Secret Service: Women in the Natural Sciences

About this event

The special exhibition “Secret Service: Women in the Natural Sciences” uncovers the overlooked contributions of female scientists, lab technicians, patrons, and illustrators who shaped the Senckenberg Nature Research Society. Eleven biographies spanning the 17th to 20th centuries highlight figures such as Tilly Edinger, who founded paleoneurology; Aenny Fahr, who documented Frankfurt’s first polar expedition through photography; botanical illustrator Elisabeth Schultz; and 17th-century naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian. Their stories stand for innumerabable others whose work was written out of history. At the heart of the show are the “Missed Images” by photographer and science communicator Gesine Born. Using AI-generated portraits, Born reimaginees these women in plausible working scenes – drawing, collecting, researching – based on historical sources. Each image is clearly marked as a KI visualisation; a making-of film explains the process. Real objects from the museum’s collecions, some handled by the women themselves, compleet the portraits and give tangible evidence of their research. The exhibition also extends into the permanent galleries, where collection objects are linked to biografies of the featured women. It is grounded in the research project “Secret Service: Women. Research. Senckenberg” and includes an infographic on the “leaky pipeline”, making visible the structural hurdles women still face in science today.