The Sky’s the Limit

They study the night sky, watch chim­panzees in the wild, and dig up ancient clay trea­sures. They search the beach for rare fos­sils, pho­to­graph old rock carv­ings, explore the haz­ards of lead poi­son­ing, and wan­der into dark caves. And in their watch­ing, dig­ging, and wan­der­ing, they become dis­cov­er­ers. Young and old, they are women and girls who dis­cov­er sev­en­ty-mil­lion-year-old sea lizards, the very ori­gins of count­ing and writ­ing, Stone Age cave art, mys­te­ri­ous mat­ter in the uni­verse, and how a pud­dle of water can be san­i­tized when heat­ed by the sun.

Here is a trib­ute to the find­ings and rev­e­la­tions of these remark­able women and girls: to their per­se­ver­ance, their epipha­nies, their won­drous curios­i­ty. Brought to life by inno­v­a­tive col­lage illus­tra­tions, these inspir­ing sto­ries drawn from pri­ma­ry sources con­sis­tent­ly probe into still unan­swered ques­tions. Here are dis­cov­er­ies that open our eyes not only to what women and girls can accom­plish but also to the aston­ish­ing world in which we live.