03/01/2020

Mathematicians are among those honored in the calendar.

Nedir do Espírito Santo é doutora pelo IMPA

How about spending the days of 2020 discovering the names of pioneering Black women scientists? That's the idea behind the calendar developed by Joselí Maria Silva dos Santos, a student in the Specialization in Science Communication and Popularization course at the Oswaldo Cruz House (COC/Fiocruz), under the guidance of Professor Hilda da Silva Gomes. In addition to the women's stories, the work highlights significant dates in the pursuit of gender equality and the fight against racial discrimination.

Two mathematicians are portrayed. Nedir do Espírito Santo, a mathematician from the Federal Fluminense University (UFF), with a master's degree from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) and a doctorate in Mathematics from the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics, represents the month of April. Nedir conducts research on Differential Geometry and has published works on minimal surfaces and surfaces of constant mean curvature.

Lis faz pesquisa na área de computação gráfica

In September, Lis Ingrid Roque Lopes Custódio will be featured. This mathematician is an adjunct professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) and conducts research in the field of computer graphics. Like Nedir, Liz graduated from UFF and holds a master's and doctorate in Mathematics from PUC-Rio. The researcher says she is "honored to be alongside pioneering scientists in their fields and, in a way, to represent Black Brazilian scientists," in an interview with GloboNews. "We are few, considering the proportion of Black and mixed-race people, but we are more than twelve."

In addition to the two mathematicians, ten other scientists from different fields complete the calendar. Enedina Alves Marques, the first Black woman in Brazil to graduate in engineering; Sonia Guimarães, a physicist and pioneer in teaching at the Technological Institute of Aeronautics (ITA); and Conceição Evaristo, PhD in Literature, are some of the personalities portrayed.

Joselí, author of the project and the first student in Fiocruz's quota system, believes she has achieved her main objective: to give visibility to women. "As I was researching Black women scientists in the field, I noticed the difficulty in finding them and seeing them in the media or in books," she stated. The final result of the work spread through social media, reaching a much larger number of people. "Someone published the calendar, without attribution, and it was replicated in groups I was in," says her advisor, Hilda da Silva Gomes.

The Black Women Scientists calendar is available for download .