FEBRUARY 20228GOOGLE AI TOOLS REINTRODUCE WOMEN IN SCIENCE TO THE FOREGoogle has developed new machine learning (ML) tools for use by curators at the Smithsonian in the US to help uncover and highlight many roles women have played in science over more than 174 years of history.This project builds on Google Arts & Culture previous work, which made over 2.8 million 2D and 3D im-ages from the museum collections available to the public for the very first time in 2020."It is now easier than ever to sur-face the work of women in Smithso-nian history," Google said in a state-ment.Women have always been on the forefront of science. From Ada Lovelace designing the first com-puter programs to Rosalind Frank-lin decoding the structure of DNA, to Katherine Johnson figuring out the physics for mankind to reach the moon, the history of science has been driven by the contributions of women.However, they have often not received proper credit or acknowl-edgement for their essential work.Powered by machine-learning, the new Google tools enable three types of research in the Smithso-nian's archives: Comparing records across history by connecting differ-ent "nodes" in the metadata, identify-ing the names of women even when they haven't been explicit (such as by the use of a husband's name in-stead), and analysing image records to cluster and group together simi-larities to facilitate comparison.Through analysing collections relating to Mary Jane Rathbun, like-ly the first woman curator at the Smithsonian, "We have been able to find taxonomy cards in Smithsonian records that detail a collecting trip she took with Serena Katherine 'Vio-let' Dandridge, a scientific illustrator who worked alongside Rathbun in the Department of Marine Inverte-brates in 1911, and gain a better un-derstanding of early collaborations between women," Google informed.In fact, the taxonomy cards re-veal that a third colleague, Dr Har-riet Richardson Searle, identified some of the specimens that Rathbun and Dandridge brought back to the Smithsonian."Though this experiment is only just beginning, it is clear that tech-nology can play a key role in facili-tating further research and help to recover stories of women in science," the tech giant noted. BUDDING BIZZIt is now easier than ever to surface the work of women in Smithsonian history
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