Agnes Pockels and the Kitchen Sink Myth
About this episode
This episode explores Agnes Pockels' contributions to surface science and challenges traditional narratives about women's roles in science.
This episode is a co-production with Lost Women of Science . Agnes Pockels did pioneering work in surface science. Her invention, the Pockels Trough, became the basis for an instrument that helped Katherine Burr Blodgett and Irving Langmuir make discoveries in material science that quietly shape our everyday world. But the way we talk about Agnes's life and work often falls back on familiar tropes about women's domestic roles, assumptions about how science gets done, and what it looked like to do science as a woman in the 19th century. Agnes's story invites us to rethink how we define success for scientists. Is our definition too narrow? And what might we gain if we crack it open a bit wider? Credits Host: Alexis Pedrick Executive Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Additional Reporting: Sophia Levin Art Design: Lily Whear Fact-Checking: Alexandria Attia Sound Design: Ana Tuirán Guests Brigitte Van Tiggelen Brigitte Van Tiggelen is the Science History Institute's director of international affairs, working from the Institute's office in Paris. Trained as both a physicist and a historian, she is the coeditor of Women in Their Element: Selected Women's Contributions…
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