Hawai’i has generated many amazing things, but the trifecta of women featured here are superlative and worth knowing about. Alice Ball (d. 1916) is a scientist who created a way to end the suffering of people with Hanson’s disease — a.k.a leprosy. Published in a chemical journal during her undergraduate years, Ball went on to conduct research using the oil from the plant known as chaulmoogra and developed a way to process it that became the normative treatment for Hanson’s for decades. This African-American woman died at the young age of 24. The loss of Ball’s potential contibutions is profound. Alice Ball is honored today, no thanks to the then-president of the University of Hawai’i where Alice was working. He actually published her research as his own after Ball passed away. This plagiarism was discovered, and now she has been granted her own special day (February 29 — it’s coming up!) by the second featured Hawai’ian woman, Mazie Hirono. Ms. Hirono is a US Senator from Hawai’i: she is the first Asian-American woman, first Japanese-born, and first Buddhist (albeit a secular Buddhist) elected as US Senator. No mention of Hawai’ian leaders is complete without Lili’uokalani, the last Queen of Hawai’i, whom the United States government forceably overthrew in 1893. She refused to politely bow to American pressure when asked to merely succeed her country’s sovereignty, and was imprisoned after her country’s takeover. We cannot undo past transgressions, but we can celebrate the work of these talented women.
