New Game Celebrates Female Scientists

By Julie Wolf

Trivia games exist for all sorts of subjects: sports, history, pop culture. Now add “accomplished female scientists” to that list with the new “Top Female Scientist Card Game.”

Image via imgur.com

Created by University of Exeter students Hannah Wakeford and Simon Clark, this game features scientists who are likely both well-known to a wide audience (Rosamund Franklin, Marie Curie) and less so (Mary Anning, Marie Tharp). Notably, the deck features many pioneers: Australia’s first female professor (Dorothy Hill), the first computer programmer (Ada Lovelace), and the first (and only) woman to win an unshared Nobel Prize (Barbara McClintok).

Thirty-two scientists from physics, biology, chemistry, math, and natural sciences are included from throughout time. The game not only highlights historical contributions by ancient Greek mathematician Hypatia and industrial-age astronomer Mary Somerville but also features scientists currently working in their respective fields, such as planetary scientist Claudia Alexander and neuroscientist May-Britt Moser.

Each card’s scientist is rated based on innovation, impact, obscurity, and badassery. To play the game, each player makes a random pile of their Female Scientist cards. The player to the dealer’s left chooses a characteristic from their top card (eg, Impact 8) and each player reads scores for the same characteristic. The player with the top-ranked scientist takes the cards from that round and adds them to the bottom of their pile, until one player has collected all the cards.

Playing Top Female Scientist is a great way to appreciate preceding Scientistas and the contributions each has made to the world. It’s also a fun way to bone up on some pretty spectacular scientific findings, or instigate debates on the rankings! If you have never played a game like this before, you can find a video of the creators playing it here, and best of all, the game can be downloaded for free here!

About the author

Julie Wolf is a research scientist studying infectious disease at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. She is passionate about increasing scientific literacy and improving scientific communication in traditional and nontraditional settings. Julie has taught at CUNY Bronx Community College, Long Island University, and the Brooklyn-based community biolab, Genspace. She writes for Scholastic Science World and the Scientista Foundation.

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