Women in Science Holiday Gift Guide

While I'm sure most of you are super organized and have all your Christmas/Hanukkah/Winter Solstice or other December holiday gift shopping finished, some of us are still trying to find the perfect gifts for our family and friends. I thought I'd suggest a few possible gifts for women scientist and women who love science.

"This is what a scientist looks like" T-shirts

YellowIbis.com carries a great selection of science-themed T-shirts, including the "this is what a scientist looks like" women's Tee, pictured at left. It also comes in a Junior cap-sleeve style. The design is fully customizable, so you can replace "scientist" with "physicist" or "chemist" or "engineer". ScienceWoman modeled one of the shirts on her blog, so you can see what it looks like on a human.

Part of my Scienceblogs swag was a limited-edition Sciencewomen T-shirt, which I believe also came from Yellow Ibis. The quality is good and it seems to run true to size.

Their Last Minute Sale runs through tomorrow, December 15th, so if you order promptly you can get $5 off orders of $13+.

Science-themed jewelry

My favorite science-related jewelry is by Made With Molecules (and I've alerted Santa of that fact). There's something to suit every chemical taste: you could chose the fairly simple dopamine and caffeine necklaces and earrings, the elegant "red wine" resveratrol and garnet necklace, or have your name or other message spelled out in amino acids. It's like fate that one of the examples of peptide jewelry spells out "PEGGY" (at right).

I also like NB Design's silver jewelry, such as the Erlenmeyer flask pendant shown at left.

And for more colorful items I like Surly-Ramics "Smart Jewelry", such as the "science is sexy" pendant (at right).




Science Art

If jewelry isn't your (or your giftee's) cup of tea, you might consider science-themed art.

Tiffany Ard's colorful "art for nerds and nurseries" would indeed be perfect for a nursery or kid's room. But I like their whimsical look too. Shown at left: detail from "I love love LOVE my microscope". Right: detail from "Newton's Laws of Motion".


Our galaxy is colorful too, and I think photos of nebulae, planets and stars are also works of art. Shown at left: The Orion Nebula from Fletcher Photos.



Books, books and more books

Despite all the nice T-shirts, art and jewelry out there, my usual go-to gifts are books (and they make up the bulk of my own wish list too)!

I've put together an Amazon.com store, so it's easy to find books about women in science. I've split them into four categories:

• Books about women in science and mathematics
• Biographies and history
• Books for girls
• Fiction featuring women scientists (literary fiction, murder mysteries, and science fiction)

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So obviously these are suggestions based on my own taste. Do you have other suggestions or an Etsy store? Leave a comment!

(Please only leave links to sciency items, or items scientists might especially like. There are plenty of other web sites that discuss gifts in general. I'll be using my judgment to delete comments I think are spam.)



Tags: gifts, women in science