The Path of Most Resistance

Poems about historical women in STEM fields.

Women have always worked in technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine. Sometimes they made important discoveries and breakthroughs; sometimes they simply managed to exist and persist despite endless obstacles and a criminal lack of acknowledgment. Carefully researched, thoughtful, pitch perfect and precise, these poems about historical women scientists are hilarious and heart-breaking at the same time.

There are women here whose names you may know (Rachel Carson, Mae Jemison, Hedy Lamarr, Ada Lovelace, Beatrix Potter) and others you probably don't (Tapputi-Belatekallim, June Bacon-Bercey, Eugenie Clark, Beatrice Medicine, Gladys West). Randall has a fine-tuned knack for metaphor and plain language, and her poetry unpicks injustice alongside complex scientific ideas. If you've seen Randall's poems in Scientific American, Analog, or Asimov's Science Fiction, you may already have been drawn into these extraordinary stories. Illustrated with portraits by NASA artist Kristin DiVona, these poems will resonate with scientists, feminists, thinkers, learners, philosophers, poets, and truth-seekers young, old and everywhere in between.

Jessy Randall

Jessy Randall is the author of the poetry collections Mathematics for Ladies (2022), How to Tell If You Are Human (2018), Suicide Hotline Hold Music (2016), There Was an Old Woman (2015), Injecting Dreams into Cows (2012), and A Day in Boyland (2007), a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Her poems and stories have appeared in Poetry, McSweeney's, Nature, and Scientific American.