Overlooked Stories, Vital Contributions: Reclaiming Women’s Place in the History of Quantum Physics

Patrick Charbonneau, professor of Physics, came across Elizabeth Monroe Boggs by accident.

Charbonneau, who specializes in theoretical soft matter and statistical physics, has always been interested in the history of his field. In 2010, as a young Duke faculty, he stumbled upon a co-author with the name “E. Monroe” while researching foundational papers from the 1940s for a problem he was working on. Later, he realized the co-author’s name changed to “E. Boggs.” Could that person be a woman? Curious because there were few women in the field historically referred to as “boy’s physics,” he dug deeper and discovered she was a theoretical chemist named Elizabeth Monroe Boggs.

At the time, Charbonneau didn’t realize her story would inspire him to become co-editor and contributor to the “Women in the History of Quantum Physics,” recently released by Cambridge University Press.

Monroe Boggs’s story, as Charbonneau uncovered it, goes like this:

Monroe studied math and chemistry at Bryn Mawr, where she was mentored by the legendary mathematician Emmy Noether. After graduating, Monroe went to Cambridge and ended up staying to work on quantum chemistry, helping build and operate a mechanical computer for high-precision calculations. As WWII approached, Monroe planned to stay in the U.K. to aid the war effort, but couldn’t get clearance as an American and had to return to the U.S., securing a postdoctoral position at Cornell instead.

Monroe married fellow Cornell researcher Fitzhugh Boggs, following him to Pittsburgh, where she first taught pre-med physics, then joined the Explosives Research Laboratory, an elite lab where she studied shock waves for the U.S. military. She effectively led both theoretical and experimental teams, becoming a key figure in WWII-era explosives research for the Manhattan project. Despite these contributions, she has largely been forgotten by historians of science. 

After she had her first child, Monroe Boggs changed tack. Her son, who had a severe infection at birth, developed a major developmental delay during the recovery process. She stayed home to care for him full time, stopped her academic research and eventually joined the movement for parents of children with disabilities. Her work was so prolific that President John F. Kennedy invited her to participate in a group to reform legislation and develop a framework for policies affecting children with both mental and physical disabilities. This helped pave the way for Medicaid benefits to become more easily accessible for children with disabilities. 

Charbonneau was impressed by Monroe Boggs’s story, but, as so many academic pursuits do, it got put on the backburner during his pre-tenure years. But he never forgot the woman who had contributed so much to the field that had forgotten her. 

Over the next decade, Charbonneau continued to learn about Monroe Boggs as he built his own research program in physics. He followed leads whenever he could, conducted interviews with a few people who worked with her and got in touch with the Bryn Mawr Special Collections, but his research on this brilliant, energetic woman remained in a file on his computer. 

It wasn’t until the pandemic that Charbonneau found the right outlet to share her story. He joined a working group called “Women in the History of Quantum Physics.” When he mentioned his interest in Monroe Boggs, the group told him they didn’t have anyone researching her, which gave him the perfect opportunity to bring her work to light.

He joined the group in person in the Netherlands for a meeting. 

“I argued in favor of us creating an edited collection, a book,” said Charbonneau, “but I wasn’t a humanities scholar, so I didn't feel confident taking leadership for something like this.” 

However, Charbonneau said he would put in as much effort as possible and offered to help move the project forward in any way he could. 

A core group formed, made up of various academic faculty, science communicators and writers. Together, they wrote a book about sixteen women in physics. 

In addition to Monroe Boggs, the book highlights 15 other women pioneers who made vital contributions to the field despite facing challenges that ranged from structural discrimination to dictatorial regimes. Among these women is Katharine Way, who compiled critical nuclear data for the Manhattan Project; Lucy Mensing, a theorist whose early work in quantum mechanics was nearly forgotten; and Carolyn Parker, one of the first Black American women to earn a postgraduate degree in physics. The collection also highlights Chien-Shiung Wu, whose groundbreaking experiments on beta decay reshaped modern physics and Ana María Cetto, a Mexican physicist whose work continues to bridge quantum theory and science advocacy to this day.

One of the women featured is very close to home. Duke faculty member and trailblazer in molecular spectroscopy and chemical physics Hertha Sponer was called on during the Cold War to assist the United States Navy in detecting chemical weapons. This wasn’t Sponer’s first brush with global unrest. Years earlier, she fled Nazi Germany and its deeply rooted sexism to save her scientific career, eventually becoming the first woman on Duke’s Physics faculty. The detection techniques she developed were ahead of her time and laid the groundwork for everything from weapons monitoring to modern medical imaging.

“Women in the History of Quantum Physics,” released in June 2025, has already received glowing praise. Science News says the book “provides a crucial accounting of the lives of those unsung trailblazers.”

And recently, Charbonneau got the opportunity to see part of Monroe Boggs’s history in person. 

The mechanical computer that Monroe Boggs used at Cambridge continued to be used for several years after the war, until electronic computers replaced it. The last graduate student to work on it — a Kiwi — took it to New Zealand, where it was used at a field research station into the early 1960s. Eventually, the machine was donated to MOTAT, the Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland, where it’s now on display. Museum staff managed to get part of it working again and presented a live demonstration, which Charbonneau got to witness on a recent trip to New Zealand. 

“The talk and visit at MOTAT were simply amazing,” said Charbonneau. “It was, in many ways, a highlight of my academic career.”