Singing Songs About Women Who Create A Better World

These are unsettling times, but these times are also reminders of the important work that scientists, engineers, and creative thinkers do. Solutions to problems like COVID-19 don’t come about by accident, but rather through the hard work and creativity of all these professionals.

March is Women’s History month, and thus good time to remember those women who, through the power of their hard work, intellect and creativity, came up with solutions to problems and developed innovations that made our world better.

Here’s an interesting list of inventions by women that USA Today published about a year ago, highlighting innovators and their creations both great and small, from Ada Lovelace (who created the first algorithm in 1843) to Melitta Bentz (who came up with the paper coffee filter in 1908). Maybe even more pertinent to us today, women created these medical innovations: the medical syringe (Letitia Geer, 1899), an anti-fungal drug (Rachel Fuller Brown and Elizabeth Lee Hazen, 1950), laser cataract surgery (Patricia Bath, 1986), and stem cell isolation (Ann Tsukamoto, 1991).

One of the beauties of folk music is that heroines like these innovators that might have gone “unsung” are actually sung about! One of those women was Hypatia of Alexandria, whom Claudia Schmidt captures in her song by the same name.

Hypatia was a philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, teacher, and counselor to the leadership in Alexandria, Egypt. Born in the latter half of the 4th century A.D., she was killed by a mob in 415. Here, Claudia Schmidt sings of her life and legacy on the 2016 album, “We Are Welcomed,” which she recorded with Sally Rogers.