Hey, podcast listeners. It's Anne here with this week's podcast Extra.

How many famous women scientists can you name?

Marie Curie, Jane Goodall?

Well, how about the astronomer, Cecilia Payne Gapashkin?

Or the cytogeneticist, Barbara McClintock. Or the inventor and movie star, Hetty Lamar. I bet you got that one.

Remembered or not, they all made contributions. But there's so many women who never even got that

far. Women who started out in science, but then got shut out because they were the wrong gender.

One of those was Albert Einstein's first wife, Malava.

She might just have been more brilliant than he was, but we'll never know.

Marie Benedict wrote a wonderful novel about her. It's called The Other Einstein. It brings

Malava back to fictional life as a young university student in the same class as Albert Einstein.

October 20th, 1896, Zurich, Switzerland.

Squaring my shoulders and willing myself to be just a little taller than my regrettably tiny frame,

I placed my hand on the heavy brass handle to the classroom.

Turn the knob and push the door open, I told myself,

you can do this. Professor Heinrich Martin Weber and I looked at each other.

You are? He asked.

Miss Malava, Mercia, sir. I prayed my voice didn't quaver.

Very slowly, Weber consulted his class list.

Of course he knew precisely who I was.

The consultation of the class list was a blatant and calculating move,

telegraphing his opinion of me to the rest of the class.

...