Ainissa Ramirez
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materials science, history of science, innovation
Articles by Ainissa Ramirez
Kobieta, która sprzedawała czas i inne historie z początku XX w. [fragment książki]
Fragment książki W jesienny poniedziałek 1908 roku, jak w zegarku, rozległo się pukanie do drzwi. Tak jak co tydzień panna Ruth Belville stanęła przed wejściem do zakładu londyńskiego zegarmistrza. Miała na sobie ciemną suknię z szerokim stanem, pozwalającym zgadnąć, że gruba tkanina okrywa szczupłą kibić. Lamówka sięgająca kostek rzucała głęboki cień, skrywając pantofelki. Włosy kobiety były schludnie zebrane pod kapeluszem, a z jej ramienia zwisała skromna, lecz dość obszerna torebka.
Pacjent całego narodu. Historia zamachu na prezydenta Garfielda [fragment książki]
[fragment książki] Telegraf był postrzegany jako cud myśli inżynierskiej, pozwalający przesyłać informacje w tempie błyskawicy, i szybko wrósł w tkankę społeczną kraju, mocno go spajając. Wynalazek Morse’a służył całemu narodowi, a w ciągu kilku krótkich dekad wytworzył też nowy narodowy nawyk konsumpcji informacji. Ze szczególną mocą ujawniło się to przy okazji krótkiej kadencji uwielbianego dwudziestego prezydenta Stanów Zjednoczonych Jamesa A. Garfielda.
Jim West - Ainissa Ramirez
Learn about the Hidden Figure behind the microphone.
Jim West
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An Interview with . . . Ainissa Ramirez, materials scientist, writer, and science communicator
Explore Fall Bridge on the Materials Genome Initiative Monday, September 29, 2025 Author: Ainissa Ramirez RONALD LATANISION: I’d like to welcome everyone back to the National Academies’ Bridge interview series. Today we’re joined by Ainissa Ramirez, a writer and science communicator with a background in materials science and engineering. Also here is Kyle Gipson, editor of The Bridge. Ainissa, it’s great to see you.
September-October - 2025 - Volume: 113 - Number: 5
September-October 2025 When HIV enters a cell, its genome (white strand, top right corner) incorporates into the cell’s genome in the nucleus. As the cell activates its genes, the virus’s genes turn on too. The cell then transcribes the viral RNA (yellow squiggles), which moves through the cell and is used to synthesize the virus’s proteins (red).
SPARK | Kirkus Reviews
Unusual in both subject and its gratifying level of technical detail. Budding inventors could do worse than to pick Jim West as a role model. Growing up a farm boy with a compulsion to take things apart to see how they worked and—thanks to an encounter with a live wire he was lucky to survive—a fascination with electricity, West went on to study science in college, where he was one of only two Black students.
The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another
The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another by Ainissa Ramirez While books about inventions such as the telegraph, silicon chip, and photography are common enough, Yale professor Ainissa Ramirez explores these creations in delightfully unique ways. As a materials scientist, she helps us understand the substances at the root of these creations and why they mattered.
North, South, East, and Gladys West: How a Mathematician Helped Shape GPS
Series: Black Innovators Description Details Gladys’s mind swirls with numbers and shapes as the world enters the high-tech space age. This is the lyrical true story of a groundbreaking Black mathematician whose inventions led to the creation of GPS. Little Gladys is a farm girl who loves math. But as a Black kid growing up in Virginia in the mid-twentieth century, she sees life around her as less than or greater than but never equal.
Spark: Jim West's Electrifying Adventures in Creating the Microphone
Description Details Resources Praise In this first picture book in the Black Innovators series, meet the insatiably curious Jim West, who invented a vital piece of the device we all carry in our pockets—transforming how the world communicates today. Young Jim West loves to pull apart whatever electronics he can get his hands on to see how they work. Those around him say there’s no path for a kid like him to become a scientist, but Jim is determined to forge his own way.
How Herman Hollerith Counted America and the World
November-December 2023 Volume 111, Number 6 In 1879, 19-year-old Herman Hollerith aimed to make a name for himself and wash off the stain of New York City poverty. His father had died when he was about 10. The tragedy not only shook his family to the core, but it also forced them to leave the comfort of their tight-knit enclave of German relatives in Buffalo, New York. It was there that his mother began making one-of-a-kind bonnets for sophisticated ladies.
These Three Overlooked Black Inventors Shaped Our Lives
There are a number of Black inventors who have become part of our national consciousness. Polymath agricultural scientist George Washington Carver and cosmetics creator and entrepreneur Madam C. J. Walker are two. There are many more who have directly influenced U.S. society and culture in major ways, but their achievements have largely been omitted from the canon of top innovators. Here are three who changed the chemical industry, the garment business and household work, and telecommunications.
May-June - 2022 - Volume: 110 - Number: 3
May-June 2022 Volume: 110 Number: 3 The plague and cholera have killed millions of people over the past centuries. Each of these diseases is caused by a bacterium that began as a harmless ancestor microorganism but evolved to become one of humanity’s worst scourges. This process, known as pathogen emergence, is difficult to predict.
Jim West’s marvellous microphone
Ainissa Ramirez highlights an African American scientist who created one of the most used technologies of our modern age, but whose name is barely known by the general public When college student Jim West began his summer internship at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories in the 1950s, he stumbled across a scientific phenomenon that would revolutionise how the world communicates. With it, he created the microphone that now sits inside every telephone and cellphone. Yet most people don’t know who he is.
The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another
Login OR login with: Don't have an account? Sign Up For Free! Forgot Password Please type in your email address in order to receive an email with instructions on how to reset your password. Processing Please Don't Refresh the Page The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another by Ainissa Ramirez has successfully been added to your shopping cart © Copyright 2011 - 2022 RB Audiobooks USA LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Commercializing Christmas: How politicians and business leaders created a gift-giving holiday
Excerpted from The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another by Ainissa Ramirez. Reprinted with permission from THE MIT PRESS. Copyright 2021. An Amalgamated Holiday The Christmas holiday as we now know it didn’t always exist that way. Santa and his reindeer didn’t appear a year after the birth of Christ; children would have to wait over three centuries, at least, for Christmas to come.
Author and Scientist Ainissa Ramirez is teaching science through stories
Published December 15, 2021 at 12:47 PM EST 1 of 2 — Christmas Mail Postal workers helping deliver Christmas mail Library of Congress (Bain News Service) 2 of 2 Ainissa Ramirez Chion Wolf Materials scientist Ainissa Ramirez has made it her mission to tell the stories of little known inventors. She shines a light on the women and people of color that have helped create everything from the ice cream scoop to the GPS. This week on Disrupted, a conversation with Ainissa Ramirez.
The Alchemy of Us
Description Praise In the bestselling tradition of Stuff Matters and The Disappearing Spoon: a clever and engaging look at materials, the innovations they made possible, and how these technologies changed us.
Teaching the Stories of Science
In “Shining a Light on the Impacts of Our Innovations” (Issues, Spring 2021), Ainissa Ramirez makes a compelling argument for bringing the stories of scientists and the impact of their research into our textbooks and classrooms. When I went through my degrees, I was taught about science. I learned about polymers—their synthesis, properties, and uses. I learned about interfacial polymerization and the “nylon rope trick” to demonstrate the preparation of a synthetic polymer.
On Henry, Trailblazer Gets His Due | New Haven Independent
As you drive through New Haven on Henry Street, you will notice something at the intersection of Dixwell: Across from a derelict lot is a magnificent mural in progress on a wall that was once pink. The image consists of cascaded portraits of a Black man rendered in gradients of color. The man is Edward Bouchet, a New Havener who was the first Black man to get a doctorate in the United States. Bouchet got his Ph.D. in physics from Yale in 1876. Yet, most children in the Elm City don’t know about him.
On Henry, Trailblazer Gets His Due
As you drive through New Haven on Henry Street, you will notice something at the intersection of Dixwell: Across from a derelict lot is a magnificent mural in progress on a wall that was once pink. The image consists of cascaded portraits of a Black man rendered in gradients of color. The man is Edward Bouchet, a New Havener who was the first Black man to get a doctorate in the United States. Bouchet got his Ph.D. in physics from Yale in 1876. Yet, most children in the Elm City don’t know about him.
Hidden Black Scientists Proved the Polio Vaccine Worked
In the summers of the early 1950s, multitudes of American children were stuck in their home. Parents didn’t permit them to play together because, when the weather got warm, society entered a nightmare called polio. Children would eagerly begin their school breaks with a bicycle, scooter or kite and end them in crutches, braces or an iron lung. The disease poliomyelitis, or polio, had been in the medical textbooks for decades.
Shining a Light on the Impacts of Our Innovations
By Ainissa Ramirez In 2014, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to a trio of physicists who struggled for years to bring the blue light-emitting diode (LED) into the world.
Inventing Us: How Inventions Shaped Humanity
This is Scientific American’s Science Talk. I’m Steve Mirsky. On this episode: [RAMIREZ CLIP] That’s Ainissa Ramirez. She’s a materials scientist with a doctorate from Stanford and a science writer. And she’s the author of the 2020 book The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another. The book has recently been named one of Smithsonian Magazine’s Ten Best Science Books of 2020. It’s also been named an Amazon Best Science Books of 2020.
Illuminating the Links Between Light and Disease
When going for a checkup, patients might do a double take when doctors ask them a new question in addition to how much they smoke, drink, or exercise. That question is, “Are you getting the right kind of light?” This isn’t a visit to a practitioner in hippy Haight-Ashbury or New Agey Sedona. This exchange happens in forward-thinking medical offices right now. Today, a range of illnesses is brought about by the lack of exercise, poor diet, insufficient sleep, widespread pollution, and bad genes.
Black Images Matter: How Cameras Helped—and Sometimes Harmed—Black People
From Frederick Douglass to George Floyd, photography has been key for racial justice. But cameras have also been used to hurt Frederick Douglass, African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer and statesman (left). Ida B. Wells, African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist and feminist (right). Credit: Getty Images (Douglass); Alamy (Wells) In the 19th century, the most photographed man in the world wasn’t Walt Whitman or Ulysses S.
The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another
Description In the bestselling tradition of Stuff Matters and The Disappearing Spoon a clever and engaging look at materials, the innovations they made possible, and how these technologies changed us. Finalist for the 41st Los Angeles Times Book Award in Science and Technology and selected as one of the Best Summer Science Books Of 2020 by Science Friday.
Tungsten's Brilliant, Hidden History
This Article From Issue March-April 2020 Volume 108, Number 2 William David Coolidge didn’t want to leave his beloved Boston or the scientific hum of physics research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But in 1905, his overwhelming school debt and meager instructor’s salary made it impossible to refuse a lucrative job offer at General Electric (GE).
New Haven's Hidden Figure: Sarah Boone | New Haven Independent
During Black History Month, when children learn about George Carver’s cultivation of the peanut and Lewis Latimer’s light bulb filament, New Haven children have an opportunity to be proud of a notable black inventor from their city. Unfortunately, most children (and their parents) never heard of her. In the 1890s, a black woman inventor living in New Haven got a patent for her invention of an early ironing board. Her name was Sarah Boone.
Material Marvels on Apple Podcasts
7 episodes Material Marvels explores some amazing technology in engineering with Associate Professor, Ainissa Ramirez. Material Marvels explores some amazing technology in engineering with Associate Professor, Ainissa Ramirez. SEP 27, 2011 video Space Shuttle Ceramics Space Shuttle Ceramics Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science at Yale, Dr. Ainissa Ramirez, demonstrates the heat absorption properties of the space shuttle's ceramic tiles.
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