Ada Lovelace day

I was thrilled to find out about this pledge by being named in Rachel Chalmer’s post. She is def­in­itely one of the geeky grrls who inspired me in the early days, when we were the dif­fi­cult, smart women in com­puter journ­al­ism in Sydney before the Inter­net was a big deal. And of course, Rosie X, who even made Geek­grrl T‑shirts (I still have mine).

I think one of my geek heroes would have to be Ros­alind Frank­lin, who even today is under-cel­eb­rated. I also have to name my won­der­ful friends with their sci­ence PhDs who inspire me daily: Dr Christina Flann, sys­temic tax­onom­ist, run­ning a world­wide pro­ject cata­loguing dais­ies; Dr Krys­tal Evans, work­ing in York on mal­aria; Dr Lizz Kopecny, work­ing on HIV epi­demi­ology; Dr Hilary Hoare, work­ing on immun­o­logy; Kate Conroy, work­ing on her cog­nit­ive sci­ence PhD con­cern­ing memory; Bonnie Alex­an­der, work­ing towards her neuro­psych PhD. I’m sure there are others. I love you all.

Also, Sandy Stone, who inspired me to write theory again and who com­plic­ates this by chal­len­ging the cat­egory “women”. Here’s to a future where it’s no longer relevant.