Born: Unknown, United States (assumed)
Died: Unknown
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
In 1951, Experimental Breeder Reactor 1 in the U.S. became the world’s first reactor to produce electricity using nuclear energy, with later testing confirming that a reactor could produce more fuel than it consumed. In 1963, EBR-1 was dedicated as a National Historic Landmark. Following the initial experiments, all the men involved wrote their names on an interior wall of the building that housed the reactor, but none of the women were invited to include their names, regardless of how vital they had been to the program’s success. It was not until 1994 that the Department of Energy added a plaque at the site recognising the contributions of Wilma S. Mangum, Eleanor B. Barnes, Gladys Joslin, Virginia Kruse, and Agnes Williams.