Although women participated in shaping scientific thinking from the outset, they very rarely became visible. This imbalance continues today, although there are currently more female scientists than ever before. Lars Jaeger spans an arc from antiquity to the present day and portrays the lives and work of the most important female scientists and mathematicians in essay-like introductions. From Hypatia of Alexandria to Emmy Noether and Lisa Randall, they have all achieved great things, decisively advanced science and yet often could not step out of the shadow of their male colleagues.In addition to the exciting portraits of the individual women scientists, the book also sheds light on gender relations in science and their agonisingly slow evolution in favour of women.

Dr Lars Jaeger, 53, studied physics, mathematics, philosophy and history in Bonn and Paris and spent several years researching in theoretical physics, particularly in the field of quantum field theories and chaos theory (University of Bonn, Max Planck Institute for Physics of Complex Systems Dresden). He has lived near Zurich for more than 25 years, where he has built up two companies of his own, using mathematical methods to model global capital markets and construct systemic trading models from them. His enthusiasm for the natural sciences and philosophy has, however, never left him. He has written ten books on various topics (history and philosophy of science and technology, future technologies, issues of technologies). In his widely read blog as well as other media he frequently writes on issues concerning current scientific developments, new technologies, and their meaning for society (see www.lars.jaeger(at)larsjaeger.ch for all books and blogs). He lives in the canton of Zug.