Meet Dr. Shohini Ghose.

She explores the quantum world already running your life, and recovers the women physics wrote out of its own story. Everyone agrees quantum will shape the century. Her question is who gets to shape it.

This is a conversation about two kinds of invisibility: the invisible rules of the quantum world and the invisible woman who helped reveal them.

Dr. Shohini Ghose shares what it was like to be one of the only women in the room, from feeling isolated and questioning her abilities to realizing that the problem wasn't women who needed fixing. Mentorship and another summer camp for girls can only go so far if the classrooms, hiring practices, resources, and recognition around them remain unequal.

Shohini also takes us inside the strange and wonderful world of quantum physics, where reality isn't always what it appears to be. She shares when equations first became wonder for her and why understanding the history of physics means understanding not just what we know, but how we came to know it.

Shohini reminds us that science needs everybody, and we need to fix the system, not the women. Women are not waiting to be invited into science; they’ve been there all along.

What Shohini wants you to know:

“ There's this huge lineage of women, and there will be in the future, too. I hope future generations will know about all the amazing women who are contributing today, and they will become the voices in the heads of these future scientists who will help drive them to do bigger and better things.”

Rapid fire:

• A science fiction story everyone should read or watch: The Lilith’s Brood Trilogy by Octavia E. Butler
  
  
• A woman physicist or astronomer’s name who should be on every classroom wall: Every woman mentioned in Her Space, Her Time.
  
  
• One word for the quantum world right now: Possibility.

Going beyond the episode:

• Shohini on LinkedIn
• Check out Her Space, Her Time: How Trailblazing Women Scientists Decoded the Hidden Universe

For all resources and links mentioned in this episode, read the full guide here: https://www.alphapodcast.studio/shohini-ghose

With gratitude to the organizations whose archival materials and recordings helped bring alpha to life:

• New Mexico PBS, Critical Mass: Women in Science (audio)
• NASA Image & Video Library
• American Archive of Public Broadcasting