of African American women mathematicians—notable among them Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Dorothy Vaughan—who worked at NASA’s Langley Research Center and played an important role in determining the trajectory of the vehicles NASA sent into space.5 The website of the Smithsonian Institution’s Lemelson Center for the Study for Invention and Innovation includes a page titled “African American Inventors,” which takes the user to a range of resources, including blog posts such as “Who Invents and Who Gets the Credit?” and articles such as “Game Changers Inventor Spotlight: Tahira Reid Smith.” The 2023 release of the film Oppenheimer led Business Insider to publish articles about women, African Americans, and people of color, including Yoonji Han’s “The Black Scientists behind the Manhattan Project, the Atomic Bomb Program That Inspired the Movie Oppenheimer” and Katie McGrath and Jenny Hawkinson’s “The Women behind the Manhattan Project that Nolan’s new film Oppenheimer Completely Ignored.” These articles link to multiple sources from the Los Alamos Lab and National Parks System. Looking back in time, an extensive, thoughtful resource about African American innovative contributions during the Industrial Revolution can be found at “The Black Innovators Who Elevated the United States: Reassessing the Golden Age of Invention,” written by Jonathan Rothwell, Andre Perry, and Mike Andrews for Brookings, the website of the Brookings Institution. The authors’ research was based on a database of inventors with linkage from US patent to Census records, especially helpful since patent records do not include demographic characteristics.
In The Inventor’s Dilemma: The Remarkable Life of H. Joseph Gerber, David Gerber profiles his father and grandmother’s immigration to the United States from Nazi-occupied Austria. The Gerbers overcame anti-Semitism in Hartford, Connecticut, and Joseph Gerber, thanks to his tenacious pursuit of education, became a leader in manufacturing, founded Gerber Scientific Instrument Company, and was responsible for many engineering inventions and innovations.
In The Innovation Mindset: Eight Essential Steps to Transform Any Industry, Lorraine Marchand explores many topics, among them problem solving in climates of change and underrepresentation of women in corporate leadership and in STEM fields. Marchand presents profiles of women innovators and draws on her personal experience as a corporate executive to provide guidance for entrepreneurs and innovators. Many helpful online sources are included in the endnotes and in an appendix, “Resource Guide for Women Innovators.”
5. The film Hidden Figures (2017), based on Shetterley’s book, was critically acclaimed and earned numerous awards, including an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.
