"Support Women in Science" T-shirt Series, Screen Printed, 2017
In January 2017 I traveled to Washington DC to attend the Women's March. For the event I created an iron on t-shirt supporting women in science. After the Women's March I was invited to Boston's March for Science through facebook. I posted a picture of my iron on t-shirt and got a strong support of enthusiasm for it and what it represented. Since I got such a good response to the t-shirt I decided to get serious and screen printed a bunch myself and started to sell them through Etsy www.twoofapear.etsy.com
To create these t-shirts I used the screen printing process. But first I needed a stencil which I made through Photoshop
To create these t-shirts I used the screen printing process. First I needed a stencil which I made through Photoshop and referenced public domain images of Curie and Franklin for their likeness. Next we placed photo emulsion on a silk screen in a dimly lit space. Photo emulsion hardens when exposed to light.
Once we exposed the emulsion with the stencil on top we washed away the unexposed emulsion (the stencil blocked light).
Next we squeegeed fabric ink over the top of the silk screen. To heat-set the ink we place the t-shirts in the dryer.
With the screen printing process we got great detail and the ink is permanent. Now we can show off our t-shirts!!
Marie Curie is an impressive Lady! She holds the distinctions of being the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, one of very few people to win two Nobel Prizes, and the only person ever to win a Nobel Prize in two different technical fields (Physics in 1903 and Chemistry in 1911). Due to the misfortune of being born a woman in the 19th century, Marie was unable to pursue higher education in her native country of Poland and spent her career in France where she was free to earn a degree in Physics from the University of Paris. She moved back to Poland to find work, but unfortunately she was still a woman, and women weren't allowed to do science in Poland. She then returned to France where she married Pierre Curie, discovered two elements, had a baby girl, won two Nobel prizes, and became the first female faculty member at the Ecole Normale Superieure. No big deal.
To learn more about Marie, check out her Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie
And there is the interesting Wikipedia page on women in science: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_science
If only posthumous Nobels were a thing. Sadly, Rosalind Franklin passed away at the young age of 37 and did not receive the recognition she deserved for her extraordinary career until long after her death. Her most notable research centered around uncovering the structure of DNA, a field in which she was immersed in intense competition with James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins. In 1962, four years after Franklin's death, Crick, Watson, and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their report of the now famous double helix model of DNA - a model that could not be confirmed without the data generated by Franklin. Despite enduring the rampant sexism that was common in academia at the time while working as a Research Associate at King's College in London, she remained passionate about research and moved to Birckbeck College where she began studying the structure of viruses. The techniques she developed at Birckbeck were heavily used by her understudy, Aaron Klug, and were ultimately recognized by the Nobel Committee in 1982. Klug is the sole holder of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, but he would likely have shared that distinction with Franklin had she been alive. But she was dead. Again. So, if only posthumous Nobels were a thing, Franklin could have joined the ranks of Marie Curie as the only people to hold two Nobels in two different technical fields. What incredible women!
To learn more about Franklin, check out her Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin
And there is this interesting article by National Geographic called "6 Women Scientists Who Were Snubbed Due to Sexism": http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130519-women-scientists-overlooked-dna-history-science/