Maia Weinstock
{{Short description|American science writer and Lego enthusiast}}
File:Maia Weinstock (cropped).jpg
Maia Weinstock is an American science writer and Lego enthusiast who resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She graduated from Brown University in 1999,{{cite news|title=Goodbye, Columbus|url=http://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/content/view/2314/40/|accessdate=30 April 2015|work=Brown University Alumni Magazine|date=August 2009}} and is the Deputy Editor of MIT News.{{cite web|title=Who We Are|url=http://newsoffice.mit.edu/staff-directory|work=MIT News|accessdate=30 April 2015}}{{cite news|title=Women in science target Wikipedia|url=http://www.pressherald.com/2013/10/16/women_in_science_target_wikipedia_/|accessdate=26 April 2015|work=Portland Press Herald|date=16 October 2013}}
Biography
Before working at MIT, she worked at BrainPOP,{{cite web|last1=Newman|first1=Judith|title=Wikipedia, What Does Judith Newman Have to Do to Get a Page?|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/09/fashion/Wikipedia-Judith-Newman.html|accessdate=30 April 2015|work=The New York Times|date=8 January 2015}} and was an editor for SPACE.com and other science publications.{{cite news|title=Index|url=http://maiaw.com/index.html|accessdate=26 April 2015|date=2015|archive-date=5 April 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150405135740/http://maiaw.com/index.html|url-status=dead}}
In 2014, Weinstock was cited by Judith Newman of The New York Times as "a Wikipedian who has been instrumental in raising awareness" of the gender imbalance on that online encyclopedia; her article on how notability is determined on Wikipedia immediately provoked other Wikipedia editors to create a page about Newman.{{cite web|url= https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/16/fashion/Wikipedia-Judith-Newman.html |title= Wiki-Validation: A Wikipedia Page for Judith Newman Is Approved |work=The New York Times |date= January 16, 2014| accessdate=April 30, 2015 |last= Newman |first= Judith}}
In addition to her editing work, Weinstock has been an editor of Wikipedia for a number of years, and has been involved in efforts to reduce the gender gap among editors and articles that occur on the site. This work includes working at edit-a-thons on Ada Lovelace Day, as well.{{cite news|last1=Ziv|first1=Stav|title=Legal Justice League Lego Maker on Writing Women Into History|url=http://www.newsweek.com/legal-justice-league-lego-maker-writing-women-history-314674|accessdate=4 April 2015|work=Newsweek|date=18 March 2015}}
A fan of Lego mini-figures, she first started building them for living scientists, the first being her friend Carolyn Porco. Eventually, this included a submission to the Lego Ideas contest called the "Legal Justice League", which was designed to look like a courtroom built out of Lego bricks, and contained miniature versions of Sandra Day O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.{{cite news|last1=Palmer|first1=Anthony|title=Lego Says You Can't Build That — Because Of Politics|url=https://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2015/03/13/392871323/lego-says-you-can-t-build-that|accessdate=4 April 2015|publisher=NPR|date=13 March 2015}} The submission was declined by LEGO as being too political, which led to an increase in publicity for the project, and eventually led to a submission with generic justices. A Boston Globe reporter described Weinstock's apartment as having "[s]tacks of heads and hairstyles, torsos and legs and arms, a pint-sized Frankenstein's workshop stored in little plastic bins".{{cite news|last1=Weiss|first1=Joanna|title=Dreaming of Lego equality|url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/2015/04/02/weiss/NZLMwWqPVeQyGgM0re8UBJ/story.html|accessdate=4 April 2015|work=Boston Globe|date=4 April 2015}}
In March 2017, Lego announced that it would be making a "Women of NASA" set, based on a design Weinstock had submitted.{{Cite web |url=https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/01/517968169/women-of-nasa-to-be-immortalized-in-lego-form |title=Women Of NASA To Be Immortalized — In Lego Form |last=Kennedy |first=Merrit |website=NPR |publication-date=1 March 2017}}
In 2022 MIT Press published Weinstock's 320-page biography of Mildred Dresselhaus.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JxIxEAAAQBAJ|title = Carbon Queen: The Remarkable Life of Nanoscience Pioneer Mildred Dresselhaus|isbn = 9780262368285|last1 = Weinstock|first1 = Maia|date = March 2022| publisher=MIT Press }} (ebook){{cite journal|url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-262-04643-5|title=Nonfiction Book Review of Carbon Queen: The Remarkable Life of Nanoscience Pioneer Mildred Dresselhaus by Maia Weinstock (320p) hbk ISBN 978-0-262-04643-5|website=Publishers Weekly|date=November 4, 2021}}
See also
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
{{Commons category|Maia Weinstock}}
- {{Official website|http://maiaw.com/}}
- {{cite web|title=Stories by Maia Weinstock|website=Scientific American|url=https://www.scientificamerican.com/author/maia-weinstock/}}
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Category:Brown University alumni
Category:Writers from Cambridge, Massachusetts
Category:Year of birth missing (living people)
Category:21st-century American non-fiction writers
Category:21st-century American women writers
Category:American science writers
Category:American women science writers