Marguerite Perey (1909-1975)
Filed under the name Marguerite · May 23, 2026
Marguerite Perey discovered the element francium and became the first woman elected to the French Academy of Sciences, which as someone with a half-finished English degree I did not regret leaving, I find genuinely awe-inspiring in a "I could never" kind of way — actual hard science, actual institutional barrier broken, not metaphorically but literally being the first woman let into that room. There's something about being first into a space that wasn't built with you in mind that I think about with my own bakery too, in a much smaller way — my wife Sam and I raising our daughter as two moms means we're often the first version of a family some institutions haven't quite figured out how to file yet. Perey didn't just discover something new in the world, she had to also force open a door nobody had opened for a woman before her. That's two hard jobs done at once, and either one alone would've been enough of an achievement to be proud of for a lifetime.