Dale DeBakcsy
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daledebakcsy.bsky.social
Dale DeBakcsy
@daledebakcsy.bsky.social
Founder of the Women in Science Archive, author of #WomenInSTEM books for Pen & Sword Publishing, and of upcoming Elton John: Album by Album, and A History of Romance Novels. Artist for Frederick the Great: A Most Lamentable Comedy.
Cover drop for my new book, A History of Women in Music From Antiquity to Present Day, coming out in the UK on January 30 and in the US in March! Available for pre-order now from @penandswordbooks.bsky.social or on Amazon! Check it out!

#BookSky #MusicSky #WomensHistory
December 23, 2025 at 4:59 PM
31 years ago today, Circle of Life was released as a single, and promptly went platinum in the UK & US. What I love is how Elton uses a move from tightly controlled chord movements to larger tonal leaps to expansively tell us the story of Life Itself.

#EltonJohn #LionKing #BookSky #MusicSky 🎹
August 9, 2025 at 3:33 PM
Hey Folks - if you're from the San Francisco Bay Area, I'm going to be having an Elton John event at Hayward's Books on B on August 16 from 5:00 to 7:00. I'll be spinning & chatting about selections from some of my favorite Elton tracks, so come by and say hi!

#EltonJohn #BookSky #MusicSky🎹
August 3, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Forty one years ago today, #EltonJohn released the single "Passengers." Featuring a Bernie lyric about apartheid in Africa, Elton decided to musically match the theme by pulling sections of the melody from South African singer Phines Mkhize's 1963 song Isonto Lezayoni.

#MusicSky #BookSky 🎹
August 3, 2025 at 2:37 PM
In celebration of astronomer Maria Mitchell's 207th birthday, here's the comic I did for our original @wisarchive.bsky.social piece on her back in 2015! The bit about Vassar making her sleep on a cot is 100% true!

#WomenInSTEM #AstroSky #HistSci 🔭🧪
August 1, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Honky Cat was released as a single 53 years ago today! The density of the musical layers places us in this space of intense overwhelming but seductive activity, making us FEEL like the lost country mice that Bernie describes. Just pitch perfect musical architecture.

#MusicSky #EltonJohn #BookSky 🎹
July 31, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Awww, I can't say how much Tom Lehrer meant to me as a kid. His phrasing and timing are in my head whenever I write, and his songs are a touchstone my father shared with me and I have shared with my kids in turn. I hope he was aware of even a fraction of how much love there is out there for him.
July 27, 2025 at 5:41 PM
And in honor of Mildred Cohn's 112th birthday, here's the comic I originally did to accompany the @wisarchive.bsky.social feature on her life and work, just for funsies!

#WomenInSTEM #Biochemistry #HistSci 🧪
July 13, 2025 at 1:03 AM
Mildred Cohn was born 112 years ago today. In the middle of the century she pioneered the use of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance to probe the chemical processes governing the storage and release of energy in ATP. Here is her story!

tinyurl.com/3xn9hhs2

#WomenInSTEM #ChemSky #HistSci
tinyurl.com
July 12, 2025 at 4:40 PM
"Electricity", Elton's 63rd UK Top-40 hit, came out 20 years ago today! It was the hit single from his musical Billy Elliot, which launched in 2005 and racked up some 13 Tony nominations. For all the drama kids out there, what's your favorite BE song?

#MusicSky #BookSky #Musicals #Drama
July 11, 2025 at 3:12 PM
It's Launch Day USA for Elton John: Album By Album! 44 albums! Over 500 songs! So cuddle up with a copy, some of your favorite Elton albums, and a cup of tea, and dig into the stories and structures of Elton's unique craft!

Available At:

tinyurl.com/zb7ms3zc

#BookSky #MusicSky #MusicHistory 🎹
July 10, 2025 at 3:53 PM
51 years ago today, Elton John's Caribou launched in the UK. Containing two hit singles, it also features "Ticking", a probing account of a mass shooting that contains some of Elton's most haunting narrative use of the piano, and one of my favorite Elton tracks ever.

#EltonJohn #Music #BookSky 🎹
June 28, 2025 at 3:29 PM
In celebration of Maria Goeppert-Mayer's 119th birthday, here is the comic I did for the @wisarchive.bsky.social about her most famous discovery, the Nuclear Shell Model, which explained why certain "magic numbers" of nucleons are more stable than others.

#WomenInSTEM #NobelPrize #Physics 🧪
June 28, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Reposted by Dale DeBakcsy
And if you want to learn more about Virginia Satir, her pioneering path in the development of family counseling, and subsequent turn towards less, shall we say, scientific waters, you can read her story on the Archive!

tinyurl.com/wsmpct6p

#WomenInSTEM #Psychology #Counseling
Virginia Satir and the Art of Family Communication.
To many, Virginia Satir was an instinctive therapeutic genius, whose invention of family therapy has instructed untold millions of husbands, wives, and children how to better communicate with each oth...
tinyurl.com
June 26, 2025 at 2:43 PM
Reposted by Dale DeBakcsy
If you'd like to learn more about all three of our birthday scientists today, they are all contained, along with a couple of hundred other trailblazing scientists, in our History of Women in Psychology and Neuroscience, available now!

#BookSky #WomenInSTEM #Psychology #Neuroscience 🧪🧠
June 26, 2025 at 2:44 PM
Celebrating the 37th anniversary today of Reg Strikes Back! This has so many undersung gems on it - the cast of characters of "Heavy Traffic", the dark portraiture of "Poor Cow", the lost souls of "Town of Plenty." So grab your copy of Album by Album and pop it on!

#EltonJohn #BookSky #Music
June 24, 2025 at 2:43 PM
It's our 276th feature at the Archive, telling the often harrowing, always inspiring story of Dr. Hawa Abdi, whose personal integrity and dedication to treating all, regardless of clan or politics, allowed her to stand up to the warlords of Somalia and keep Hope Village alive.

#WomenInSTEM
June 24, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Just wrapped up the 276th episode of the Women in Science Archive for Tuesday - it's all about the incredible life and work of Dr. Hawa Abdi, whose Hope Village protected, fed, and provided med services for tens of thousands of people during the darkest years of the Somali civil war.

#WomenInSTEM
June 22, 2025 at 11:31 PM
Reposted by Dale DeBakcsy
Russian astronomer Lidiya Tseraskaya was born 170 years ago today! She worked at the Moscow Observatory on the detection of variable stars, discovering some 219 over the course of a quarter century career spanning some of Russia's most turbulent years.

#WomenInSTEM #AstroSky #BookSky #HistSci 🔭
June 22, 2025 at 3:16 PM
33 years ago today, Elton John released The One, a triumphant album that jubilantly announced his new lease on life, and showcased some of the finest writing of his career, including "The Last Song", "Emily", "The One", and "Whitewash County." Read all about it in my book Elton John: Album by Album!
June 22, 2025 at 2:52 PM
Reposted by Dale DeBakcsy
Wishing a happy 98th birthday to Ye Shuhua, the astronomer who in the 1950s took over China's universal time measurement program and made it a global standard, and then went on to establish the VLBI and SLR programs at the Shanghai Observatory.

#WomenInSTEM #AstroSky #BookSky #HistSci 🔭🧪
June 21, 2025 at 3:07 PM
50 years ago today, Elton released "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" as a single, 1975's only single from Captain Fantastic, and a devastating account of Elton's attempted suicide from a half decade prior. It hit #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified Gold.

#BookSky #MusicSky #EltonJohn 🎹
June 21, 2025 at 5:33 AM
Last month marked the 50th anniversary of Elton John's classic Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy album, one of his most ambitiously conceived and breath-takingly executed albums. I've got lots to say about it in Elton John: Album by Album, so dig in!

#MusicSky #BookSky #EltonJohn 🎹
June 20, 2025 at 11:17 PM
Reposted by Dale DeBakcsy
Mary Scharlieb was born 180 years ago today. She was in the first group of women to study medicine at Madras Medical College, receiving her license in 1878. She established the Royal Victoria Hospital, which still operates today as the Kasturba Gandhi Hospital.

#WomenInSTEM #BookSky #MedSky 🧪
June 18, 2025 at 2:28 PM