Pic of the Week: Women in Science

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Dr. Svetlana Kotliarova guides students in forming and testing a hypothesis about whether a peeled or an unpeeled orange will float. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Eighteen fifth-graders from Hendley Elementary School in Washington, D.C., visited the Library’s Young Readers Center this week to test the scientific method under the direction of Dr. Svetlana Kotliarova, a cancer researcher who is now a scientific review officer at the National Institutes of Health. She talked about her difficult childhood in Ufa, Russia, her education, and the scientific process. Who can become a scientist? she asked the children. Anyone with passion, curiosity and persistence, she told them.

The students left with a copy of “Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World” by Rachel Ignotofsky. The book was provided by the event’s cosponsor, Everybody Wins! DC, a nonprofit that promotes children’s literacy.

Everybody Wins! is a longtime partner of the Library’s Center for the Book, and Library staff members have served as reading mentors to students at a nearby elementary school for the past seven years.