History of Scientific Women

Marie CURIEMain achievements: Development of the theory of radioactivity (a term that she coined), of techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and discovery of two elements, polonium and radium.
Publications: Marie Curie was a Polish-born physicist and chemist and one of the most famous scientists of her time. Together with her husband Pierre, she was awarded the in 1903, and she went on to win another in 1911. Marie Sklodowska was born in Warsaw on 7 November 1867, the daughter of a teacher. In 1891, she went to Paris to study physics and mathematics at the Sorbonne where she met Pierre Curie, professor of the School of Physics. They were married in 1895. The Curies worked together investigating radioactivity, building on the work of the German physicist Roentgen and the French physicist Becquerel. In July 1898, the Curies announced the discovery of a new chemical element, polonium. At the end of the year, they announced the discovery of another, radium. The Curies, along with Becquerel, were awarded the in 1903. Pierre's life was cut short in 1906 when he was knocked down and killed by a carriage. Marie took over his teaching post, becoming the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne, and devoted herself to continuing the work that they had begun together. She received a second Nobel Prize, for Chemistry, in 1911. The Curie's research was crucial in the development of x-rays in surgery. During World War One Curie helped to equip ambulances with x-ray equipment, which she herself drove to the front lines. The International Red Cross made her head of its radiological service and she held training courses for medical orderlies and doctors in the new techniques. Despite her success, Marie continued to face great opposition from male scientists in France, and she never received significant financial benefits from her work. By the late 1920s her health was beginning to deteriorate. She died on 4 July 1934 from leukaemia, caused by exposure to high-energy radiation from her research. The Curies' eldest daughter was herself a scientist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Source:

Alicia BOOLE STOTTMain achievements: Known for coining the term "polytope" for a convex solid in four dimensions. Alicia Boole Stott was a British mathematician, the third daughter of George Boole and Mary Everest Boole. She is best known for coining the term "polytope" for a convex solid in four dimensions, and having an impressive grasp of four-dimensional geometry from a very early age. She found that there were exactly six regular polytopes in four dimensions and that they are bounded by 5, 16 or 600 tetrahedra, 8 cubes, 24 octahedra or 120 dodecahedra. She then produced three-dimensional central cross-sections of all the six regular polytopes by purely Euclidean constructions and synthetic methods for the simple reason that she had never learned any analytic geometry. She made beautiful cardboard models of all these sections. After taking up secretarial work near Liverpool in 1889 she met and married Walter Stott in 1890. Stott learned of Pieter Schoute's work on central sections of the regular polytopes in 1895. Schoute came to England and worked with Alicia Stott, persuading her to publish her results which she did in two papers published in Amsterdam in 1900 and 1910. The University of Groningen honoured her by inviting her to attend the tercentenary celebrations of the university and awarding her an honorary doctorate in 1914. In 1930 she was introduced to H.S.M. Coxeter and they worked together on various problems. Alicia Boole Stott made two further important discoveries relating to constructions for polyhedra related to the golden section. Coxeter later wrote, "The strength and simplicity of her character combined with the diversity of her interests to make her an inspiring friend." Source:

Maria AGNESIMain achievements: Author of the first book on differential and integral calculus. Maria Gaetana Agnesi was an Italian mathematician and philosopher. She is credited with writing the first book discussing both differential and integral calculus and was an honorary member of the faculty at the University of Bologna. Maria Gaetana Agnesi was born in Milan on 16 May 1718, to a wealthy and literate family. Her father Pietro Agnesi, a University of Bologna mathematics professor, wanted to elevate his family into the Milanese nobility. In order to achieve his goal, he had married Anna Fortunata Brivio in 1717. Her mother's death provided her the excuse to retire from public life. She took over management of the household. Agnesi's diploma from Università di Bologna Maria was recognized as a child prodigy very early; she could speak both Italian and French at five years of age. By her eleventh birthday she had acquired Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, German, and Latin in addition to French and Italian, and was referred to as the "Seven-Tongued Orator". She even educated her younger brothers. When she was nine years old, she composed and delivered an hour-long speech in Latin to some of the most distinguished intellectuals of the day. The subject was women's right to be educated. At the age of 12, Agnesi suffered a mysterious illness attributed to her excessive studying and was prescribed vigorous dancing and horseback riding. This treatment did not work, as she began to experience extreme convulsions, after which she was encouraged to pursue moderation. By fourteen, she was studying ballistics and geometry. When she was fifteen, her father began to regularly gather in his house a circle of the most learned men in Bologna, before whom she read and maintained a series of theses on the most abstruse philosophical questions. Records of these meetings are given in Charles de Brosses' Lettres sur l'Italie and in the Propositiones Philosophicae, which her father had published in 1738 as an account of her final performance, where she defended 190 theses. Maria was very shy in nature and did not like these meetings. Her father remarried twice after Maria's mother died, and Maria Agnesi ended up the eldest of 23 children, including her half-siblings. In addition to her performances and lessons, her responsibility was to teach her siblings. This task kept her from her own goal of entering a convent, as she had become strongly religious. Although her father refused to grant this wish, he agreed to let her live from that time on in an almost semi-retirement, avoiding all interactions with society and devoting herself entirely to the study of mathematics. During that time, Maria studied both differential and integral calculus. Fellow philosophers thought she was extremely beautiful and her family was recognized as one of the wealthiest in Milan. Maria became a professor at the University of Bologna. The most valuable result of her labours was the Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventù italiana, which was published in Milan in 1748 and "was regarded as the best introduction extant to the works of Euler." In the work, she worked on integrating mathematical analysis with algebra. The first volume treats of the analysis of finite quantities and the second of the analysis of infinitesimals. A French translation of the second volume by P.T. d'Antelmy, with additions by Charles Bossut (1730–1814), was published in Paris in 1775; and an English translation of the whole work by John Colson (1680–1760), the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, "inspected" by John Hellins, was published in 1801 at the expense of Baron Maseres. The work was dedicated to Empress Maria Theresa, who thanked Agnesi with the gift of a diamond ring, a personal letter, and a diamond and crystal case. Many others praised her work, including Pope Benedict XIV, who wrote her a complimentary letter and sent her a gold wreath and a gold medal. Source:

 ATHIRTEMain achievements: Calculation of the position of the planets. Member of the court, and maybe girl of Pharaoh Sesostris, she devoted herself to the study of the heavens and the calculation of the position of the planets. Diodorus speaks of a daughter Athirte of Sesostris, king of Egypt, who "excited him to become master of the world, being far above her sex by her intelligence, she provides him with expedients to facilitate business. Others say that the princess is very clever in the knowledge of the future, his father assured success by omens from sacrifices she had made, the dreams she had had in the temples and signs that had appeared in the sky, or by observing the signs of heaven."

Françoise BARRE-SINOUSSIMain achievements: Identification of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Françoise Barré-Sinoussi is a French virologist and director of the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Division (Unité de Régulation des Infections Rétrovirales) at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France. Born in Paris, France, Barré-Sinoussi performed some of the fundamental work in the identification of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the cause of AIDS. In 2008, she was awarded the , together with her former mentor, Luc Montagnier, for their discovery of HIV. Barré-Sinoussi joined the Pasteur Institute in Paris in the early 1970s. She received her PhD in 1975 and interned at the U.S. National Institutes of Health before returning to the Pasteur Institute. Barré-Sinoussi's research quickly turned to a particular group of viruses, the retroviruses. Her knowledge in this field led her to discover [HIV] in 1983. This discovery revealed an urgent need for diagnostic tests to aid in controlling the spread of the disease. Barré-Sinoussi started her own laboratory at the Pasteur Institute in 1988. Among Barré-Sinoussi's many recent research contributions are studies of various aspects of the adaptive immune response to viral infection,the role of innate immune defences of the host in controlling HIV/AIDS, factors involved in mother-to-child transmission of HIV, and characteristics that allow a small percentage of HIV-positive individuals, known as elite suppressors or controllers, to limit HIV replication without antiretroviral drug. She has co-authored over 240 scientific publications, has participated in over 250 international conferences, and has trained many young researchers. Barré-Sinoussi has actively contributed to several scientific societies and committees at the Institut Pasteur as well as to other AIDS organizations, such as the National Agency for AIDS Research in France. She has also been implicated at an international level, notably as a consultant to the UNAIDS-HIV. Since the 1980s, Barré-Sinoussi has initiated collaborations with developing countries whereby she has managed multidisciplinary networks with dedication. She constantly works on establishing permanent links between basic research and clinical research with the aim of achieving concrete improvements in the areas of prevention, clinical care, and treatment. In 2009, she wrote an open letter to Pope Benedict XVI in protest over his statements that condoms are at best ineffective in the AIDS crisis. In July 2012 Barré-Sinoussi became President of the International AIDS Society. Barré-Sinoussi shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Luc Montagnier for their co-discovery of HIV, and with Harald zur Hausen, who discovered the viral cause of cervical cancer that led to the development of the HPV vaccine. Source:

Laura BASSIMain achievements: Introduced Newton's ideas of physics and natural philosophy to Italy. Laura Maria Caterina Bassi was an Italian scientist, received a doctoral degree from the University of Bologna in May 1732, only the third academic qualification ever bestowed on a woman by a European university, and the first woman to earn a professorship in physics at a university in Europe. She was the first woman to be offered an official teaching position at a university in Europe. Born in Bologna into a wealthy family with a lawyer as a father, she was privately educated and tutored for seven years in her teens by Gaetano Tacconi, a University teacher of Biology, Natural History and Medicine. She came to the attention of Cardinal Prospero Lambertini, who encouraged her scientific work. She was appointed professor of anatomy in 1732 at the University of Bologna at the age of 21, was elected to the Academy of the Institute for Sciences in 1732 and, the next year, was given the chair of philosophy. Bassi became the second woman in Europe to receive a degree from a university, the first being Elena Cornaro Piscopia in 1678 (in philosophy), fifty-four years prior. In her early years, her teaching opportunities were restricted to occasional lectures. Significance of her 1732 defence, degree ceremony, and first lecture at Bologna is that the events took place in the Palazzo Publico, a location significant to the governing bodies of Bologna. These events were attended by "not only the university faculty and students, but also by principle political and religious figures of the city-the Popal Legate and vice-legate, the Archbishop of Bologna, the Gonfaloniere, the Elders, senators, and magistrates. Additionally, 'all the ladies of Bologna and all the Nobility'." The Bologna community came to recognize the achievements of Bassi earning and receiving her degree. As a political figure, the Senate expected Bassi to attend various events. The Carnival Anatomy, a public dissection with tickets open to anyone, was an event she was expected to attend because it was a central feature of public life at the University which attracted the attention of many foreigners and important community members. She began attending this event annually in 1734. In 1738, she married Giuseppe Veratti, a fellow academic with whom she had twelve children. After this, she was able to lecture from home on a regular basis and successfully petitioned the University for more responsibility and a higher salary to allow her to purchase her own equipment. One of her principal patrons was Pope Benedict XIV. He supported less censorship of scholarly work, such as happened with Galileo, and he supported women figures in learning, including . She was mainly interested in Newtonian physics and taught courses on the subject for 28 years. She was one of the key figures in introducing Newton's ideas of physics and natural philosophy to Italy. She also carried out experiments of her own in all aspects of physics. In order to teach Newtonian physics and Franklinian electricity, topics that were not focused in the university curriculum, Bassi gave private lessons. In her lifetime, she authored 28 papers, the vast majority of these on physics and hydraulics, though she did not write any books. She published only four of her papers. Although only a limited amount of her scientific works were left behind, much of her scientific impact is evident through her many correspondents including Voltaire, Francesco Algarotti, Roger Boscovich, Charles Bonnet, Jean Antoine Nollet, Giambattista Beccaria, Paolo Frisi, Alessandro Volta. Voltaire once wrote to her saying "There is no Bassi in London, and I would be much hapier to be added to your Academy of Bologna than that of the English, even though it has produces a Newton". Francesco Algarotti wrote several poems regarding her degree ceremonies. In 1745, Lambertini (now Pope Benedict XIV) established an elite group of 25 scholars known as the Benedettini ("Benedictines", named after himself.) Bassi pressed hard to be appointed to this group, but there was a mixed reaction from the other academics. Ultimately, Benedict did appoint her, the only woman in the group. During the 1760s, Bassi and her husband worked together on experimental research in electricity. This attracted talent of Abbe Nollet and others to Bologna to study electricity. In 1776, at the age of 65, she was appointed to the chair in experimental physics by the Bologna Institute of Sciences, with her husband as a teaching assistant. Two years later, she died, having made physics into a lifelong career and broken a huge amount of ground for women in academic circles. Source:

Jocelyn BELL BURNELLMain achievements: Discovery of the first radio pulsars. Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell is a Northern Irish astrophysicist. As a postgraduate student, she discovered the first radio pulsars while under her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish, for which Hewish shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Martin Ryle, while Bell Burnell was left out despite having observed the pulsars. Bell Burnell was President of the Royal Astronomical Society from 2002 to 2004, president of the Institute of Physics from October 2008 until October 2010, and was interim president following the death of her successor, Marshall Stoneham, in early 2011. She was succeeded in October 2011 by Sir Peter Knight. The paper announcing the discovery of pulsars had five authors. Hewish's name was listed first, Bell's second. Hewish was awarded the Nobel Prize, along with Martin Ryle, without the inclusion of Bell as a co-recipient. Many prominent astronomers expressed outrage at this omission, including Sir Fred Hoyle. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, in their press release announcing the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics, cited Ryle and Hewish for their pioneering work in radio-astrophysics, with particular mention of Ryle's work on aperture-synthesis technique, and Hewish's decisive role in the discovery of pulsars. Dr. Iosif Shklovsky, recipient of the 1972 Bruce Medal, had sought out Bell at the 1970 International Astronomical Union's General Assembly, to tell her: "Miss Bell, you have made the greatest astronomical discovery of the twentieth century." Susan Jocelyn Bell was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where her father was an architect who helped design the Armagh Planetarium. She was encouraged to read and was drawn to books on astronomy. She lived in Lurgan as a child and attended Lurgan College where she was one of the first girls there who was permitted to study science. Previously, the girls' curriculum had included such subjects as cross-stitching and cooking. She graduated from the University of Glasgow with a Bachelor of Science degree in Natural Philosophy (physics) in 1965, and obtained her Ph.D. degree from New Hall (since renamed Murray Edwards College) of the University of Cambridge in 1969. At Cambridge, she worked with Hewish and others to construct a radio telescope for using interplanetary scintillation to study quasars, which had recently been discovered (interplanetary scintillation allows compact sources to be distinguished from extended ones). In July 1967, she detected a bit of "scruff" on her chart-recorder papers that tracked across the sky with the stars. Ms. Bell found that the signal was pulsing with great regularity, at a rate of about one pulse per second. Temporarily dubbed "Little Green Man 1" (LGM-1) the source (now known as PSR B1919+21) was identified after several years as a rapidly rotating neutron star. After finishing her Ph.D., Bell Burnell worked at the University of Southampton (1968–73), University College London (1974–82), and the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh (1982–91). In addition, from 1973 to 1987, Bell Burnell was also a tutor, consultant, examiner, and lecturer for the Open University. In 1991, she was appointed as a Professor of Physics at the Open University, a position that she held for ten years. She was also a visiting professor at Princeton University in the United States. Before retiring, she was Dean of Science at the University of Bath (2001–04), and she was the President of the Royal Astronomical Society between 2002 and 2004. She is currently a Visiting Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Mansfield College. She served two years as the President of the Institute of Physics, her term ended in October 2010. The fact that Bell did not receive recognition in the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics has been a point of controversy ever since. She helped build the four-acre radio telescope over two years and initially noticed the anomaly, sometimes reviewing as much as 96 feet of paper data per night. Bell later claimed that she had to be persistent in reporting the anomaly in the face of scepticism from Hewish, who was initially insistent that it was due to interference and man-made. She spoke of meetings held by Hewish and Ryle to which she was not invited. Fred Hoyle harshly criticized the Nobel committee, going so far as to accuse Hewish of stealing Bell's data. In 1999 she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). In June 2007 she was elevated to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). In February 2013 she was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4. In February 2014 she was made President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the first woman to take that office. Source:

 HILDEGARDE OF BINGENMain achievements: Considered as the founder of scientific natural history in Germany. Saint Hildegard of Bingen also known as Saint Hildegard, and Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath. Elected a magistra by her fellow nuns in 1136, she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. One of her works as a composer, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality play. She wrote theological, botanical and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, and poems, while supervising miniature illuminations in the Rupertsberg manuscript of her first work, Scivias. Although the history of her formal recognition as a saint is complicated, she has been recognized as a saint by parts of the Roman Catholic Church for centuries. On 7 October 2012, Pope Benedict XVI named her a Doctor of the Church. Hildegard's exact date of birth is uncertain. She was born around the year 1098 to Mechtilde and Hildebert of Bermersheim, a family of the free lower nobility in the service of the Counts of Sponheim. Sickly from birth, Hildegard is traditionally considered their youngest and tenth child, although there are records of seven older siblings. In her Vita, Hildegard states that from a very young age she had experienced visions. Hildegard's works include three great volumes of visionary theology; a variety of musical compositions for use in liturgy, as well as the musical morality play Ordo Virtutum; one of the largest bodies of letters (nearly 400) to survive from the Middle Ages, addressed to correspondents ranging from Popes to Emperors to abbots and abbesses, and including records of many of the sermons she preached in the 1160s and 1170's; two volumes of material on natural medicine and cures; an invented language called the Lingua ignota ("unknown language"); and various minor works, including a gospel commentary and two works of hagiography. Several manuscripts of her works were produced during her lifetime, including the illustrated Rupertsberg manuscript of her first major work, Scivias (lost since 1945); the Dendermonde manuscript, which contains one version of her musical works; and the Ghent manuscript, which was the first fair-copy made for editing of her final theological work, the Liber Divinorum Operum. At the end of her life, and probably under her initial guidance, all of her works were edited and gathered into the single Riesenkodex manuscript. Hildegard also wrote Physica, a text on the natural sciences, as well as Causae et Curae. Hildegard of Bingen was well known for her healing powers involving practical application of tinctures, herbs, and precious stones. In both texts Hildegard describes the natural world around her, including the cosmos, animals, plants, stones, and minerals. She combined these elements with a theological notion ultimately derived from Genesis: all things put on earth are for the use of humans. She was particularly interested in the healing properties of plants, animals, and stones, though she also questions God's effect on man's health. One example of her healing powers was curing the blind with the use of Rhine water. Source:

Elizabeth BLACKBURNMain achievements: Discovered of the enzyme that replenishes the telomere. Professor Elizabeth Helen Blackburn is an Australian-American biological researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies the telomere, a structure at the end of chromosomes that protects the chromosome. Blackburn co-discovered telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes the telomere. For this work, she was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, sharing it with and Jack W. Szostak. She also worked in medical ethics, and was controversially dismissed from the Bush Administration's President's Council on Bioethics. Elizabeth Helen Blackburn was born in Hobart, Tasmania on 26 November 1948. Her family moved to the town of Launceston when she was four, where she attended the Broadland House Church of England Girls' Grammar School (later amalgamated with Launceston Church Grammar School) until the age of sixteen. Upon her family's relocation to Melbourne, she then attended University High School, and ultimately gained very high marks in the end-of-year final statewide matriculation exams. She went on to earn a Bachelor of Science in 1970 and Master of Science in 1972, both from the University of Melbourne and her PhD in 1975 from the University of Cambridge (Darwin College). She then carried out postdoctoral work in molecular and cellular biology between 1975 and 1977 at Yale University. In 1981, Blackburn joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, in the Department of Molecular Biology. In 1990, she moved across the San Francisco Bay to the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of California, San Francisco, where she served as the Department Chairwoman from 1993 to 1999. Blackburn is currently the Morris Herzstein Professor of Biology and Physiology at UCSF, and a non-resident fellow of the Salk Institute. She is the president-elect of the American Association for Cancer Research. Blackburn co-discovered telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes the telomere. Blackburn recalls: "Carol had done this experiment, and we stood, just in the lab, and I remember sort of standing there, and she had this – we call it a gel. It's an autoradiogram, because there was trace amounts of radioactivity that were used to develop an image of the separated DNA products of what turned out to be the telomerase enzyme reaction. I don't remember any details in that area, ‘Ah! This could be very big. This looks just right.’ It had a pattern to it. There was a regularity to it. There was something that was not just sort of garbage there, and that was really kind of coming through, even though we look back at it now, we'd say, technically, there was this, that and the other, but it was a pattern shining through, and it just had this sort of sense, ‘Ah! There's something real here.’" For this work, she was awarded the 2009 and Jack W. Szostak. In recent years Blackburn and her colleagues have been investigating the effect of stress on telomerase and telomeres with particular emphasis on mindfulness meditation. She is also one of several biologists (and one of two Nobel Prize laureates) in the 1995 science documentary Death by Design/The Life and Times of Life and Times. Studies suggest that chronic psychological stress may accelerate ageing at the cellular level. Intimate partner violence was found to shorten telomere length in formerly abused women versus never abused women, possibly causing poorer overall health and greater morbidity in abused women. Source:

Katharine BLODGETTMain achievements: Discovery of the . Katharine Burr Blodgett was the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cambridge in 1926. After receiving her master's degree, she was hired by General Electric, where she invented low-reflectance "invisible" glass. She was the second child of Katharine Burr and George Blodgett. Her father was a patent attorney at General Electric where he headed that department. He was shot and killed in his home by a burglar just before she was born. GE offered a $5,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the killer, but the suspected killer hanged himself in his jail cell in Salem, New York. Her mother was financially secure after her husband's death, and she moved to New York City with Katharine and her son George Jr. shortly after Katharine's birth. In 1901 the family moved to France. In 1912, Blodgett returned to New York City with her family where she was enrolled in the Rayson School. This private school gave her the same quality of education that the boys her age were receiving. From an early age, she had shown a talent for mathematics. Blodgett subsequently won a scholarship to Bryn Mawr College, where she excelled at mathematics and physics; she received her B.A. degree from Bryn Mawr in 1917. Blodgett decided to pursue scientific research and visited the Schenectady GE plant during Christmas break of her senior year. Her father's former colleagues introduced her to research chemist Irving Langmuir. After a tour of his laboratory, Langmuir told the eighteen-year-old Blodgett that she needed to broaden her scientific education before coming to work for him. Following his advice, Blodgett enrolled at the University of Chicago in 1918 to pursue a master's degree. Since a job awaited her in industrial research, she picked a related subject for her thesis: the chemical structure of gas masks. World War I was raging and gas masks were needed to protect troops against poison gases. Blodgett determined that almost all poisonous gases can be adsorbed by carbon molecules. She published a paper on gas mask materials in the scientific journal Physical Review at the age of 21. In 1924, Blodgett was awarded a position in a physics Ph.D. program at Sir Ernest Rutherford's Cavendish Laboratory. She wrote her dissertation on the behavior of electrons in ionized mercury vapor. Blodgett was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in physics from Cambridge University, in 1926. Blodgett was hired by General Electric as a research scientist as soon as she had received her master's degree in 1920. She was the first woman to work as a scientist for General Electric Laboratory in Schenectady, NY. During her research, she often worked with Langmuir, who had worked with her father. Blodgett and Langmuir worked on monomolecular coatings designed to cover surfaces of water, metal, or glass. These special coatings were oily and could be deposited in layers only a few nanometers thick. It wasn’t until the 1930s that she discovered uses for the coatings. In 1935, Blodgett devised a method to spread these monomolecular coatings one at a time onto glass or metal. She used a barium stearate film to cover glass with 44 monomolecular layers that made the glass more than 99% transmissive, creating "invisible" glass.[citation needed] This coating is now called the Langmuir-Blodgett film. One such use for her glass was in the cinematography of the popular film Gone with the Wind (1939). The Langmuir-Blodgett trough is also named after her. Blodgett also invented the color gauge, a method to measure the molecular coatings on the glass to one millionth of an inch. The gauge employs the concept that different thicknesses of coatings are different colors. She saw that soap bubbles were different colors and discovered that, at each place a soap bubble was a new color, it had a different thickness. Before her invention, the best instruments were only accurate to a few thousandths of an inch. She made a glass "ruler" to show different colors corresponding to the thicknesses and measuring thickness became as simple as matching colors. Dr. Blodgett was issued eight U.S. patents during her career. She was the sole inventor on all but two of the patents, working with Vincent J. Schaefer as co-inventor. Blodgett published over 30 technical papers in various scientific journals and was the inventor of poison gas adsorbents, methods for deicing aircraft wings, and improving smokescreens. Source:

Sophia BRAHEMain achievements: Astronomical observations together with her brother Tycho Brahe Sophie Brahe, also known as Sophia Thott, was a Danish horticulturalist and student of astronomy, chemistry, and medicine, best known for assisting her brother Tycho Brahe with his astronomical observations. She was born in Knudsturp, as the youngest of ten children, to Otte Brahe rigsråd, or advisor to the King of Denmark; and Beate Bille Brahe, leader of the royal household for Queen Sophie. Famous astronomer Tycho Brahe, 10 years her senior, was Sophie's oldest brother. When she was 17, she started assisting her brother with his astronomical observations in 1573, and helped him with the work that became the basis for modern planetary orbit predictions. She frequently visited his observatory Uranienborg, on the then-Danish island of Hveen. Tycho wrote that he had trained her in horticulture and chemistry, but he told her not to study astronomy. He expressed with pride that she learned astronomy on her own, studying books in German, and having Latin books translated with her own money so that she could also study them (Tjørnum). Brother and sister were united by their work in science, and by their family's opposition to science as an appropriate activity for members of the aristocracy. Tycho referred with admiration to her 'animus invictus', her "determined mind" (Det Kongelige Bibliotek). She married Otto Thott in 1576, when she was 19 or 20 and he was 33. She had one child with him before he died on 23 March 1588. Their son was Tage Thott, born in 1580. Upon her husband's death, Sophie Thott managed his property in Ericksholm, running the estate to keep it profitable until her son came of age. During this time, she also became a horticulturalist, in addition to her studies in chemistry and medicine. The gardens she created in Ericksholm were said to be exceptional. Sophie was particularly interested in studying chemistry and medicine according to Paracelsus, in which small doses of poison might serve as strong medicines. She also helped her brother with producing horoscopes, continuing with that until 1597 (Det Kongelige Biblioteck). On 21 July 1587, King Frederick II of Denmark signed a document transferring to Sophia Brahe title of Årup farm in what is now Sweden. During the times she visited at Uranienborg, Sophia Thott met Erik Lange, a nobleman who studied alchemy. In 1590, Sophie took 13 visits to Uranienborg, and they became engaged in that year. Lange used up most of his fortune with alchemy experiments, so their marriage was delayed some years while he avoided his debtors and traveled to Germany to try to find patrons for his work. Tycho Brahe wrote the poem "Urania Titani" during the couple's separation, expressed as a letter from his sister Sophia to her fiance in 1594. In 1599, she visited Lange in Hamburg, but they did not marry until 1602 in Eckenförde. They lived in this town for a while in extreme poverty. Sophie wrote a long letter to her sister Margrethe Brahe, describing having to wear stockings with holes in them for her wedding. Lange's wedding clothes had to be returned to the pawn shop after the wedding, because the couple could not afford to keep them. She expressed anger with her family for not accepting her science studies, and for depriving her of money owed to her. By 1608, Erik Lange was living in Prague, and he died there in 1613 (Det Kongelige Bibliotek). Sophie Brahe personally financed the restoration of the local church, Ivetofta kyrka. She planned to be buried there, and the lid for her unused sarcophagus remains in the church's armory (Svensson, et al.). But, by 1616 she had moved back permanently to Denmark and settled in Helsingør. She spent her last years writing up the genealogy of Danish noble families, publishing the first major version in 1626 (there were later additions). Her work is still considered a major source for early history of Danish nobility (Det Kongelige Bibliotek). She died in Helsingør in the year 1643, and was buried in Kristianstad, in Trefaldighets kyrka, with the Thott family. In 1626 Sophie had completed a 900-page manuscript on the genealogies of 60 Danish noble families, which is held by Lund University. In 1691 Pieter van der Hulst painted a portrait of an old woman named Live Larsdatter; he wrote a note claiming she was born in 1575, and was 116 years old. Sparse sources claimed that Larsdatter worked for Tycho in Denmark, and later for Sophie, who taught her medicine. Larsdatter was variously said to have lived to 123 or 124 years and to have become known for her "miracle plaster". Source:

Dorotea BUCCAMain achievements: Held a chair of medicine at the University of Bologna. Dorotea Bucca (also Dorotea Bocchi) was an Italian physician. Little is known of her life, except that she held a chair of medicine and philosophy at the University of Bologna for over forty years from 1390. Her father had previously held the same chair. The attitude to educating women in medical fields in Italy appears to have been more liberal than in England prior to the 19th century. , Margarita, Mercuriade (14th century), Constance Calenda, Calrice di Durisio (15th century), Constanza, Maria Incarnata and Thomasia de Mattio. Source:

Linda BUCKMain achievements: Discovery of hundreds odorat genes. Linda Brown Buck is an American biologist best known for her work on the olfactory system. She was awarded the 2004 , along with Richard Axel, for their work on olfactory receptors. In their landmark paper published in 1991, Buck and Axel cloned olfactory receptors, showing that they belong to the family of G protein-coupled receptors. By analyzing rat DNA, they estimated that there were approximately one thousand different genes for olfactory receptors in the mammalian genome. This research opened the door to the genetic and molecular analysis of the mechanisms of olfaction. In their later work, Buck and Axel have shown that each olfactory receptor neuron remarkably only expresses one kind of olfactory receptor protein and that the input from all neurons expressing the same receptor is collected by a single dedicated glomerulus of the olfactory bulb. Born in Seattle, Washington, Buck received her B.S. in psychology and microbiology in 1975 from the University of Washington, Seattle and her Ph.D. in immunology in 1980 from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. She did her post-doctoral work at Columbia University under Axel. In 1991 Buck became an assistant professor of neurobiology at Harvard University where she expanded her knowledge of the nervous system. Her primary research interest is on how pheromones and odors are detected in the nose and interpreted in the brain. She is a Full Member of the Basic Sciences Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, an Affiliate Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington, Seattle and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in 2004. Buck was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008. She also sits on the Selection Committee for Life Science and Medicine which chooses winners of the Shaw Prize. Source:

Margaret BUCKINGHAMMain achievements: Works on myogenesis and cardiogenesis. Professor Margaret Buckingham is a developmental biologist, working in the fields of myogenesis and cardiogenesis. She is a professor emeritus at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and exceptional grade senior researcher emeritus at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique. She is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, the Academia Europaea and the French Academy of Sciences. After graduating from Oxford University, where her thesis was on histone modifications, she joined F. Gros's laboratory at the Pasteur Institute to work on mRNA regulation during skeletal muscle differentiation. In 2013, she got the Source:

Annie Jump CANNONMain achievements: Harvard Classification Scheme for stars. Annie Jump Cannon was an American astronomer whose cataloging work was instrumental in the development of contemporary stellar classification. With Edward C. Pickering, she is credited with the creation of the Harvard Classification Scheme, which was the first serious attempt to organize and classify stars based on their temperatures. The daughter of shipbuilder and state senator Wilson Lee Cannon and his second wife, Mary Elizabeth Jump, Cannon grew up in Dover, Delaware. Cannon's mother had a childhood interest in star-gazing, and she passed that interest along to her daughter. Cannon had four older step-siblings from her father's first marriage, as well as two brothers, Robert and Wilson. Cannon never married but was happy to be an aunt to her brother's children. At Wilmington Conference Academy, Cannon was a promising student, particularly in mathematics. In 1880, Cannon was sent to Wellesley College in Massachusetts, one of the top academic schools for women in the U.S. The cold winter climate in the area led to repeated infections, and in one instance Cannon was stricken with scarlet fever. As a result, she became almost completely deaf. Cannon graduated with a degree in physics in 1884 and returned home. Uninterested in the limited career opportunities available to women, she grew bored and restless. Her partial hearing loss made socializing difficult, and she was generally older and better educated than most of the unmarried women in the area. Also during these years, Cannon developed her skills in the new art of photography. In 1892 she traveled through Europe taking photographs with her Blair box camera. After she returned home her prose and photos from Spain were published in pamphlet called "In the Footsteps of Columbus" by the Blair Company and distributed as a souvenir at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. In 1894, Cannon's mother died and life in the home grew more difficult. She finally wrote to her former instructor at Wellesley, professor of physics and astronomy also inspired Cannon to learn about spectroscopy. In order to gain access to a better telescope, Cannon enrolled at Radcliffe College, set up near Harvard College for Harvard professors to repeat their lectures to the young Radcliffe women, which had access to the Harvard College Observatory. In 1896, Edward C. Pickering hired Cannon as his assistant at the Observatory. By 1907, she had received a MA from Wellesley. In 1896, Cannon became a member of Pickering’s Women, the women hired by Harvard Observatory director Pickering to complete the Henry Draper Catalogue mapping and defining every star in the sky to photographic magnitude of about 9. Anna Draper, the widow of wealthy physician and amateur astronomer Henry Draper, set up a fund to support the work. Pickering made the Catalogue a long-term project to obtain the optical spectra of as many stars as possible and to index and classify stars by spectra. If making measurements was hard, the development of a reasonable classification was at least as difficult. Not long after the work on the Draper Catalogue began, a disagreement developed as to how to classify the stars. Antonia Maury, Henry Draper's niece, insisted on a complex classification system while Williamina Fleming, who was overseeing the project for Pickering, wanted a much more simple, straightforward approach. Cannon negotiated a compromise: she started by examining the bright southern hemisphere stars. To these stars she applied a third system, a division of stars into the spectral classes O, B, A, F, G, K, M. Her scheme was based on the strength of the Balmer absorption lines. After absorption lines were understood in terms of stellar temperatures, her initial classification system was rearranged to avoid having to update star catalogues. The mnemonic of "Oh Be a Fine Girl, Kiss Me" has developed as a way to remember stellar classification. The female astronomers doing this groundbreaking work at the Observatory earned 25 cents per hour, which was less than what the secretaries at the university earned. Cannon’s work was theory-laced but simplified. Her observation of stars and stellar spectra was extraordinary. Her Draper Catalogue listed nearly 230,000 stars, all the work of a single observer. Cannon also published other catalogues of variable stars, including 300 that she personally discovered. Her career lasted more than 40 years, during which time women gained acceptance within the scientific community. Cannon died April 13, 1941 after being named the William C. Bond astronomer at Harvard in 1938. She was also the only single female to win the Henry Draper Medal from the National Academy of Sciences, in 1931. (Martha P. Haynes shared her honor with a male colleague.) Source:

Emilie DU CHATELETMain achievements: Translation of Isaac Newton's book Principia Mathematica. Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Châtelet was a French mathematician, physicist, and author during the Age of Enlightenment. Her crowning achievement is considered to be her translation and commentary on Isaac Newton's work Principia Mathematica. The translation, published posthumously in 1759, is still considered the standard French translation. Voltaire, one of her lovers, declared in a letter to his friend King Frederick II of Prussia that du Châtelet was "a great man whose only fault was being a woman". Émilie du Châtelet was born on 17 December 1706 in Paris, the only daughter of six children. Du Châtelet also had an illegitimate half-sister, Michelle, who was born of her father and Anne Bellinzani, an intelligent woman who was interested in astronomy and married to an important Parisian official. Her father was Louis Nicolas le Tonnelier de Breteuil, a member of the lesser nobility. At the time of du Châtelet's birth, her father held the position of the Principal Secretary and Introducer of Ambassadors to King Louis XIV. He held a weekly salon on Thursdays, to which well-respected writers and scientists were invited. Du Châtelet's education has been the subject of much speculation, but nothing is known with certainty. Among their acquaintances was Fontenelle, the perpetual secretary of the French Académie des Sciences. Émilie's father Louis-Nicolas, recognizing her early brilliance, arranged for Fontenelle to visit and talk about astronomy with her when she was 10 years old. Émilie's mother, Gabrielle-Anne de Froulay, was brought up in a convent, at the time the predominant educational institution available to French girls and women. While some sources believe her mother did not approve of her intelligent daughter, or of her husband's encouragement of Émilie's intellectual curiosity, there are also other indications that her mother not only approved of du Châtelet's early education, but actually encouraged her to vigorously question stated fact. In either case, such encouragement would have been seen as unusual for parents of their time and status. When she was small, her father arranged training for her in physical activities such as fencing and riding, and as she grew older, he brought tutors to the house for her. As a result, by the age of twelve she was fluent in Latin, Italian, Greek and German; she was later to publish translations into French of Greek and Latin plays and philosophy. She received education in mathematics, literature, and science. Her mother Gabrielle-Anne was horrified at her progress and fought Louis-Nicolas at every step, once attempting to have Émilie sent to a convent. Émilie also liked to dance, was a passable performer on the harpsichord, sang opera, and was an amateur actress. As a teenager, short of money for books, she used her mathematical skills to devise highly successful strategies for gambling. On 12 June 1725, she married the Marquis Florent-Claude du Chastellet-Lomont. Her marriage conferred the title of Marquise du Chastellet. Like many marriages among the nobility, theirs was arranged. As a wedding gift, the husband was made governor of Semur-en-Auxois in Burgundy by his father; the recently married couple moved there at the end of September 1725. Du Châtelet was nineteen at the time, her husband thirty-four. The Marquis Florent-Claude du Chastellet and Émilie du Châtelet had three children: Françoise Gabriel Pauline, Louis Marie Florent, and Victor-Esprit. Victor-Esprit died as a toddler in late summer 1734, likely the last Sunday in August. In 1749 Émilie du Châtelet gave birth to Stanislas-Adélaïde du Châtelet (daughter of Jean François de Saint-Lambert). She was born on 4 September 1749. The infant died in Lunéville on 6 May 1751. In 1733, at the age of 26, du Châtelet resumed her mathematical studies. Initially, she was tutored in algebra and calculus by Moreau de Maupertuis, a member of the Academy of Sciences. Although mathematics was not his forte, Maupertuis had received a solid education from Johann Bernoulli, who also taught Leonhard Euler. By 1735, however, du Châtelet had turned for her mathematical training to Alexis Clairaut, a mathematical prodigy known best for Clairaut's equation and Clairaut's theorem. Du Châtelet and Voltaire may have met in her childhood at one of her father's salons; Voltaire himself dates their meeting to 1729, when he returned from his exile in London. However, their friendship began in earnest in May 1733, upon her re-entering society after the birth of her third child. Du Châtelet invited Voltaire to live in her country house at Cirey-sur-Blaise in Haute-Marne, northeastern France, and he became her long-time companion (under the eyes of her tolerant husband). There she studied physics and mathematics and published scientific articles and translations. To judge from Voltaire's letters to friends and their commentaries on each other's work, they lived together with great mutual liking and respect. In May 1748, du Châtelet began an affair with the poet Jean François de Saint-Lambert and became pregnant. In a letter to a friend, she confided her fears that she would not survive her pregnancy. On the night of 3 September 1749, she gave birth to a daughter, Stanislas-Adélaïde, but died a week later, at Lunéville, from a pulmonary embolism, at the age of 42. Her daughter died roughly eighteen months later. In 1749, the year of her death, she completed the work regarded as her outstanding achievement: her translation into French, with her commentary, of Newton’s Principia Mathematica, including her derivation of the notion of conservation of energy from its principles of mechanics. Published ten years after her death, today du Châtelet's translation of Principia Mathematica is still the standard translation of the work into French. Source:

Grace CHISHOLMMain achievements: First woman who obtained a doctorate in Germany (in 1895). Grace Chisholm Young was an English mathematician. She was educated at Girton College, Cambridge, England and continued her studies at Göttingen University in Germany, where in 1895 she became the first woman to receive a doctorate in any field in that country. Her early writings were published under the name of her husband, William Henry Young, and they collaborated on mathematical work throughout their lives. For her work on calculus (1914–16), she was awarded the Gamble Prize. She was the youngest of three surviving children. Grace and her sister were taught at home by their mother and a governess which was custom during that time. Her family encouraged her to become involved in social work, helping the poor in London. She had aspirations of studying medicine, but her family would not allow it however, Chisholm wanted to continue her studies. She passed the senior examination for entrance into Cambridge University at the age of 17. Later in life Grace had a tutor by the name of William Young, whom she married the year after she received her Ph.D. at Göttingen. Grace and William spent the next 44 years together having six children together in a span of nine years. Chisholm entered Girton in 1889, four years after she passed the senior entrance examination. At the end of their first year, when the Mays list came out, she was top of the Second class right below Isabel Maddison. In 1893, Grace passed her final examinations and scored the equivalent of a first-class degree. She also took (unofficially, on a challenge, with Isabel Maddison) the exam for the Final Honours School in mathematics at the University of Oxford on which she out-performed all the Oxford students. However, women were not awarded formal degrees at that time and Chisholm remained at Cambridge for an additional year to complete Part II of the Mathematical Tripos, which was unusual for women at this time. Chisholm was still interested in continuing her studies and since women were not yet admitted to graduate schools in England she went to the University of Göttingen in Germany to study with Felix Klein. This was one of the major mathematical centers in the world. The decision to admit her had to be approved by the Berlin Ministry of Culture. In 1895, at the age of 27, Grace became the first woman to attain a doctorate in any field in Germany. Again government approval had to be obtained to allow her to take the examination, which consisted of probing questions by several professors on sections such as geometry, differential equations, physics, astronomy, and the area of her dissertation, all in German. Along with her test she was required to take courses showing broader knowledge as well as prepare a thesis which was entitled "Algebraisch-gruppentheoretische Untersuchungen zur sphärischen Trigonometrie" (Algebraic Groups of Spherical Trigonometry.) Grace and William had six children together in a span of nine years; most of their children went on to become mathematicians. In addition to her career as a pioneering female in what was then a discipline with significant barriers to entry, Grace completed all the requirements for a medical degree except the internship. She also learned six languages and taught each of her children a musical instrument. With the approach of World War II, Grace left Switzerland in 1940 to take two of her grandchildren to England. Grace was to return immediately, but because of the fall of France, she could not. Of their six children, three continued on to study mathematics, one daughter became a physician, and one son pursued a career in finance and business. One of Grace's fourteen grandchildren, Sylvia Wiegand, is a mathematician at the University of Nebraska and is a past president of the Association for Women in Mathematics. Source:

Jane COLDENMain achievements: First woman in the New World to be distinguished as a botanist. Jane Colden was an American botanist described as the "first botanist of her sex in her country" by Asa Gray in 1843. Contemporary scholarship maintains that she was the first female botanist working in America. Colden was born in New York City, the fifth child of Cadwallader Colden, who was a physician who trained at the University of Edinburgh and became involved in the politics and management of New York after arriving in the city. She was educated at home and her father provided her with botanical training following the new system of classification developed by Carolus Linnaeus. Between 1753 and 1758 Jane Colden catalogued New York's flora, compiling specimens and information on more than 300 species of plants from the lower Hudson River Valley, and classifying then according to the system developed by Linnaeus. She developed a technique for making ink impressions of leaves, and was also a skilled illustrator, doing ink drawings of 340. To many drawings she added pieces of folklore, suggesting medicinal uses for the plant. She went on to study the gardenia. Through her father she met and corresponded with many leading naturalists of the time, including Carolus Linnaeus. One of her descriptions of a new plant, which she herself called Fibraurea, was forwarded to Linnaeus with the suggestion that he should call it Coldenella, but Linnaeus refused and called it Helleborus (now Coptis groenlandica). Colden's original manuscript describing the flora of New York is held in the British Museum. A plant sanctuary in her honor was established in the late 1990s at Knox's Headquarters State Historic Site in New Windsor, near where she lived and worked. She married Scottish widower Dr. William Farquhar on March 12, 1759. She died in childbirth only seven years later; the child also died in the same year. There is no evidence that she continued her botanical work after her marriage. The standard author abbreviation Colden is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name. Source:

Gerty Theresa CORIMain achievements: Discovery of the Gerty Theresa Cori was an American biochemist who became the third woman—and first American woman—to win a Nobel Prize in science, and the first woman to be awarded the . Cori was born in Prague (then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now the Czech Republic). Growing up at a time when women were marginalized in science and allowed few educational opportunities, she gained admittance to medical school, where she met her future husband Carl Ferdinand Cori; upon their graduation in 1920, they married. Because of deteriorating conditions in Europe, the couple emigrated to the United States in 1922. Gerty Cori continued her early interest in medical research, collaborating in the laboratory with Carl. She published research findings coauthored with her husband, as well as publishing singly. Unlike her husband, she had difficulty securing research positions, and the ones she obtained provided meager pay. Her husband insisted on continuing their collaboration, though he was discouraged from doing so by the institutions that employed him. With her husband Carl and Argentine physiologist Bernardo Houssay, Gerty Cori received the Nobel Prize in 1947 for the discovery of the mechanism by which glycogen—a derivative of glucose—is broken down in muscle tissue into lactic acid and then resynthesized in the body and stored as a source of energy (known as the Cori cycle). They also identified the important catalyzing compound, the Cori ester. In 2004, both Gerty and Carl Cori were designated a National Historic Chemical Landmark in recognition of their work in clarifying carbohydrate metabolism. In 1957, Gerty Cori died after a ten-year struggle with myelosclerosis. She remained active in the research laboratory until the end. She received recognition for her achievements through multiple awards and honors. The Cori crater on the Moon and the Cori crater on Venus are named after her. Source:

Isabella CORTESEMain achievements: Author of the book Isabella Cortese was an Italian alchemist and writer of the Renaissance. In 1561, her book first appeared in print in Venice and it introduced alchemy to a wider readership. In it were medical and cosmetic remedies, advice for how to run a household and discussion of how to turn metal into gold. It was a popular book, which went through several editions into the seventeenth century. She also stated to have learned more from traveling than from reading older texts about the subject.

Dorothy CROWFOOT HODGKINMain achievements: Discovery of the structures of penicillin and vitamin B12. Dorothy Mary Hodgkin was a British chemist, credited with the development of protein crystallography. Dorothy Mary Crowfoot was born on 12 May 1910 in Cairo, Egypt. For the first four years of her life she lived in the English expatriate community in Egypt, returning to England only a few months each year. She spent the period of World War I in the United Kingdom under the care of relatives and friends, but separated from her parents. After the war, her mother decided to stay home in England for one year and educate her children, a period that Hodgkin later described as the happiest in her life. In 1921, she entered the Sir John Leman Grammar School in Beccles. Only once, when she was thirteen, did she make an extended visit to her parents, who by then had moved to Khartoum, although both parents continued to visit England each summer. She developed a passion for chemistry from a young age, and her mother fostered her interest in science in general. Her state school education left her without Latin or a further science subject, but she took private tuition in order to enter the Oxford University entrance examination. At age 18 she started studying chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, then one of the University of Oxford colleges for women only. She studied for a PhD at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of John Desmond Bernal, where she became aware of the potential of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of proteins, working with him on the technique's first application to analysis of a biological substance, pepsin. In 1933 she was awarded a research fellowship by Somerville College, and in 1934, she moved back to Oxford. The college appointed her its first fellow and tutor in chemistry in 1936, a post which she held until 1977. In the 1940s, one of her students was Margaret Roberts, the future Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who installed a portrait of Hodgkin in Downing Street in the 1980s. Together with Sydney Brenner, Jack Dunitz, Leslie Orgel, and Beryl M. Oughton, she was one of the first people in April 1953 to travel from Oxford to Cambridge to see the model of the structure of DNA, constructed by Francis Crick and James Watson, based on data acquired by . According to the late Dr. Beryl Oughton, later Rimmer, they all traveled together in two cars once Dorothy Hodgkin announced to them that they were off to Cambridge to see the model of the structure of DNA. In 1960 she was appointed the Royal Society's Wolfson Research Professor, an honour that provided her salary, research expenses and research assistance to continue her work at Oxford. Hodgkin is particularly noted for discovering three-dimensional biomolecular structures. In 1945, working with C.H. Carlisle, she published the first such structure of a steroid, cholesteryl iodide (having worked with cholesteryls since the days of her doctoral studies). In 1945, she and her colleagues solved the structure of penicillin, demonstrating (contrary to scientific opinion at the time) that it contains a ?-lactam ring. However, the work was not published until 1949. In 1954 she and colleagues began to publish their analysis of vitamin B12. She advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography, a method used to determine the three-dimensional structures of biomolecules. Among her most influential discoveries are the confirmation of the structure of penicillin that Ernst Boris Chain and Edward Abraham had previously surmised, and then the structure of vitamin B12, for which she was awarded the . In 1969, after 35 years of work and five years after winning the Nobel Prize, Hodgkin was able to decipher the structure of insulin. X-ray crystallography became a widely used tool and was critical in later determining the structures of many biological molecules where knowledge of structure is critical to an understanding of function. She is regarded as one of the pioneer scientists in the field of X-ray crystallography studies of biomolecules. Hodgkin published as Dorothy Crowfoot until 1949, when she was persuaded by Hans Clarke’s secretary to use her married name on her chapter in The Chemistry of Penicillin. Thereafter she always published as Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin. Source:

Maria CUNITZMain achievements: Author of the book Maria Cunitz or Maria Cunitia was an accomplished German astronomer, and one of the most notable female astronomers of the modern era. She authored a book Urania propitia, in which she provided new tables, new ephemera, and a more elegant solution to Kepler's problem. The Cunitz crater on Venus is named after her. The minor planet 12624 Mariacunitia is named in her honour. Maria Cunitz was born in Wohlau (Poland), as the eldest daughter of a Baltic German, Dr. Heinrich Cunitz, a physician and landowner who had lived in Schweidnitz for most of his life, and Maria Scholtz from Liegnitz, daughter of German scientist Anton von Scholtz (1560–1622), a mathematician and counselor to Duke Joachim Frederick of Liegnitz. The family eventually moved to Schweidnitz in Lower Silesia (Poland). At an early age Maria married (in 1623) the lawyer David von Gerstmann. After his death in 1626, she married (in 1630) Dr. Elias von Löwen, also from Silesia. Elias and Maria had three sons: Elias Theodor, Anton Heinrich and Franz Ludwig. Maria's most significant work was composed on the estate of the Cistercian convent in ?ubnice under O?obok near Kalisz, Poland where, with her husband, she had taken refuge at the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War (they were of Protestant religion; her siblings, who stayed in Silesia, converted to Roman Catholicism). After their return to Silesia, they published, at their own expense, Maria's book in 1650. The work was dedicated to Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand III. In 1655, a catastrophic fire of Pitschen (Polish: Byczyna) destroyed their scientific papers, and also the instruments and chemicals used for making many types of medicines. This undercut their source of income. Maria became a widow (a woman whose spouse has died) in 1661, and died at Pitzen in 1664. The year of Maria's birth is uncertain. No birth, baptism or similar documents have ever been located. The year was speculated about in the first major German-language publication about Maria Cunitz of 1798. Dr. Paul Knötel appears to be the first to give the year 1604 as the year of Maria's birth. This date seemed to make sense since her parents married the previous year. Other authors later appear to have repeated the same year. The proof that Maria was actually born in 1610 is furnished by an anthology with congratulation poems on her first wedding, in connection with a letter of Elias A Leonibus to Johannes Hevelius from the year 1651, found recently by Dr. Ingrid Guentherodt. The publication of the book Urania propitia (Olse, Silesia, 1650) gained Cunitz a European reputation. She was acclaimed as the most learned woman in astronomy since . Significantly for a technical publication of that period, her book was written both in Latin and German (stating that it was to increase the accessibility to her work). Urania propitia was a simplification of the Rudolphine Tables. It provided new tables, new ephemera, and a more elegant solution to Kepler's Problem, which is to determine the position of a planet in its orbit as a function of time. Today, her book is also credited for its contribution to the development of the German scientific language. Source:

Maria Dalle DONNEMain achievements: First woman having a doctorate in medicine. Maria Dalle Donne (1778-1842), was an Italian physician and a director at the University of Bologna. She was the first female doctorate in medicine, and the second woman to become a member of the Ordine dei Benedettini Accademici Pensionati. Dalle Donne was born to a peasant family in a village outside Bologna. Her talents was early recognized and she was encouraged to study medicine at the University of Bologna. In 1799, she presented her dissertation and took the examination, which made her the first female doctorate in medicine. She passed the examination with highest honors (maxima cum laude). In 1800, Dalle Donne published three scientific papers. The first paper, on anatomy and physiology, was a review and commentary on work previously done on female reproduction and fertility, fetal malformations, and blood circulation in the uterus. The second paper suggested for the first time that diseases of female fertility be classified on the basis of symptoms. The third paper focused on midwifery and the care of newborns. In 1829, Dalle Donne became the second woman, after , to be inducted to the prestigious Ordine dei Benedettini Accademici Pensionati, in which she was given the title "Academic". In 1832, Dalle Donne became Director of the Department of Midwifery at the University of Bologna. Source:

Gertrude ELIONMain achievements: Developed a multitude of new drugs, and the first immunosuppressive drug, azathioprine, used for organ transplants. Gertrude Belle Elion was an American biochemist and pharmacologist, and a 1988 recipient of the . Working alone as well as with George H. Hitchings, Elion developed a multitude of new drugs, using innovative research methods that would later lead to the development of the AIDS drug AZT. Elion was born in New York City, to immigrant parents Bertha (Cohen) and Robert Elion, a dentist. When she was 15, her grandfather died of cancer, instilling in her a desire to do all she could to try and cure the disease. She graduated from Hunter College in 1937 with a degree in Chemistry and New York University (M.Sc.) in 1941. Unable to obtain a graduate research position, she worked as a lab assistant and a high school teacher. Later, she left to work as an assistant to George H. Hitchings at the Burroughs-Wellcome pharmaceutical company (now GlaxoSmithKline). After several years of long range commuting, she was informed that she would no longer be able to continue her doctorate on a part-time basis, but would need to give up her job and go to school full-time. Elion made what was then a critical decision in her life, to stay with her job and give up the pursuit of a doctorate. She never obtained a formal Ph.D., but was later awarded an honorary Ph.D from Polytechnic University of New York in 1989 and honorary SD degree from Harvard university in 1998. She attended Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute (now known as Polytechnic University of New York) but did not graduate. Gertrude Elion died in North Carolina in 1999, aged 81. She had moved to the Research Triangle in 1970, and for a time served as a research professor at Duke University. She had also worked for the National Cancer Institute, American Association for Cancer Research and World Health Organization, among other organizations. From 1967 to 1983, she was the Head of the Department of Experimental Therapy for Burroughs Wellcome. Elion never married, had no children, and listed her hobby as 'listening to music'. Rather than relying on trial-and-error, Elion and Hitchings used the differences in biochemistry between normal human cells and pathogens (disease-causing agents) to design drugs that could kill or inhibit the reproduction of particular pathogens without harming the host cells. Most of Elion's early work came from the use and development of purines. Elion's inventions include: 6-mercaptopurine (Purinethol), the first treatment for leukemia and used in organ transplantation; Azathioprine (Imuran), the first immuno-suppressive agent, used for organ transplants; Allopurinol (Zyloprim), for gout; Pyrimethamine (Daraprim), for malaria; Trimethoprim (Septra), for meningitis, septicemia, and bacterial infections of the urinary and respiratory tracts. Acyclovir (Zovirax), for viral herpes; Nelarabine for cancer treatment. In 1988 Elion received the , together with Hitchings and Sir James Black. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1990, a member of the Institute of Medicine in 1991 and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences also in 1991. Other awards include the National Medal of Science (1991), Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award (1997), and the Garvan-Olin Medal (1968). In 1991 she became the first woman to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Source:

 EN HEDU ANNAMain achievements: Realized precise astronomical recordings of the moon’s phases. What was Enheduanna’s daily life like? As priestess of the moon god Nanna and his wife Ningal, she and her staff would have spent a great deal of time caring for them ritually–bathing and clothing the statues, bathing themselves before they approached the figures, making offerings of animals, produce, jewelry, and other materials, and keeping precise astronomical recordings of the moon’s phases. It’s unclear whether she would have conducted some of these astronomical observations herself. One of her poems refers to the fact that her own rooms (the “gipar” part of the temple complex) were where “they track the passage of the moon.” The language simultaneously suggests that specialized personnel (“they”) did the actual observations, and that she had some sort of intimate part in the operation, since they were in her room (“the priestess’ rooms, that princely shrine of holy cosmic order”). In addition to her cult and scientific responsibilities, she also had a considerable agricultural enterprise to oversee. Her title “en-priestess” referred to her capacity to oversee the fecundity of the land, and she ruled over a veritable army of farmers, fishermen, shepherds, and other livestock managers. The incredible bounty produced by so large an enterprise made temples extremely wealthy, so much so that they also played the role of banks, making substantial loans to individuals and kings. And in addition to her managerial responsibilities at home, she would have had to have maintained relations with other temples in the Mesopotamian valley as a sort of roving “goodwill ambassador” of Nanna (and possibly her father, Sargon). Source:

Sandra FABERMain achievements: Discovery of the Sandra Moore Faber is a University Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and works at the Lick Observatory. She has made important discoveries linking the brightness of galaxies to the speed of stars within them and was the co-discoverer of the Faber–Jackson relation. Faber was also instrumental in designing the Keck telescopes in Hawaii. In 1966, Faber obtained a B.A., with high honors, in physics from Swarthmore College. She went on to receive her Ph.D. in Astronomy from Harvard University in 1972. Faber was the head of a team (known as the Seven Samurai) that discovered a mass concentration called "The Great Attractor". She was also the Principal Investigator of the Nuker Team, which used the Hubble Space Telescope to search for supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. Faber was deeply involved in the initial use of Hubble as a member of the WFPC-1 camera team, and was responsible for diagnosing the spherical aberration in the Hubble primary. Faber says, "I hope that you take time to contemplate the implications of what you are studying. This is one of the rare opportunities to think about where the human race is going." Indeed, on the importance of astronomical knowledge, Faber states that "it's astronomy that puts us in perspective; it tells us where we come from, and cosmically, where we're going." At UCSC she focuses her research on the evolution of structure in the universe and the evolution and formation of galaxies. In addition to this, she led the development of the DEIMOS instrument on the Keck telescopes to obtain spectra of cosmologically distant galaxies. On August 1, 2012 she became the Interim Director of the University of California Observatories. Sandra Faber is co-editor of the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Faber was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1985 and the American Philosophical Society on 29 April 2001. Faber received the Heineman Prize in 1985 and the Harvard Centennial Medal in 2006. Sandra M. Faber received the 2009 Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science from The Franklin Institute for three decades of research on the formation and evolution of galaxies, and for her altruistic dedication to building new tools for the astronomy community. Her research revolutionized the way cosmologists understand and model the universe. In May, 2012, she received the Bruce Medal from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. In September 2012, Faber received the Karl Schwarzschild Medal, which is awarded by the German Astronomical Society. In February, 2013 she received the National Medal of Science from President Barack Obama. Source:

Jacobina FELICEJacqueline Felice de Almania was reportedly from Florence in Italy, and was active as a physician in Paris in 1322. She belonged to the minority of licensed female physicians of her time period, in 1292, there were eight female physicians registered in Paris. In 1322, however, Jacobina Felicie was put on trial for unlawful practice. During the trial many testimonies were given where she was said to have cured patients where other physicians had failed and given up hope of the patient's recovery, and according to one witness, she was reputed to be a better physician and surgeon than any of the French physicians in Paris. Despite the testimonies that she was able to cure people the male physicians had given up on, the court reasoned that it was obvious that a man could understand the subject of medicine better than a woman because of his gender. She was banned from practicing medicine and threatened with excommunication if she ever did so again. This decision is considered to have banned women from academic study in medicine in France and obtaining licenses until the 19th-century. Source:

Williamina FLEMINGMain achievements: Developed a common designation system for stars. Catalogued thousands of stars. Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming was a Scottish astronomer. During her career, she helped develop a common designation system for stars and catalogued thousands of stars and other astronomical phenomena. Fleming is especially noted for her discovery of the Horsehead Nebula in 1888. Williamina was born at 86 Nethergate, Dundee, on May 15, 1857, to parents Robert Stevens, a carver and gilder, and Mary Walker. She married James Orr Fleming, an accountant and widower of Isabella Barr, at Paradise Road, Dundee, on May 26, 1877. Williamina was a teacher before traveling to Boston with her husband. After she and her child were deserted by James, she worked as a maid in the home of Professor Edward Charles Pickering. Pickering became frustrated with his male assistants at the Harvard College Observatory and, according to legend, famously declared his maid could do a better job. In 1881, Pickering hired Fleming to do clerical work at the observatory. While there, she devised and helped implement a system of assigning stars a letter according to how much hydrogen could be observed in their spectra. Stars classified as A had the most hydrogen, B the next most, and so on. Later, would improve upon this work to develop a simpler classification system based on temperature. Fleming contributed to the cataloguing of stars that would be published as the Henry Draper Catalogue. In nine years, she catalogued more than 10,000 stars. During her work, she discovered 59 gaseous nebulae, over 310 variable stars, and 10 novae. In 1907, she published a list of 222 variable stars she had discovered. In 1888, Fleming discovered the Horsehead Nebula on Harvard plate B2312, describing the bright nebula (later known as IC 434) as having "a semicircular indentation 5 minutes in diameter 30 minutes south of Zeta Orionis." The brother of Edward Pickering, William Henry Pickering, who had taken the photograph, speculated that the spot was dark obscuring matter. All subsequent articles and books seem to deny Fleming and W. H. Pickering credit, because the compiler of the first Index Catalogue, J. L. E. Dreyer, eliminated Fleming's name from the list of objects then discovered by Harvard, attributing them all instead merely to "Pickering" (taken by most readers to mean E. C. Pickering, director of Harvard College Observatory.) By the release of the second Index Catalogue by Dreyer in 1908, Fleming and others at Harvard were famous enough to receive proper credit for later object discoveries, but not for IC 434 and the Horsehead Nebula, one of her early observations. Fleming was placed in charge of dozens of women hired to do mathematical classifications, and edited the observatory's publications. In 1899, Fleming was given the title of Curator of Astronomical Photographs. In 1906, she was made an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society of London, the first American woman to be so elected. Soon after, she was appointed honorary fellow in astronomy of Wellesley College. Shortly before her death, the Astronomical Society of Mexico awarded her the Guadalupe Almendaro medal for her discovery of new stars. She published A Photographic Study of Variable Stars (1907) and Spectra and Photographic Magnitudes of Stars in Standard Regions (1911). She died in Boston of pneumonia in 1911. Source:

Rosalind FRANKLINMain achievements: Identification of the DNA molecular structure. Discovery of the DNA double helix. Rosalind Elsie Franklin was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer who made critical contributions to the understanding of the fine molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA, viruses, coal, and graphite. Her DNA work achieved the most fame because DNA plays an essential role in cell metabolism and genetics, and the discovery of its structure helped her co-workers understand how genetic information is passed from parents to their offspring. Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA which led to the discovery of the DNA double helix. According to Francis Crick, her data were key in determining the structure and formulating Crick and Watson's 1953 model regarding the structure of DNA. Franklin's images of X-ray diffraction confirming the helical structure of DNA were shown to Watson without her approval or knowledge. This image provided valuable insight into the DNA structure, but Franklin's scientific contributions to the discovery of the double helix are often overlooked. Unpublished drafts of her papers (written just as she was arranging to leave King's College London) show that she had independently determined the overall B-form of the DNA helix and the location of the phosphate groups on the outside of the structure. Moreover, it was a report of Franklin's that convinced Crick and Watson that the backbones had to be on the outside, which was crucial since before this both they and Linus Pauling had independently generated non-illuminating models with the chains inside and the bases pointing outwards. However, her work was published third, in the series of three DNA Nature articles, led by the paper of Watson and Crick which only hinted at her contribution to their hypothesis. Watson has suggested that ideally Franklin would have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Maurice Wilkins. After finishing her portion of the work on DNA, Franklin led pioneering work on the tobacco mosaic virus and the polio virus. She died in 1958 at the age of 37 of ovarian cancer. Franklin was born in Notting Hill, London, into an affluent and influential British Jewish family. Her father was Ellis Arthur Franklin (1894–1964), a politically liberal London banker who taught at the city's Working Men's College, and her mother was Muriel Frances Waley (1894–1976). Rosalind was the elder daughter, and the second child in the family of five children. Her father's uncle was Herbert Samuel (later Viscount Samuel), who was the Home Secretary in 1916 and the first practising Jew to serve in the British Cabinet. Her aunt, Helen Caroline Franklin, was married to Norman de Mattos Bentwich, who was the Attorney General in the British Mandate of Palestine. She was active in trade union organisation and the women's suffrage movement, and was later a member of the London County Council. Franklin herself later became an agnostic. Her uncle, Hugh Franklin was another prominent figure in the suffrage movement, although his actions embarrassed the Franklin family. From early childhood, Franklin showed exceptional scholastic abilities. She was educated at St Paul's Girls' School where she excelled in science, Latin and sports. Her family was actively involved with a Working Men's College, where her father taught electricity, magnetism, and the history of the Great War in the evenings and later became the vice-principal. Later Franklin's family helped settle Jewish refugees from Europe who had escaped the Nazis. Franklin went up to Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1938 and studied chemistry within the Natural Sciences Tripos. One of the demonstrators who taught her was the spectroscopist W.C. Price. Later, he was one of her senior colleagues at King's College. In 1941 she was awarded Second Class Honours in her Finals. This was accepted as a bachelor's degree in the qualifications for employment. Cambridge started to award the titular B.A. and M.A. to women in 1947, and the previous women graduates received these retroactively. Franklin was awarded a research fellowship and, according to an entry on the web site of the Dolan DNA Learning Center of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, "She spent a year in R.G.W. Norrish's lab without great success." Resigning from Norrish's Lab, Franklin fulfilled the requirements of the National Service Act by working as an Assistant Research Officer at the British Coal Utilisation Research Association (BCURA). The BCURA was located on the Coombe Springs Estate, near Kingston upon Thames on the southwestern outskirts of London. Professor Norrish was a wartime advisor to BCURA. John G. Bennett was the Director. Marcello Pirani and Victor Goldschmidt, both refugees from the Nazis, were consultants and lectured at BCURA while Franklin was there. She studied the porosity of coal, comparing its density to that of helium. Through this, she discovered the relationship between the fine constrictions in the pores in coals and the permeability of the pore space. By concluding that substances were expelled in order of molecular size as temperature increased, Franklin helped classify coals and accurately predict their performance for fuel purposes and in the production of wartime devices (i.e. gas masks). This work was the basis of her Ph.D. thesis The physical chemistry of solid organic colloids with special reference to coal for which Cambridge University awarded her a Ph.D. in 1945. It was also the basis of several papers. The French scientist Adrienne Weill was one of Franklin's tutors at Newnham. At the end of the war, according to Anne Sayre, author of Rosalind Franklin and DNA, Franklin asked Weill to let her know of job openings for "a physical chemist who knows very little physical chemistry, but quite a lot about the holes in coal". At a conference in the autumn of 1946, Weill introduced Franklin to Marcel Mathieu, a director of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the network of institutes that comprise the major part of the scientific research laboratories supported by the French government. This led to Franklin's appointment with Jacques Mering at the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de l'Etat in Paris. Franklin joined the labo (as referred to by the staff) of Mering on 14 February 1947 as one of the fifteen chercheurs (researchers). Mering was an X-ray crystallographer who applied X-ray diffraction to the study of rayon and other amorphous substances, in contrast to the thousands of regular crystals that had been studied by this method for many years. He taught her the practical aspects of applying X-ray crystallography to amorphous substances. This presented new challenges in the conduct of experiments and the interpretation of results. Franklin applied them to further problems related to coal, in particular the changes to the arrangement of atoms when it is converted to graphite. Franklin published several further papers on this work. It became part of the mainstream of work on the physics and chemistry of coal, covered by a current monograph, the annual and other publications. Mering also continued the study of carbon in various forms, using X-ray diffraction and other methods. In January 1951, Franklin started working as a research associate at King's College London in the Medical Research Council's (MRC) Biophysics Unit, directed by John Randall. Although originally she was to have worked on X-ray diffraction of proteins and lipids in solution, Randall redirected her work to DNA fibres before she started working at King's since Franklin was to be the only experienced experimental diffraction researcher at King's in 1951. He made this reassignment, even before she started working at King's, because of the following pioneering work by Maurice Wilkins and Raymond Gosling – a Ph.D. student assigned to help Franklin. Even using crude equipment, these two men had obtained an outstanding diffraction picture of DNA which sparked further interest in this molecule. Wilkins and Gosling had been carrying out X-ray diffraction analysis of DNA in the unit since May 1950, but Randall had not informed them that he had asked Franklin to take over both the DNA diffraction work and guidance of Gosling's thesis. Randall's lack of communication about this reassignment significantly contributed to the well documented friction that developed between Wilkins and Franklin. Franklin, working with Gosling, started to apply her expertise in X-ray diffraction techniques to the structure of DNA. She used a new fine focus X-ray tube and microcamera ordered by Wilkins, but which she refined, adjusted and focused carefully. Drawing upon her physical chemistry background, Franklin also skillfully manipulated the critical hydration of her specimens. When Wilkins inquired about this improved technique, Franklin replied in terms which offended Wilkins as Franklin had "an air of cool superiority". Franklin's habit of intensely looking people in the eye while being concise, impatient and direct unnerved many of her colleagues. In stark contrast, Wilkins was very shy, and slowly calculating in speech while he avoided looking anyone directly in the eye. In spite of the intense atmosphere, Franklin and Gosling discovered that there were two forms of DNA: at high humidity (when wet), the DNA fibre became long and thin; when it was dried it became short and fat. These forms were termed DNA "B" and "A" respectively. Because of the intense personality conflict developing between Franklin and Wilkins, Randall[46] divided the work on DNA. Franklin chose the data rich A form while Wilkins selected the "B" form because his preliminary pictures had hinted it might be helical. He showed tremendous insight in this assessment of preliminary data. The X-ray diffraction pictures taken by Franklin at this time have been called, by J. D. Bernal, as "amongst the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken". By the end of 1951 it was generally accepted at King's that the B form of DNA was a helix, but after she had recorded an asymmetrical image in 1952 May, Franklin became unconvinced that the A form of DNA was helical in structure. In July 1952, as a practical joke on Wilkins (who frequently expressed his view that both forms of DNA were helical), Franklin and Gosling produced a death notice regretting the 'death' of helical crystalline DNA (A-DNA) During 1952, Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling worked at applying the Patterson function to the X-ray pictures of DNA they had produced. This was a long and labour-intensive approach but would yield significant insight into the structure of the molecule. By January 1953, Franklin had reconciled her conflicting data, concluding that both DNA forms had two helices, and had started to write a series of three draft manuscripts, two of which included a double helical DNA backbone (see below). Her two A form manuscripts reached Acta Crystallographica in Copenhagen on 6 March 1953, one day before Crick and Watson had completed their model. Franklin must have mailed them while the Cambridge team was building their model, and certainly had written them before she knew of their work. On 8 July 1953 she modified one of these "in proof", Acta articles "in light of recent work" by the King's and Cambridge research teams. The third draft paper on the "B" form of DNA, dated 17 March 1953, was discovered years later amongst her papers, by Franklin's Birkbeck colleague, Aaron Klug. He then published an evaluation of the draft's close correlation with the third of the original trio of 25 April 1953 Nature DNA articles. Klug designed this paper to complement the first article he had written defending Franklin's significant contribution to DNA structure. He had written this first article in response to the incomplete picture of Franklin's work depicted in Watson's 1968 memoir, The Double Helix. As vividly described in The Double Helix, on 30 January 1953, Watson travelled to King's carrying a preprint of Linus Pauling's incorrect proposal for DNA structure. Since Wilkins was not in his office, Watson went to Franklin's lab with his urgent message that they should all collaborate before Pauling discovered his error. The unimpressed Franklin became angry when Watson suggested she did not know how to interpret her own data. Watson hastily retreated, backing into Wilkins who had been attracted by the commotion. Wilkins commiserated with his harried friend and then changed the course of DNA history with the following disclosure. Without Franklin's permission or knowledge, Wilkins showed Watson Franklin's famous photograph 51. Watson, in turn, showed Wilkins a prepublication manuscript by Pauling and Corey. Franklin and Gosling's photo 51 gave the Cambridge pair critical insights into the DNA structure, whereas Pauling and Corey's paper described a molecule remarkably like their first incorrect model. Source:

Sophie GERMAINMain achievements: Pioneer of the elasticity theory. Works on the Fermat's Last Theorem. Marie-Sophie Germain was a French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. Despite initial opposition from her parents and difficulties presented by society, she gained education from books in her father's library and from correspondence with famous mathematicians such as Lagrange, Legendre, and Gauss. One of the pioneers of elasticity theory, she won the grand prize from the Paris Academy of Sciences for her essay on the subject. Her work on Fermat's Last Theorem provided a foundation for mathematicians exploring the subject for hundreds of years after. Because of prejudice against her gender, she was unable to make a career out of mathematics, but she worked independently throughout her life. In recognition of her contribution towards advancement of mathematics, an honorary degree was also conferred upon her by the University of Göttingen six years after her death. At the centenary of her life, a street and a girls' school were named after her. The Academy of Sciences established The Sophie Germain Prize in her honor. Marie-Sophie Germain was born on April 1, 1776, in Paris, France, in a house on Rue Saint-Denis. According to most sources, her father, Ambroise-Francois, was a wealthy silk merchant, though some believe he was a goldsmith. In 1789, he was elected as a representative of the bourgeoisie to the États-Généraux, which he saw change into the Constitutional Assembly. It is therefore assumed that Sophie witnessed many discussions between her father and his friends on politics and philosophy. Gray proposes that after his political career, Ambroise-François became the director of a bank; at least, the family remained well-off enough to support Germain throughout her adult life. Marie-Sophie had one younger sister, named Angélique-Ambroise, and one older sister, named Marie-Madeline. Her mother was also named Marie-Madeline, and this plethora of "Maries" may have been the reason she went by Sophie. Germain's nephew Armand-Jacques Lherbette, Marie-Madeline's son, published some of Germain's work after she died. When Germain was 13, the Bastille fell, and the revolutionary atmosphere of the city forced her to stay inside. For entertainment she turned to her father's library. Here she found J. E. Montucla's L'Histoire des Mathématiques, and his story of the death of Archimedes intrigued her. Germain decided that if geometry, which at that time referred to all of pure mathematics, could hold such fascination for Archimedes, it was a subject worthy of study. So she pored over every book on mathematics in her father's library, even teaching herself Latin and Greek so she could read works like those of Sir Isaac Newton and Leonhard Euler. She also enjoyed Traité d'Arithmétique by Étienne Bézout and Le Calcul Différentiel by Jacques Antoine-Joseph Cousin. Later, Cousin visited her in her house, encouraging her in her studies. Germain's parents did not at all approve of her sudden fascination with mathematics, which was then thought inappropriate for a woman. When night came, they would deny her warm clothes and a fire for her bedroom to try to keep her from studying, but after they left she would take out candles, wrap herself in quilts and do mathematics. As Lynn Osen describes, when her parents found Sophie "asleep at her desk in the morning, the ink frozen in the ink horn and her slate covered with calculations," they realized that their daughter was serious and relented. After some time, her mother even secretly supported her. In 1794, when Germain was 18, the École Polytechnique opened. As a woman, Germain was barred from attending, but the new system of education made the "lecture notes available to all who asked." The new method also required the students to "submit written observations." Germain obtained the lecture notes and began sending her work to Joseph Louis Lagrange, a faculty member. She used the name of a former student Monsieur Antoine-August Le Blanc, "fearing," as she later explained to Gauss, "the ridicule attached to a female scientist." When Lagrange saw the intelligence of M. LeBlanc, he requested a meeting, and thus Sophie was forced to disclose her true identity. Fortunately, Lagrange did not mind that Germain was a woman, and he became her mentor. He too visited her in her home, giving her moral support. Germain first became interested in number theory in 1798 when Adrien-Marie Legendre published Essai sur la théorie des nombres. After studying the work, she opened correspondence with him on number theory, and later, elasticity. Legendre showed some of Germain's work in the Supplément to his second edition of the Théorie des Nombres, where he calls it très ingénieuse ["very ingenious"] (See Best Work on Fermat's Last Theorem). Germain's interest in number theory was renewed when she read Carl Friedrich Gauss' monumental work Disquisitiones Arithmeticae. After three years of working through the exercises and trying her own proofs for some of the theorems, she wrote, again under the pseudonym of M. LeBlanc, to the author himself, who was one year younger than she. The first letter, dated 21 November 1804, discussed Gauss' Disquisitiones and presented some of Germain's work on Fermat's Last Theorem. In the letter, Germain claimed to have proved the theorem for n = p – 1, where p is a prime number of the form p = 8k + 7. However, her proof contained a weak assumption, and Gauss' reply did not comment on Germain's proof. Around 1807 (sources differ) the French were occupying the German town of Braunschweig, where Gauss lived. Germain, concerned that he might suffer the fate of Archimedes, wrote to General Pernety, a family friend, requesting that he ensure Gauss' safety. General Pernety sent a chief of a battalion to meet with Gauss personally to see that he was safe. As it turned out, Gauss was fine, but he was confused by the mention of Sophie's name. Three months after the incident, Germain disclosed her true identity to Gauss. He replied, "How can I describe my astonishment and admiration on seeing my esteemed correspondent M leBlanc metamorphosed into this celebrated person. . . when a woman, because of her sex, our customs and prejudices, encounters infinitely more obstacles than men in familiarising herself with [number theory's] knotty problems, yet overcomes these fetters and penetrates that which is most hidden, she doubtless has the most noble courage, extraordinary talent, and superior genius." Gauss' letters to Olbers show that his praise for Germain was sincere. In the same 1807 letter, Sophie claimed that if xⁿ + yⁿ is of the form h² + nf², then x + y is also of that form. Gauss replied with a counterexample: 15¹¹ + 8¹¹ can be written as h² + 11f², but 15 + 8 cannot. Although Gauss thought well of Germain, his replies to her letters were often delayed, and he generally did not review her work. Eventually his interests turned away from number theory, and in 1809 the letters ceased. Despite the friendship of Germain and Gauss, they never met. When Germain's correspondence with Gauss ceased, she took interest in a contest sponsored by the Paris Academy of Sciences concerning Ernst Chladni's experiments with vibrating metal plates. The object of the competition, as stated by the Academy, was "to give the mathematical theory of the vibration of an elastic surface and to compare the theory to experimental evidence." Lagrange's comment that a solution to the problem would require the invention of a new branch of analysis deterred all but two contestants, Denis Poisson and Germain. Then Poisson was elected to the Academy, thus becoming a judge instead of a contestant, and leaving Germain as the only entrant to the competition. In 1809 Germain began work. Legendre assisted by giving her equations, references, and current research. She submitted her paper early in the fall of 1811, and did not win the prize. The judging commission felt that "the true equations of the movement were not established," even though "the experiments presented ingenious results." Lagrange was able to use Germain's work to derive an equation that was "correct under special assumptions." After winning the Academy contest, she was still not able to attend its sessions because of the Academy's tradition of excluding women other than the wives of members. Seven years later this tradition was broken when she made friends with Joseph Fourier, a secretary of the Academy, who obtained tickets to the sessions for her. Germain published her prize-winning essay at her own expense in 1821, mostly because she wanted to present her work in opposition to that of Poisson. In the essay she pointed out some of the errors in her method. In 1826 she submitted a revised version of her 1821 essay to the Academy. According to Andrea Del Centina, the revision included attempts to clarify her work by "introducing certain simplifying hypotheses." This put the Academy in an awkward position, as they felt the paper to be "inadequate and trivial," but they did not want to "treat her as a professional colleague, as they would any man, by simply rejecting the work." So Augustin-Louis Cauchy, who had been appointed to review her work, recommended she publish it, and she followed his advice. One further work of Germain's on elasticity was published posthumously in 1831: her "Mémoire sur la courbure des surfaces." She used the mean curvature in her research. In 1829 Germain learned she had breast cancer. Despite the pain, she continued to work. In 1831 Crelle's Journal published her paper on the curvature of elastic surfaces. Mary Gray records, "She also published in Annales de chimie et de physique an examination of principles which led to the discovery of the laws of equilibrium and movement of elastic solids." On June 27 of 1831, she died in the house at 13 rue de Savoie. Despite Germain's intellectual achievements, her death certificate lists her as a "rentière – annuitant" (property holder, not a "mathematicienne." But her work was not unappreciated by everyone. When the matter of honorary degrees came up at the University of Göttingen six years after Germain's death, Gauss lamented, "[Germain] proved to the world that even a woman can accomplish something worthwhile in the most rigorous and abstract of the sciences and for that reason would well have deserved an honorary degree." Source :

Maria GOEPPERT-MAYERMain achievements: Discovery of the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus. Maria Goeppert Mayer was a German-born American theoretical physicist, and . A graduate of the University of Göttingen, Goeppert Mayer wrote her doctorate on the theory of possible two-photon absorption by atoms. At the time, the chances of experimentally verifying her thesis seemed remote, but the development of the laser permitted this. Today, the unit for the two-photon absorption cross section is named the Goeppert Mayer (GM) unit. Goeppert Mayer married Joseph Edward Mayer, and moved to the United States, where he was an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University. Strict rules against nepotism prevented Johns Hopkins University from taking her on as a faculty member, but she was given a job as an assistant and published a landmark paper on double beta decay in 1935. In 1937, she moved to Columbia University, where she took an unpaid position. During World War II, she worked for the Manhattan Project at Columbia on isotope separation, and with Edward Teller at the Los Alamos Laboratory on the development of the Teller's "Super" bomb. After the war, Goeppert Mayer became a voluntary associate professor of Physics at the University of Chicago (where Teller and her husband worked) and a senior physicist at the nearby Argonne National Laboratory. She developed a mathematical model for the structure of nuclear shells, for which she was awarded the in 1963, which she shared with J. Hans D. Jensen and Eugene Wigner. In 1960, she was appointed full professor of physics at the University of California at San Diego. Maria Goeppert was born on June 28, 1906, in Kattowitz, a city in Prussia, the only child of Friedrich Goeppert and his wife Maria née Wolff. In 1910, she moved with her family to Göttingen when her father, a sixth-generation university professor, was appointed as the professor of pediatrics at the University of Göttingen. Goeppert was closer to her father than her mother. "Well, my father was more interesting," she later explained. "He was after all a scientist." Goeppert was educated at the Höhere Technische in Göttingen, a school for middle-class girls who aspired to higher education.[5] In 1921, she entered the Frauenstudium, a private high school run by suffragettes that aimed to prepare girls for university. She took the abitur, the university entrance examination, at age 17, a year early, with three or four girls from her school and thirty boys. All the girls passed, but only one of the boys did. In the Spring of 1924, Goeppert entered the University of Göttingen, where she studied mathematics. A purported shortage of women mathematics teachers for schools for girls led to an upsurge of women studying mathematics at a time of high unemployment, and there was even a female professor of mathematics at Göttingen, Emmy Noether, but most were only interested in qualifying for their teaching certificate. Instead, Goeppert became interested in physics, and chose to pursue a Ph.D. In her 1930 doctoral thesis she worked out the theory of possible two-photon absorption by atoms. Eugene Wigner later described the thesis as "a masterpiece of clarity and concreteness". At the time, the chances of experimentally verifying her thesis seemed remote, but the development of the laser permitted the first experimental verification in 1961 when two-photon-excited fluorescence was detected in a europium-doped crystal. To honor her fundamental contribution to this area, the unit for the two-photon absorption cross section is named the Goeppert Mayer (GM) unit. Her examiners were three future Nobel prize winners: Max Born, James Franck and Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus. On January 19, 1930, Goeppert married Joseph Edward Mayer, an American Rockefeller fellow who was one of James Franck's assistants. The two had met when Mayer had boarded with the Goeppert family. The couple moved to Mayer's home country of the United States, where he had been offered a position as associate professor of chemistry at Johns Hopkins University. They had two children, Maria Ann and Peter Conrad. Strict rules against nepotism prevented Johns Hopkins University from hiring Goeppert Mayer as a faculty member, but she was given a job as an assistant in the Physics Department working with German correspondence. She received a very small salary, a place to work and access to the facilities. She taught some courses, and published an important paper on double beta decay in 1935. There was little interest in quantum mechanics at Johns Hopkins, but Goeppert Mayer worked with Karl Herzfeld, collaborating on a number of papers. She also returned to Göttingen in the summers of 1931, 1932 and 1933 to work with her former examiner Born, writing an article with him for the Handbuch der Physik. This ended when the NSDAP came to power in 1933, and many academics, including Born and Franck, lost their jobs. Goeppert Mayer and Herzfeld became involved in refugee relief efforts. Joe Mayer was fired in 1937. He attributed this to the hatred of women on the part of the dean of physical sciences, which he thought was provoked by Goeppert Mayer's presence in the laboratory. Herzfeld agreed and added that, with Goeppert Mayer, Franck and Herzfeld all at Johns Hopkins, some thought that there were too many German scientists there. There were also complaints from some students that Mayer's chemistry lectures contained too much modern physics. Mayer took up a position at Columbia University, where the chairman of the Physics Department, George Pegram, arranged for Goeppert Mayer to have an office, but she received no salary. She soon made good friends with Harold Urey and Enrico Fermi, who arrived at Columbia in 1939. Fermi asked her to investigate the valence shell of the undiscovered transuranic elements. Using the Thomas–Fermi model, she predicted that they would form a new series similar to the rare earth elements. This proved to be correct. In December 1941, Goeppert Mayer took up her first paid professional position, teaching science part-time at Sarah Lawrence College. In the spring of 1942, with the United States embroiled in World War II, she joined the Manhattan Project. She accepted a part-time research post from Urey with Columbia University's Substitute Alloy Materials (SAM) Laboratory. The objective of this project was to find a means of separating the fissile uranium-235 isotope in natural uranium; she researched the chemical and thermodynamic properties of uranium hexafluoride and investigated the possibility of separating isotopes by photochemical reactions. This method proved impractical at the time, but the development of lasers would later open the possibility of separation of isotopes by laser excitation. Through her friend Edward Teller, Goeppert Mayer was given a position at Columbia with the Opacity Project, which researched the properties of matter and radiation at extremely high temperatures with an eye to the development of the Teller's "Super" bomb, the wartime program for the development of thermonuclear weapons. In February 1945, Joe was sent to the Pacific War, and Goeppert Mayer decided to leave her children in New York and join Teller's group at the Los Alamos Laboratory. Joe came back from the Pacific earlier than expected, and they returned to New York together in July 1945. In February 1946, Joe became a professor in the Chemistry Department and the new Institute for Nuclear Studies at the University of Chicago, and Goeppert Mayer was able to become a voluntary associate professor of Physics at the school. When Teller also accepted a position there, she was able to continue her Opacity work with him. When the nearby Argonne National Laboratory was founded on July 1, 1946, Goeppert Mayer was also offered a part-time job there as a senior physicist in the Theoretical Physics Division. She responded "I don't know anything about nuclear physics." She programmed the Aberdeen Proving Ground's ENIAC to solved criticality problems for a liquid metal cooled reactor using the Monte Carlo method. During her time at Chicago and Argonne in the late 1940s, Goeppert Mayer developed a mathematical model for the structure of nuclear shells, which she published in 1950. Her model explained why certain numbers of nucleons in an atomic nucleus result in particularly stable configurations. These numbers are what Eugene Wigner called magic numbers: 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, and 126. Enrico Fermi provided a critical insight by asking her: "Is there any indication of spin orbit coupling?" She realised that this was indeed the case, and postulated that the nucleus is a series of closed shells and pairs of neutrons and protons tend to couple together. She described the idea as follows: Think of a room full of waltzers. Suppose they go round the room in circles, each circle enclosed within another. Then imagine that in each circle, you can fit twice as many dancers by having one pair go clockwise and another pair go counterclockwise. Then add one more variation; all the dancers are spinning twirling round and round like tops as they circle the room, each pair both twirling and circling. But only some of those that go counterclockwise are twirling counterclockwise. The others are twirling clockwise while circling counterclockwise. The same is true of those that are dancing around clockwise: some twirl clockwise, others twirl counterclockwise. Three German scientists, Otto Haxel, J. Hans D. Jensen, and Hans Suess, were also working on solving the same problem, and arrived at the same conclusion independently. Their results were announced in the issue of the Physical Review before Goeppert Mayer 's announcement in June 1949. Afterwards, she collaborated with them. Hans Jensen co-authored a book with Goeppert Mayer in 1950 titled Elementary Theory of Nuclear Shell Structure. In 1963, Goeppert Mayer, Jensen, and Wigner shared the . In 1960, Goeppert Mayer was appointed full professor of physics at the University of California at San Diego. Although she suffered from a stroke shortly after arriving there, she continued to teach and conduct research for a number of years. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1965. Goeppert Mayer died in San Diego, California, on February 20, 1972, after a heart attack that had struck her the previous year left her comatose. She was buried at El Camino Memorial Park in San Diego. After her death, the Maria Goeppert Mayer Award was created by the American Physical Society to honor young female physicists at the beginning of their careers. Open to all female physicists who hold Ph.D.s, the winner receives money and the opportunity to give guest lectures about her research at four major institutions. Two of her former universities also honor her. The Argonne National Laboratory presents an award each year to an outstanding young woman scientist or engineer, while the University of California at San Diego hosts an annual Maria Goeppert Mayer symposium, bringing together female researchers to discuss current science. Crater Goeppert Mayer on Venus with a diameter of about 35 km is also named after Goeppert-Mayer. In 2011, she was included in the third issuance of the American Scientists collection of US postage stamps, along with Melvin Calvin, Asa Gray, and Severo Ochoa. Her papers are in the Geisel Library at the University of California at San Diego. Source:

Carol GREIDERMain achievements: Pioneered research on the structure of telomeres. Carolyn Widney "Carol" Greider is an American molecular biologist. She is Daniel Nathans Professor and Director of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Johns Hopkins University. She discovered the enzyme telomerase in 1984, when she was a graduate student of at the University of California, Berkeley. Greider pioneered research on the structure of telomeres, the ends of the chromosomes. She was awarded the 2009 and Jack W. Szostak, for their discovery that telomeres are protected from progressive shortening by the enzyme telomerase. Greider was born in San Diego, California. Her father, Kenneth Greider, was a physics professor. Her family moved from San Diego to Davis, California, where she spent many of her early years and graduated from Davis Senior High School in 1979. Despite being dyslexic, she graduated from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a B.A. in biology in 1983. During this time she also studied at the University of Göttingen and made significant discoveries there. She completed her Ph.D. in molecular biology in 1987 at the University of California, Berkeley, under . While at U.C. Berkeley, Greider co-discovered telomerase, a key enzyme in cancer and anemia research, along with . Greider then completed her postdoctoral work, and also held a faculty position, at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Long Island, New York. During this time, Greider, in collaboration with Ronald A. DePinho, produced the first telomerase knockout mouse, showing that although telomerase is dispensable for life, increasingly short telomeres result in various deleterious phenotypes, colloquially referred to as premature aging. In the mid-1990s, Greider was recruited by Michael D. West, founder of biotechnology company Geron (now CEO of BioTime) to join the company's Scientific Advisory Board. She resigned from the cooperation in 1994 in a disagreement over how Geron marketed telomere research. She next moved on to a faculty position at the Johns Hopkins University in 1997, where she remains employed. Greider is the Daniel Nathans Professor and the Director of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Johns Hopkins Institute of Basic Biomedical Sciences. Greider has two children: Charles and Gwendolyn. Greider joined the laboratory of Elizabeth Blackburn in April, 1984, and took on a project Blackburn considered intimidating: finding the enzyme that was hypothesized to add extra DNA bases to the ends of chromosomes. Without the extra bases, which are added as repeats of a six base pair motif, chromosomes are shortened during DNA replication, eventually resulting in chromosome deterioration and senescence or cancer-causing chromosome fusion. and Greider looked for the enzyme in the model organism Tetrahymena thermophila, a fresh-water protozoan with a large number of telomeres. Blackburn reports that Greider approached the research with diligence, often working twelve-hour shifts in the lab. On Christmas Day, 1984, Greider first obtained results indicating that she had found the responsible enzyme. An additional six months of research led Greider and Blackburn to the conclusion that they had, indeed, identified the enzyme responsible for telomere addition. They published their findings in the journal Cell in December, 1985. The enzyme, originally called "telomere terminal transferase," is now known as telomerase. Awards and honors: Gairdner Foundation International Award (1998). Member of the American Society for Cell Biology (1999). Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award (2000). Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2003). Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2003). Richard Lounsbery Award (2003) National Academy of Sciences. Member of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (2004). Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (2006) (shared with Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak). Dickson Prize in Medicine (2006). Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences (2006) (shared with Elizabeth Blackburn) Louisa Gross Horwitz. Prize of Columbia University (2007) (shared with Elizabeth Blackburn and Joseph G. Gall). ). Member of the Institute of Medicine (2010). Source:

Rebecca de GUARNAMain achievements: One of the physician and surgeon females in Italy. Rebecca de Guarna was an Italian physician and surgeon and author in the 14th century. She is one of the few woman physicians known from the Middle Ages. Rebecca de Guarna was a member of the same Salernitian family as the famous Romuald, priest, physician and historian. She was a student of the University of Salerno and belonged to the minority of female students of her time period. She was the author of medical works on "Fevers", on "Urine", and on "Embryo". Source:

Caroline HERSCHELMain achievements: Discoveries of several comets. Production of a catalogue of stars. Caroline Lucretia Herschel was a German British astronomer and the sister of astronomer Sir William Herschel with whom she worked throughout both of their careers. Her most significant contributions to astronomy were the discoveries of several comets and in particular the periodic comet 35P/Herschel-Rigollet, which bears her name. She was the first woman to be paid for her contribution to science, to be awarded a Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1828), and to be named an Honorary Member of the Royal Astronomical Society (1835, with ). She was also named an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy (1838). The King of Prussia presented her with a Gold Medal for Science, on the occasion of her 96th birthday (1846). Caroline Lucretia Herschel was born at Hanover on 16 March 1750. She was the eighth child and fourth daughter of Isaac Herschel and his wife, Anna Ilse Moritzen. Isaac became a bandmaster in the Guards, was away with his regiment for substantial periods, and suffered ill-health after the battle of Dettingen in 1743. At the age of ten, Caroline was struck with typhus, which stunted her growth, so that she never grew past four-foot three. Her family assumed that she would never marry and her mother felt it was best for her to train to be a house servant. Her father wished her to receive an education, but her mother opposed this. Her father sometimes took advantage of her mother's absence to teach her directly or include her in her brother's lessons. Caroline was allowed to learn millinery and dress-making and worked hard at various types of fancy-work, with a view to someday supporting herself. Following her father's death, her brother William proposed that she join him in Bath, England, "to make the trial if by his instruction I might not become a useful singer for his winter concerts and oratorios". Caroline eventually left Hanover on 16 August 1772, and accompanied her brother William back to England. There she took on the responsibilities of running his household, and learning to sing. William had established himself as an organist and music teacher at 19 New King Street, Bath, Somerset (now the Herschel Museum of Astronomy). He was also the choirmaster of the Octagon Chapel. William was busy with his musical career and became fairly busy organizing public concerts. Caroline took several singing lessons a day from William. She became the principal singer at his oratorio concerts, and acquired such a reputation as a vocalist that she was offered an engagement for the Birmingham festival. She declined to sing for any conductor but William. But it appears that Caroline did not blend in with the local society and made few friends. William's interest in astronomy started as a hobby to pass time at night. At breakfast the next day he would give an impromptu lecture on what he had learned the night before. Caroline became as interested as William, stating that she was "much hindered in my practice by my help being continually wanted in the execution of the various astronomical contrivances." William became known for his work on high performance telescopes, and Caroline found herself supporting his efforts. Caroline possessed incredible dexterity in polishing mirrors and mounting telescopes. She learned to copy astronomical catalogues and other publications that William had borrowed. She also learned to record, reduce, and organise her brother’s astronomical observations. She recognised that this work demanded speed, precision and accuracy. In 1782, William accepted the office of King's Astronomer to George III and moved to Datchet and subsequently to Observatory House near Slough (then in Buckinghamshire, now in Berkshire). The new job proved to be a mixed blessing; although it left him with ample free time to continue his astronomical observations, it also meant a reduction in income and being called upon by the king for entertainment at any time. During this time William perfected his telescope making, building a series of ever larger devices that ultimately ended with his famous 40-foot (12 m) focal length instrument. Caroline was his constant assistant in his observations, also performing the laborious calculations with which they were connected. During one such observation run on the large telescope in 1783, Caroline became caught on an iron hook and when she was helped off "...they could not lift me without leaving nearly 2 ounces (60 g) of my flesh behind." At William’s suggestion, Caroline began to make observations on her own in 1782. During her leisure hours she occupied herself with observing the sky with a 27-inch (690 mm) focal length Newtonian telescope and by this means detected a number of astronomical objects during the years 1783–87, including most notably an independent discovery of M110 (NGC 205), the second companion of the Andromeda Galaxy. During 1786–97 she also discovered eight comets, her first comet being discovered on 1 August 1786. She had unquestioned priority as discoverer of five of the comets and rediscovered Comet Encke in 1795. In 1787, she was granted an annual salary of £50 (equivalent to £5,500 in 2014) by George III for her work as William's assistant. In 1797 William's observations had shown that there were a great many discrepancies in the star catalog published by John Flamsteed, which was difficult to use due to its having been published as two volumes, the catalogue proper and a volume of original observations. William realized that he needed a proper cross-index to properly explore these differences but was reluctant to devote time to it at the expense of his more interesting astronomical activities. He therefore recommended to Caroline that she undertake the task. The resulting Catalogue of Stars was published by the Royal Society in 1798 and contained an index of every observation of every star made by Flamsteed, a list of errata, and a list of more than 560 stars that had not been included. Caroline returned to Hanover in 1822 following her brother's death, but did not abandon her astronomical studies, continuing to verify and confirm William's findings and producing a catalogue of nebulae to assist her nephew John Herschel in his work. In 1828 the Royal Astronomical Society presented her with their Gold Medal for this work – no woman would be awarded it again until Vera Rubin in 1996. Herschel was awarded a gold medal from the Astronomical Society of London, and another from the King of Prussia. The gold medal from the Astronomical Society was awarded to her in 1828 "for her recent reduction, to January, 1800, of the Nebulæ discovered by her illustrious brother, which may be considered as the completion of a series of exertions probably unparalleled either in magnitude or importance in the annals of astronomical labour." She completed this work after her brother's death and her removal to Hanover. The Royal Astronomical Society elected her an Honorary Member in 1835, along with Mary Somerville; they were the first women members. In 1838 she was notified by Sir William Hamilton, Astronomer Royal, Dublin that she had also been elected as an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. In 1846, at the age of 96, she was awarded a Gold Medal for Science by the King of Prussia, conveyed to her by Alexander von Humboldt, "in recognition of the valuable services rendered to Astronomy by you, as the fellow-worker of your immortal brother, Sir William Herschel, by discoveries, observations, and laborious calculations". The asteroid 281 Lucretia (discovered 1888) was named after Caroline's second given name, and the crater C. Herschel on the Moon is named after her. Adrienne Rich's 1968 poem Planetarium celebrated Caroline Herschel's life and scientific achievements. Source:

Elisabeth HEVELIUSMain achievements: Author of the Catalogus Stellarum. One of the first female astronomers. Elisabeth Catherina Koopmann Hevelius (in Polish also called Elzbieta Heweliusz) is considered one of the first female astronomers, and called "the mother of moon charts". She was also the second wife of fellow astronomer Johannes Hevelius. Elisabeth Koopmann (or Kaufmann, German: "merchant") was, like Hevelius and his first wife, a member of a rich merchant family in the city of Danzig (Gdansk) located in Pomeranian Voivodeship of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and a member of the trade organisation called Hansa. Elisabetha Koopman's parents were Nicholas Kooperman (or Cooperman) (1601-1672) who was a prosperous merchant and Joanna Mennings (or Menninx) (1602-1679). Nicholas and Joanna were married in Amsterdam in 1633. They moved from Amsterdam to Hamburg then, in 1636, they moved to Danzig. It was in this city, largely German speaking but a part of Poland at the time, that their daughter Elisabetha was born. It was a fascination for astronomy which led Elisabetha, when still only a child, to approach Johannes Hevelius, an astronomer of international repute who had a complex of three houses in Danzig which contained the best observatory in the world. The marriage of the sixteen-year-old to fifty-two-year-old Hevelius in 1663 allowed her also to pursue her own interest in astronomy by helping him manage his observatory. They had a son, who died soon, and three daughters who survived. The eldest of the three daughters was named Catherina Elisabetha (after her mother) and baptized in St Catherine's Church, Danzig, on 14 February 1666. From the writings of Johann III Bernoulli we know that Elisabetha contracted small pox and was permanently scarred by it. Following his death in 1687, she completed and published Prodromus astronomiae (1690), their jointly compiled catalogue of 1,564 stars and their positions. Scholars know that she wrote in Latin since she had written letters to other scientists in Latin. They wonder why she would have had to learn Latin and why it would have been a priority for her at the time. Published after the death of Johannes, and with support from King Sobieski, the Prodromus Astronomiae consisted of three separate parts: a preface (labeled Prodromus), a star catalog (named Catalogus Stellarum), and an atlas of constellations (named Firmamentum Sobiescianum, sive Uranographia).Prodromus outlines the methodology and technology used in creating the star catalogue. It provides examples of the use of the sextant and quadrant by Johannes, in tandem with known positions of the sun, in calculating each stars' longitude and latitude. The written draft of the Catalogus Stellarum consists of 183 leaves, 145, alphabetized according to constellation, containing star positions. Each star had specific information recorded in columns: the reference number and magnitude found by astronomer Tycho Brahe, Johannes' own magnitude calculation, the star's longitude and latitude by both ecliptic coordinates measured by angular distances and meridian altitudes found using Johannes' quadrant, and the star's equatorial coordinates calculated using spherical trigonometry. The printed version was similar to the written draft, except the two columns describing a star's ecliptic coordinates were combined, and only the single best value for the star's latitude and longitude was given. Also, the printed version held more than 600 new stars and 12 new constellations not documented in the written draft, bringing its total to 1564. Although the observations of the catalog used nothing more than the astronomer's naked eye, the measurements were so precise as to be used in the making of celestial globes into the early 18th Century. Firmamentum Sobiescianum, while technically part of the Prodromus Astronomiae as a well, was likely published separately and in tighter circulation. Housing its own cover page and page-numbering system, the atlas consisted of two hemispheres and 54 double-page plates of 73 constellations. Both the northern and southern hemispheres were centered on an ecliptic pole, and most star locations were all based off Johannes' own observations. Those that were not, the southern polar stars, were based on a catalog and map published in 1679 by Edmond Halley. Elisabetha Hevelius died in December 1693, at the age of 46, and was buried in the same tomb as her husband. After her death, the mathematician François Arago wrote of her character: "A complimentary remark was always made about Madam Hevelius, who was the first woman, to my knowledge, who was not frightened to face the fatigue of making astronomical observations and calculations." Source:

Grace HOPPERMain achievements: One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer. Grace Murray Hopper was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. A pioneer in the field, she was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, and invented the first compiler for a computer programming language. She popularized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first modern programming languages. She is credited with popularizing the term "debugging" for fixing computer glitches (inspired by an actual moth removed from the computer). Owing to the breadth of her accomplishments and her naval rank, she is sometimes referred to as "Amazing Grace". The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Hopper (DDG-70) is named for her, as was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC. Hopper was born Grace Brewster Murray in New York City. She was the oldest in a family of three children. She was curious as a child, a lifelong trait; at the age of seven she decided to determine how an alarm clock worked, and dismantled seven alarm clocks before her mother realized what she was doing (she was then limited to one clock). For her preparatory school education, she attended the Hartridge School in Plainfield, New Jersey. Rejected for early admission to Vassar College at age 16 (her test scores in Latin were too low), she was admitted the following year. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar in 1928 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics and earned her master's degree at Yale University in 1930. In 1934, she earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale under the direction of Oystein Ore. Her dissertation, New Types of Irreducibility Criteria, was published that same year. Hopper began teaching mathematics at Vassar in 1931, and was promoted to associate professor in 1941. She was married to New York University professor Vincent Foster Hopper (1906–76) from 1930 until their divorce in 1945. She never remarried, and she kept his surname. In 1943, during World War II, Hopper obtained a leave of absence from Vassar and was sworn into the United States Navy Reserve, one of many women to volunteer to serve in the WAVES. She had to get an exemption to enlist; she was 15 pounds (6.8 kg) below the Navy minimum weight of 120 pounds (54 kg). She reported in December and trained at the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Hopper graduated first in her class in 1944, and was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard University as a lieutenant, junior grade. She served on the Mark I computer programming staff headed by Howard H. Aiken. Hopper and Aiken coauthored three papers on the Mark I, also known as the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. Hopper's request to transfer to the regular Navy at the end of the war was declined due to her age (38). She continued to serve in the Navy Reserve. Hopper remained at the Harvard Computation Lab until 1949, turning down a full professorship at Vassar in favor of working as a research fellow under a Navy contract at Harvard. In 1949, Hopper became an employee of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation as a senior mathematician and joined the team developing the UNIVAC I. In the early 1950s the company was taken over by the Remington Rand corporation and it was while she was working for them that her original compiler work was done. The compiler was known as the A compiler and its first version was A-0. In 1952 she had an operational compiler. "Nobody believed that," she said. "I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic." In 1954 Hopper was named the company's first director of automatic programming, and her department released some of the first compiler-based programming languages, including MATH-MATIC and FLOW-MATIC. In the spring of 1959, a two-day conference known as the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL) brought together computer experts from industry and government. Hopper served as the technical consultant to the committee, and many of her former employees served on the short-term committee that defined the new language COBOL (an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language). The new language extended Hopper's FLOW-MATIC language with some ideas from the IBM equivalent, COMTRAN. Hopper's belief that programs should be written in a language that was close to English (rather than in machine code or in languages close to machine code, such as assembly languages) was captured in the new business language, and COBOL went on to be the most ubiquitous business language to date. From 1967 to 1977, Hopper served as the director of the Navy Programming Languages Group in the Navy's Office of Information Systems Planning and was promoted to the rank of captain in 1973. She developed validation software for COBOL and its compiler as part of a COBOL standardization program for the entire Navy. In the 1970s, Hopper advocated for the Defense Department to replace large, centralized systems with networks of small, distributed computers. Any user on any computer node could access common databases located on the network. She pioneered the implementation of standards for testing computer systems and components, most significantly for early programming languages such as FORTRAN and COBOL. The Navy tests for conformance to these standards led to significant convergence among the programming language dialects of the major computer vendors. In the 1980s, these tests (and their official administration) were assumed by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), known today as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Source:

Margaret HUGGINSMain achievements: Pioneer in the field of spectroscopy. Author of the Atlas of Representative Stellar Spectra. Margaret Lindsay, Lady Huggins, born Margaret Lindsay Murray, was an Irish scientific investigator and astronomer. With her husband William Huggins she was a pioneer in the field of spectroscopy and co-authored the Atlas of Representative Stellar Spectra (1899). When Huggins was young, her mother died and her father remarried, leaving her on her own much of the time. Obituaries written by her friends attribute her interest in astronomy to her grandfather, a wealthy bank officer named Robert Murray. According to these sources, Margaret's grandfather taught her the constellations, and as a result of this she began studying the heavens with home-made instruments. She constructed a spectroscope after finding inspiration in articles on astronomy in the periodical Good Words. Her interest and abilities in spectroscopy led to her introduction to the astronomer William Huggins, whom she married in 1875. Evidence suggests that Huggins was instrumental in instigating William Huggins' successful program in photographic research. Huggins was a contributor to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition. Source:

 HYPATIAMain achievements: Head of the Platonist school at Alexandria. Hypatia of Alexandria was a Greek Alexandrian Neoplatonist philosopher in Egypt. As head of the Platonist school at Alexandria, she taught philosophy and astronomy. As a Neoplatonist philosopher, she belonged to the mathematic tradition of the Academy of Athens, as represented by Eudoxus of Cnidus; she was of the intellectual school of the 3rd century thinker Plotinus, which encouraged logic and mathematical study in place of empirical enquiry and strongly encouraged law in place of nature. For followers of Plotinus the life of reason had as its ultimate goal mystical union with the divine. According to contemporary sources, Hypatia was murdered by a Christian mob after being accused of exacerbating a conflict between two prominent figures in Alexandria: the governor Orestes and the Bishop of Alexandria. Kathleen Wider proposes that the murder of Hypatia marked the end of Classical antiquity, and Stephen Greenblatt observes that her murder "effectively marked the downfall of Alexandrian intellectual life". The mathematician and philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was the daughter of the mathematician Theon Alexandricus (c. 335 – c. 405). She was educated at Athens. Around AD 400, she became head of the Platonist school at Alexandria, where she imparted the knowledge of Plato and Aristotle to students, including pagans, Christians, and foreigners. Although contemporary 5th-century sources identify Hypatia of Alexandria as a practitioner and teacher of the philosophy of Plato and Plotinus, two hundred years later, the 7th-century Egyptian Coptic bishop John of Nikiû identified her as a Hellenistic pagan and that "she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through her Satanic wiles". However, not all Christians were as hostile towards her: some Christians even used Hypatia as symbolic of Virtue. The contemporary Christian historiographer Socrates Scholasticus described her in Ecclesiastical History: “ There was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions. On account of the self-possession and ease of manner which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she not infrequently appeared in public in the presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in going to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more. ” —Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History Hypatia corresponded with former pupil Synesius of Cyrene, who was tutored by her in the philosophical school of Platonism and later became bishop of Ptolemais in AD 410, an exponent of the Christian Holy Trinity doctrine. Together with the references by the pagan philosopher Damascius, these are the extant records left by Hypatia's pupils at the Platonist school of Alexandria. The Byzantine Suda encyclopaedia reported that Hypatia was "the wife of Isidore the Philosopher" (apparently Isidore of Alexandria); however, Isidore of Alexandria was not born until long after Hypatia's death, and no other philosopher of that name contemporary with Hypatia is known. The Suda also stated that "she remained a virgin" and that she rejected a suitor with her menstrual rags, saying that they demonstrated that there is "nothing beautiful" about carnal desire—an example of a Christian source using Hypatia as a symbol of Virtue. Source:

Deborah JINMain achievements: Made the first using magnetic traps and lasers to cool fermionic atomic gases. Deborah S. Jin was a physicist and fellow with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); Professor Adjunct, Department of Physics at the University of Colorado; a fellow of the JILA, a NIST joint laboratory with the University of Colorado. Born in Santa Clara County, California, Jin was one of three children, and grew up in Indian Harbour Beach, Florida. Her father was a physicist and her mother a physicist working as an engineer. Jin studied physics at Princeton University, graduating with an A.B. in 1990 and received her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1995 under Thomas Felix Rosenbaum with the thesis title "Experimental Study of Phase Diagrams of Heavy Fermion Superconductors with Multiple Transitions". In 1997, Jin formed a group at JILA, the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in Boulder, Colorado. Within two years, she developed the ability to create the first quantum degenerate gas of fermionic atoms. The work was motivated by earlier studies of Bose-Einstein condensates and the ability to cool a dilute gas of atoms to 1 μK. The weak interactions between particles in a Bose-Einstein Condensate led to interesting physics. It was theorized that fermionic atoms would form an analogous state at low enough temperatures, with fermions pairing up in a phenomena similar to the creation of Cooper pairs in superconducting materials. The work was complicated by the fact that, unlike bosons, fermions cannot occupy the same place at the same time and are therefore limited with regard to cooling mechanisms. To circumvent this issue, Jin and her team cooled potassium-40 atoms in two different magnetic sublevels. This enabled atoms in different sublevels to collide with each other, despite the fact that atoms of the same sublevel could not collide. The theorized 'quantum degeneracy' occurred at around 300 nK. In 2003, Jin and her team were the first to condense pairs of fermionic atoms. They directly observed a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate created solely by adjusting the interaction strength in an ultracold Fermi gas of atoms. She was able to observe transitions of the gas between a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) state and Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) state. Jin continued to advance the frontiers of ultracold science in 2008 when she and her colleague, Jun Ye, managed to cool polar molecules that possess a large electric dipole moment to ultracold temperatures. Rather than directly cool polar molecules, they created a gas of ultracold atoms and then transformed them into dipolar molecules in a coherent way. This work led to novel insights regarding the chemical reactions near absolute zero. They were able to observe and control potassium-rubidium (KRb) molecules in the lowest energy state (ground state). They were even able to observe molecules colliding and breaking and forming chemical bonds. Jin's husband, John Bohn, who specialized in the theory of ultracold atomic collisions, collaborated with her on this work. Jin has won several prestigious awards: The MacArthur Fellowship "genius grant" in 2003; Scientific American's "Research Leader of the Year" in 2004; The Franklin Institute's The Franklin Institute Awards 2008 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics; L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award Laureate for North America, for her work in ultracold gases of fermions in 2013; The Institute of physics Isaac Newton Medal; Comstock Prize in Physics 2014. Source:

Irène JOLIOT-CURIEMain achievements: Discovery of the Irène Joliot-Curie was a French scientist, the daughter of and Pierre Curie and the wife of Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Jointly with her husband, Joliot-Curie was awarded the in 1935 for their discovery of artificial radioactivity. This made the Curies the family with the most Nobel laureates to date. Both children of the Joliot-Curies, Hélène and Pierre, are also esteemed scientists. Irène Curie was born in Paris, France. After a year of traditional education, which began when she was 10 years old, her parents realized her obvious mathematical talent and decided that Irène’s academic abilities needed a more challenging environment. joined forces with a number of eminent French scholars, including the prominent French physicist Paul Langevin to form “The Cooperative,” a private gathering of some of the most distinguished academics in France. Each contributed to educating one another’s children in their respective homes. The curriculum of The Cooperative was varied and included not only the principles of science and scientific research but such diverse subjects as Chinese and sculpture and with great emphasis placed on self-expression and play. This arrangement lasted for two years after which Curie re-entered a more orthodox learning environment at the Collège Sévigné in central Paris from 1912 to 1914 and then onto the Faculty of Science at the Sorbonne, to complete her Baccalaureate. Her studies at the Faculty of Science were interrupted by World War I. Initially, Irène Curie was taken to the countryside but a year later when she turned 18 she was re-united with her mother, running the 20 mobile field hospitals that had established. The hospitals were equipped with primitive X-ray equipment made possible by the Curies’ radiochemical research. This technology greatly assisted doctors to locate shrapnel in wounded soldiers, but it was crude and led to both Marie and Irène, who were serving as nurse radiographers, suffering large doses of radiation exposure. Both would eventually die from the consequences of accumulated radiation exposure over their professional life. After the War, Irène Curie returned to Paris to study at the Radium Institute, which had been built by her parents. The institute was completed in 1914 but remained empty during the war. Her doctoral thesis was concerned with the alpha rays of polonium, the element discovered by her parents (along with radium) and named after Marie’s country of birth, Poland. Irène Curie became Doctor of Science in 1925. As she neared the end of her doctorate in 1924 she was asked to teach the precise laboratory techniques required for radiochemical research to the young chemical engineer Frédéric Joliot whom she would later come to wed. From 1928 Joliot-Curie and her husband Frédéric combined their research interests on the study of atomic nuclei. Though their experiments identified both the positron and the neutron, they failed to interpret the significance of the results and the discoveries were later claimed by Carl David Anderson and James Chadwick respectively. These discoveries would have secured greatness indeed, as together with J.J. Thomson's discovery of the electron in 1897, they finally replaced John Dalton’s theory of atoms being solid spherical particles. Finally, in 1934 they made the discovery that sealed their place in scientific history. Building on the work of and Pierre, who had isolated naturally occurring radioactive elements, Joliot-Curies realized the alchemist’s dream of turning one element into another, creating radioactive nitrogen from boron and then radioactive isotopes of phosphorus from aluminum and silicon from magnesium. For example, irradiating the main natural and stable isotope of aluminum with alpha particles (i.e. helium nuclei) results in an unstable isotope of phosphorus. By now the application of radioactive materials for use in medicine was growing and this discovery led to an ability to create radioactive materials quickly, cheaply and plentifully. The , and Fritz Strassman, to discover nuclear fission; the splitting of the nucleus itself and the vast amounts of energy emitted as a result. The years of working so closely with such deadly materials finally caught up with Joliot-Curie and she was diagnosed with leukemia. She had been accidentally exposed to polonium when a sealed capsule of the element exploded on her laboratory bench in 1946. Treatment with antibiotics and a series of operations did relieve her suffering temporarily but her condition continued to deteriorate. Despite this Joliot-Curie continued to work and in 1955 drew up plans for new physics laboratories at the Universitie d’Orsay, south of Paris. Source:

Sofia KOVALEVSKYMain achievements: Original contributions to analysis, differential equations and mechanics. Sofia Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya was the first major Russian female mathematician, responsible for important original contributions to analysis, differential equations and mechanics, and the first woman appointed to a full professorship in Northern Europe. She was also one of the first women to work for a scientific journal as an editor. There are several alternative transliterations of her name. She herself used Sophie Kowalevski (or occasionally Kowalevsky), for her academic publications. After moving to Sweden, she called herself Sonya. Sofia Kovalevskaya (née Korvin-Krukovskaya), was born in Moscow, the second of three children. Her father, Vasily Vasilyevich Korvin-Krukovsky, was a man of Polish descent and was Lieutenant-General of Artillery who served in the Imperial Russian Army. Her mother, Yelizaveta Fedorovna Schubert, was a scholarly woman of German ancestry and Sofia's grandmother was Romani. When she was 11 years old, the wall paper in her room had differential and integral analysis, which was her early preparation for calculus. They nurtured her interest in mathematics and hired a tutor (A. N. Strannoliubskii, a well-known advocate of higher education for women), who taught her calculus. During that same period, the son of the local priest introduced her to nihilism. Despite her obvious talent for mathematics, she could not complete her education in Russia. At that time, women there were not allowed to attend universities. In order to study abroad, she needed written permission from her father (or husband). Accordingly, she contracted a "fictitious marriage" with Vladimir Kovalevskij, then a young paleontology student who would later become famous for his collaboration with Charles Darwin. They emigrated from Russia in 1867. In 1869, Kovalevskaya began attending the University of Heidelberg, Germany, which allowed her to audit classes as long as the professors involved gave their approval. Shortly after beginning her studies there, she visited London with Vladimir, who spent time with his colleagues Thomas Huxley and Charles Darwin, while she was invited to attend George Eliot's Sunday salons. There, at age nineteen, she met Herbert Spencer and was led into a debate, at Eliot's instigation, on "woman's capacity for abstract thought". This was well before she made her notable contribution of the "Kovalevsky top" to the brief list of known examples of integrable rigid body motion (see following section). George Eliot was writing Middlemarch at the time, in which one finds the remarkable sentence: "In short, woman was a problem which, since Mr. Brooke's mind felt blank before it, could hardly be less complicated than the revolutions of an irregular solid." Kovalevskaya participated in social movements and shared ideas of utopian socialism. In 1871 she traveled to Paris together with her husband in order to attend to the injured from the Paris Commune. Kovalevskaya helped save Victor Jaclard, who was the husband of her sister Ann (Anne Jaclard). After two years of mathematical studies at Heidelberg under such teachers as Hermann von Helmholtz, Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen, she moved to Berlin, where she had to take private lessons from Karl Weierstrass, as the university would not even allow her to audit classes. In 1874 she presented three papers—on partial differential equations, on the dynamics of Saturn's rings and on elliptic integrals —to the University of Göttingen as her doctoral dissertation. With the support of Weierstrass, this earned her a doctorate in mathematics summa cum laude, bypassing the usual required lectures and examinations. She thereby became the first woman in Europe to hold that degree. Her paper on partial differential equations contains what is now commonly known as the Cauchy-Kovalevski theorem, which gives conditions for the existence of solutions to a certain class of those equations. In the early 1880s, Sofia and her husband Vladimir developed financial problems. Sofia wanted to be a lecturer at the university; however, she was not allowed to because she was a woman, despite volunteering to provide free lectures. Soon after, Vladimir started a house building business with Sofia as his assistant. In 1879, the price for mortgages became higher and they became bankrupt. Shortly after, Vladimir got a job offer and Sofia helped neighbors to electrify street lights. Vladimir and Sofia quickly established themselves again financially. The Kovalevskys returned to Russia, but failed to secure professorships because of their radical political beliefs. Discouraged, they went back to Germany. Vladimir, who had always suffered severe mood swings, became more unstable so they spent most of their time apart. Then, for some unknown reason, they decided to spend several years together as an actual married couple. During this time their daughter, Sofia (called "Fufa"), was born. After a year devoted to raising her daughter, Kovalevskaya put Fufa under the care of her older sister, resumed her work in mathematics and left Vladimir for what would be the last time. In 1883, faced with worsening mood swings and the possibility of being prosecuted for his role in a stock swindle, Vladimir committed suicide. That year, with the help of the mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler, whom she had known as a fellow student of Weierstrass', Kovalevskaya was able to secure a position as a privat-docent at Stockholm University in Sweden. Kovalevskaya met Mittag-Leffler through his sister, actress, novelist, and playwright Anne-Charlotte Edgren-Leffler. Until Kovalevsky's death the two women shared a close friendship. The following year (1884) she was appointed to a five year position as "Professor Extraordinarius" (Professor without Chair) and became the editor of Acta Mathematica. In 1888 she won the Prix Bordin of the French Academy of Science, for her work on the question: "Mémoire sur un cas particulier du problème de le rotation d'un corps pesant autour d'un point fixe, où l'intégration s'effectue à l'aide des fonctions ultraelliptiques du temps". Her submission included the celebrated discovery of what is now known as the "Kovalevsky top", which was subsequently shown (by Liouville) to be the only other case of rigid body motion, beside the tops of Euler and Lagrange, that is "completely integrable". In 1889 she was appointed Professor Ordinarius (Professorial Chair holder) at Stockholm University, the first woman to hold such a position at a northern European university. After much lobbying on her behalf (and a change in the Academy's rules) she was granted a Chair in the Russian Academy of Sciences, but was never offered a professorship in Russia. Kovalevskaya wrote several non-mathematical works as well, including a memoir, A Russian Childhood, plays (in collaboration with Duchess Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler) and a partly autobiographical novel, Nihilist Girl (1890). She died of influenza in 1891 at age forty-one, after returning from a pleasure trip to Genoa. She is buried in Solna, Sweden, at Norra begravningsplatsen. Source:

Stephanie KWOLEKMain achievements: Inventor of the Stephanie Louise Kwolek was an American chemist who invented poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide—better known as . She was born in the Pittsburgh suburb of New Kensington, Pennsylvania. Kwolek won numerous awards for her work in polymer chemistry. Kwolek was born to Polish immigrant parents in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, in 1923. Her father, John Kwolek (Polish: Jan Chwalek), died when she was ten years old. He was a naturalist by avocation, and Kwolek spent hours with him, as a child, exploring the natural world. She attributed her interest in science to him and an interest in fashion to her mother, Nellie (Zajdel) Kwolek. In 1946, Kwolek earned a degree in chemistry from Margaret Morrison Carnegie College of Carnegie Mellon University. She had planned to become a doctor and hoped she could earn enough money from a temporary job in a chemistry-related field to attend medical school. In 1946, Hale Charch, a future mentor to Kwolek, offered her a position at DuPont's Buffalo, New York, facility. Charch had initially told Kwolek that he would contact her within two weeks, but after Kwolek said she had to answer another job offer and insisted on a faster reply, Charch immediately offered her the position. Although Kwolek initially only intended to work for DuPont temporarily, she found the work interesting enough to stay and not pursue a medical career. She moved to Wilmington, Delaware, in 1950 to continue to work for DuPont. In 1959, she won a publication award from the American Chemical Society. While working for DuPont, Kwolek invented . In 1964, in anticipation of a gasoline shortage, her group began searching for a lightweight yet strong fiber to be used in tires. The polymers she had been working with at the time, poly-p-phenylene terephthalate and polybenzamide, formed liquid crystal while in solution that at the time had to be melt-spun at over 200 °C (392 °F), which produced weaker and less-stiff fibers. A unique technique in her new projects and the melt condensation polymerization process was to reduce those temperatures to between 0–40 °C (32–104 °F). As she later explained in a 1993 speech: “The solution was unusually (low viscosity), turbid, stir-opalescent and buttermilk in appearance. Conventional polymer solutions are usually clear or translucent and have the viscosity of molasses, more or less. The solution that I prepared looked like a dispersion but was totally filterable through a fine pore filter. This was a liquid crystalline solution, but I did not know it at the time.” This sort of cloudy solution usually was thrown away. However, Kwolek persuaded technician Charles Smullen, who ran the spinneret, to test her solution. She was amazed to find that the new fiber would not break when nylon typically would. Not only was it stronger than nylon, Kevlar was five times stronger than steel by weight. Both her supervisor and the laboratory director understood the significance of her discovery, and a new field of polymer chemistry quickly arose. By 1971, modern Kevlar was introduced. Kwolek learned that the fibers could be made even stronger by heat-treating them. The polymer molecules, shaped like rods or matchsticks, are highly oriented, which gives Kevlar its extraordinary strength. Kwolek was not very involved in developing practical applications of Kevlar. Once senior DuPont managers were informed of the discovery, they immediately assigned a whole group to work on different aspects," she said. She also did not profit from DuPont's products, as she signed over the Kevlar patent to the company. Kevlar is used to build cellular telephones; Motorola's Droid RAZR has a Kevlar unibody. Kevlar is also used for sports rackets and bullet-proof vests. During the week of Kwolek's death, the one millionth bullet-resistant vest made with Kevlar was sold. For her discovery, Kwolek was awarded the DuPont company's Lavoisier Medal for outstanding technical achievement: at the time of her death, she is still the only female employee to receive that honor. Source:

Herrad of LANDSBERGMain achievements: Author of the pictorial encyclopedia Hortus deliciarum. Herrad of Landsberg (Latin: Herrada Landsbergensis; c. 1130 – July 25, 1195) was a 12th-century Alsatian nun and abbess of Hohenburg Abbey in the Vosges mountains. She was known as the author of the pictorial encyclopedia Hortus deliciarum (The Garden of Delights). Born about 1130 at the castle of Landsberg, the seat of a noble Alsatian family. She entered the Hohenburg Abbey in the Vosges mountains, about fifteen miles from Strasbourg, at an early age. The Hohenburg Abbey, also known as Mont St. Odile, was run by Abbess Relinda, a nun sent from the Benedictine monastery of Bergen in Bavaria to Hohenburg Abbey. Due to her support from the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa the abbey was extremely successful and powerful, as well as a source for reform. At the abbey Herrad received the most comprehensive education available to women during the 12th century. As she grew older she rose to a high position in office at the abbey, and was soon put in charge of governing and educating her fellow nuns. After Relinda’s death, Herrad was elected abbess in 1167. As abbess, Herrad worked on rebuilding the monastery, as well as consolidating the land surrounding the monastery under its ownership. She proved herself to be a capable and well loved abbess, and it was at this time that she began her work on the Hortus Deliciarum. Herrad was abbess for 28 years, and continued in that office until her death in 1195. Adelhaid von Vaimingen (Faimingen) became her successor as the Abbess of Hohenburg. As early as 1159 Herrad had begun within the cloister walls the work for which she is best known, the Hortus Deliciarum, a compendium of all the sciences studied at that time. Hortus Deliciarum was written as a compendium for the women in Herrad's convent, in order to further learn biblical, moral, and theological material, and was completed in 1185. In it, Herrad delves into the battle of Virtue and Vice with vivid visual imagery preceding the text. The original manuscript consisted of 648 pages on 324 parchment sheets. The majority of the work is written in Medieval Latin, with approximately 1250 glosses in Old High German and Middle High German. The work shows a wide range of reading. Its chief claim to distinction is the three hundred and thirty-six illustrations which adorn the text. Many of these are symbolical representations of theological, philosophical, and literary themes; some are historical, some represent scenes from the actual experience of the artist, and one is a collection of portraits of her sisters in religion. The technique of some of them has been very much admired and in almost every instance they show an artistic imagination which is rare in Herrad's contemporaries. While other artists and writers contributed to the Hortus Deliciarum, it was largely compiled, written, and edited by Herrad. Many of the poems and hymns were written by Herrad, and it is speculated that much of the art was created under the direction of Herrad as well. After having been preserved for centuries at the Hohenburg Abbey, the manuscript of Hortus Deliciarum passed into the municipal Library of Strasbourg about the time of the French Revolution. There the miniatures were copied by Christian Moritz (Maurice in French) Engelhardt and published by Cotta in Stuttgart in 1818. The text was copied and published by Straub and Keller between 1879 and 1899 including some coloured copies from Herrad's illustrations made by Wilhelm Stengel. Thus, although the original perished in the burning of the libraries of the Protestant seminary and the City of Strasbourg during the siege of 1870 in the Franco-Prussian War, we can still form an estimate of the artistic and literary value of Herrad's work. Source:

 AGLAONICEMain achievements: First female astronomer in ancient Greece Aglaonice, also known as Aganice of Thessaly, is cited as the first female astronomer in ancient Greece. She is mentioned in the writings of Plutarch and Apollonius of Rhodes as the daughter of Hegetor of Thessaly or as the daughter of Hegemon. She was regarded as a sorceress for her ability to make the moon disappear from the sky, which has been taken to mean she could predict the time and general area where a lunar eclipse would occur. A number of female astrologers, apparently regarded as sorcerers, were associated with Aglaonice. They were known as the "witches of Thessaly" and were active from the 1st to 3rd centuries BC. In Plato’s Gorgias (circa 380 BCE), Socrates speaks of “the Thessalian enchantresses, who, as they say, bring down the moon from heaven at the risk of their own perdition.” Plutarch wrote that she was “thoroughly acquainted with the periods of the full moon when it is subject to eclipse, and, knowing beforehand the time when the moon was due to be overtaken by the earth’s shadow, imposed upon the women, and made them all believe that she was drawing down the moon.” One of the craters of the planet Venus is named after Aglaonice. As "Aglaonice", she is a character in the Jean Cocteau movie Orpheus, where she is a friend of Eurydice and leader of the "League of Women". Aglaonice is a featured figure on Judy Chicago's installation piece The Dinner Party, being represented as one of the 999 names on the Heritage Floor. A Greek proverb makes reference to Aglaonice's alleged boasting: "Yes, as the moon obeys Aglaonice". Source:

Marie-Anne LAVOISIERMain achievements: The Lavoisiers rebuilt the field of chemistry. Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze Lavoisier was a French chemist and noble. She was the wife of Antoine Lavoisier and acted as his laboratory companion and contributed to his work. Her father, Jacques Paulze, worked primarily as a parliamentary lawyer and financier. Most of his income came from running the Ferme Générale (the General Farm) which was a private consortium of financiers who paid the French monarchy for the privilege of collecting certain taxes. Her mother, Claudine Thoynet Paulze, died in 1761, leaving behind not only Marie-Anne, then aged 3 only, but two other sons. After her mother’s death Paulze was placed in a convent where she received her formal education. At the age of thirteen Paulze received a marriage proposal from the 50-year-old Count d'Amerval. Jacques Paulze tried to object to the union, but received threats about losing his job with the Ferme Générale. To indirectly thwart the marriage, Jacques Paulze made an offer to one of his colleagues to ask for his daughter’s hand instead. This colleague was Antoine Lavoisier, a French nobleman and scientist. Lavoisier accepted the proposition, and he and Marie-Anne were married on 16 December 1771. Lavoisier was about 28, while Marie-Anne was about 13. Lavoisier continued to work for the Ferme-Générale but in 1775 was appointed gunpowder administrator, leading the couple to settle down at the Arsenal in Paris. Here, Lavoisier’s interest in chemistry blossomed having previously trained at the chemical laboratory of Guillaume François Rouelle, and, with the financial security provided by both his and Paulze’s family, as well as his various titles and other business ventures, he was able to construct a state-of-the-art chemistry laboratory. Paulze soon became interested in his scientific research and began to actively participate in her husband's laboratory work. As her interest developed, she received formal training in the field from Jean Baptiste Michel Bucquet and Philippe Gingembre, both of whom were Lavoisier’s colleagues at the time. The Lavoisiers spent most of their time together in the laboratory, working as a team conducting research on many fronts. She also assisted him by translating documents about chemistry from English to French. In fact, the majority of the research effort put forth in the laboratory was actually a joint effort between Paulze and her husband, with Paulze mainly playing the role of laboratory assistant. Paulze accompanied Lavoisier in his lab during the day, making entries into his lab notebooks and sketching diagrams of his experimental designs. The training she had received from the painter Jacques-Louis David allowed her to accurately and precisely draw experimental apparatuses, which ultimately helped many of Lavoisier’s contemporaries to understand his methods and results. Furthermore, she served as the editor of his reports. Together, the Lavoisiers rebuilt the field of chemistry, which had its roots in alchemy and at the time was a convoluted science dominated by George Stahl’s theory of phlogiston. In the eighteenth century the idea of phlogiston (a fire-like element which is gained or released during a material’s combustion) was used to describe the apparent property changes that substances exhibited when burned. Paulze, being a master in the English, Latin and French language, was able to translate various works about phlogiston into French for her husband to read. Perhaps her most important translation was that of Richard Kirwan's 'Essay on Phlogiston and the Constitution of Acids', which she both translated and critiqued, adding footnotes as she went along and pointing out errors in the chemistry made throughout the paper. She also translated works by Joseph Priestley, Henry Cavendish, and others for Lavoisier’s personal use. This was an invaluable service to Lavoisier, who relied on Paulze’s translation of foreign works to keep abreast of current developments in chemistry. In the case of phlogiston, it was Paulze’s translation that convinced him the idea was incorrect, ultimately leading to his studies of combustion and his discovery of oxygen gas. Paulze was also instrumental in the 1789 publication of Lavoisier’s Elementary Treatise on Chemistry, which presented a unified view of chemistry as a field. This work proved pivotal in the progression of chemistry, as it presented the idea of conservation of mass as well as a list of elements and a new system for chemical nomenclature. Paulze contributed thirteen drawings that showed all the laboratory instrumentation and equipment used by the Lavoisiers in their experiments. She also kept strict records of the procedures followed, lending validity to the findings Lavoisier published. Before her death, Paulze was able to recover nearly all of Lavoisier’s notebooks and chemical apparatuses, most of which survive in a collection at Cornell University, the largest of its kind outside of Europe. The year she died, a book was published, showing that Marie-Anne had a rich theological library with books which included versions of The Bible, St. Augustine's Confessions, Jacques Saurin's Discours sur la Bible, Pierre Nicole's Essais de Morale, Blaise Pascal's Lettres provinciales, Louis Bourdaloue's Sermons, Thomas à Kempis's De Imitatione Christi, etc. Source:

Henrietta LEAVITTMain achievements: Discovered the relation between the luminosity and the period of stars. Henrietta Swan Leavitt was an American astronomer who discovered the relation between the luminosity and the period of stars. A graduate of Radcliffe College, Leavitt started working at the Harvard College Observatory as a "computer" in 1893, examining photographic plates in order to measure and catalog the brightness of the stars. Though she received little recognition in her lifetime, it was her discovery that first allowed astronomers to measure the distance between the Earth and faraway galaxies. She explained her discovery: "A straight line can readily be drawn among each of the two series of points corresponding to maxima and minima, thus showing that there is a simple relation between the brightness of the variables and their periods." After Leavitt's death, Edwin Hubble used the luminosity–period relation for Cepheids together with spectral shifts first measured by fellow astronomer Vesto Slipher at Lowell Observatory to determine that the universe is expanding (see Hubble's law). Henrietta Swan Leavitt, the daughter of Congregational church minister George Roswell Leavitt and his wife Henrietta Swan (Kendrick), was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts, a descendant of Deacon John Leavitt, an English Puritan tailor, who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the early seventeenth century. She attended Oberlin College and graduated from Radcliffe College, then called the Society for the Collegiate Instruction for Women, with a bachelor's degree in 1892. She studied a broad curriculum including classical Greek, fine arts, philosophy, analytic geometry, and calculus. It wasn't until her fourth year of college that Leavitt took a course in astronomy. She then traveled in America and in Europe, during which time she lost her hearing. In 1892, she graduated from Harvard University's Radcliffe College, which was then known as the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women. In 1893, she obtained credits toward a graduate degree in astronomy for work done at the Harvard College Observatory; she never completed the degree. It was at the Harvard College Observatory that Leavitt began working as one of the women human "computers" hired by Edward Charles Pickering to measure and catalog the brightness of stars as they appeared in the observatory's photographic plate collection. (In the early 1900s, women were not allowed to operate telescopes). Because Leavitt had independent means, Pickering initially did not have to pay her. Later, she received $0.30 an hour for her work. She was reportedly “hard-working, serious-minded, little given to frivolous pursuits and selflessly devoted to her family, her church, and her career.” Pickering assigned Leavitt to study "variable stars," whose luminosity varies over time. According to science writer Jeremy Bernstein, "variable stars had been of interest for years, but when she was studying those plates, I doubt Pickering thought she would make a significant discovery — one that would eventually change astronomy." Leavitt noted thousands of variable stars in images of the Magellanic Clouds. In 1908 she published her results in the Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, noting that a few of the variables showed a pattern: brighter ones appeared to have longer periods. After further study, she confirmed in 1912 that the Cepheid variables with greater intrinsic luminosity did have longer periods, and that the relationship was quite close and predictable. Leavitt used the simplifying assumption that all of the Cepheids within each Magellanic Cloud were at approximately the same distances from Earth, so that their intrinsic brightness could be deduced from their apparent brightness (as measured from the photographic plates) and from the distance to each of the clouds. "Since the variables are probably at nearly the same distance from the Earth, their periods are apparently associated with their actual emission of light, as determined by their mass, density, and surface brightness." Her discovery, which she produced from studying some 1,777 variable stars recorded on Harvard's photographic plates, is known as the "period–luminosity relationship" or "Leavitt's law": The logarithm of the period is linearly and directly related to the logarithm of the star's average intrinsic optical luminosity (which is the amount of power radiated by the star in the visible spectrum). In Leavitt's words, "A straight line can be readily drawn among each of the two series of points corresponding to maxima and minima, thus showing that there is a simple relation between the brightness of the and their periods." Leavitt also developed and continued to refine the Harvard Standard for photographic measurements, a logarithmic scale that orders stars by brightness over 17 magnitudes. She initially analyzed 299 plates from 13 telescopes to construct her scale, which was accepted by the International Committee of Photographic Magnitudes in 1913. Awards and honors: The asteroid 5383 Leavitt and the crater Leavitt on the Moon are named after her to honor deaf men and women who have worked as astronomers. Unaware of her death four years prior, the Swedish mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler considered nominating her for the 1926 Nobel Prize in Physics, and wrote to Shapley requesting more information on her work on Cepheid variables, offering to send her his monograph on . Shapley replied, letting Mittag-Leffler know that Leavitt had died, and suggesting that the true credit belonged to his (Shapley's) interpretation of her findings. She was never nominated, because the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously. Source:

Nicole-Reine LEPAUTREMain achievements: Predicted the return of Halley's Comet. Calculated the exact time of a solar eclipse. Constructed a group of catalogs for the stars. Nicole-Reine Lepaute was a French astronomer and mathematician. She predicted the return of Halley's Comet, calculated the timing of a solar eclipse and constructed a group of catalogs for the stars. She was a member of the Scientific Academy of Béziers. Nicole-Reine Lepaute was born in the Luxembourg Palace in Paris as the daughter of Jean Etable, valet in the service of Louise Élisabeth d'Orléans. In 1749, she married Jean-André Lepaute, who was a royal clockmaker. Nicole Lepaute constructed a clock with an astronomical function together with her spouse. The clock was constructed on her suggestion, and she also participated in its construction. The clock was presented to the French Academy of Science in 1753, where it was inspected and approved by Jérôme Lalande. Lepaute was a member of the French Academy of Science. Jérôme Lalande recommended her along with the mathematician Alexis Clairault to calculate the predicted return of Halley's Comet, as well as to calculate the attraction of Jupiter and Saturn of the Halley's comet. In November 1758, the team presented their conclusion that the comet would arrive on 13 April 1759. They were almost correct, as the comet arrived on 13 March 1759. Clairault did not recognize her work at all in his work, which upset Lalande. Jérôme Lalande acknowledged her help in an article. In 1759, she was again a part of Jérôme Lalande's team and worked with him to calculate the ephemeris of the Transit of Venus. It is not documented what should be attributed to her personally, but in 1761, she was acknowledged by being inducted as an honorary member of the distinguished Scientific Academy of Béziers. Lalande also collaborated with Lepaute for fifteen years on the Academy of Science's annual guides for astronomers and navigators, and after her death, wrote a brief biography about her contributions to astronomy. In 1762, Lepaute calculated the exact time of a solar eclipse that occurred on 1 April 1764. She wrote an article in which she gave a map of the eclipse's extent in 15-minute intervals across Europe. The article was published in Connaissance des temps (Knowledge of the times). Lepaute also created a group of catalogs of the stars which were useful for the future of astronomy. She calculated the Ephemeris of the Sun, the Moon and the Planets for the years 1774–1784. Nicole Lepaute took care of her terminally ill husband from 1767 until her death in 1788. She adopted her husband's nephew, Joseph Lepaute Dagelet, a future member of the French Academy of Science, in 1768. The asteroid 7720 Lepaute is named in her honour, as is the lunar crater Lepaute. Source:

Rita LEVI-MONTALCINIMain achievements: Discovery of nerve growth factor. Rita Levi-Montalcini was an Italian neurologist who, together with colleague Stanley Cohen, received the 1986 for their discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF). Also, from 2001, until her death, she served in the Italian Senate as a Senator for Life. Rita Levi-Montalcini had been the oldest living Nobel laureate and the first ever to reach a 100th birthday. On 22 April 2009, she was feted with a 100th birthday party at Rome's city hall. Born on 22 April 1909 at Turin to a wealthy Italian Jewish family, she and her twin sister Paola were the youngest of four children. Her parents were Adamo Levi, an electrical engineer and mathematician, and Adele Montalcini, a painter. In her teenage years, she considered becoming a writer and admired Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf. Adamo discouraged his children from attending college as he feared it would disrupt their lives as wives and mothers but he eventually supported Levi-Montalcini's aspirations to become a doctor anyway. Levi-Montalcini decided to attend University of Turin Medical School after seeing a close family friend die of stomach cancer. While attending, she was taught by neurohistologist Giuseppe Levi who introduced her to the developing nervous system. After graduating with an M.D. in 1936, she went to work as Giuseppe Levi's assistant, but her academic career was cut short by Benito Mussolini's 1938 Manifesto of Race and the subsequent introduction of laws barring Jews from academic and professional careers. Levi-Montalcini lost her assistant position in the anatomy department after a 1938 law was passed, barring Jews from university positions. During World War II, Levi-Montalcini would conduct experiments from a home laboratory, studying the growth of nerve fibers in chicken embryos, which laid the groundwork for much of her later research. She described this experience decades later in the science documentary film Death by Design/The Life and Times of Life and Times (1997), which also features her identical twin sister Paola, who had entered a decades-long career in the arts. Her first genetics laboratory was in her bedroom at her home. In 1943, to escape the German occupation of Italy, her family fled south to Florence, and she set up a laboratory there also, using the corner of a shared living space. During this time she also volunteered her medical expertise for the Allied health service. Her family returned to Turin in 1945. In September 1946, Levi-Montalcini accepted an invitation to Washington University in St. Louis, under the supervision of Professor Viktor Hamburger. Although the initial invitation was for one semester, after she repeated the exciting results from her home laboratory, Hamburger offered her a research associate position. She stayed in St. Louis for thirty years. It was there that, in 1952, she did her most important work: isolating the nerve growth factor (NGF) from observations of certain cancerous tissues that cause extremely rapid growth of nerve cells. By transferring pieces of tumors to chick embryos, Montalcini established a mass of cells that was full of nerve fibers. This discovery, of nerves growing everywhere like a halo around the tumor cells, was surprising. Montalcini described this "like rivulets of water flowing steadily over a bed of stones." The nerve growth produced by the tumor was unlike anything she had seen before – the nerves took over areas that would become other tissues and even entered veins in the embryo. But nerves did not grow into the arteries, which would flow from the embryo back to the tumor. This suggested to Montalcini that the tumor itself was releasing a substance that was stimulating the growth of nerves. She was made a Full Professor in 1958, and in 1962, established a research unit in Rome, dividing the rest of her time between there and St. Louis. From 1961 to 1969 she directed the Research Center of Neurobiology of the CNR (Rome), and from 1969 to 1978 the Laboratory of Cellular Biology. Rita Levi-Montalcini founded the European Brain Research Institute in 2002, and then served as its president. Her role in this institute was at the center of some criticism from some parts of the scientific community in 2010. Controversies were raised about the cooperation of Levi-Montalcini with the Italian pharmaceutical industry Fidia . While working for Fidia, she improved the understanding of gangliosides. Beginning in 1975, the scientist supported the drug Cronassial (a particular ganglioside) produced by Fidia from bovine brain tissue. Independent studies showed that the drug actually could be successful in treatment of intended diseases (periphrastic nervous system neuropathies). Years later, some patients under treatment with Cronassial reported a severe neurological syndrome (Guillain-Barré syndrome). As per the normal cautionary routine, Germany banned Cronassial in 1983, followed by other countries. Italy prohibited the drug only in 1993; at the same time, an investigation revealed that Fidia paid the Italian Ministry of Health for a quick approval of Cronassial and later paid for pushing use of the drug in treatment of diseases where it had not been tested. During the investigation, one of the witnesses spoke about the use of Levi-Montalcini as a sponsor for the drug and serious criticism was levied at Levi-Montalcini. In the 1990s, she was one of the first scientists pointing out the importance of the mast cell in human pathology. In the same period (1993) she identified the endogenous compound palmitoylethanolamide as an important modulator of this cell. This line of research led to using this endogenous compound as an analgesic and anti-inflammatory drug. Source:

Ada LOVELACEMain achievements: First computer programmer. Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognize that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation, and created the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine. As a result, she is often regarded as the first to recognize the full potential of a "computing machine" and the first computer programmer. Ada Lovelace was the only legitimate child of the poet George, Lord Byron, and his wife Anne Isabella Milbanke ("Annabella"), Lady Wentworth. All Byron's other children were born out of wedlock to other women. Byron separated from his wife a month after Ada was born and left England forever four months later, eventually dying of disease in the Greek War of Independence when Ada was eight years old. Her mother remained bitter towards Lord Byron and promoted Ada's interest in mathematics and logic in an effort to prevent her from developing what she saw as the insanity seen in her father, but Ada remained interested in him despite this (and was, upon her eventual death, buried next to him at her request). Often ill, she spent most of her childhood sick. Ada married William King in 1835. King was made Earl of Lovelace in 1838, and she became Countess of Lovelace. Her educational and social exploits brought her into contact with scientists such as Andrew Crosse, Sir David Brewster, Charles Wheatstone, Michael Faraday and the author Charles Dickens, which she used to further her education. Ada described her approach as "poetical science" and herself as an "Analyst (& Metaphysician)". When she was a teenager, her mathematical talents led her to a long working relationship and friendship with fellow British mathematician Charles Babbage, also known as "the father of computers", and in particular, Babbage's work on the Analytical Engine. Lovelace first met him in June 1833, through their mutual friend, and her private tutor, . Between 1842 and 1843, Ada translated an article by Italian military engineer Luigi Menabrea on the engine, which she supplemented with an elaborate set of notes, simply called Notes. These notes contain what many consider to be the first computer program—that is, an algorithm designed to be carried out by a machine. Lovelace's notes are important in the early history of computers. She also developed a vision of the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching, while many others, including Babbage himself, focused only on those capabilities. Her mindset of "poetical science" led her to ask questions about the Analytical Engine (as shown in her notes) examining how individuals and society relate to technology as a collaborative tool. She died of uterine cancer in 1852 at the age of 36. The computer language Ada, created on behalf of the United States Department of Defense, was named after Lovelace. The reference manual for the language was approved on 10 December 1980 and the Department of Defense Military Standard for the language, MIL-STD-1815, was given the number of the year of her birth. Since 1998 the British Computer Society (BCS) has awarded the Lovelace Medal,[92] and in 2008 initiated an annual competition for women students. BCSWomen sponsors the Lovelace Colloquium, an annual conference for women undergraduates. Ada College is a further-education college in Tottenham Hale, London focused on digital skills. Source:

Anna MANZOLINIMain achievements: Professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna. Expert on anatomical models. Anna Morandi Manzolini (21 January 1714 – 9 July 1774) was an internationally known anatomist and anatomical wax modeler, as lecturer of anatomical design at the University of Bologna. Anna Morandi was born in 1714 in Bologna, Italy. She was raised in a traditional home where marriage, children, and a domestic lifestyle were natural choices for women. In 1736, she was married to her childhood sweetheart, Giovanni Manzolini, a professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna. She was 20, and he was 24 years old. After five years of marriage, she was the mother of six children. In 1755, her husband died, and she was left with very slender means of support. She received tempting offers from other universities, but she preferred to remain in her native city, Bologna. She closed a laborious and honored life in the city in 1774, at the age of 60 years. When her husband became ill with tuberculosis, she received special permission to lecture in his place. She became professor of anatomy upon his death in 1755. Knowledge of her talent in molding anatomical models spread throughout Europe and she was invited to the court of Catherine II of Russia as well as other royal courts. It became her major turning point in her life. In order to learn anatomy, she had to dissect cadavers, which was extremely difficult for her, but she overcame her fears. Giovanni Manzolini was so encouraged by her and her accomplishments that he again returned to his work. They were recognized as a team by many artists, intellectuals, and anatomists in Europe. After her husband's death, she was appointed Lecturer in Anatomy in her own name by the Institute of Bologna. Anna aided her husband, and then surpassed him in skill, and particularly in that scientific knowledge upon which the success of their joint labours so largely depended. She lectured in a lot of different places. In her lectures, she imparted with peculiar talent the knowledge derived from her husband, and also communicated many discoveries made by herself. She clearly demonstrated, both theoretically and practically, the wonderful structure of the human body. She also crafted two portrait busts in wax, both of which are currently on display at the Palazzo Poggi in Bologna. One is a self-portrait, in which she depicts herself at work dissecting a human brain; the other is of her husband, engaged in similar activity. Her wax models were highly prized while she was alive and long after her death. Some of her anatomical models were so skillfully molded that they were extremely difficult to distinguish from the actual body parts from which they were copied. Furthermore, her acute skill at dissection resulted in her discovery of several previously unknown anatomical parts, including the termination of the oblique muscle of the eye. She held the distinction of having been the first person to reproduce (in wax) body parts of minute portions, including capillary vessels and nerves. Her collection of wax models was known throughout Europe as Supellex Manzoliniana and was eagerly sought after to aid in the study of anatomy. Her work became the archetype of such models as the Vassourie collection and the creations of Dr. Auzoux made from "papier maché", which were the forerunners of those used in today's schools and colleges. A collection of her models was acquired by the Medical Institute of Bologna and is housed at the Institute of Science in Bologna. After her death, a bust of her was placed in the Pantheon in Rome. Another portrait in wax, which she modeled herself, was placed in the museum at the University of Bologna and became one of its most precious possessions. Source:

Jane MARCETMain achievements: Author of scientific popularization books. Jane Marcet (née Haldimand) was an innovative, successful writer of popular introductory science books. She also broke new ground with Conversations on Political Economy (1816), which explained the ideas of Adam Smith, Malthus and David Ricardo. Jane Marcet was born Jane Haldimand in London on 1 January 1769, one of twelve children of wealthy merchant and banker Anthony Francis Haldimand (1740/41–1817) and his wife Jane (died 1785). Following Swiss tradition, she was educated at home with her brothers: her studies included Latin (essential for the sciences), chemistry, biology, and history, as well as topics more usual for young ladies in England. Jane took over the running of the family at age 15, after her mother's death. She managed the house and helped to bring up her younger siblings. Her younger brother William Haldimand (1784–1862) became a director of the Bank of England and a member of Parliament. She also acted as her father's hostess, helping to entertain frequent parties of scientific and literary guests. Jane developed an early interest in painting during a visit to Italy with her father in 1796, and studied with Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Lawrence. Her artistic training later enabled her to illustrate her books. Jane was married in 1799 to Alexander John Gaspard Marcet (1770–1822), a political exile from Geneva, Switzerland who graduated from medical school at the University of Edinburgh as a physician in 1797. After their marriage, the Marcets continued to live in London. They had four children, one of whom, François Marcet (1803–1883), became a well-known physicist. Alexander was strongly interested in chemistry, and became a lecturer at Guy's Hospital in London and a Fellow of the Royal Society. When Jane became interested in learning more about chemistry, they conducted experiments together in a home laboratory, discussing the scientific principles involved. The Marcets were part of a literary and scientific social circle that included many leading writers and scientists such as , Henry Hallam, Harriet Martineau, Auguste Arthur de la Rive and Maria Edgeworth. Novelist Maria Edgeworth described their home, with its lively, intelligent children and welcome for visitors, in her letters. Jane and her father were close throughout their lives, and he lived with his daughter and her husband after their marriage. After Jane’s father died in 1817, she received a substantial legacy which enabled Alexander Marcet to devote himself full-time to chemistry, giving up his medical practice. Alexander, in his turn, understood and supported his wife's need for intellectual engagement and productive work. After helping to read the proofs of one of her husband's books, Marcet decided to write her own, and produced expository books on chemistry, botany, religion and economics under the general title "Conversations". In her prefaces, Marcet explicitly addresses issues of whether such knowledge is suitable for women, arguing against objections and stating that public opinion supports her position. The first of these was written in 1805, although not published until much later in 1819, as Conversations on Natural Philosophy. The textbook covered the basics of scientific knowledge of the time: physics, mechanics, astronomy, the properties of fluids, air, and optics. Marcet's next book, Conversations on Chemistry, Intended More Especially for the Female Sex was published anonymously in 1805, and became her most popular and famous work. Summarizing and popularising the work of Humphry Davy, whose lectures she attended, it was one of the first elementary science textbooks. It was illustrated with Marcet's own drawings of chemical apparatus and emphasised the importance both of demonstration by experiment and of theoretical rigour. Jane Marcet was not explicitly identified as the author until the twelfth edition appeared in 1832. The book went into 16 editions in England, where it was an early inspiration for the young Michael Faraday. It was widely plagiarised in America, appearing in at least 23 editions there. In 1820 the Marcets travelled to Geneva, Switzerland, intending to relocate there. In 1822, Alexander died unexpectedly while on a visit to Britain. Jane was extremely distressed by his death. She went through one of several periods of depression to affect her during her life, described by her friend Auguste de La Rive as a "shadow enveloping an energetic and active spirit". Though she retained strong ties to her Swiss friends, she eventually returned to England to live. She continued to be active in scientific circles, and updated and published new editions of her major works throughout her life. Her last edition of "Conversations on Chemistry" appeared when she was eighty-four. In later life, Marcet wrote new works mainly for children, perhaps with her grandchildren in mind. Mary's Grammar (1835) became a classic. Source:

Mileva MARIC-EINSTEINMileva was born on 19 December 1875 to a rich family in Title, Vojvodina. Following her secondary education in Novi Sad she enrolled at the Royal Classical High School which until then had been an all-male institution. She had to get special permission to study Physics which she went on to pass and achieve the highest grades of anyone. In November 1894 Maric moved to Zurich, Switzerland to study medicine initially and then switched to Eidgenossische Technische Hoschule (Zurich Polytechnic) where she enrolled on a diploma course to teach Physics and Mathematics. Not only was Mileva the only woman on this course, but she was also only the fifth woman ever to study at this prestigious academic institution. Alongside her were only five other students one of which was Albert Einstein. In 1899 they sat their intermediate diploma exams with both achieving an average grade of 5.5. Mileva Maric was a trail blazer inventing a womens’role in science and breaking traditions of academic institutions across Europe. She had to overcome major odds to be given opportunities, choosing a path that hardly any women in the late 19th century had taken. Einstein had to struggle also. One of the less well known facts about him was his dyslexia. He didn’t begin to speak until aged three. Often Einstein’s teachers told his parents to switch him to a trade school. It was only after leaving rote schools where students had to memorize everything that he was allowed to be creative in his work and Einstein began to shine. In different ways both Einstein and Maric over- came massive odds to be able to study Science and Physics in particular, the cornerstone for the world famous equation. In 1901 Mileva became pregnant by Einstein and had to stop her work on her diploma dissertation. By 1902 she went back to Novi Sad where her daughter Lieserl was born. Her fate is not known, as Lieserl may have died in the summer of 1903 or may have been given up for adoption. In 1903 Maric and Einstein married in Bern, Switzerland. In 1904 a son Hans Albert was born. At that time Einstein worked at the Federal Office for Intellectual Property where he stayed until 1909 when he became a lecturer at the University of Zurich causing the family to move. In 1910 Eduard was born and in 1913 during a trip to Novi Sad, Mileva had her two sons baptised as Orthodox Christians. The following year the family moved to Berlin, and yet within a month Mileva was missing Switzerland, which caused her to take her children back with her to Zurich. By the end of 1914, as the world descended into the Great War most of Mileva’s and Albert’s friends realised that their marriage had collapsed. After the war in February 1919 Albert and Mileva who were still living separate lives, formally divorced. Although Mileva had been opposed to a divorce it was probably inevitable that the marriage would fail. Einstein had been living in Berlin since 1914 and the assassination of Austria’s Arch Duke Ferdinand by a Serb Gavrillo Princip did little to enamour Serbs to the German race. There is controversy over what Mileva Maric might have contributed to Einstein’s work, and in particular dispute over the Annus Mirabilis Papers of 1905. Some “experts” such as John Stachel claim that any reference to “our” in work and research was simply Einstein re-assuring Maric of his love and that the “our” always referred to general statements rather than any specific breakthroughs. Much is also made of the fact that there are no exclusive Mileva Maric published papers. The Tesla Society however has been gathering evidence and claim that the newest findings gathered on the Theory of Relativity and specifically Mileva Maric’s contribution, was significant. A letter from Maric to Einstein discussing a 1897 lecture at Heidelburg, which would influence Einstein’s studies of Brownian Motion, one of his three influential 1905 papers. The documentary “Einstein’s Wife” showed that the original manuscript from 1905 of the “Theory of Relativity” was signed with Einstein-Marity (Marity for Maric). Soviet Scientist Abraham Joffe, an alumni of the Eidgenossische Technische Hoschule (Zurich Polytechnic) where Einstein and Maric had both studied, claimed to have seen this original manuscript with the two signatures of Einstein and Maric. Then, there is Einstein’s quote from 1905 (translated from the original German): “For everything that I achieved in my life, I must thank Mileva. She is my genius inspirer, my protector against the hardships of life and Science. Without her, my work would never have been started nor finished.” Both Albert Einstein and Mileva Maric overcame tremendous odds to even study Physics. Einstein saw Maric as an equal in Physics this being part of the attraction between them. Mileva’s contribution to Einstein’s paper on Brownian Motion, a key part of his Annus Mirabilis Papers is seen as evidence of Maric’s direct contribution to the work on relativity. Abraham Joffe’s claim to have seen the original papers signed by Einstein and Maric. If Maric had chosen to live the privileged life of her wealthy family she would never have met Einstein and perhaps The Theory of Relativity would have taken longer to be discovered or maybe may still be undiscovered. On balance it would appear to be reasonable to assume that Mileva Maric made a contribution to this theory, and perhaps if she had stayed married to Einstein and been able to continue her work, she would be more widely acknowledged as such. Compare this with a contemporary and friend of Mileva’s, is well renowned and respected, having received the kudos of Nobel prizes in 1903 alongside her husband Pierre, but the Theory of Relativity, and the world’s most famous equation? The kudos went to Albert Einstein who in the eyes of the world just happened to have a wife called Mileva Maric. Source: To go beyond :

Hertha MARKS-AYRTONMain achievements: Characterization of the First female member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE). Phoebe Sarah Hertha Ayrton, was a British engineer, mathematician, physicist and inventor. Known in adult life as Hertha Ayrton, born Phoebe Sarah Marks, she was awarded the Hughes Medal by the Royal Society for her work on electric arcs and ripples in sand and water. Hertha Ayrton was born Phoebe Sarah Marks in Portsea, Hampshire, England, on 28 April 1854. She was the third child of a Polish Jewish watchmaker named Levi Marks, an immigrant from Tsarist Poland; and Alice Theresa Moss, a seamstress, the daughter of Joseph Moss, a glass merchant of Portsea. Her father died in 1861, leaving Sarah's mother with seven children and an eighth expected. Sarah then took up some of the responsibility for caring for the younger children. At the age of nine, Sarah was invited by her aunts, who ran a school in northwest London, to live with her cousins and be educated with them. She was known to her peers and teachers as a fiery, occasionally crude personality. Her cousins introduced Ayrton to science and mathematics. By age 16, she was working as a governess. Ayrton attended Girton College, Cambridge, where she studied mathematics and was coached by physicist Richard Glazebrook. George Eliot supported Ayrton's application to Girton College. During her time at Cambridge, Ayrton constructed a sphygmomanometer (blood pressure meter), led the choral society, founded the Girton fire brigade, and, together with Charlotte Scott, formed a mathematical club. In 1880, Ayrton passed the Mathematical Tripos, but Cambridge did not grant her an academic degree because, at the time, Cambridge gave only certificates and not full degrees to women. Ayrton passed an external examination at the University of London, which awarded her a Bachelor of Science degree in 1881. Upon her return to London, Ayrton earned money by teaching and embroidery, ran a club for working girls, and cared for her invalid sister. She also put her mathematical skills to practical use – she taught at Notting Hill and Ealing High School, and was also active in devising and solving mathematical problems, many of which were published in "Mathematical Questions and Their Solutions" from the Educational Times. In 1884 Ayrton patented a line-divider, an engineering drawing instrument for dividing a line into any number of equal parts and for enlarging and reducing figures. The line-divider was her first major invention and, while its primary use was likely for artists for enlarging and diminishing, it was also useful to architects and engineers. Ayrton's patent application was financially supported by Louisa Goldsmid and feminist Barbara Bodichon, who together advanced her enough money to take out patents; the invention was shown at the Exhibition of Women's Industries and received much press attention. Ayrton's 1884 patent was the first of many – from 1884 until her death, Hertha registered 26 patents: five on mathematical dividers, 13 on arc lamps and electrodes, the rest on the propulsion of air. In 1884 Ayrton began attending evening classes on electricity at Finsbury Technical College, delivered by Professor William Edward Ayrton, a pioneer in electrical engineering and physics education and a fellow of the Royal Society. On 6 May 1885 she married her former teacher, and thereafter assisted him with experiments in physics and electricity. She also began her own investigation into the characteristics of the electric arc. In the late nineteenth century, electric arc lighting was in wide use for public lighting. The tendency of electric arcs to flicker and hiss was a major problem. In 1895, Hertha Ayrton wrote a series of articles for the Electrician, explaining that these phenomena were the result of oxygen coming into contact with the carbon rods used to create the arc. In 1899, she was the first woman ever to read her own paper before the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE). Her paper was entitled "The Hissing of the Electric Arc". Shortly thereafter, Ayrton was elected the first female member of the IEE; the next woman to be admitted to the IEE was in 1958. She petitioned to present a paper before the Royal Society but was not allowed because of her sex and "The Mechanism of the Electric Arc" was read by John Perry in her stead in 1901. Ayrton was also the first woman to win a prize from the Society, the Hughes Medal, awarded to her in 1906 in honour of her research on the motion of ripples in sand and water and her work on the electric arc. By the late nineteenth century, Ayrton's work in the field of electrical engineering was recognised more widely, domestically and internationally. At the International Congress of Women held in London in 1899, she presided over the physical science section. Ayrton also spoke at the International Electrical Congress in Paris in 1900. Her success there led the British Association for the Advancement of Science to allow women to serve on general and sectional committees. In 1902, Ayrton published , with origins in her earlier articles from the Electrician published between 1895 and 1896. With this publication, her contribution to the field of electrical engineering began to be cemented. However, initially at least, Ayrton was not well received by the more prestigious and traditional scientific societies such as the Royal Society. In the aftermath of the publication of The Electric Arc, Ayrton was proposed as a Fellow of the Royal Society by renowned electrical engineer John Perry in 1902. Her application was turned down by the Council of the Royal Society, who decreed that married women were not eligible to be Fellows. However, in 1904, she became the first woman to read a paper before the Royal Society when she was allowed to read her paper "The Origin and Growth of Ripple Marks" and this was later published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. In 1906, she was awarded the Royal Society's prestigious Hughes Medal "for her experimental investigations on the electric arc, and also on sand ripples." She was the fifth recipient of this prize, awarded annually since 1902, in recognition of an original discovery in the physical sciences, particularly electricity and magnetism or their applications, and as of 2015, one of only two women so honoured, the other being Michele Dougherty in 2008. Ayrton delivered papers on the subject again before the Royal Society in 1908 and 1911; she also presented the results of her research before audiences at the British Association and the Physical Society. Ayrton's interest in vortices in water and air inspired the Ayrton fan, or flapper, used in the trenches in the First World War to dispel poison gas. Ayrton fought for its acceptance and organised its production, over 100,000 being used on the Western Front. Ayrton helped found the International Federation of University Women in 1919 and the National Union of Scientific Workers in 1920. She died of blood poisoning (resulting from an insect bite) on 26 August 1923 at New Cottage, North Lancing, Sussex. Source:

Annie MAUNDERMain achievements: Author of . First women elected at Royal Astronomical Society (1916). Annie Scott Dill Russell was born in 1868 in The Manse, Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland, to William Andrew Russell and Hessy Nesbitt Russell (née Dill). Her father was the minister of the Presbyterian Church in Strabane until 1882. She received her secondary education at the Ladies Collegiate School in Belfast, which later became Victoria College. Winning a prize in an 1886 intermediate school examination, she was able to sit the Girton open entrance scholarship examination, and was awarded a three-year scholarship. She studied at Cambridge University (Girton College) and in 1889 she passed the degree examinations with honours, as the top mathematician of her year at Girton, and ranked Senior Optime (equivalent to second class at other universities) in the university results list. However the restrictions of the period did not allow her to receive the B.A. degree she would otherwise have earned. In 1891 Russell began work at the Greenwich Royal Observatory, serving as one of the "lady computers" assigned to the solar department at a salary of four pounds per month. This was a special department set up in 1873 to photograph the sun. There Russell assisted Walter Maunder, and she spent a great deal of time photographing the Sun. The solar maximum of 1894 resulted in a high number of sunspots, the movements of which Russell also tracked. Maunder and Russell were married in 1895, Walter's second marriage, and Annie was required to resign from her job due to restrictions on married women working in public service. However the two continued to collaborate, while Annie accompanied Walter on solar eclipse expeditions. In 1897 Annie received a grant from Girton College to acquire a short-focus camera with a 1.5-inch lens which she took on expeditions. She used this camera to photograph the outer solar corona from India in 1898. Annie published in 1908, with her husband Walter as co-author. (She was credited by her husband as the primary author.) The book contains her photographs of the sun and the Milky Way. She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in November 1916, ten months after the bar on female Fellows was lifted. She had first been nominated for election 24 years earlier. Earlier she had become a member of the British Astronomical Association, which her husband had helped found in 1890. Although he had been fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society since 1875, Maunder wanted an association of astronomers open to every person interested in astronomy, from every class of society, and especially open for women. She returned to the Royal Greenwich Observatory as a volunteer during World War I, working there from 1915 to 1920. Many of her observations were published in popular journals under her husband's name before she was named as a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. The investigations of the Maunders demonstrated a correlation between the variation in sunspot numbers and the climate of the Earth, leading to the discovery that the period of decreased solar activity during the Maunder Minimum. Annie was regarded as an expert in eclipse photography and was asked to take charge of photography of the Canadian Government's eclipse expedition to Labrador in August 1905. This was the only time her expenses were paid for a scientific expedition; the weather ended up being cloudy and no eclipse observations were taken. The crater Maunder on the Moon is jointly named for Walter and Annie Maunder, as is the Maunder Minimum. Source:

Barbara MCCLINTOCKMain achievements: Work in genetic structure of maize. Discovery of genetic transposition. Barbara McClintock was an American scientist and one of the world's most distinguished cytogeneticists, the 1983 . McClintock received her PhD in botany from Cornell University in 1927. There she started her career as the leader in the development of maize cytogenetics, the focus of her research for the rest of her life. From the late 1920s, McClintock studied chromosomes and how they change during reproduction in maize. Her work was groundbreaking; she developed the technique for visualizing maize chromosomes and used microscopic analysis to demonstrate many fundamental genetic ideas. One of those ideas was the notion of genetic recombination by crossing-over during meiosis—a mechanism by which chromosomes exchange information. She produced the first genetic map for maize, linking regions of the chromosome to physical traits. She demonstrated the role of the telomere and centromere, regions of the chromosome that are important in the conservation of genetic information. She was recognized among the best in the field, awarded prestigious fellowships, and elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1944. During the 1940s and 1950s, McClintock discovered transposition and used it to demonstrate that genes are responsible for turning physical characteristics on and off. She developed theories to explain the suppression and expression of genetic information from one generation of maize plants to the next. Due to skepticism of her research and its implications, she stopped publishing her data in 1953. Later, she made an extensive study of the cytogenetics and ethnobotany of maize races from South America. McClintock's research became well understood in the 1960s and 1970s, as other scientists confirmed the mechanisms of genetic change and genetic regulation that she had demonstrated in her maize research in the 1940s and 1950s. Awards and recognition for her contributions to the field followed, including the , awarded to her in 1983 for the discovery of genetic transposition; she is the only woman to receive an unshared Nobel Prize in that category. Source:

Lise MEITNERMain achievements: Discovered nuclear fission. First woman in Germany to assume a post of full professor in physics. Lise Meitner was an Austrian physicist who worked on radioactivity and nuclear physics. Meitner was part of the team that discovered nuclear fission, an achievement for which her colleague Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize. Meitner is often mentioned as one of the most glaring examples of women's scientific achievement overlooked by the Nobel committee. A 1997 Physics Today study concluded that Meitner's omission was "a rare instance in which personal negative opinions apparently led to the exclusion of a deserving scientist" from the Nobel. Element 109, meitnerium, is named in her honour. Meitner was born into a Jewish family as the third of eight children in Vienna, 2nd district (Leopoldstadt). Her father, Philipp Meitner, was one of the first Jewish lawyers in Austria. Meitner studied physics and became the second woman to obtain a doctoral degree in physics at the University of Vienna in 1905 ("Wärmeleitung im inhomogenen Körper"). Women were not allowed to attend public institutions of higher education in those days, but Meitner was able to achieve a private education in physics in part because of her supportive parents, and she completed in 1901 with an "externe Matura" examination at the Akademisches Gymnasium. In 1926, Meitner became the first woman in Germany to assume a post of full professor in physics, at the University of Berlin. There she undertook the research program in nuclear physics which eventually led to her co-discovery of nuclear fission in 1939, after she had left Berlin. She was praised by Albert Einstein as the "German Marie Curie". In 1930, Meitner taught a seminar on nuclear physics and chemistry with Leó Szilárd. With the discovery of the neutron in the early 1930s, speculation arose in the scientific community that it might be possible to create elements heavier than uranium (atomic number 92) in the laboratory. A scientific race began between Ernest Rutherford in Britain, in France, Enrico Fermi in Italy, and the Meitner–Hahn team in Berlin. At the time, all concerned believed that this was abstract research for the probable honour of a Nobel prize. None suspected that this research would culminate in nuclear weapons. Following the doctoral degree, she rejected an offer to work in a gas lamp factory. Encouraged by her father and backed by his financial support, she went to Berlin. Max Planck allowed her to attend his lectures, an unusual gesture by Planck, who until then had rejected any women wanting to attend his lectures. After one year, Meitner became Planck's assistant. During the first years she worked together with chemist Otto Hahn and discovered with him several new isotopes. In 1909 she presented two papers on beta-radiation. In 1912 the research group Hahn–Meitner moved to the newly founded Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut (KWI) in Berlin-Dahlem, south west in Berlin. She worked without salary as a "guest" in Hahn's department of Radiochemistry. It was not until 1913, at 35 years old and following an offer to go to Prague as associate professor, that she got a permanent position at KWI. In the first part of World War I, she served as a nurse handling X-ray equipment. She returned to Berlin and her research in 1916, but not without inner struggle. She felt in a way ashamed of wanting to continue her research efforts when thinking about the pain and suffering of the victims of war and their medical and emotional needs. In 1917, she and Hahn discovered the first long-lived isotope of the element protactinium, for which she was awarded the Leibniz Medal by the Berlin Academy of Sciences. That year, Meitner was given her own physics section at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. In 1922, she discovered the cause, known as the Auger effect, of the emission from surfaces of electrons with 'signature' energies. The effect is named for Pierre Victor Auger, a French scientist who independently discovered the effect in 1923. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Meitner was acting director of the Institute for Chemistry. Although she was protected by her Austrian citizenship, all other Jewish scientists, including her nephew Otto Frisch, Fritz Haber, Leó Szilárd and many other eminent figures, were dismissed or forced to resign from their posts. Most of them emigrated from Germany. Her response was to say nothing and bury herself in her work. In 1938, Meitner fled to Holland and finally arrived in Sweden. She later acknowledged, in 1946, that "It was not only stupid but also very wrong that I did not leave at once." After the Anschluss, her situation became desperate. On July 13, 1938, Meitner, with the support of Otto Hahn and the help from the Dutch physicists Dirk Coster and Adriaan Fokker, escaped to the Netherlands. She was forced to travel under cover to the Dutch border, where Coster persuaded German immigration officers that she had permission to travel to the Netherlands. She reached safety, though without her possessions. Meitner later said that she left Germany forever with 10 marks in her purse. Before she left, Otto Hahn had given her a diamond ring he had inherited from his mother: this was to be used to bribe the frontier guards if required. It was not required, and Meitner's nephew's wife later wore it. Meitner was lucky to escape, as Kurt Hess, a chemist who was the head of the organic department of the KWI and an avid Nazi, had informed the authorities that she was about to flee. An appointment at the University of Groningen did not come through, and she went instead to Stockholm, where she took up a post at Manne Siegbahn's laboratory, despite the difficulty caused by Siegbahn's prejudice against women in science. Here she established a working relationship with Niels Bohr, who travelled regularly between Copenhagen and Stockholm. She continued to correspond with Hahn and other German scientists. On occasion of a lecture by Hahn in Bohr's Institute he, Meitner and Frisch met in Copenhagen on November 10. Later they exchanged a series of letters. In December Hahn and Fritz Strassmann performed the difficult experiments which isolated the evidence for nuclear fission at their laboratory in Berlin. The surviving correspondence shows that Hahn recognized that fission was the only explanation for the barium (at first he named the process a 'bursting' of the uranium), but, baffled by this remarkable conclusion, he wrote to Meitner. The possibility that uranium nuclei might break up under neutron bombardment had been suggested years before, notably by in 1934. However, by employing the existing "liquid-drop" model of the nucleus, Meitner and Frisch were the first to articulate a theory of how the nucleus of an atom could be split into smaller parts: uranium nuclei had split to form barium and krypton, accompanied by the ejection of several neutrons and a large amount of energy (the latter two products accounting for the loss in mass). She and Frisch had discovered the reason that no stable elements beyond uranium (in atomic number) existed naturally; the electrical repulsion of so many protons overcame the strong nuclear force. Frisch and Meitner also first realized that Einstein's famous equation, E = mc², explained the source of the tremendous releases of energy in nuclear fission, by the conversion of rest mass into kinetic energy, popularly described as the conversion of mass into energy. Hahn and Strassmann had sent the manuscript of their first paper to Naturwissenschaften in December 1938, reporting they had detected and identified the element barium after bombarding uranium with neutrons; simultaneously, Hahn had communicated their results exclusively to Meitner in several letters, and did not inform the physicists in his own institute. In their second publication on the evidence of barium (Die Naturwissenschaften, 10 February 1939) Hahn and Strassmann used for the first time the name Uranspaltung (Uranium fission) and predicted the existence and liberation of additional neutrons during the fission process (which was proved later to be a chain reaction by Frédéric Joliot and his team). Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch were the first who correctly interpreted Hahn's and Strassmann's results as being nuclear fission, a term coined by Frisch, and published their paper in Nature. Frisch confirmed this experimentally on 13 January 1939. These two reports, the first Hahn-Strassmann publication of January 6, 1939, and the Frisch-Meitner publication of February 11, 1939, had electrifying effects on the scientific community. Because there was a possibility that fission could be used as a weapon, and since the knowledge was in German hands, Leó Szilárd, Edward Teller, and Eugene Wigner jumped into action, persuading Albert Einstein, a celebrity, to write President Franklin D. Roosevelt a letter of caution. In 1940 Frisch and Rudolf Peierls produced the Frisch–Peierls memorandum, which first set out how an atomic explosion could be generated, and this ultimately led to the establishment in 1942 of the Manhattan Project. Meitner refused an offer to work on the project at Los Alamos, declaring "I will have nothing to do with a bomb!" Meitner said that Hiroshima had come as a surprise to her, and that she was "sorry that the bomb had to be invented." In Sweden, Meitner was first active at Siegbahn's Nobel Institute for Physics, and at the Swedish Defence Research Establishment (FOA) and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, where she had a laboratory and participated in research on R1, Sweden's first nuclear reactor. In 1947, a personal position was created for Meitner at the University College of Stockholm with the salary of a professor and funding from the Council for Atomic Research. Source:

Anna Maria Sibylla MERIANMain achievements: Documentation of butterfly metamorphosis. Scientific illustration. Maria Sibylla Merian was a German-born naturalist and scientific illustrator, a descendant of the Frankfurt branch of the Swiss Merian family, founders of one of Europe's largest publishing houses in the 17th century. Merian received her artistic training from her stepfather, Jacob Marrel, a student of the still life painter Georg Flegel. She remained in Frankfurt until 1670, relocating subsequently to Nuremberg, Wieuwerd (1685), where she stayed in a Labadist community till 1691, and Amsterdam. Merian published her first book of natural illustrations, titled Neues Blumenbuch, in 1675 at age 28. In 1699, following eight years of painting and studying, and on the encouragement of Cornelis van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck, the then-governor of the Dutch colony of Surinam, Merian was awarded a grant by the city of Amsterdam to travel to South America with her daughter Dorothea. After two years there, she was forced return to Europe as result of malaria. She then proceeded to publish her major work, Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, in 1705, for which she became famous. Because of her careful observations and documentation of the metamorphosis of the butterfly, she is considered among the most significant contributors to the field of entomology. She was a leading entomologist of her time and she discovered many new facts about insect life through her studies. Maria Sibylla Merian was born on 2 April 1647 in Frankfurt, then a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire, into the family of the Swiss engraver and publisher Matthäus Merian the Elder. Her father died three years later, and in 1651 her mother married still life painter Jacob Marrel. Marrel encouraged Merian to draw and paint. While he lived mostly in Holland his pupil Abraham Mignon trained her. At the age of thirteen she painted her first images of insects and plants from specimens she had captured. Regarding her youth, in the foreword to Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, Merian wrote: "I spent my time investigating insects. At the beginning, I started with silk worms in my home town of Frankfurt. I realized that other caterpillars produced beautiful butterflies or moths, and that silkworms did the same. This led me to collect all the caterpillars I could find in order to see how they changed". In 1665 Merian married Marrel's apprentice, Johann Andreas Graff from Nuremberg; his father was a poet and director of the local high school, one of the leading schools in 17th century Germany. Two years later she had her first child, Johanna Helena, and the family moved to Nuremberg, her husband's home town. While living there, Maria Sibylla continued painting, working on parchment and linen, and creating designs for embroidery. She gave drawing lessons to unmarried daughters of wealthy families (her "Jungferncompaney", i.e. virgin group), which helped her family financially and increased its social standing. This provided her with access to the finest gardens, maintained by the wealthy and elite. In 1681 she moved to Frankfurt am Main to live with her mother, after her stepfather died. In 1685 the family moved to Friesland where her halfbrother Caspar Merian lived in a religious community. Jean de Labadie set up a community in a stately home – Walta Castle – at Wieuwerd in Friesland, which belonged to three sisters Van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck, who were his adherents. Here printing and many other occupations continued, including farming and milling. At its peak, the community numbered around 600 with many more adherents further afield. Visitors came from England, Italy, Poland and elsewhere, but not all approved of the strict discipline. Those of arrogant disposition were given the most menial of jobs. Fussiness in matters or food was overcome since all were expected to eat what was put in front of them. Several noted visitors have left their accounts of visits to the Labadist community. One was Sophie of Hanover, mother of King George I of Great Britain; another was William Penn, the Quaker pioneer, who gave his name to the US state of Pennsylvania; a third was the English philosopher John Locke. In 1691 she moved with her daughters to Amsterdam and met with Caspar Commelin and Steven Blankaart. In 1692 she divorced from her husband. In 1699 the city of Amsterdam sponsored Merian to travel to Suriname in South America, along with her younger daughter Dorothea Maria. Before departing, she wrote: "In Holland, with much astonishment what beautiful animals came from the East and West Indies. I was blessed with having been able to look at both the expensive collection of Doctor Nicolaas Witsen, mayor of Amsterdam and director of the East Indies society, and that of Mr. Jonas Witsen, secretary of Amsterdam. Moreover I also saw the collections of Mr. Fredericus Ruysch, doctor of medicine and professor of anatomy and botany, Mr. Livinus Vincent, and many other people. In these collections I had found innumerable other insects, but finally if here their origin and their reproduction is unknown, it begs the question as to how they transform, starting from caterpillars and chrysalises and so on. All this has, at the same time, led me to undertake a long dreamed of journey to Suriname." Merian worked in Suriname, which included what later became known as the French, Dutch and British Guianas, for two years, travelling around the colony and sketching local animals and plants. She criticized Dutch planters' treatment of natives and black slaves. She recorded local native names for the plants and described local uses. In 1701 malaria possible forced her to return to the Dutch Republic. Back in the Netherlands, Merian sold specimens she had collected and published a collection of engravings of plant and animal life in Suriname. In 1705 she published a book Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium about the insects of Suriname. In 1715, Merian suffered a stroke and was partially paralysed. She continued her work, but her illness probably affected her ability to work. A later registry lists her as a pauper. Maria Sibylla Merian died in Amsterdam on 13 January 1717 and was buried four days later. Her daughter Dorothea published "Erucarum Ortus Alimentum et Paradoxa Metamorphosis", a collection of her mother's work, posthumously. In the last quarter of the 20th century, the work of Merian was re-evaluated, validated, and reprinted. Her portrait was printed on the 500 DM note before Germany converted to the euro. Her portrait has also appeared on a 0.40 DM stamp, released on 17 September 1987, and many schools are named after her. In 2005, a modern research vessel named Maria S. Merian was launched at Warnemünde, Germany. She was honored with a Google Doodle on 2 April 2013 to mark her 366th birth anniversary. Merian worked as a botanical artist. She published collections of engravings of plants in 1675, 1677, and 1680. She collected and observed live insects and created detailed drawings to illustrate insect metamorphosis. In her time, it was very unusual that someone would be genuinely interested in insects, which had a bad reputation and were colloquially called "beasts of the devil." As a consequence of their reputation, the metamorphosis of these animals was largely unknown. Merian described the life cycles of 186 insect species, amassing evidence that contradicted the contemporary notion that insects were "born of mud" by spontaneous generation. Moreover, although certain scholars were aware of the process of metamorphosis from the caterpillar to the butterfly, the majority of people did not understand the process. The work that Anna Maria Sibylla Merian published, Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandlung und sonderbare Blumennahrung – The Caterpillars' Marvelous Transformation and Strange Floral Food, was very popular in certain segments of high society as a result of being published in the vernacular. However, her work was largely ignored by scientists of the time because the official language of science was still Latin. Merian also described many other details of the evolution and lifecycle of the insects she observed. For example, she showed that each stage of the change from caterpillar to butterfly depended on a small number of plants for its nourishment. She noted that as a consequence the eggs were laid near these plants. Merian was one of the first naturalists to observe insects directly. This approach gave her much more insight into their lives and was contrary to the way that most scientists worked at the time. Source:

Marie MEURDRACMain achievements: Author of Marie Meurdrac was a French chemist and alchemist born in Mandres-les-Roses, today a suburb of Paris. She was one of two daughters. In 1625 she married Henri de Vibrac, commander of Charles de Valois's guard unit. When she moved to the Château de Grosbois she came to know the Countess de Guiche, wife of Armand de Gramont, Comte de Guiche. The pair became very good friends and Meurdrac would later dedicate her chemistry treatise to the Countess. It is through this book that Meurdrac's name has survived to the present day and scholars have argued that this was the first work on chemistry by a woman since that of Maria the Jewess in the late classical period. In 1656 Meurdrac published her famous treatise (roughly "Useful and Easy Chemistry, for the Benefit of Ladies"). This work went through several editions in French (1666, 1674, 1680, 1687 and 1711) and was translated into German (four editions from 1673–1712) and Italian. The work which was approved by the regent masters of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, focused on providing affordable treatments for the poor. The work was divided up into six parts, part 1 focusing on principles and operations, vessels, lutes, furnaces, characteristics and weights. Part 2 was concerned with medical herbs and medicines made from such plants. Part 3 dealt with animals and Part 4 with Metals. Part 5 focused on making compound medicines and Part 6 was directed to a female audience and covered methods of preserving and increasing beauty. Meurdrac wrote in her introduction about her methods that "I have been very careful not to go beyond my knowledge, and I can assure that everything I teach is true, and that all my remedies have been tested; for which I praise and glorify God." (translation Bishop and DeLoach, 1970) In addition to the importance of her work in terms of female scientific endeavors, she has by some been seen as a proto-feminist. In her introduction Meurdrac outlines her "inner struggle" between the contemporary female ideal, which Meurdrac described as to be "silent, listen and learn, without displaying...knowledge". However she decides that "it would be a sin against Charity to hide the knowledge that God has given me, which may be of benefit to the world". Her eventual contribution of her works provided a foreshadowing of the paradigm shift that would later occur in the shift of alchemy to modern chemistry. Whether or not her work can be considered chemistry, Meurdrac directly contributed in a visible way that allowed for collaborative processes, and scrutiny, that would later define the field of modern chemistry and science as a whole. Since the 1970s scholars have been discussing the nature of , with some arguing that it is a work on alchemy rather than chemistry. Recently, Londa Shiebinger placed Meurdrac's La Chymie in the tradition of medical cookery books. La Chymie has many similarities to the libri de segreti, medical and cosmetic books made popular in Renaissance Italy which were occasionally authored by women. Source:

Maryam MIRZAKHANIMain achievements: First woman and the first Iranian honored with the Fields Medal (2014). Maryam Mirzakhani was an Iranian mathematician working in the United States. Since 1 September 2008, she has served as a professor of mathematics at Stanford University. In 2014, Mirzakhani became both the first woman and the first Iranian honored with the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics. The award committee cited her work in understanding the symmetry of curved surfaces. Her research topics include Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, ergodic theory, and symplectic geometry. In 1994, Mirzakhani won a gold medal in the International Mathematical Olympiad, the first female Iranian student to do so. In the 1995 Olympiad, she became the first Iranian student to achieve a perfect score and to win two gold medals. Mirzakhani was born in 1977 in Tehran, Iran. She went to high school in Tehran at Farzanegan, National Organization for Development of Exceptional Talents (NODET). She competed and was recognized internationally for her math skills, receiving gold medals at both the 1994 International Mathematical Olympiad (Hong Kong) and the 1995 International Mathematical Olympiad (Toronto), where she was the first Iranian student to finish with a perfect score. She obtained her BSc in mathematics (1999) from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. She went to the United States for graduate work, earning a PhD from Harvard University (2004), where she worked under the supervision of the Fields Medalist Curtis McMullen. She was also a 2004 research fellow of the Clay Mathematics Institute and a professor at Princeton University. Mirzakhani has made several contributions to the theory of moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces. In her early work, Mirzakhani discovered a formula expressing the volume of a moduli space with a given genus as a polynomial in the number of boundary components. This led her to obtain a new proof for the formula discovered by Edward Witten and Maxim Kontsevich on the intersection numbers of tautology classes on moduli space, as well as an asymptotic formula for the growth of the number of simple closed geodesics on a compact hyperbolic surface. Her subsequent work has focused on Teichmüller dynamics of moduli space. In particular, she was able to prove the long-standing conjecture that William Thurston's earthquake flow on Teichmüller space is ergodic. Most recently as of 2014, with Alex Eskin and with input from Amir Mohammadi, Mirzakhani proved that complex geodesics and their closures in moduli space are surprisingly regular, rather than irregular or fractal. The closures of complex geodesics are algebraic objects defined in terms of polynomials and therefore they have certain rigidity properties, which is analogous to a celebrated result that Marina Ratner arrived at during the 1990s. The International Mathematical Union said in its press release that, "It is astounding to find that the rigidity in homogeneous spaces has an echo in the inhomogeneous world of moduli space." Mirzakhani was awarded the Fields Medal in 2014 for "her outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces". At the time of the award, Wisconsin professor Jordan Ellenberg explained her research to a popular audience: "... [Her] work expertly blends dynamics with geometry. Among other things, she studies billiards. But now, in a move very characteristic of modern mathematics, it gets kind of meta: She considers not just one billiard table, but the universe of all possible billiard tables. And the kind of dynamics she studies doesn't directly concern the motion of the billiards on the table, but instead a transformation of the billiard table itself, which is changing its shape in a rule-governed way; if you like, the table itself moves like a strange planet around the universe of all possible tables ... This isn't the kind of thing you do to win at pool, but it's the kind of thing you do to win a Fields Medal. And it's what you need to do in order to expose the dynamics at the heart of geometry; for there's no question that they're there." Source :

Maria MITCHELLMain achievements: Discovery of C/1847 T1. First female U.S. professional astronomer. Maria Mitchell was an American astronomer who, in 1847, by using a telescope, discovered a comet which as a result became known as "Miss Mitchell's Comet". She won a gold medal prize for her discovery which was presented to her by King Frederick VII of Denmark - this was remarkable for a woman. On the medal was inscribed "Non Frustra Signorum Obitus Speculamur et Ortus" in Latin (taken from Georgics by Virgil (Book I, line 257) (English: “Not in vain do we watch the setting and rising of the stars”). Mitchell was the first American woman to work as a professional astronomer. One of ten children, she was raised in the Quaker religion but later adopted Christian Unitarianism. Maria Mitchell was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts. She was a first cousin four times removed of Benjamin Franklin. She had nine brothers and sisters. Her parents, William Mitchell and Lydia Coleman Mitchell, were Quakers. Maria Mitchell was born into a community unusual for its time in regard to equality for women. Her parents, like other Quakers, valued education and insisted on giving her the same quality of education that boys received. One of the tenets of the Quaker religion was intellectual equality between the sexes. Additionally, Nantucket's importance as a whaling port meant that wives of sailors were left for months and sometimes years to manage affairs while their husbands were at sea, thus fostering an atmosphere of relative independence and equality for the women who called the island home. After attending Elizabeth Gardener's small school in her earliest childhood years, Maria attended the North Grammar school, where William Mitchell was the first principal. Two years following the founding of that school, when Maria was eleven, her father built his own school on Howard Street. There, she was a student and also a teaching assistant to her father. At home, Maria's father taught her astronomy using his personal telescope. At age twelve and a half, she aided her father in calculating the exact moment of an annular eclipse. Her father's school closed, and afterwards she attended Unitarian minister Cyrus Peirce's school for young ladies. Later she worked for Peirce as his teaching assistant before she opened her own school in 1835. She made the decision to allow non-white children to attend her school, a controversial move as the local public school was still segregated at the time. One year later, she was offered a job as the first librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum, where she worked for 20 years. Using a telescope, she discovered "Miss Mitchell's Comet" (Comet 1847 VI, modern designation is C/1847 T1) on October 1, 1847, at 10:30 PM. Some years previously, King Frederick VI of Denmark had established gold medal prizes to each discoverer of a "telescopic comet" (too faint to be seen with the naked eye). The prize was to be awarded to the "first discoverer" of each such comet (note that comets are often independently discovered by more than one person). Maria Mitchell won one of these prizes, and this gave her worldwide fame, since the only previous women to discover a comet have been and Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz were elected). She later worked at the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office, calculating tables of positions of Venus, and traveled in Europe with Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family. She became professor of astronomy at Vassar College in 1865, the first person (male or female) appointed to the faculty. She was also named as Director of the Vassar College Observatory. After teaching there for some time, she learned that despite her reputation and experience, her salary was less than that of many younger male professors. She insisted on a salary increase, and got it. She taught at the college until her retirement in 1888, one year before her death. In 1842, she left the Quaker faith and followed Unitarian principles. In protest against slavery, she stopped wearing clothes made of cotton. She was friends with various suffragists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and co-founded the American Association for the Advancement of Women. Source:

May-Britt MOSERMain achievements: Discovery of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain. May-Britt Moser is a Norwegian psychologist, neuroscientist and Founding Director of the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience and Centre for the Biology of Memory (KI/CBM) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway. Moser and her husband Edvard Moser have pioneered research on the brain's mechanism for representing space during the last decade. Edvard and May-Britt Moser were appointed associate professors in psychology and neuroscience at NTNU in 1996, less than one year after their Ph.D defenses. They established The Centre for the Biology of Memory (CBM) in 2002 and the Kavli Institute, the 15th in the world and the 4th in neuroscience, in 2007. May-Britt Moser was awarded the in 2014, together with her husband Edvard Moser and John O'Keefe. The scientific goal of the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience is to advance our understanding of neural circuits and systems. By focusing on spatial representation and memory, the investigators hope to uncover general principles of neural network computation in the mammalian cortex. The Kavli Institute, supported by the Kavli Foundation, coexists with the Centre for the Biology of Memory (CBM), but the scope of the Institute is broader and more long-term. CBM is part of the Centre of Excellence scheme of the Research Council of Norway. The KI/CBM is also funded by the EU’s Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7) and an Advanced Investigator Grant from the European Research Council(ERC). May-Britt and Edvard Moser have studied how spatial location and spatial memory are computed in the brain. Their most famous contribution is probably the discovery in 2005 of entorhinal grid cells (Hafting et al., Nature 2005), which points to the entorhinal cortex as a hub for the brain network that makes us find our way. The discovery of the grid cells showed for the first time that the rat brain has its own universal map for encoding self-position in any environment. The discovery opened up new opportunities for investigating the cognitive functioning of the brain. The mapping system is probably also found in the human brain and that of other mammals. The Mosers and the staff of researchers at the KI/CBM have shown how a variety of functional cell types in the entorhinal microcircuit contribute to representation of self-location, how the outputs of the circuit are used by memory networks in the hippocampus, and how episodic memories are separated from each other in the early stages of the hippocampal memory storage. The KI/CBM researchers have also discovered a new type of brain cells that registers borders and boundaries, and that the place cells in the hippocampus can operate at scales varying from about 50 centimeters to 10 meters. May-Britt Moser has a degree in Psychology from the University of Oslo in 1990. She thereafter obtained her Ph.D. in Neurophysiology from the University of Oslo in 1995, under the supervision of professor Per Andersen. Moser went on to undertake postdoctoral training with Richard Morris at the Centre for Neuroscience, University of Edinburgh from 1994 to 1996, and was a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the laboratory of John O'Keefe at the University College, London. Moser returned to Norway in 1996 to be appointed Associate Professor in Biological Psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. She was promoted to Full professor of Neuroscience at NTNU in 2000. Moser is also the founding co-director of the NTNU Centre for the Biology of Memory (2002) and the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience (2007). Further, she was awarded one half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2014, along with her husband Edvard Moser, with the other half going to John O'Keefe. She is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences. Honours. 1999: Prize for young scientists awarded by the Royal Norwegian Academy for Sciences and Letters; 2005: 28th annual W. Alden Spencer Award (College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University); 2006: 14th Betty and David Koetser Award for Brain Research (University of Zürich); 2006: 10th Prix "Liliane Bettencourt pour les Sciences du Vivant" 2006 (Fondation Bettencourt, Paris); 2008: 30th Eric K. Fernström’s Great Nordic Prize (Fernström Foundation, University of Lund); 2011: Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine; 2011: Anders Jahre Award (with Edvard Moser); 2012: Perl-UNC Neuroscience Prize (with Edvard Moser); 2013: Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize (with Edvard Moser and John O'Keefe) 2014: Karl Spencer Lashley Award (with Edvard Moser); 2014: (with Edvard Moser and John O'Keefe). Source:

Ruth MOUFANGMain achievements: . First woman professor at the University of Frankfurt Ruth Moufang was a German mathematician. Born to a German chemist Dr. Eduard Moufang and Else Fecht Moufang, she studied mathematics at the University of Frankfurt. In 1931 she received her Ph.D. on projective geometry under the direction of Max Dehn, and in 1932 spent a fellowship year in Rome. After her year in Rome, she returned to Germany to lecture at the University of Königsberg and the University of Frankfurt. Her research in projective geometry built upon the work of David Hilbert. She was responsible for ground-breaking work on non-associative algebraic structures, including the named after her. In 1933 Moufang showed Desargues's theorem does not hold in the Cayley plane. The Cayley plane uses octonion coordinates which do not satisfy the associative law. Such connections between geometry and algebra had been previously noted by Karl von Staudt and David Hilbert. Ruth Moufang thus initiated a new branch of geometry called . Denied permission to teach by the minister of education of Nazi Germany, she worked in private industry until 1946, when she became the first woman professor at the University of Frankfurt. Source:

Florence NIGHTINGALEMain achievements: Pioneering modern nursing. First female member of the Royal Statistical Society. Florence Nightingale was a celebrated English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. She came to prominence while serving as a nurse during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was known as "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night. In 1860, Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment of her nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital in London. It was the first secular nursing school in the world, now part of King's College London. The Nightingale Pledge taken by new nurses was named in her honor, and the annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday. Her social reforms include improving healthcare for all sections of British society, improving healthcare and advocating better hunger relief in India, helping to abolish laws regulating prostitution that were over-harsh to women, and expanding the acceptable forms of female participation in the workforce. Nightingale was a prodigious and versatile writer. In her lifetime much of her published work was concerned with spreading medical knowledge. Some of her tracts were written in simple English so that they could easily be understood by those with poor literary skills. She also helped popularize the graphical presentation of statistical data. Much of her writing, including her extensive work on religion and mysticism, has only been published posthumously. Florence Nightingale exhibited a gift for mathematics from an early age and excelled in the subject under the tutorship of her father. Later, Nightingale became a pioneer in the visual presentation of information and statistical graphics. She used methods such as the pie chart, which had first been developed by William Playfair in 1801. While taken for granted now, it was at the time a relatively novel method of presenting data. Indeed, Nightingale is described as "a true pioneer in the graphical representation of statistics", and is credited with developing a form of the pie chart now known as the polar area diagram, or occasionally the Nightingale rose diagram, equivalent to a modern circular histogram, to illustrate seasonal sources of patient mortality in the military field hospital she managed. Nightingale called a compilation of such diagrams a "coxcomb", but later that term would frequently be used for the individual diagrams. She made extensive use of coxcombs to present reports on the nature and magnitude of the conditions of medical care in the Crimean War to Members of Parliament and civil servants who would have been unlikely to read or understand traditional statistical reports. In 1859, Nightingale was elected the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society. She later became an honorary member of the American Statistical Association. "Diagram of the causes of mortality in the army in the East" by Florence Nightingale. Nightingale made a comprehensive statistical study of sanitation in Indian rural life and was the leading figure in the introduction of improved medical care and public health service in India. In 1858 and 1859, she successfully lobbied for the establishment of a Royal Commission into the Indian situation. Two years later, she provided a report to the commission, which completed its own study in 1863. "After 10 years of sanitary reform, in 1873, Nightingale reported that mortality among the soldiers in India had declined from 69 to 18 per 1,000". The Royal Sanitary Commission of 1868-9 presented Nightingale with an opportunity to press for compulsory sanitation in private houses. She lobbied the minister responsible, James Stansfeld, to strengthen the proposed Public Health Bill to require owners of existing properties to pay for connection to mains drainage. The strengthened legislation was enacted in the Public Health Acts of 1874 and 1875. At the same time she combined with the retired sanitary reformer Edwin Chadwick to persuade Stansfeld to devolve powers to enforce the law to Local Authorities, eliminating central control by medical technocrats. Her Crimean War statistics had convinced her that non-medical approaches were more effective given the state of knowledge at the time. Historians now believe that both drainage and devolved enforcement played a crucial role in increasing average national life expectancy by 20 years between 1871 and the mid-1930s during which time medical science made no impact on the most fatal epidemic diseases. While better known for her contributions in the nursing and mathematical fields, Nightingale is also an important link in the study of English feminism. During 1850 and 1852, she was struggling with her self-definition and the expectations of an upper-class marriage from her family. As she sorted out her thoughts, she wrote Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth. This was an 829-page, three-volume work, which Nightingale had printed privately in 1860, but which until recently was never published in its entirety. An effort to correct this was made with a 2008 publication by Wilfrid Laurier University, as volume 11 of a 16 volume project, the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale. The best known of these essays, called Cassandra, was previously published by Ray Strachey in 1928. Strachey included it in The Cause, a history of the women's movement. Apparently, the writing served its original purpose of sorting out thoughts; Nightingale left soon after to train at the Institute for deaconesses at Kaiserswerth. Cassandra protests the over-feminisation of women into near helplessness, such as Nightingale saw in her mother's and older sister's lethargic lifestyle, despite their education. She rejected their life of thoughtless comfort for the world of social service. The work also reflects her fear of her ideas being ineffective, as were Cassandra's. Cassandra was a princess of Troy who served as a priestess in the temple of Apollo during the Trojan War. The god gave her the gift of prophecy; when she refused his advances, he cursed her so that her prophetic warnings would go unheeded. Elaine Showalter called Nightingale's writing "a major text of English feminism, a link between Wollstonecraft and Woolf. Source :

Ida NODDACKMain achievements: The first to mention the idea of (1934). Ida Noddack, born Ida Tacke, was a German chemist and physicist. She was the first to mention the idea of nuclear fission in 1934. With her husband Walter Noddack she discovered element 75, rhenium. She was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Ida Tacke was born in Wesel, Lackhausen 1896. She was one of the first women in Germany to study chemistry. She attained a doctorate in 1921 at the Technical University of Berlin "On higher aliphatic fatty acid anhydrides" and worked afterwards in the field, becoming the first woman to hold a professional chemist's position in the chemical industry in Germany. She and chemist Walter Noddack were married in 1926. Both before and after their marriage they worked as partners, an "Arbeitsgemeinschaft" or "work unit", but with the exception of her work at the University of Strasbourg, her positions were unpaid appointments. Noddack correctly criticized Enrico Fermi's chemical proofs in his 1934 neutron bombardment experiments, from which he postulated that transuranic elements might have been produced, and which was widely accepted for a few years. Her paper, "On Element 93" suggested a number of possibilities, centering around Fermi's failure to chemically eliminate all lighter than uranium elements in his proofs, rather than only down to lead. The paper is considered historically significant today not simply because she correctly pointed out the flaw in Fermi's chemical proof but because she suggested the possibility that "it is conceivable that the nucleus breaks up into several large fragments, which would of course be isotopes of known elements but would not be neighbors of the irradiated element." In so doing she presaged what would become known a few years later as nuclear fission. However Noddack offered no experimental proof or theoretical basis for this possibility, which defied the understanding at the time. The paper was generally ignored. Later experiments along a similar line to Fermi's, by , explaining the process as a 'bursting' of the uranium nucleus into lighter elements. It remained for Meitner who had been forced to flee Germany in July 1938 and her exiled nephew Otto Frisch utilizing Fritz Kalckar and Niels Bohr's liquid drop hypothesis (first proposed by George Gamow in 1935) to provide a first theoretical model and mathematical proof of what Frisch named nuclear fission (he coined this term). (Frisch also experimentally verified the fission reaction by means of a cloud chamber, confirming the energy release). Ida and her husband-to-be looked for the then still unknown elements 43 and 75 at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt. In 1925, they published a paper (Zwei neue Elemente der Mangangruppe, Chemischer Teil) claiming to have done so, and called the new elements Rhenium (75) and Masurium (43). Only the discovery of rhenium was confirmed. They were unable to isolate element 43 and their results were not reproducible. Their choice of the term masurium was also considered unacceptably nationalistic and may have contributed to a poor reputation amongst scientists of the day. Artificially produced element 43 was definitively isolated in 1937 by Emilio Segre and Carlo Perrier from a discarded piece of molybdenum foil from a cyclotron which had undergone beta decay. It was eventually named technetium due to its artificial source. No isotope of technetium has a half-life longer than 4.2 million years and was presumed to have disappeared on Earth as a naturally occurring element. In 1961 minute amounts of technetium in pitchblende produced from spontaneous 238U fission were discovered by B.T. Kenna and Paul K. Kuroda. Based on this discovery, Belgian physicist Pieter van Assche constructed an analysis of their data to show that the detection limit of Noddacks' analytical method could have been 1000 times lower than the 10^-9 value reported in their paper, in order to show the Noddacks could have been the first to find measurable amounts of element 43, as the ores they had analyzed contained uranium. Using Van Assche's estimates of the Noddacks' residue compositions, NIST scientist John T. Armstrong, simulated the original X-ray spectrum with a computer, and claimed that the results were "surprisingly close to their published spectrum!" Gunter Herrmann from the University of Mainz examined van Assche's arguments, and concluded they were developed ad hoc, and forced to a predetermined result. F. Habashi pointed out that uranium was never more than about 5% in Noddacks' columbite samples. Such a low quantity could not be weighed, nor give X-ray lines of element 43 clearly distinguishable from the background noise. The only way to detect its presence is to carry out radioactive measurements, a technique the Noddacks did not use, but Segrè and Perrier did. Following on the van Assche and Armstrong claims, an investigation was made into the works of Masataka Ogawa who had made a prior claim to the Noddacks. In 1908 he claimed to have isolated element 43, calling it Nipponium. Using an original plate (not a simulation), Kenji Yoshihara determined Ogawa had not found the Period 5 Group 7 element 43 (eka-manganese), but had successfully separated Period 6 Group 7 element 75 (dvi-manganese) (rhenium), preceding the Noddacks by 17 years. Source:

Emmy NOETHERMain achievements: Amalie Emmy Noether was a German mathematician known for her landmark contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. She was described by Pavel Alexandrov, Albert Einstein, Jean Dieudonné, Hermann Weyl, and Norbert Wiener as the most important woman in the history of mathematics. As one of the leading mathematicians of her time, she developed the theories of rings, fields, and algebras. In physics, explains the connection between symmetry and conservation laws. Noether was born to a Jewish family in the Franconian town of Erlangen; her father was a mathematician, Max Noether. She originally planned to teach French and English after passing the required examinations, but instead studied mathematics at the University of Erlangen, where her father lectured. After completing her dissertation in 1907 under the supervision of Paul Gordan, she worked at the Mathematical Institute of Erlangen without pay for seven years. At the time, women were largely excluded from academic positions. In 1915, she was invited by David Hilbert and Felix Klein to join the mathematics department at the University of Göttingen, a world-renowned center of mathematical research. The philosophical faculty objected, however, and she spent four years lecturing under Hilbert's name. Her habilitation was approved in 1919, allowing her to obtain the rank of Privatdozent. Noether remained a leading member of the Göttingen mathematics department until 1933; her students were sometimes called the "Noether boys". In 1924, Dutch mathematician B. L. van der Waerden joined her circle and soon became the leading expositor of Noether's ideas: her work was the foundation for the second volume of his influential 1931 textbook, Moderne Algebra. By the time of her plenary address at the 1932 International Congress of Mathematicians in Zürich, her algebraic acumen was recognized around the world. The following year, Germany's Nazi government dismissed Jews from university positions, and Noether moved to the United States to take up a position at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. In 1935 she underwent surgery for an ovarian cyst and, despite signs of a recovery, died four days later at the age of 53. Noether's mathematical work has been divided into three "epochs". In the first (1908–19), she made contributions to the theories of algebraic invariants and number fields. Her work on differential invariants in the calculus of variations, in her honor. In the third epoch (1927–35), she published works on noncommutative algebras and hypercomplex numbers and united the representation theory of groups with the theory of modules and ideals. In addition to her own publications, Noether was generous with her ideas and is credited with several lines of research published by other mathematicians, even in fields far removed from her main work, such as algebraic topology. Source:

Christiane NUSSLEIN-VOLHARDMain achievements: Works on the genetic control of embryonic development. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard is a German biologist. She won the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1991 and the in 1995, together with Eric Wieschaus and Edward B. Lewis, for their research on the genetic control of embryonic development. Today she lives in Bebenhausen, Germany. The experiments that earned Nüsslein-Volhard and Wieschaus their Nobel prize aimed to identify genes involved in the development of Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) embryos. At this point (the late 1970s and early 1980s) little was known about the genetic and molecular mechanisms by which multicellular organisms develop from single cells to morphologically complex forms during embryogenesis. Fruit flies have long been an important model organism in genetics due to their small size and quick generation time, which makes even large numbers of them relatively easy to maintain and observe in the laboratory. Nüsslein-Volhard and Wieschaus identified genes involved in embryonic development by a series of genetic screens. They generated random mutations in fruit flies using EMS (Ethyl methanesulfonate). Some of these mutations affected genes involved in the development of the embryo. Nüsslein-Volhard and Weischaus took advantage of the segmented form of Drosophila larvae to address the logic of the genes controlling development. In normal unmutated Drosophila, each segment produces bristles called denticles in a band arranged on the side of the segment closer to the head (the anterior). The researchers looked at the pattern of segments and denticles in each mutant under the microscope, and were therefore able to work out that particular genes were involved in different processes during development based on their differing mutant phenotypes (such as fewer segments, gaps in the normal segment pattern, and alterations in the patterns of denticles on the segments). Many of these genes were given descriptive names based on the appearance of the mutant larvae, such as hedgehog, gurken (German: "cucumbers"), and Krüppel ( "cripple"). Later, researchers identified exactly which gene had been affected by each mutation, thereby identifying a set of genes crucial for Drosophila embryogenesis. The subsequent study of these mutants and their interactions led to important new insights into early Drosophila development, especially the mechanisms that underlie the step-wise development of body segments. A preparation of the cuticle from a Drosophila embryo, similar to those examined by Nüsslein-Volhard. Note the bands of denticles on the left hand side (towards the head) of each segment. These experiments are not only distinguished by their sheer scale (with the methods available at the time, they involved an enormous workload), but more importantly by their significance for organisms other than fruit flies. It was later found that many of the genes identified here had homologues in other species. In particular, the homeobox genes (coding for transcription factors critically involved in early body development) are found in all metazoans, and usually have similar roles in body segmentation. These findings have also led to important realizations about evolution - for example, that protostomes and deuterostomes are likely to have had a relatively well-developed common ancestor with a much more complex body plan than had been conventionally thought. Additionally, they greatly increased our understanding of the regulation of transcription, as well as cell fate during development. Nüsslein-Volhard is associated with the discovery of Toll, which led to the identification of toll-like receptors. Since 1985 Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard has been Director of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen and also leads its Genetics Department. In 1986, she received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the highest honour awarded in German research. Since 2001 she has been member of the Nationaler Ethikrat (National Ethics Council of Germany) for the ethical assessment of new developments in the life sciences and their influence on the individual and society. Her primer for the lay-reader, Coming to Life: How Genes Drive Development was published in April 2006. In 2004 Nüsslein-Volhard started the Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Foundation (Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Stiftung). It is meant to aid promising young female German scientists with children. The foundation's main focus is to facilitate childcare as a supplement to existing stipends and day care. Source:

Cecilia PAYNE-GAPOSCHKINMain achievements: Explanation of spectra of Sun. More than 3,000,000 observations of variable stars. Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin was a British–American astronomer and astrophysicist who, in 1925, proposed in her Ph.D. thesis an explanation for the composition of stars in terms of the relative abundances of hydrogen and helium. Cecilia Helena Payne was one of three children born in Wendover, England, to Emma Leonora Helena and Edward John Payne, a London barrister, historian and accomplished musician. Her mother came from a Prussian family and had two distinguished uncles, historian Georg Heinrich Pertz and the Swedenborgian writer James John Garth Wilkinson. Cecilia Payne's father died when she was four years old, forcing her mother to raise the family on her own. She attended St Paul's Girls' School. In 1919, she won a scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge University, where she read botany, physics, and chemistry. Here, she attended a lecture by Arthur Eddington on his 1919 expedition to the island of Principe in the Gulf of Guinea off the west coast of Africa to observe and photograph the stars near a solar eclipse as a test of Einstein's general theory of relativity. This sparked her interest in astronomy. She said of the lecture, "The result was a complete transformation of my world picture. My world had been so shaken that I experienced something very like a nervous breakdown." She completed her studies, but was not awarded a degree because of her sex; Cambridge did not grant degrees to women until 1948. Payne realized that her only career option in the U.K. was to become a teacher, so she looked for grants that would enable her to move to the United States. After being introduced to Harlow Shapley, the Director of the Harvard College Observatory, who had just begun a graduate program in astronomy, she left England in 1923. This was made possible by a fellowship to encourage women to study at the observatory. The first student on the fellowship was Adelaide Ames (1922) and the second was Payne. Shapley persuaded Payne to write a doctoral dissertation, and so in 1925 she became the first person to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College (now part of Harvard). Her thesis was "Stellar Atmospheres, A Contribution to the Observational Study of High Temperature in the Reversing Layers of Stars". Astronomers Otto Struve and Velta Zeberg called it "undoubtedly the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy". Payne was able to accurately relate the spectral classes of stars to their actual temperatures by applying the ionization theory developed by Indian physicist Meghnad Saha. She showed that the great variation in stellar absorption lines was due to differing amounts of ionization at different temperatures, not to different amounts of elements. She found that silicon, carbon, and other common metals seen in the Sun's spectrum were present in about the same relative amounts as on Earth, in agreement with the accepted belief of the time, which held that the stars had approximately the same elemental composition as the Earth. However, she found that helium and particularly hydrogen were vastly more abundant (for hydrogen, by a factor of about one million). Thus, her thesis established that hydrogen was the overwhelming constituent of the stars (see Metallicity), and accordingly was the most abundant element in the Universe. When Payne's dissertation was reviewed, astronomer Henry Norris Russell dissuaded her from presenting her conclusion that the composition of the Sun was predominantly hydrogen and thus very different from that of the Earth, as it contradicted the accepted wisdom at the time. She consequently described the result in her thesis as "spurious". However, Russell changed his mind four years later after having derived the same result by different means and publishing it. Although he acknowledged her work briefly in his paper, Russell was nevertheless often given credit for the discovery even after Payne's work was accepted. After her doctorate, Payne studied stars of high luminosity in order to understand the structure of the Milky Way. Later she surveyed all the stars brighter than the tenth magnitude. She then studied variable stars, making over 1,250,000 observations with her assistants. This work later was extended to the Magellanic Clouds, adding a further 2,000,000 observations of variable stars. These data were used to determine the paths of stellar evolution. She published her conclusions in her second book, Stars of High Luminosity (1930). Her observations and analysis, with her husband, Sergei Gaposchkin, of variable stars laid the basis for all subsequent work on them. Payne-Gaposchkin remained scientifically active throughout her life, spending her entire academic career at Harvard. At first, she had no official position, merely serving as a technical assistant to Shapley from 1927 to 1938. At one point she considered leaving Harvard because of her low status and poor salary. However, Shapley made efforts to improve her position, and in 1938 she was given the title of "Astronomer". She later asked to have this title changed to Phillips Astronomer. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943. None of the courses she taught at Harvard were recorded in the catalogue until 1945. When Donald Menzel became Director of the Harvard College Observatory in 1954, he tried to improve her appointment, and in 1956 she became the first woman to be promoted to full professor from within the faculty at Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Later, with her appointment to the Chair of the Department of Astronomy, she also became the first woman to head a department at Harvard. Her students included Helen Sawyer Hogg, Joseph Ashbrook, Frank Drake and Paul W. Hodge, who all made important contributions to astronomy. She also supervised Frank Kameny, who became a prominent advocate of gay rights. Payne-Gaposchkin retired from active teaching in 1966 and was subsequently appointed Emeritus Professor of Harvard. She continued her research as a member of staff at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and edited the journals and books published by Harvard Observatory for twenty years. According to G. Kass-Simon and Patricia Farnes, Payne's career marked a turning point at Harvard College Observatory. Under the direction of Harlow Shapley and Dr E. J. Sheridan (whom Payne-Gaposchkin described as a mentor), the observatory had already offered more opportunities in astronomy to women than did other institutions, and notable achievements had been made earlier in the century by Williamina Fleming, Antonia Maury, Annie Jump Cannon, and Henrietta Swan Leavitt. However, with Payne-Gaposchkin's Ph.D., women entered the 'mainstream'. The trail she blazed into the largely male-dominated scientific community was an inspiration to many. For example, she became a role model for noted astrophysicist Joan Feynman. Feynman's mother and grandmother had dissuaded her from pursuing science, since they believed women were not physically capable of understanding scientific concepts. But Feynman was later inspired by Payne-Gaposchkin when she came across some of her work in an astronomy textbook. Seeing Payne-Gaposchkin's research published in this way convinced Feynman that she could, in fact, follow her scientific passions. Source:

 PESESHETMain achievements: Egyptian physician women. Peseshet, who lived under the Fourth Dynasty (albeit a date to the Fifth Dynasty is also possible), is often credited with being the earliest known female physician in ancient Egypt, though another, lived earlier. Her relevant title was "lady overseer of the female physicians," but whether she was a physician herself is uncertain. She also had the titles king's acquaintance, and overseer of funerary-priests of the king's mother. She had a son Akhethetep, in whose mastaba at Giza her personal false door was found. However, the mother-son relation of Akhethetep and Peseshet is not confirmed by any inscription. On the false door is also depicted a man called Kanefer. He might be her husband. She may have graduated midwives at an ancient Egyptian medical school in Sais; midwifery must have existed, even though no ancient Egyptian term for it is known. The Hebrew Bible – while not a proven source for historical events prior to the 7th century BCE – refers to midwives in Exodus 1,16: "And he (i.e. the king of Egypt) said: 'When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women and see them upon the stools...’" Peseshet’s history plays a key role in the 2009 novel Storm Cycle by Roy and Iris Johansen, which tells the story of an archaeologist seeking to obtain and sell cures and treatments that the novel’s Peseshet is said to have discovered, and of a researcher whose only hope of saving her sister may lie in one of those cures. Source:

Elena PISCOPIAMain achievements: First woman in the world to receive a Ph.D. degree. Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, also Helen Cornaro, was an Italian philosopher of noble descent, who was the first woman to receive an academic degree from a university, and in 1678 she became the first woman in the world to receive a Ph.D. degree. Elena was considered to be an expert musician. In addition to mastering the sciblis of her time-which means she mastered almost the entire body of knowledge-Elena mastered the harpsichord, the clavichord, the harp, and the violin. Her skills were shown by the music that she composed in her lifetime. She was a member of various academies and was esteemed throughout Europe for her attainments and virtues. In Hypatia's Heritage, Margaret Alic states that she became a mathematics lecturer at the University of Padua in 1678. Elena Cornaro Piscopia was born in the Palazzo Loredan, at Venice, Republic of Venice on 5 June 1646. She was the third child of Giovanni Battista Cornaro-Piscopia, and his wife Zanetta Boni. Her mother was a peasant and was not married to Giovanni (by whom she had four other children) at the time of Elena’s birth. Giovanni Battista was a Procurator of St. Mark's, a high office in the Republic of Venice, which entitled him to accommodation in St Mark's Square. By the advice from Giovanni Fabris, a priest friend of the family's, she began the study of Latin and Greek under distinguished instructors, and soon became proficient in these languages at the age of seven. She also mastered Hebrew, Spanish, French and Arabic, earning the title of "Oraculum Septilingue". Her later studies included mathematics, philosophy, and theology. In 1665 she took the habit of a Benedictine Oblate without, however, becoming a nun. In 1669, she translated from Spanish into Italian Colloquio di Cristo nostro Redentore all’anima devota, a book by the Carthusian monk Giovanni Laspergio. She was invited to be a part of many scholarly societies when her fame spread and in 1670 became president of the Venetian society Accademia dei Pacifici. Upon the recommendation of Carlo Rinaldini, her tutor in philosophy, Felice Rotondi, petitioned the University of Padua to grant Cornaro the laurea in theology. When Gregorio Cardinal Barbarigo, the bishop of Padua, learned that she was pursuing a degree in theology, he refused on the grounds that she was a woman. However, he did allow for her to get a degree in philosophy and after a brilliant course of study received the laurea in Philosophy. The degree was conferred on 25 June 1678, in Padua Cathedral in the presence of the University authorities, the professors of all the faculties, the students, and most of the Venetian Senators, together with many invited guests from the Universities of Bologna, Perugia, Rome, and Naples. The Lady Elena spoke for an hour in classical Latin, explaining difficult passages selected at random from the works of Aristotle. She was listened to with great attention, and when she had finished, she received plaudits as Professor Rinaldini proceeded to award her the insignia of the laurea, the book of philosophy, placing the wreath of laurel on her head, the ring on her finger, and over her shoulders the ermine mozetta. This scene is illustrated in the Cornaro Window in the West Wing of the Thompson Memorial Library at Vassar College. After graduation, Margaret Alic states that she became a mathematics lecturer at the University of Padua in 1678. She became a member of various academies and was esteemed throughout Europe for her attainments and virtues. The last seven years of her life were devoted to study and charity. She died at Padua in 1684 of tuberculosis, was buried in the church of Santa Giustina at Padua, and her statue was placed in the university. Her death was marked by memorial services in Venice, Padua, Siena, and Rome. Her writings, published at Parma in 1688, include academic discourses, translations, and devotional treatises. In 1685 the University of Padua caused a medal to be struck in her honour. In 1895 Abbess Mathilda Pynsent of the English Benedictine Nuns in Rome had Elena's tomb opened, the remains placed in a new casket, and a suitable tablet inscribed to her memory. The book by Jane Smith Guernsey, entitled The Lady Cornaro: Pride and Prodigy of Venice, published in 1999, is the first full-length study of the life of Lady Elena. Source:

Paris PISMISMain achievements: First woman to get a Ph.D. from the Science Faculty of Istanbul University. Marie Paris Pismis de Recilas was an Armenian-Mexican astronomer. Pismis was born Mari Sukiasyan in 1911, in Ortaköy, Istanbul. She completed her high school studies at Üsküdar American Academy. In 1937, she became the first woman to get a Ph.D. from the Science Faculty of Istanbul University. Her advisor was Erwin Finlay Freundlich. Later, she went to Harvard University where she met her future husband Félix Recillas, a Mexican mathematician. They settled in Mexico, and she became the first professional astronomer in Mexico. According to Dorrit Hoffleit, "she is the one person most influential in establishing Mexico’s importance in astronomical education and research". For more than 50 years she worked at UNAM which awarded her a number of prizes including the "Science Teaching Prize". Pismis studied among others the kinematics of galaxies, H II nebulae, the structure of open star clusters and planetary nebulae. She compiled the catalogue Pismis of 22 open clusters and 2 globular clusters in the southern hemisphere. In 1998, she published an autobiography entitled "Reminiscences in the Life of Paris Pismis: a Woman Astronomer". She died in 1999. According to her wish, she was cremated. Her daughter Elsa is an astrophysicist. Source:

Agnes POCKELSMain achievements: Discovered the influence of impurities on the surface tension. Agnes Luise Wilhelmine Pockels, was a German pioneer in chemistry. Her work was fundamental in establishing the modern discipline known as surface science, which describes the properties of liquid and solid surfaces. Pockels was born in Venice, Italy, in 1862. At the time, Venice was under Austrian rule, and Pockels' father served in the Austrian Army. When he fell sick with malaria, the family moved in 1871 to Brunswick, Lower Saxony, which was part of the nascent German Empire. There, Pockels attended the Municipal High School for Girls. As a child, Pockels was interested in science, and would have liked to study physics. In those days, however, women had no access to universities. It was only through her younger brother, Friedrich Carl Alwin Pockels, that she gained access to scientific literature. Friedrich, who then studied at the University of Göttingen, was a famous scientist himself; he is known for the Pockels effect. As legend has it, Pockels discovered the influence of impurities on the surface tension of fluids doing the dishes in her own kitchen. She was unwed and the caretaker of her ailing parents, so she spent much time cooking and cleaning with various oils, soaps, and other household products. Despite her lack of formal training, Pockels was able to measure the surface tension of water by devising an apparatus known as the Pockels trough, a key instrument in the new discipline of surface science. Using an improved version of this slide trough, American chemist Irving Langmuir made additional discoveries on the properties of surface molecules, which earned him a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1932. Pockels' device is also a direct antecedent of the Langmuir–Blodgett trough, developed later by Langmuir and physicist . In 1891, with the help of Lord Rayleigh, Pockels published her first paper, "Surface Tension," on her measurements in the journal Nature. Thus began her career studying surface films. She never received a formal appointment, but she published a number of papers and eventually received recognition as a pioneer in the new field of surface science. Pockels died in 1935 in Brunswick, Germany. She never married. In 1931, together with Henri Devaux, Pockels received the Laura Leonard award from the Colloid Society. In the following year, the Braunschweig University of Technology granted her an honorary PhD. Source:

Maria PROPHETISSAMain achievements: Inventor of several kinds of chemical apparatus. Mary or Maria the Jewess (Latin: Maria Prophetissima), also known as Mary the Prophetess, is an early alchemist who is known from the works of the Gnostic Christian writer Zosimos of Panopolis. On the basis of Zosimos's comments, she lived between the first and third centuries A.D. French, Taylor and Lippmann list her as one of the first alchemical writers, dating her works at no later than the first century. She is credited with the invention of several kinds of chemical apparatus and is considered to be the first true alchemist of the Western world. The primary source for the existence of "Mary the Jewess" within the context of alchemy is Zosimos of Panopolis, who wrote, in the 4th century, the oldest extant books on alchemy. Zosimos described several of Mary's experiments and instruments. In his writings, Mary is almost always mentioned as having lived in the past, and she is described as "one of the sages." George Syncellus, a Byzantine chronicler of the 8th century, presented Mary as a teacher of Democritus, whom she had met in Memphis, Egypt, during the time of Pericles. The 10th century Kitab al-Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadim cited Mary as one of the 52 most famous alchemists and stated that she was able to prepare caput mortuum, a purple pigment. The early medieval alchemical text ascribed to an otherwise unknown "Morienus Romanus" called her "Mary the Prophetess," and the Arabs knew her as the "Daughter of Plato" — a name which, in Western alchemical texts, was reserved for white sulfur. Although none of Mary's writings have survived, some quotations credited to her are found in hermetic writings. The most notable of these are found in The Dialogue of Mary and Aros on the Magistery of Hermes, which is an extract made by an anonymous Christian philosopher. Operations are described in this document which would later become the basis of alchemy, such as leukosis (whitening) and xanthosis (yellowing). The document describes, for the first time, an acid salt and other acids. There are also several recipes for making gold from plants (mandragora, for example). Several cryptic alchemical precepts have been attributed to Mary. Mary is said to have discovered hydrochloric acid, though this is not accepted by most science texts. Mary, along with Agathodaemon, Pseudo-Democritus, and Hermes Trismegistus, was mentioned by Zosimos of Panopolis in his descriptions of certain devices, such as the tribikos, the kerotakis, and the bain-marie. But her contributions are disputed and not clear. Tribikos: the tribikos was a kind of alembic with three arms that was used to obtain substances purified by distillation. It is not known whether Mary invented it, but Zosimos credits the first description of the instrument to her. It is still used today in alchemy and chemistry labs. In her writings (quoted by Zosimos), she recommends that the copper or bronze used to make the tubes should be the thickness of a frying pan and that the joints between the tubes and the still-head should be sealed with flour paste. Kerotakis: an alchemical balneum Mariae, or Maria’s bath, from Coelum philosophorum, Philip Ulstad, 1528, Chemical Heritage Foundation. The kerotakis is a device used to heat substances used in alchemy and to collect vapors. It is an airtight container with a sheet of copper upon its upper side. When working properly, all its joints form a tight vacuum. The use of such sealed containers in the hermetic arts led to the term "hermetically sealed." The kerotakis was said to be a replication of the process of the formation of gold that was occurring in the bowels of the earth. This instrument was later modified by the German chemist Franz von Soxhlet in 1879 to create the extractor that bears his name, the Soxhlet extractor. : Mary's name survives in her invention of the bain-marie (Mary's Bath), which limits the maximum temperature of a container and its contents to the boiling point of a separate liquid: essentially a double boiler. It is extensively used in chemical processes for which a gentle heat is necessary. This term was introduced by Arnold of Villanova in the 14th century. The bain-marie is also used for cooking food. Source:

Merit PTAHMain achievements: First named woman in science. Merit Ptah ("Beloved of the god Ptah") was an early physician in ancient Egypt. She is most notable for being the first woman known by name in the history of the field of medicine, and possibly the first named woman in all of science as well.
However, there is a doubt about the real existence of Merit Ptah, see: .

Julia ROBINSONMain achievements: Diophantine equations. Decidability. Julia Hall Bowman Robinson was an American mathematician best known for her work on decision problems and Hilbert's tenth problem. Robinson was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Ralph Bowers Bowman and Helen (Hall) Bowman. Her older sister was the mathematical popularizer and biographer Constance Reid. The family moved to Arizona and then to San Diego when the girls were a few years old. Julia attended San Diego High. She entered San Diego State University in 1936 and transferred as a senior to University of California, Berkeley, in 1939. She received her BA degree in 1940 and continued in graduate studies. She received the Ph.D. degree in 1948 under Alfred Tarski with a dissertation on "Definability and Decision Problems in Arithmetic". In 1975 she became a full professor at Berkeley, teaching quarter-time because she still did not feel strong enough for a full-time job. Hilbert's tenth problem: Hilbert's tenth problem asks for an algorithm to determine whether a Diophantine equation has any solutions in integers. A series of results developed in the 1940s through 1970 by Robinson, Martin Davis, Hilary Putnam, and Yuri Matiyasevich resolved this problem in the negative; that is, they showed that no such algorithm can exist. George Csicsery produced and directed a one-hour documentary about Robinson titled Julia Robinson and Hilbert's Tenth Problem, that premiered at the Joint Mathematics Meeting in San Diego on January 7, 2008. Notices of the American Mathematical Society printed a film review and an interview with the director. College Mathematics Journal also published a film review. Other decidability work: her Ph.D. thesis was on "Definability and Decision Problems in Arithmetic". In it she showed that the theory of the rational numbers was undecidable by showing that elementary number theory could be defined in terms of the rationals, and elementary number theory was already known to be undecidable (this is Gödel's first Incompleteness Theorem). Other mathematical works: Robinson's work only strayed from decision problems twice. The first time was her first paper, published in 1948, on sequential analysis in statistics. The second was a 1951 paper in game theory where she proved that the fictitious play dynamics converges to the mixed strategy Nash equilibrium in two-player zero-sum games. This was posed as a prize problem at RAND with a $200 prize, but she did not receive the prize because she was a RAND employee at the time. Honors: United States National Academy of Sciences elected 1975 (first woman mathematician elected); Noether Lecturer 1982; MacArthur Fellowship 1983; President of American Mathematical Society 1983–1984 (first woman president); Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1985; The Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival sponsored by the American Institute of Mathematics 2013-present and by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, 2007–2013, was named in her honor. Source:

Clémence ROYERMain achievements: French translation of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Clémence Royer was a self-taught French scholar who lectured and wrote on economics, philosophy, science and feminism. She is best known for her controversial 1862 French translation of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Augustine-Clémence Audouard was born on 21 April 1830 in Nantes, Brittany, the only daughter of Augustin-René Royer and Joséphine-Gabrielle Audouard. When her parents married seven years later her name was changed to Clémence-Auguste Royer. Her mother was a seamstress from Nantes while her father came from Le Mans and was an army captain and a royalist legitimist. After the failure of a rebellion in 1832 to restore the Bourbon monarchy the family were forced to flee to Switzerland where they spent 4 years in exile before returning to Orléans. There her father gave himself up to the authorities and was tried for his part in the rebellion but was eventually acquitted. Royer was mainly educated by her parents until the age of 10 when she was sent to the Sacré-Coeur convent school in Le Mans. She became very devout but was unhappy and spent only a short time at the school before continuing her education at home. When she was 13 she moved with her parents to Paris. As a teenager she excelled at needlework and enjoyed reading plays and novels. She was an atheist. Her father separated from her mother and returned to live in his native village in Brittany, leaving mother and daughter to live in Paris. She was 18 at the time of 1848 revolution and was greatly influenced by the republican ideas and abandoned her father’s political beliefs. When her father died a year later, she inherited a small piece of property. The next 3 years of her life were spent in self-study which enabled her to obtain diplomas in arithmetic, French and music, qualifying her to work as a teacher in a secondary school. In January 1854 when aged 23 she took up a teaching post at a private girls’ school in Haverfordwest in south Wales. She spent a year there before returning to France in the spring of 1855 where she taught initially at a school in Touraine and then in the late spring of 1856 at a school near Beauvais. According to her autobiography, it was during this period that she began to seriously question her Catholic faith. In June 1856 Royer abandoned her career as a teacher and moved to Lausanne in Switzerland where she lived on the proceeds of the small legacy that she had received from her father. She borrowed books from the public library and spent her time studying, initially on the origins of Christianity and then on various scientific topics. In 1858, inspired by a public lecture given by the Swedish novelist Frederika Bremer, Royer gave a series of 4 lectures on logic which were open only to women. These lectures were very successful. At about this time she began meeting a group of exiled French freethinkers and republicans in the town. One of these was Pascal Duprat, a former French deputy living in exile, who taught political science at the Académie de Lausanne (later the university) and edited two journals. He was 15 years older than Royer and married with a child. He was later to become her lover and the father of her son. She began to assist Duprat with his journal Le Nouvel Économiste and he encouraged her to write. He also helped her to advertise her lectures. When she began another series of lecture for women, this time on natural philosophy in the winter of 1859-1860, Duprat’s Lausanne publisher printed her first lecture Introduction to the Philosophy of Women. This lecture provides an early record of her thoughts and her attitudes to the role of women in society. Duprat soon moved with his family to Geneva but Royer continued to write reviews of books for his journal and herself lived in Geneva for a period during the winter of 1860-1861. When in 1860 the Swiss canton of Vaud offered a prize for the best essay on income tax, Royer wrote a book describing both the history and the practice of the tax which was awarded second prize. Her book was published in 1862 with the title Théorie de l'impôt ou la dîme social. It included a discussion on the economic role of women in society and the obligation of women to produce children. It was through this book that she first became known outside Switzerland. In the spring of 1861 Royer visited Paris and gave a series of lectures. These were attended by the Countess Marie d'Agoult who shared many of Royer's republican views. The two women became friends and started corresponding with Royer sending long letters enclosing articles that she had written for the Journal des Économistes. Royer's translation of On the Origin of Species led to public recognition. She was now much in demand to give lectures on Darwinism and spent the winter of 1862-1863 lecturing in Belgium and the Netherlands. She also worked on her only novel Les Jumeaux d’Hellas, a long melodramatic story set in Italy and Switzerland, which was published in 1864 to no great acclaim. She continued to review books and report on social-science meetings for the Journal des Économistes. During this period she would regularly meet up with Duprat at various European meetings. In August 1865 Royer returned from Lausanne to live in Paris while Duprat, proscribed by the Second Empire, joined her and secretly shared her apartment. Three months later in December they went to live together openly in Florence (then the capital of Italy) where her only son, René, was born on 12 March 1866. With a small child to care for she could no longer easily travel but she continued to write, contributing to various journals and publishing a series of three articles on Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. She also worked on a book on the evolution of human society, L’origine de l’homme et des sociétés, published in 1870. This was a subject that Darwin had avoided in On the Origin of Species but was to address in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex published a year later. At the end of 1868 Duprat left Florence to report on the Spanish revolution for the Journal des Économistes, and in 1869, with the relaxing of the political climate at the end of the Second Republic, Royer returned to Paris with her son. The move would allow her mother to help with raising her child. Royer attended the first International Congress on Woman’s Rights in 1878 but did not speak. For the Congress in 1889 she was asked by Maria Deraismes, to chair the historical section. In her address she argued that the immediate introduction of women's suffrage was likely to lead to an increase in the power of the church and that the first priority should be to establish secular education for women. Similar elitist views were held by many French feminists at the time who feared a return to the monarchy with its strong links to the conservative Roman Catholic Church. When in 1897, Marguerite Durand launched the feminist newspaper La Fronde, Royer became a regular correspondent, writing articles on scientific and social themes. In the same year her colleagues working on the newspaper organized a banquet in her honor and invited a number of eminent scientists. Her book La Constitution du Monde on cosmology and the structure of matter was published in 1900. In it she criticized scientists for their over specialization and questioned accepted scientific theories. The book was not well received by the scientific community and a particularly uncomplimentary review in the journal Science suggested that her ideas "... show at every point a lamentable lack of scientific training and spirit." In the same year that her book was published she was awarded the Légion d'honneur. Royer died in 1902 at the Maison Galignani in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Source:

Vera RUBINMain achievements: Pioneer on . Vera Rubin was an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted angular motion of galaxies and the observed motion, by studying galactic rotation curves. This phenomenon became known as the . Vera Rubin was born in Philadelphia and lived in Washington, D.C. when she was 10 years old. It was in Washington, D.C. that she started to develop an interest in astronomy. Vera Rubin's father, Philip Cooper, was an electrical engineer, born in Vilnius, Lithuania as Pesach Kobchefski. Her mother, Rose Applebaum, originally came from Bessarabia, and worked for Bell Telephone Company calculating mileage for telephone lines. Rubin has an older sister named Ruth Cooper Burg, who was an administrative judge in the United States Department of Defense. Rubin earned her BA degree at Vassar College and attempted to enroll at Princeton but never received their graduate catalog, as women there were not allowed in the graduate astronomy program until 1975. She instead enrolled for her Master's degree at Cornell University, where she studied physics under Philip Morrison, Richard Feynman, and Hans Bethe. She completed her study in 1951, during which she made one of the first observations of deviations from the Hubble flow in the motions of galaxies. She argued that galaxies might be rotating around unknown centers, rather than simply moving outwards, as suggested by the Big Bang theory at that time. The presentation of these ideas was not well received. Rubin’s doctoral work at Georgetown University was conducted under advisor George Gamow. Her PhD thesis upon graduation in 1954 concluded that galaxies clumped together, rather than being randomly distributed through the universe. The idea that clusters of galaxies existed was not pursued seriously by others until two decades later. After her graduation, Rubin taught at Montgomery County Junior College, and also worked at Georgetown University as a research assistant, and in 1962 became an assistant professor there. Also in 1965, she became the first woman allowed to use the instruments at the Palomar Observatory. Prior to this, women had not been authorized to access the facilities. In 1965 she also secured a position at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and has worked there as an astronomer since that time. Rubin is currently a Senior Fellow at the DTM, and her work area is described as "Galactic and extragalactic dynamics; large-scale structure and dynamics of the universe." Since 1978, Vera has researched and analyzed over 200 galaxies. Rubin began work which was close to the topic of her previously controversial thesis regarding galaxy clusters, with instrument maker Kent Ford, making hundreds of observations. The Rubin–Ford effect is named after them, and has been the subject of intense discussion ever since it was reported. It describes the motion of the Milky Way relative to a sample of galaxies at distances of about 150 to 300 Mly, and suggests that it is different from the Milky Way's motion relative to the cosmic microwave background radiation. Wishing to avoid controversy, Rubin moved her area of research to the study of rotation curves of galaxies, commencing with the Andromeda Galaxy. She pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates, and uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted angular motion of galaxies and the observed motion, by studying galaxy rotation curves. Galaxies are rotating so fast that they would fly apart, if the gravity of their constituent stars was all that was holding them together. But they are not flying apart, and therefore, a huge amount of unseen mass must be holding them together. This phenomenon became known as the galaxy rotation problem. Her calculations showed that galaxies must contain at least ten times as much dark mass as can be accounted for by the visible stars. Attempts to explain the galaxy rotation problem led to the theory of dark matter. In the 1970s Rubin obtained the strongest evidence up to that time for the existence of . The nature of dark matter is as yet unknown, but its presence is crucial to understanding the future of the universe. The existence of dark matter jointly explains galaxy rotation curves, the motion of galaxies within galaxy clusters, patterns of gravitational lensing, and the distribution of mass in systems such as the Bullet Cluster. Alternative MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) models for galaxy rotation curves have been excluded. Rubin has expressed disappointment about this result, stating "If I could have my pick, I would like to learn that Newton's laws must be modified in order to correctly describe gravitational interactions at large distances. That's more appealing than a universe filled with a new kind of sub-nuclear particle." Source:

Mary Ellen RUDINMain achievements: First to construct a ZFC . Proved the Nikiel's conjecture. Mary Ellen Rudin was an American mathematician known for her work in set-theoretic topology. Mary Ellen (Estill) Rudin was born in Hillsboro, Texas to Joe Jefferson Estill and Irene (Shook) Estill. Her mother Irene was an English teacher before marriage, and her father Joe was a civil engineer. The family moved with her father's work, but spent a great deal of Mary Ellen's childhood around Leakey, Texas. She had one sibling, a younger brother. Both of Rudin's maternal grandmothers had attended Mary Sharp College near their hometown of Winchester, Tennessee. Rudin remarks on this legacy and how much her family valued education in an interview. She attended the University of Texas, completing her B.A. in 1944 after just three years before moving into the graduate program in mathematics under Robert Lee Moore. Her graduate thesis presented a counterexample to one of "Moore's axioms". She completed her Ph.D. in 1949. During her time as an undergraduate, she was a member of the Phi Mu Women's Fraternity, and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa society. In 1953, she married mathematician Walter Rudin, whom she met while teaching at Duke University. They had four children. At the beginning of her career, Rudin taught at Duke University and the University of Rochester. She took a position as Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin in 1959, and was appointed Professor of Mathematics in 1971. After her retirement in 1991, she continued to serve as a Professor Emerita. She was the first Grace Chisholm Young Professor of Mathematics and also held the Hilidale Professorship. She served as vice-president of the American Mathematical Society, 1980–1981. In 1984 she was selected to be a Noether Lecturer. She was an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1995). In 2012 she became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. Rudin is best known in topology for her constructions of counterexamples to well-known conjectures. Most famously, she was the first to construct a ZFC Dowker space, thus disproving a conjecture of Dowker's that had stood, and helped drive topological research, for more than twenty years. Her example fuelled the search for "small" ZFC and a restricted version of the second. Her last major result was a proof of Nikiel's conjecture. "Reading the articles of Mary Ellen Rudin, studying them until there is no mystery takes hours and hours; but those hours are rewarded, the student obtains power to which few have access. They are not hard to read, they are just hard mathematics, that's all." (Steve Watson) Source:

Mary SOMERVILLEMain achievements: First women members of the Royal Astronomical Society. Translation of the "Mécanique Céleste" of Laplace. Mary Fairfax Somerville was a Scottish science writer and polymath, at a time when women's participation in science was discouraged. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and was nominated to be jointly the first female member of the Royal Astronomical Society at the same time as . She was the daughter of Irish Vice-Admiral Sir William George Fairfax (scion of a distinguished family of Fairfaxes), and was related to several prominent Scottish houses through her mother. She was born at the manse of Jedburgh, in the Borders, the house of her mother's sister, wife of Dr Thomas Somerville (1741–1830), author of My Own Life and Times. Her childhood home was at Burntisland, Fife. Returning from sea, her father considered the 10-year-old Mary "a savage" and sent her for a year of tuition at Musselburgh, an expensive boarding school. She returned being able to read, and able to write, albeit poorly; she could perform simple arithmetic and knew a little French. Following this, she was informally taught elementary geography and astronomy, but found her education limited compared to what her brother might receive. To supplement this, therefore, she was taught Latin by her uncle, Dr Thomas Somerville, who described her as an eager student. Once, listening in to her brother receive tutoring in mathematics, she answered when he could not; impressed, his tutor allowed her to continue with lessons unofficially. She also studied art with Alexander Nasmyth in Edinburgh, who taught her about perspective – inspired, she managed to obtain a copy of Euclid's Elements of Geometry, and began to teach herself from it. Meanwhile, she continued in the traditional roles of the daughter of a well-connected family, attending social events and maintaining a sweet and polite manner – she was nicknamed "the Rose of Jedburgh" among Edinburgh socialites. Around this time, however, following the death of her sister at age ten, her parents forbade Mary from further study, believing it had contributed to her sister's death. This did not deter her from studying on her own, although she had to continue in secret. In 1804 she married her distant cousin, the Russian Consul in London, Captain Samuel Greig, son of Admiral Samuel Greig. They had two children, one of whom, Woronzow Greig, became a barrister and scientist. They lived in London, and it was not a happy time for Somerville – although she could study more easily, her husband did not think much of women's capacity to pursue academic interests. She returned home to Scotland upon his death in 1807. Her inheritance from Greig gave her the freedom to pursue intellectual interests. In 1812 she married another cousin, Dr William Somerville (1771–1860), inspector of the Army Medical Board, who encouraged and greatly aided her in the study of the physical sciences. They had four children. During her marriage she made the acquaintance of the most eminent scientific men of the time, among whom her talents had attracted attention. Before she had acquired general fame, Laplace told her, "There have been only three women who have understood me. These are yourself, Mrs Somerville, and a Mrs Greig of whom I know nothing" (of course, Somerville was first and third of these three). Having been requested by Lord Brougham to translate for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge the "Mécanique Céleste" of Laplace, she greatly popularized its form, and its publication in 1831, under the title of The Mechanism of the Heavens, at once made her famous. She stated "I translated Laplace's work from algebra into common language". Her other works are the On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834), Physical Geography (1848), which was commonly used as a text book until the early 20th century, and Molecular and Microscopic Science (1869). In 1835, she and became the first women members of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1838 she and her husband went to Italy, where she spent much of the rest of her life. In 1868, four years before her death at age 91, she signed John Stuart Mill's unsuccessful petition for female suffrage. Much of the popularity of her writings was due to her clear and crisp style and the underlying enthusiasm for her subject which pervaded them. From 1835 she received a pension of £300 from government. In 1869 she was awarded the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. Somerville's writing influenced James Clerk Maxwell and John Couch Adams. Her discussion of a hypothetical planet perturbing Uranus, in the 6th edition of On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1842), led Adams to look for and discover Neptune. She died at Naples on 28 November 1872, and was buried there in the English Cemetery, Naples although her remains were later moved. In the following year there appeared her autobiographical Personal Recollections, consisting of reminiscences written during her old age, and of great interest both for what they reveal of her own character and life and the glimpses they afford of the literary and scientific society of bygone times. Somerville College, Oxford, was named after Mary Somerville, as is Somerville House, Burntisland, where she lived for a time and Somerville House, a high school for girls in Brisbane, Australia. One of the Committee Rooms of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh has been named after her. The term "scientist" was coined by William Whewell in an 1834 review of her On the Connexion of the Sciences. Somerville Island (74°44'N, 96°10'W), a small island in Barrow Strait, Nunavut, was named after her by Sir William Edward Parry in 1819 during the first of the four Arctic expeditions under his command. 5771 Somerville (1987 ST1) is a main-belt asteroid discovered on 21 September 1987 by E. Bowell at Lowell Observatory Flagstaff, Arizona, and named for her. Somerville crater is a small lunar crater in the eastern part of the Moon. It lies to the east of the prominent crater Langrenus, and was designated Langrenus J before being given her name by the International Astronomical Union. It is one of a handful of lunar craters named after a woman. Somerville was a friend of Anne Isabella Milbanke, Baroness Wentworth, and was mathematics tutor to her daughter, maintained a close friendship and when Lovelace encountered difficulties with a mathematical calculation she would walk to Somerville's house and discuss the matter over a cup of tea. Source:

 TAPPUTIMain achievements: The world’s first chemist. Tapputi, also referred to as Tapputi-Belatekallim ("Belatekallim" refers to female overseer of a palace), is considered to be the world’s first chemist, a perfume-maker mentioned in a cuneiform tablet dated around 1200 BC in Babylonian Mesopotamia. She used flowers, oil, and calamus along with cyperus, myrrh, and balsam. She added water or other solvents then distilled and filtered several times. This is also the oldest referenced still. She also was an overseer at the Royal Palace, and worked with a researcher named (—)-ninu (the first part of her name has been lost). Source:

 THEANO OF CROTONEMain achievements: Works on the theorems of the Golden Mean and the Theano of Crotone is the name given to perhaps two Pythagorean philosophers. She has been called the pupil, daughter and wife of Pythagoras, although others made her the wife of Brontinus. Her place of birth and the identity of her father are just as uncertain, leading some authors to suggest that there was more than one person whose details have become merged (these are sometimes referred to as Theano I and Theano II). A few fragments and letters ascribed to her have survived which are of uncertain authorship. Theano not only worked in the areas of physics, medicine and child psychology, but was an astronomer/mathematician in her own right. Her work on the theorem of the Golden Mean (still in use today) and the corresponding are considered to be her most important contribution [Reference: "The Hidden Giants" by Sethanne Howard]. The writings attributed to Theano were: Pythagorean Apophthegms, Female Advice, On Virtue, On Piety, On Pythagoras, Philosophical Commentaries, and Letters. None of these writings have survived except a few fragments and letters of uncertain authorship. Attempts have been made to assign some of these fragments and letters to the original Theano (Theano I) and some to a later Theano (Theano II), but it is likely that they are all pseudonymous fictions of later writers, which attempt to apply Pythagorean philosophy to a woman's life. The surviving fragment of On Piety concerns a Pythagorean analogy between numbers and objects; the various surviving letters deal with domestic concerns: how a woman should bring up children, how she should treat servants, and how she should behave virtuously towards her husband. According to Mary Ritter Beard, Theano told Hippodamus of Thurium (may be Hippodamus of Miletus, who according to Aristotle planned the city of Thurium in 440 BC), the treatise On Virtue contains the doctrine of the Golden Mean. According to Thesleff, Stobaeus, and Heeren, Theano wrote in On Piety: "I have learned that many of the Greeks believe Pythagoras said all things are generated from number. The very assertion poses a difficulty: How can things which do not exist even be conceived to generate? But he did not say that all things come to be from number; rather, in accordance with number - on the grounds that order in the primary sense is in number and it is by participation in order that a first and a second and the rest sequentially are assigned to things which are counted." Source:

 TROTA OF SALERNOMain achievements: Held a chair in the school of medicine at the university of Salerno. Trota of Salerno (also spelled Trocta) was a medical practitioner and medical writer in the southern Italian coastal town of Salerno who lived sometime in the early or middle decades of the 12th century. She promoted cleanliness, a balanced diet, exercise, and avoidance of stress - a very modern combination. Her book on the diseases of women was very advanced for the time [Reference: "The Hidden Giant" by Sethanne Howard]. Her fame spread as far away as France and England in the 12th and 13th centuries. Thereafter, aside from a distorted reflection of her work that lived on in the Trotula treatises, her work was forgotten until it was rediscovered in the late 20th century. In the later 12th century, part of the work associated with the historical Trota of Salerno, the De curis mulierum ("On Treatments for Women"), was subsumed into the Trotula ensemble, a compendium of three different works on women's medicine by three different authors. The title "Trotula" ("the little (work of) Trota") was soon misunderstood as an author's name, and “Trotula” came to be seen as the singular author of all three texts in the Trotula ensemble, which became the most widely disseminated and translated works on women’s medicine in later medieval Europe. The authentic works of Trota, in contrast, survive in only a handful of copies. Whatever survived of her fame beyond the 12th century seems to have been fused with the textual persona "Trotula." In modern scholarship, therefore, it is important to separate the historical woman Trota from the fate of the Trotula texts, because their historical importance and impact were quite distinct. Debates about whether "Trotula" really existed began in the 16th century, generated in part out of the inherent inconsistencies in the assembled work that circulated under "her" name. Those debates persisted into the later 20th century, when the discovery of Trota's Practica secundum Trotam ("Practical Medicine According to Trota") and philological analysis of other works associated with her allowed the real historic woman Trota to be seen independently from the textual creation "Trotula." No independent biographical information on Trota of Salerno exists beyond information that can be gleaned from writings associated with her. That information allows us to place her sometime in the first half of the twelfth century. Trota is associated as author or source with several different works. The work that Trota is most immediately associated with as author is the Practica secundum Trotam ("Practical Medicine According to Trota"), which covers a variety of different medical topics, from infertility and menstrual disorders to snakebite and cosmetics. The Practica was first discovered in 1985 by California Institute of Technology historian John F. Benton. Benton found the text in a Madrid manuscript likely written at the very beginning of the 13th century. Trota is also the authoritative figure behind one of three texts in the so-called Trotula ensemble, a compendium of works on women’s medicine brought together later in the twelfth century. This is the text known as De curis mulierum ("On Treatments for Women"). Trota cannot properly be called the "author" of this text, or at least not in the form in which it has survived, because she is cited within the text in the third person. Trota appears in an anecdote about a young woman suffering from ventositas matricis ("wind in the uterus"). As the text explains, sometimes women "take in wind" into their uterus, "with the result that to certain people they look as if they were ruptured or suffering from intestinal pain." Trota was called in to treat a woman suffering from the condition. The text stressed that "Trota was called in as if she were a master." The Latin word for "master" here is in the feminine form, magistra, the most compelling sign that Trota had a social stature comparable to that of male magistri. This treatment of "wind" in the uterus has no other parallel with known works coming out of Salerno. But much of the rest of the text of De curis mulierum has strong echoes of practices of Trota's known from the Practica secundum Trotam. The third-person reference to Trota's cure raises the question of who the "we" is that is seen throughout most of the text of De curis mulierum. Green posits that the text seems to capture the collective practices of one group of female practitioners, setting down their cures for another group of readers (or auditors) who will have the same unfettered access to the bodies of their female patients: "it appears to have been written down to provide a more permanent and concrete mechanism for the transmission of knowledge from woman to woman than the oral forms that had traditionally served the needs of Salernitan women. . . . [T]he text posits a community of female readers who would be able to rely on this text for instruction . . ." Women's literacy is not well documented in southern Italy in this period, which raises the question of why the De curis mulierum was written down in the first place. Green finds a clue to this question in the three words of English derivation found in the earliest copies of the text. The De curis mulierum may have been written down, she suggests, not for the benefit of local women in Salerno, but for an audience in England eager in general to learn about medical practices in far-off Salerno. Both England and southern Italy were under Norman rule at this point, and transference of southern Italian medical writings to Normandy and especially England are well-documented in this period. In fact, the manuscript where we find the earliest copy of the original version of the De curis mulierum—Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 79, from the early 13th century—seems to have been written both in Italy and in England. Source:

Sarah Frances WHITINGMain achievements: Pioneer of science education for women. Sarah Frances Whiting, American physicist and astronomer, was the instructor to several astronomers, including . Whiting graduated from Ingham University in 1865. Whiting was appointed by Wellesley College president Henry Fowle Durant, one year after the College's 1875 opening, as its first professor of physics. She established its physics department and the undergraduate experimental physics lab at Wellesley, the second of its kind to be started in the country. At the request of Durant, she attended lectures at MIT given by Edward Charles Pickering. He invited Whiting to observe some of the new techniques being applied to astronomy, such as spectroscopy. In 1880, Whiting started teaching a course on Practical Astronomy at Wellesley. In 1895, as told by : "An especially exciting moment came when the Boston morning papers reported the discovery of the Rontgen or X-rays in 1895. The advanced students in physics of those days will always remember the zeal with which Miss Whiting immediately set up an old Crookes tube and the delight when she actually obtained some of the very first photographs taken in this country of coins within a purse and bones within the flesh." Between 1896 and 1900, Whiting helped Wellesley College trustee Sarah Elizabeth Whitin to establish the Whitin Observatory, of which Whiting became the first director. Tufts College bestowed an honorary doctorate on Whiting in 1905. Whiting retired from Wellesley in 1916 and was a Professor Emeritus until her death in 1927. She is buried in Machpelah Cemetery in Le Roy, New York, near her now-defunct alma mater. Whiting wrote textbook Daytime and evening exercises in astronomy, for schools and colleges. She was also author of several articles in Popular Astronomy, including: "Use of Graphs in Teaching Astronomy", "Use of Drawings in Orthographic Projection and of Globes in Teaching Astronomy", "Spectroscopic Work for Classes in Astronomy", "The Use of Photographs in Teaching Astronomy", "Partial Solar Eclipse, June 28, 1908", Solar Halos, "A Pedagogical Suggestion for Teachers of Astronomy", "Priceless Accessions to Whitin Observatory Wellesley College", "The Tulse Hill observatory diaries (abstract)", and "The Tulse Hill observatory diaries", as well as the obituary for Margaret Lindsay Huggins, "Lady Huggins". Source:

Maria WINCKELMANN-KIRCHMain achievements: Co-discovery of the "Comet of 1702" (). Maria Margarethe Kirch (née Winckelmann; 25 February 1670 – 29 December 1720) was a German astronomer, and one of the first famous astronomers of her period due to her writings on the conjunction of the sun with Saturn, Venus, and Jupiter in 1709 and 1712 respectively. Maria was educated from an early age by her father, a Lutheran minister, who believed that she deserved an education equivalent to that given to young boys of the time. After her father's death, her education was continued by her uncle. As Maria, had an interest in astronomy from an early age, she took the opportunity of studying with Christoph Arnold, a self-taught astronomer who worked as a farmer in Sommerfeld, near Leipzig. She became Arnold's unofficial apprentice and later his assistant, living with him and his family. Through Arnold, Maria met astronomer and mathematician Gottfried Kirch, one of the most famous German astronomers of the time. Despite Kirch being 30 years her senior, they married in 1692, later having four children, all of whom followed in their parents' footsteps by studying astronomy. Gottfried Kirch gave Maria further instruction in astronomy, as he had his sister and many other students. While at the time women were not allowed to attend universities, much work was conducted outside universities and Gottfried himself had never attended a university. Maria and Gottfried worked together as a team, though Maria was mainly seen as Gottfried's assistant rather than equal. Together they made observations and performed calculations to produce calendars and ephemerides. From 1697, the couple also began recording weather information. The data collected by the Kirches was used to produce calendars and almanacs and was also very useful in navigation. The Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin handled sales of their calendars, which included information on the phases of the moon, the setting of the sun, eclipses, and the position of the sun and other planets. On 21 April 1702, while making her regular nighttime observations, Maria discovered a previously unknown comet, the so-called "Comet of 1702" (), becoming the first woman to make such a discovery (actually two observers in Rome had found this comet about two hours before her). In the words of her husband: “Early in the morning the sky was clear and starry. Some nights before I had observed a variable star, and my wife wanted to find and see it for herself. In so doing she found a comet in the sky. At which time she woke me and I found that it was indeed a comet... was surprised that I had not seen it the night before.” However, the comet was not named after her as was the case with most newly discovered comets, Gottfried instead taking credit for its discovery, something he may have done from fear of possible ridicule if the truth were widely known. It is likely, though, that Maria could not have made a claim in her own name because she published solely in German while the preferred language in the German scientific circles of the time was Latin, a fact which prevented her publishing her works in Germany's only scientific journal of the period, Acta Eruditorum. Gottfried later admitted the truth regarding the discovery in 1710 but the comet was never named after her. Maria continued to pursue important work in astronomy, publishing in German under her own name, and with the proper recognition. Her publications, which included her observations on the Aurora Borealis (1707), the pamphlet Von der Conjunction der Sonne des Saturni und der Venus on the conjunction of the sun with Saturn and Venus (1709), and the approaching conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 1712 became her lasting contributions to astronomy. The latter contained both astrological and astronomical observations and some have claimed that it leaned towards the former. However, Alphonse des Vignoles, president of the Berlin Academy, said in her eulogy: "Madame Kirch prepared horoscopes at the request of her friends, but always against her will and in order not to be unkind to her patrons." After Gottfried died in Berlin on 25 July 1710, Maria attempted to assume her husband's place as astronomer and calendar maker at the Royal Academy of Sciences, saying that she had been carrying out most of this work during the illness from which he died, as at that time it was not unusual for widows to take over their husband's business. However, the Royal Academy's council refused to let her do this and in fact did not even consider the possibility before she petitioned them, as they were reluctant to set a precedent. The only person who supported Maria was the then president of the Academy, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who had long encouraged her and had arranged for her to be presented to the royal court of Prussia in 1709 where she made a good impression as she discussed sunspots. Even Leibniz's support was insufficient to change the Academy's mind even though Maria had been left without any income. Maria was of the opinion that her petitions were denied due to her gender. This is somewhat supported by the fact that Johann Heinrich Hoffmann, who had little experience, was appointed to her husband's place instead of her. Hoffmann soon fell behind with his work and failed to make required observations and it was even suggested that Maria become his assistant. Maria wrote: Now I go through a severe desert, and because... water is scarce... the taste is bitter. However, she was admitted by the Berlin Academy of Sciences. In 1711, she published Die Vorbereitung zug grossen Opposition, a well-received pamphlet in which she predicted a new comet, followed by a pamphlet concerning Jupiter and Saturn which was again a blend of astronomical calculations and astrological material. In 1712, Maria accepted the patronage of a family friend, Bernhard Friedrich Baron von Krosigk, who was an enthusiastic amateur astronomer, and began work in his observatory. She trained her son and daughters to act as her assistants and continued the family's astronomical work, continuing the production of calendars and almanacs as well as making observations. After Baron von Krosigk died in 1714 Maria moved to Danzig to assist a professor of mathematics for a short time before returning. In 1716, she received an offer to work for Russian czar, Peter the Great, but preferred to remain in Berlin where she continued to calculate calendars for locales such as Nuremberg, Dresden, Breslau, and Hungary. Also in 1716, Maria's son Christfried became the director of Berlin Observatory of the Royal Academy of Sciences following Hoffmann's death and Maria and her daughter, Christine, became his assistants. Academy members complained that she took too prominent a role during visits to the observatory and demanded that she behave like an assistant and stay in the background. Maria refused to do this and was forced to retire, being obliged to relinquish her home, which was sited on the observatory's grounds. Maria continued working in private but conditions eventually forced her to abandon all astronomical work and she died in Berlin on 29 December 1720. Her three daughters continued much of her work after her death, assisting their brother in his position as master astronomer. Award: Gold medal of Royal Academy of Sciences, Berlin (1709). Source:

Chien-Shiung WUMain achievements: Manhattan Project. Parity violation. Beta decay. Chien-Shiung Wu was a Chinese American experimental physicist who made significant contributions in the research of radioactivity. Wu worked on the Manhattan Project, where she helped develop the process for separating uranium metal into the U-235 and U-238 isotopes by gaseous diffusion. She is best known for conducting the , and her many honorary nicknames include "the First Lady of Physics", "the Chinese Madame Curie", and the "Queen of Nuclear Research". Wu was born in the town of Liuhe in Taicang, Jiangsu province on May 31, 1912. Her father Wu Zhongyi encouraged her to attend a class taught by Hu Shih, a leading Chinese philosopher and scholar at the time. She and her father were extremely close and he encouraged her interests passionately, creating an environment where she was surrounded by books, magazines, and newspapers. Wu left her hometown at the age of 11 to go to the Suzhou Women's Normal School No. 2. In 1929 Wu was admitted to the National Central University in Nanjing. According to the governmental regulations of the time, "normal school" (teacher-training college) students wanting to move on to the universities needed to serve as schoolteachers for one year. Hence, in 1929 Wu went to teach in the Public School of China, founded by Hu Shih in Shanghai. From 1930 to 1934, Wu studied at the National Central University, first in mathematics, but later transferring to physics. She received a BS in Physics from National Central University in Nanjing. For two years after graduation, she did graduate-level study in physics and also worked as an assistant at the Zhejiang University. After this, Wu became a researcher at the Institute of Physics of the Academia Sinica. After completing the two years of studying physics, Wu moved to the United States in 1936. Wu decided that she wanted and needed to continue her studies in physics at a higher level than was possible in China. Therefore, she sent out applications to study at universities overseas, especially in California. Upon receiving a favorable response from the Michigan State University, Wu and her female friend, Dong Ruofen, a chemist from Taicang, embarked on the long steamship voyage from China to the United States. The two women arrived in San Francisco in 1936. Wu's plans for graduate study changed completely after visiting the University of California, Berkeley. She met physicist Luke Chia-Liu Yuan, a grandson of Yuan Shikai, the first President of the Republic of China and self-proclaimed Emperor of China. But also, Wu's achievements earned her an offer to study under Ernest Lawrence, who would soon win the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron particle accelerator and the development of its applications in physics. Wu abandoned her plans to study at Michigan and enrolled instead at Berkeley. She made rapid progress in her education and her research, completing her Ph.D. in physics in 1940. Wu and Yuan were married two years later, in 1942. In 1947, she gave birth to their son, Vincent Yuan, who would also grow up to become a physicist. Wu died on February 16, 1997 in New York City at the age of 84 after suffering a stroke. At the time of her death, Wu was Pupin Professor Emerita of Physics at Columbia. Wu and Yuan moved to the East Coast of the U.S., where Wu became a faculty member at, first, Smith College, then Princeton University in New Jersey for 1942?44, where she became the first female instructor in the Physics Department. Finally, she found herself at Columbia University in New York City, beginning in 1944 and continuing for many years after the war, all the way through 1980. From 1942 until 1944, Wu was a research assistant at the University of Berkeley. Wu also taught at the National Academy of Sciences in Shanghai, specifically about x-ray crystallography and in 1944 at Smith College. In 1958, Wu became a full-time professor and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. At Columbia University, Wu also did research and development for the Manhattan Project. She helped to develop the process for separating uranium metal into the U-235 and U-238 isotopes by gaseous diffusion. This was the process that was implemented on a gigantic scale at the K-25 Plant near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, whose construction began in 1944. In 1946, she served in the Physics Department of Columbia as a research associate until 1952. From 1952-58, Wu was an associate professor and then became a professor until she retired in 1981 as a Michael I. Pupin Professor of Physics. In her research at Columbia, Wu also worked to develop improved Geiger counters for measuring nuclear radiation levels. At Columbia Wu knew the Chinese-born theoretical physicist Tsung-Dao Lee personally. In the mid-1950s, Lee and another Chinese theoretical physicist, Chen Ning Yang, grew to question a hypothetical law in elementary particle physics, the "Law of Conservation of Parity". Their library research into experimental results convinced them that this "Law" was valid for electromagnetic interactions and for the strong nuclear force. However, it had not been tested for the weak nuclear force, and Lee and Yang's theoretical studies showed that it would probably not hold true for this kind of interaction. Lee and Yang worked out the pencil-and-paper design of several experiments for testing the "Conservation of Parity" in the laboratory. Lee then turned to Wu for her expertise in choosing and then working out the hardware manufacture, set-up, and laboratory procedures for carrying out the experiment. Wu chose to do this for an experiment that involved taking a sample of radioactive cobalt 60 and cooling to cryogenic temperatures with liquid gases. Cobalt 60 is an isotope that decays by beta particle emission, and Wu was also an expert on beta decay. The extremely low temperatures were needed to reduce the amount of thermal vibration of the cobalt atoms to practically nil. Also, Wu needed to apply a constant and uniform magnetic field across the sample of cobalt 60 in order to cause the spin axes of the atomic nuclei to all line up in the same direction. For this cryogenic work, Wu needed the expertise and the facilities of the National Bureau of Standards in liquid gases. She thus traveled to NBS headquarters in Maryland with her equipment to carry out the experiments. Lee and Yang's theoretical calculations predicted that the beta particles from the cobalt 60 atoms would be emitted asymmetrically if the hypothetical "Law of Conservation of Parity" proved invalid. Wu's experiments at the NBS showed that this is indeed the case: parity is not conserved under the weak nuclear interactions. This was also very soon confirmed by her colleagues at Columbia University in different experiments, and as soon as all of these results were published—in two different research papers in the same issue of the same physics journal—the results were also confirmed at many other laboratories and in many different experiments. The discovery of parity violation was a major contribution to high energy physics and the development of the Standard model. In recognition for their theoretical work, Lee and Yang were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1957. Wu received the first Wolf Prize in Physics in 1978 for her experimental work. Wu's book titled Beta Decay (published 1965) is still a standard reference for nuclear physicists. An additional important experiment carried out by Wu was the confirmation of the Pryce and Ward calculations on the correlation of the quantum polarizations of two photons propagating in opposite directions. This was the first experimental confirmation of quantum results relevant to a pair of entangled photons as applicable to the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox, or situation. Wu later conducted research into the molecular changes in the deformation of hemoglobins that cause sickle-cell disease. She also did research on magnetism, and on the Mössbauer effect during the 1960s. Source:

Rosalyn YALOWMain achievements: . Rosalyn Sussman Yalow was an American medical physicist, and a co-winner of the 1977 . She was born in Manhattan, the daughter of Clara and Simon Sussman. She attended Walton High School. Knowing how to type, she won a part-time position as secretary to Dr. Rudolf Schoenheimer, a leading biochemist at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. Not believing that any good graduate school would admit and provide financial support to a woman, she took a job as a secretary to Michael Heidelberger, another biochemist at Columbia, who hired her on the condition that she studied stenography. She graduated from Hunter College in January 1941. In mid-February of that aforementioned year she received an offer of a teaching assistantship in physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with the primary reason being that World War II commenced and many men went off to war and the university decided to offer scholarships for women rather than shut down. That summer she took two tuition-free physics courses under government auspices at New York University. At the University of Illinois, she was the only woman among the department's 400 members, and the first since 1917. She married fellow student Aaron Yalow, the son of a rabbi, in June 1943. They had two children and kept a kosher home. Yalow earned her Ph.D in 1945. After graduating, Yalow joined the Bronx Veterans Administration Medical Center to help set up its radioisotope service. There she collaborated with Solomon Berson to develop (RIA). RIA is a radioisotope tracing technique that allows the measurement of tiny quantities of various biological substances in human blood as well as a multitude of other aqueous fluids. RIA testing relies on the creation of two reagents. One reagent is a molecule that is the product of covalently bonding a radioactive isotope atom with a molecule of the target. The second reagent is an antibody which specifically chemically reacts with the target substance. The measurement of target signal is done using both reagents. They are mixed with the fluid containing an unknown concentration of target to be measured. The radioactive atom supplies a signal that can be monitored. The target supplied from the unknown concentration solution displaces the radiolabelled target bond to the antibody. Originally used to study insulin levels in diabetes mellitus, the technique has since been applied to hundreds of other substances – including hormones, vitamins and enzymes – all too small to detect previously. Despite its huge commercial potential, Yalow and Berson refused to patent the method. In 1968, Yalow was appointed Research Professor in the Department of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, where she later became the Solomon Berson Distinguished Professor at Large. Until the time of her death she continued to reside in the same house in Riverdale that she and her husband purchased after she began working at the Bronx Veterans Administration Medical Center in the 1940s. Her husband, Dr. Aaron Yalow, died in 1992. Rosalyn Yalow died on May 30, 2011, aged 89, in The Bronx from undisclosed causes. In 1975 Yalow and Berson (who had died in 1972) were awarded the AMA Scientific Achievement Award. The following year she became the first female recipient of the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. In 1977 Yalow received the for the invention she and Berson created. Radioimmunoassay (RIA) can be used to measure a multitude of substances found in tiny quantities in fluids within and outside of organisms (such as viruses, drugs and hormones). The list of current possible uses is endless, but specifically, RIA allows blood-donations to be screened for various types of hepatitis. The technique can also be used to identify hormone-related health problems. Further, RIA can be used to detect in the blood many foreign substances including some cancers. Finally, the technique can be used to measure the effectiveness of dose levels of antibiotics and drugs. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978. Yalow received the National Medal of Science in 1988. Source:

Ada YONATHMain achievements: Pioneer work on the structure of the ribosome. Cryo bio-crystallography. Ada E. Yonath is an Israeli crystallographer best known for her pioneering work on the structure of the ribosome. She is the current director of the Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly of the Weizmann Institute of Science. In 2009, she received the along with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz for her studies on the structure and function of the ribosome, becoming the first Israeli woman to win the Nobel Prize out of ten Israeli Nobel laureates, the first woman from the Middle East to win a Nobel prize in the sciences, and the first woman in 45 years to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. However, she said herself that there was nothing special about a woman winning the Prize. Yonath (née Lifshitz) was born in the Geula quarter of Jerusalem. Her parents, Hillel and Esther Lifshitz, were Zionist Jews who immigrated to Palestine from Lodz, Poland in 1933 before the establishment of Israel. Her father was a rabbi and came from a rabbinical family. They settled in Jerusalem and ran a grocery, but found it difficult to make ends meet. They lived in cramped quarters with several other families, and Yonath remembers "books" being the only thing she had to keep her occupied. Despite their poverty, her parents sent her to school in the upscale Beit HaKerem neighborhood to assure her a good education. When her father died at the age of 42, the family moved to Tel Aviv. Yonath was accepted to Tichon Hadash high school although her mother could not pay the tuition. She gave math lessons to students in return. As a youngster, she says she was inspired by the Polish-French scientist . However, she stresses that Curie, whom she as a child was fascinated by after reading a well-written biography, was not her "role model". She returned to Jerusalem for college, graduating from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1962, and a master's degree in biochemistry in 1964. In 1968, she earned a Ph.D. in X-Ray crystallography at the Weizmann Institute of Science. She has one daughter, Hagit Yonath, a doctor at Sheba Medical Center, and a granddaughter, Noa. She is the cousin of anti-occupation activist Dr Ruchama Marton. She has called for the unconditional release of all Hamas prisoners, saying that "holding Palestinians captive encourages and perpetuates their motivation to harm Israel and its citizens ... once we don't have any prisoners to release they will have no reason to kidnap soldiers". Yonath accepted postdoctoral positions at Carnegie Mellon University (1969) and MIT (1970). While a postdoc at MIT she spent some time in the lab of subsequent 1976 chemistry Nobel Prize winner William N. Lipscomb, Jr. of Harvard University where she was inspired to pursue very large structures. In 1970, she established what was for nearly a decade the only protein crystallography laboratory in Israel. Then, from 1979 to 1984 she was a group leader with Heinz-Günter Wittmann at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin. She was visiting professor at the University of Chicago in 1977-78. She headed a Max-Planck Institute Research Unit at DESY in Hamburg, Germany (1986–2004) in parallel to her research activities at the Weizmann Institute. Yonath focuses on the mechanisms underlying protein biosynthesis, by ribosomal crystallography, a research line she pioneered over twenty years ago despite considerable skepticism of the international scientific community. Ribosomes translate RNA into protein and because they have slightly different structures in microbes, when compared to eukaryotes, such as human cells, they are often a target for antibiotics. She determined the complete high-resolution structures of both ribosomal subunits and discovered within the otherwise asymmetric ribosome, the universal symmetrical region that provides the framework and navigates the process of polypeptide polymerization. Consequently she showed that the ribosome is a ribozyme that places its substrates in stereochemistry suitable for peptide bond formation and for substrate-mediated catalysis. Two decades ago she visualized the path taken by the nascent proteins, namely the ribosomal tunnel, and recently revealed the dynamics elements enabling its involvement in elongation arrest, gating, intra-cellular regulation and nascent chain trafficking into their folding space. Additionally, Yonath elucidated the modes of action of over twenty different antibiotics targeting the ribosome, illuminated mechanisms of drug resistance and synergism, deciphered the structural basis for antibiotic selectivity and showed how it plays a key role in clinical usefulness and therapeutic effectiveness, thus paving the way for structure-based drug design. For enabling ribosomal crystallography Yonath introduced a novel technique, cryo bio-crystallography, which became routine in structural biology and allowed intricate projects otherwise considered formidable. At the Weizmann Institute, Yonath is the incumbent of the Martin S. and Helen Kimmel Professorial Chair. Source:

Tu YOUYOUMain achievements: Discovering artemisinin and dihydroartemisinin in . Tu Youyou (born 30 December 1930), is a Chinese medical scientist, pharmaceutical chemist, and educator best known for discovering artemisinin (also known as Qinghaosu) and dihydroartemisinin, used to treat malaria, which saved millions of lives. The discovery of artemisinin and its treatment of malaria is regarded as a significant breakthrough of tropical medicine in the 20th Century and health improvement for people of tropical developing countries in South Asia, Africa, and South America. For her work, Tu received the 2011 Lasker Award in Clinical Medicine and the . Tu was the first native Chinese to win Lasker award in history who was educated in China and whose work was carried out within China. Tu carried on her work in the 1960s and 70s during China's Cultural Revolution, when scientists were one of the nine black categories in Chinese society according to Mao's theory. But China's ally, North Vietnam, was at war with South Vietnam and the U.S. Malaria was a major cause of death, and evolving resistance to chloroquine. Malaria was also a major cause of death in China's southern provinces including Hainan, Yunnan, Guangxi, and Guangdong. Mao Zedong set up a secret drug discovery project, named Project 523 after its starting date, 23 May 1967. Scientists worldwide had screened over 240,000 compounds without success. In 1969, Tu, then 39 years old, had an idea of screening Chinese herbs. She first investigated the Chinese medical classics in history, visited old practitioners of Chinese medicine all over the country on her own, and made a notebook namely A Collection of "Single Practical Prescriptions for Anti-Malaria". Her notebook summarized 640 prescriptions. Her team also screened over 2,000 traditional Chinese recipes and made 380 herbal extracts, which were tested on mice. One compound was effective, sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua), which was used for "intermittent fevers," a hallmark of malaria. As Tu also presented at the project seminar, its preparation was described in a 1,600-year old text, in a recipe titled, "Emergency Prescriptions Kept Up One's Sleeve." At first, it didn't work, because they extracted it with boiling water, the same as recorded in the classic. Tu suggested the hot water had already damaged the active ingredient in the plant, therefore proposed a method using low-temperature ether to extract the effective compound instead. The animal tests showed it was completely effective in mice and monkeys. Furthermore, Tu volunteered to be the first human subject. "As head of this research group, I had the responsibility," she said. It was safe, so she conducted successful clinical trials with human patients. Her work was published anonymously in 1977. "It is scientists' responsibility to continue fighting for the healthcare of all humans," said Tu. "What I have done is what I should have done in return for the education provided by my country." She was grateful for the Lasker award, but said, "I feel more reward when I see so many patients cured." Tu was born in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, China on 30 December 1930. In 1951, she matriculated at Peking University School of Medicine (In 1952, the Medical School became independent as Beijing Medical College, later renamed Beijing Medical University in 1985. On 3 April 2000, Beijing Medical University was merged with Peking University and is now known as Peking University Health Science Center). Tu studied at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and graduated in 1955. Later Tu was trained for two and a half years in traditional Chinese medicine. Tu worked at the Academy of Chinese Medicine (now named as China Academy of Chinese Medical Research) in Beijing after graduation. She was promoted to a researcher in 1980 only after the Chinese economic reform, and in 2001 promoted to academic advisor for doctorate candidates. Currently she is the Chief Scientist in the Academy. As of 2007, her office is in an old apartment building in Dongcheng District, Beijing. Before 2011, Tu had been obscure for decades, and is described as "almost completely forgotten by people". Tu is regarded as the Professor of Three Nos – no postgraduate degree (there was no postgraduate education in then-China), no study or research experience abroad, and not a member of any Chinese national academies, i.e. Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering. Up until 1979, there were no postgraduate degree programs in China, and China was largely isolated from the rest of the world. Tu is now regarded as a representative figure of the first generation Chinese medical workers since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Source:

Wang ZHENYIMain achievements: Author of the books: "Dispute of the Procession of the Equinoxes", "Dispute of Longitude and Stars" and "The Explanation of a Lunar Eclipse". Wang Zhenyi was a famous female scientist from the Qing dynasty. She breached the feudal customs of the time which hindered women's rights and arduously worked to educate herself in subjects such as astronomy, mathematics, geography, and medicine. She was a very strong and intelligent woman well known for her contributions in astronomy, mathematics, and poetry. She was an acclaimed scholar, "An extraordinary woman of 18th century China." Zhenyi’s ancestral home is in Anhui province, but her grandfather's family moved to Jiangning or present-day Nanjing. Wang Zhenyi was very fond of reading when she was a child and was very clever. Her family consists of her grandfather, grandmother and her father. Her grandfather Wang Zhefu, was a former governor of Fengchen county and Xuanhua District. He had broad and profound intellect with a deep love for reading and had a collection of over seventy-five bookshelves. Her father Wang Xichen failed the imperial examination and instead studied medical science and recorded his findings in a four-volume collection called Yifang yanchao (Collection of Medical Prescriptions). Her grandmother is named neé Dong. Her grandfather was her first teacher in astronomy, her grandmother was her teacher of poetry, and her father taught her medicine, geography, and mathematics. Wang Zhefu, her grandfather, died in 1782 and the family traveled to Jiling (close to the Great Wall) for his funeral. They stayed in the region for five years, which is where Zhenyi gained extensive knowledge from reading her grandfather’s collection of books as well as learning equestrian skills, archery, and martial arts from the wife of a Mongolian general named Aa. At the age of sixteen, Wang Zhenyi traveled south of the Yangtze river with her father, until she moved back to the capital. She was able to see places like Shaanxi, Hubei, and Guangdong, broadening her horizons and enriching her experiences. When she was eighteen, she made friends with female scholars in Jiangning through her poetry and began focusing on her studies in astronomy and mathematics, most of which were self-taught. At age twenty-five she married Zhan Mei from Xuan cheng in Anhui province. After her marriage, she became better known for her poetry and knowledge in mathematics and astronomy that she once taught some male students. Wang Zhenyi died at age twenty-nine and had no children. Although she only lived to be twenty-nine, Wang Zhenyi was very accomplished in the academic world. She excelled in astronomy and mathematics. One of her contributions was being able to describe her views of celestial phenomena in her article, "Dispute of the Procession of the Equinoxes." She was able to explain and simply prove how equinoxes move and then how to calculate their movement. She wrote many other articles such as "Dispute of Longitude and Stars" as well as "The Explanation of a Lunar Eclipse." She commented on the number of stars, revolving direction of the sun, the moon, and the planets Venus, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, and Saturn as well as describing the relationship between lunar and solar eclipses. Not only did she study the research of other astronomers, but she was able to find her own original research. One of her experiments to study a lunar eclipse included placing a round table in a garden pavilion, to be a globe; she hung a crystal lamp on a cord from the ceiling beams, to be the sun. Then on one side of the table she had a round mirror as the moon. She moved these three objects as if they were the sun, earth, and moon according to astronomical principles. Her findings and observations were very accurate and recorded in her article, "The Explanation of a Solar Eclipse." In the realm of mathematics, Zhenyi had mastered trigonometry and knew the Pythagorean theorem. She wrote an article called "The Explanation of the Pythagorean Theorem and Trigonometry," where she described a triangle and the relationship between the shorter leg of a right triangle, the long leg, and the triangle's hypotenuse all correctly. She admired the mathematician Mei Wending (1633-1721 A.D.). He was famous in the early Qing dynasty, who wrote the book Principles of Calculation. Wang Zhenyi became a master of this book and even rewrote it with simpler language and made it available to others under the title The Musts of Calculation. She was even able to simplify multiplication and division to make learning mathematics easier for beginners. She was very dedicated in her study of mathematics and even wrote a book called The Simple Principles of Calculation when she was twenty-four. Her studies were difficult and she once said, "There were times that I had to put down my pen and sighed. But I love the subject, I do not give up." Source :

Margaret HAMILTONMain achievements: Development of on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo Moon missions. Margaret Heafield Hamilton is an American computer scientist, systems engineer, and business owner. She was Director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for the Apollo space program. In 1986, she became the founder and CEO of Hamilton Technologies, Inc., in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company was developed around the Universal Systems Language based on her paradigm of Development Before the Fact (DBTF) for systems and software design. Hamilton has published over 130 papers, proceedings, and reports about the 60 projects and six major programs in which she has been involved. On November 22, 2016, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President Barack Obama for her work leading the development of on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo Moon missions. Margaret Heafield was born in Paoli, Indiana, to Kenneth Heafield and Ruth Esther Heafield (née Partington). After graduating from Hancock High School in 1954, she started out in mathematics at the University of Michigan in 1955 and subsequently earned a B.A. in mathematics with a minor in philosophy from Earlham College in 1958. She briefly taught high school mathematics and French upon graduation, in order to support her husband while he worked on his undergraduate degree at Harvard, with the ultimate goal of pursuing a graduate degree at a later time. She moved to Boston, Massachusetts, with the intention of doing graduate study in abstract mathematics at Brandeis University. She cites a female math professor as helping her desire to pursue abstract mathematics. She had other inspirations outside the technological world, including her father, the philosopher and poet, and her grandfather, a school headmaster and Quaker Minister. She says these men inspired her to a minor in philosophy. In 1960 she took an interim position at MIT to develop software for predicting weather on the LGP-30 and the PDP-1 computers (at Marvin Minsky's Project MAC) for professor Edward Norton Lorenz in the meteorology department. Hamilton wrote that at that time, computer science and software engineering were not yet disciplines; instead, programmers learned on the job with hands-on experience. From 1961 to 1963, she worked on the SAGE Project at Lincoln Lab, where she was one of the programmers who wrote software for the first AN/FSQ-7 computer (the XD-1), to search for "unfriendly" aircraft; she also wrote software for the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories. The SAGE Project was an extension of Project Whirlwind, started by MIT, to create a computer system that could predict weather systems and track their movements through simulators; SAGE was soon developed for military use in anti-aircraft air defense from potential Soviet attacks during the Cold War. For her part, Hamilton described her duties as such, What they used to do when you came into this organization as a beginner, was to assign you this program which nobody was able to ever figure out or get to run. When I was the beginner they gave it to me as well. And what had happened was it was tricky programming, and the person who wrote it took delight in the fact that all of his comments were in Greek and Latin. So I was assigned this program and I actually got it to work. It even printed out its answers in Latin and Greek. I was the first one to get it to work. It was her efforts on this project that made her a candidate for the position at NASA as the lead developer for Apollo flight software. Hamilton then joined the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory at MIT, which at the time was working on the Apollo space mission. She eventually led a team credited with developing the software for Apollo and Skylab. Hamilton's team was responsible for developing in-flight software, which included algorithms designed by various senior scientists for the Apollo command module, lunar lander, and the subsequent Skylab. Another part of her team designed and developed the systems software which included the error detection and recovery software such as restarts and the Display Interface Routines (AKA the Priority Displays) which Hamilton designed and developed. She worked to gain hands-on experience during a time when computer science courses were uncommon and software engineering courses did not exist. Her areas of expertise include systems design and software development, enterprise and process modelling, development paradigm, formal systems modeling languages, system-oriented objects for systems modelling and development, automated life-cycle environments, methods for maximizing software reliability and reuse, domain analysis, correctness by built-in language properties, open-architecture techniques for robust systems, full life-cycle automation, quality assurance, seamless integration, error detection and recovery techniques, man-machine interface systems, operating systems, end-to-end testing techniques, and life-cycle management techniques. In one of the critical moments of the Apollo 11 mission, the Apollo Guidance Computer together with the on-board flight software averted an abort of the landing on the Moon. Three minutes before the Lunar lander reached the Moon's surface, several computer alarms were triggered. The computer was overloaded with interrupts caused by incorrectly phased power supplied to the lander's rendezvous radar. The program alarms indicated "executive overflows", meaning the guidance computer could not complete all of its tasks in real time and had to postpone some of them. The asynchronous executive designed by J. Halcombe Laning allowed the computer to cope with the increased demand by prioritizing tasks. Hamilton's priority alarm displays interrupted the astronauts' normal displays to warn them that there was an emergency “giving the astronauts a go/no go decision (to land or not to land)”. Jack Garman, a NASA computer engineer in mission control, recognized the meaning of the errors that were presented to the astronauts by the priority displays and shouted, "Go, go!" And on they went. Dr. Paul Curto, senior technologist who nominated Hamilton for a NASA Space Act Award, called Hamilton's work "the foundation for ultra-reliable software design." Source:

Katherine JOHNSONMain achievements: Calculating the trajectories for many NASA missions. Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson is an African-American physicist and mathematician who made contributions to the United States' aeronautics and space programs with the early application of digital electronic computers at NASA. Known for accuracy in computerized celestial navigation, she conducted technical work at NASA that spanned decades. During this time, she calculated the trajectories, launch windows, and emergency back-up return paths for many flights from Project Mercury, including the early NASA missions of John Glenn and Alan Shepard, and the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon, through the Space Shuttle program. Her calculations were critical to the success of these missions. Johnson also did calculations for plans for a mission to Mars. In 2015, Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was included in the BBC series 100 Women the following year. Johnson was born Katherine Coleman in 1918 in White Sulphur Springs, Greenbrier County, West Virginia, the daughter of Joshua and Joylette Coleman. She was the youngest of four children. Her father was a lumberman, farmer, and handyman and worked at the Greenbrier Hotel. Her mother was a former teacher. Johnson showed a talent for math from an early age. Because Greenbrier County did not offer public schooling for African-American students past the eighth grade, the Coleman parents arranged for their children to attend high school in Institute, West Virginia. This school was on the campus of West Virginia State College. Johnson was admitted when she was only 10 years old. The family split their time between Institute during the school year and White Sulphur Springs in the summer. Johnson graduated from high school at 14 and entered West Virginia State College (now West Virginia State University), a historically black college. As a student, Johnson took every math course offered by the college. Multiple professors took Katherine under their wings, including chemist and mathematician Angie Turner King, who had mentored the girl throughout high school, and W.W. Schiefflin Claytor, the third African American to receive a PhD in math. Claytor added new math courses just for Katherine. She graduated summa cum laude in 1937, with degrees in Mathematics and French, at age 18. She took on a teaching job at a black public school in Virginia. In 1939, after marrying her first husband, James Goble, Johnson left her teaching job and enrolled in a graduate math program, but quit after one year, having become pregnant and choosing to focus on her family. At the time of her entry, she was the first African-American woman to attend graduate school at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. Through WVSC's president, Dr. John W. Davis, she became one of three African-American students, and the only female, selected to integrate the graduate school after the United States Supreme Court ruling Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938). The court had ruled that states that provided public higher education to white students also had to provide it to black students, to be satisfied either by establishing black colleges and universities or by admitting black students to previously white-only universities. Johnson decided on a career as a research mathematician, although this was a difficult field for African Americans and women to enter. The first jobs she found were in teaching. It was not until 1952, at a family gathering, that a relative mentioned that the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was hiring mathematicians. (It was superseded by the agency NASA in 1958.) At the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, based in Hampton, Virginia near Langley Field, NACA hired African-American mathematicians as well as whites for their Guidance and Navigation Department. Johnson was offered a job in 1953. She accepted and became part of the early NASA team. According to an oral history archived by the National Visionary Leadership Project: At first she worked in a pool of women performing math calculations. Katherine has referred to the women in the pool as virtual "computers who wore skirts." Their main job was to read the data from the black boxes of planes and carry out other precise mathematical tasks. Then one day, Katherine (and a colleague) were temporarily assigned to help the all-male flight research team. Katherine's knowledge of analytic geometry helped make quick allies of male bosses and colleagues to the extent that, "they forgot to return me to the pool." While the racial and gender barriers were always there, Katherine says she ignored them. Katherine was assertive, asking to be included in editorial meetings (where no women had gone before). She simply told people she had done the work and that she belonged. From 1953 through 1958, Johnson worked as a "computer", analyzing topics such as gust alleviation for aircraft. Originally assigned to the West Area Computers section supervised by mathematician , Johnson was reassigned to the Guidance and Control Division of Langley's Flight Research Division. It was staffed by white male engineers. In keeping with state racial segregation laws, and federal workplace segregation introduced under President Woodrow Wilson in the early 20th century, Johnson and the other African-American women in the computing pool were required to work, eat, and use restrooms that were separate from those of their white peers. Their office was labeled as "Colored Computers." In an interview with WHRO-TV, Johnson stated that she "didn't feel the segregation at NASA, because everybody there was doing research. You had a mission and you worked on it, and it was important to you to do your job ... and play bridge at lunch." She added, "I didn't feel any segregation. I knew it was there, but I didn't feel it." NACA disbanded the colored computing pool in 1958 when it was superseded by NASA, which adopted digital computers. The installation was desegregated. Society's discrimination against women had not yet ended, however. Johnson recalled that era as follows: "We needed to be assertive as women in those days—assertive and aggressive—and the degree to which we had to be that way depended on where you were. I had to be. In the early days of NASA women were not allowed to put their names on the reports—no woman in my division had had her name on a report. I was working with Ted Skopinski and he wanted to leave and go to Houston ... but Henry Pearson, our supervisor—he was not a fan of women—kept pushing him to finish the report we were working on. Finally, Ted told him, "Katherine should finish the report, she's done most of the work anyway." So Ted left Pearson with no choice; I finished the report and my name went on it, and that was the first time a woman in our division had her name on something." From 1958 until her retirement in 1986, Johnson worked as an aerospace technologist, moving during her career to the Spacecraft Controls Branch. She calculated the trajectory for the May 5, 1961 space flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space. She also calculated the launch window for his 1961 Mercury mission. She plotted backup navigational charts for astronauts in case of electronic failures. When NASA used electronic computers for the first time to calculate John Glenn's orbit around Earth, officials called on Johnson to verify the computer's numbers; Glenn had asked for her specifically and had refused to fly unless Johnson verified the calculations. Biography.com states these were "far more difficult calculations, to account for the gravitational pulls of celestial bodies." Author Margot Lee Shetterly stated, "So the astronaut who became a hero, looked to this black woman in the still-segregated South at the time as one of the key parts of making sure his mission would be a success." She added that, in a time where computing was "women's work" and engineering was left to men, "it really does have to do with us over the course of time sort of not valuing that work that was done by women, however necessary, as much as we might. And it has taken history to get a perspective on that." Johnson later worked directly with digital computers. Her ability and reputation for accuracy helped to establish confidence in the new technology. In 1961, Johnson's work helped to ensure that Alan Shepard's Freedom 7 Mercury capsule would be quickly found after landing, using the accurate trajectory that had been established. Johnson also helped to calculate the trajectory for the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon. During the moon landing, Johnson was at a meeting in the Pocono Mountains. She and a few others crowded around a small television screen watching the first steps on the moon. In 1970, Johnson worked on the Apollo 13 moon mission. When the mission was aborted, her work on backup procedures and charts helped set a safe path for the crew's return to Earth, creating a one-star observation system that would allow astronauts to determine their location with accuracy. In a 2010 interview, Johnson recalled, "Everybody was concerned about them getting there. We were concerned about them getting back." Later in her career, Johnson worked on the Space Shuttle program, the Earth Resources Satellite, and on plans for a mission to Mars.

In 2016, Johnson was included in the list of "BBC 100 Women," BBC's list of 100 influential women worldwide. NASA stated, "Her calculations proved as critical to the success of the Apollo Moon landing program and the start of the Space Shuttle program, as they did to those first steps on the country's journey into space." Johnson has been portrayed in the media. In a 2016 episode of the NBC series Timeless, titled "Space Race," the mathematician is portrayed by Nadine Ellis. The highly-acclaimed December 2016 film Hidden Figures, based on the non-fiction book of the same title by Margot Lee Shetterly, follows Johnson and other female African-American mathematicians () who worked at NASA. Taraji P. Henson plays Johnson in the film. Johnson appeared alongside Henson at the 89th Academy Awards. In an earlier interview, Johnson offered the following comment about the movie: "It was well-done. The three leading ladies did an excellent job portraying us." Source:

Nettie STEVENSMain achievements: . Nettie Maria Stevens was an early American geneticist. In 1906, she discovered that male beetles produce two kinds of sperm, one with a large chromosome and one with a small chromosome. When the sperm with the large chromosome fertilized eggs, they produced female offspring, and when the sperm with the small chromosome fertilized eggs, they produced male offspring. This pattern was observed in other animals, including humans, and became known as the . Nettie Maria Stevens was born on July 7, 1861, in Cavendish, Vermont, to Julia and Ephraim Stevens. After the death of her mother, her father remarried and the family moved to Westford, Massachusetts. She was graduated from Westford Academy in 1880. Stevens taught high school and was a librarian. Her teaching duties included courses in physiology and zoology, as well as mathematics, Latin, and English. Her interest in zoology may have been influenced by taking a teacher training course she attended on Martha's Vineyard in the 1890s. After teaching for three terms, she continued her education at Westfield Normal School (now Westfield State University) completing the four-year course in only two years and being graduated with the highest scores in her class. After graduation at the top in her class, she attended Stanford University, where she received her B.A. in 1899 and her M.A. in 1900. She also completed one year of graduate work in physiology under Professor Jenkins and histology and cytology under Professor McFarland. Stevens continued her studies in cytology at Bryn Mawr College, where she obtained her Ph.D. and was influenced by the work of the previous head of the biology department, Edmund Beecher Wilson, and by that of his successor, Thomas Hunt Morgan.[5] Her work documented processes that were not researched by Wilson and she used subjects that he later would adopt along with the results of her work. In her first year at Bryn Mawr, Stevens received a graduate scholarship in biology. The following year, she was named a President's European Fellow, and studied at the University of Würzburg, Germany. She also studied marine organisms at Helgoland and Naples Zoological Station. After receiving her Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr, Stevens was given an assistantship at the Carnegie Institute of Washington in the year 1904–1905. Several subsequent studies of germ cells in aphids appeared as a result. One paper (1905) won Stevens an award of $1,000 for the best scientific paper written by a woman. Another work, "Studies in Spermatogenesis," highlighted her entry into the increasingly promising focus of sex-determination studies and chromosomal inheritance. It was at this institute that Stevens had her sex determination work published as a report in 1905. At Bryn Mawr, Stevens focused on topics such as the regeneration in primitive multicellular organisms, the structure of single cell organisms, the development of sperm and eggs, germ cells of insects, and cell division in sea urchins and worms. In 1908, Stevens received the Alice Freeman Palmer Fellowship from the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, now the American Association of University Women. During her fellowship year, Stevens studied at the Naples Zoological Station and the University of Wurzburg, in addition to visiting laboratories throughout Europe. Stevens was one of the first American women to be recognized for her contribution to science. Her research was completed at Bryn Mawr College. Her highest rank attained was the associate in experimental morphology (1905–1912). Using observations of insect chromosomes she discovered that, in some species, chromosomes are different among the sexes. The discovery was the first time that observable differences of chromosomes could be linked to an observable difference in physical attributes (i.e., whether an individual is male or female). This work was done in 1905. The experiments completed to determine this used a range of insects. She identified the Y chromosome in the mealworm, Tenebrio. She deduced that the chromosomal basis of sex depended on the presence or absence of the Y chromosome. She did not start her research until her thirties and completed her Ph.D. in 1903. She successfully expanded the fields of genetics, cytology, and embryology. Stevens failed to gain a full regular university position, however, she achieved a research career at leading marine stations and laboratories. Her record of 38 publications includes several major contributions which further the emergence of ideas of chromosomal heredity. As a result of her research, Stevens provided critical evidence for Mendelian and chromosomal theories of inheritance. Stevens worked to be able to become a full researcher at Bryn Mawr, however, before she could take the research professorship offered to her, she died on May 4, 1912, of breast cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Following her death, Thomas Hunt Morgan wrote an extensive obituary for the journal Science. In an earlier letter of recommendation he wrote, "Of the graduate students that I have had during the last twelve years I have had no one that was as capable and independent in research as Miss Stevens." Studying egg tissue and fertilization process, Stevens was the first to recognize that females have two large sex chromosomes in the shape of Xs and that males have one of full size X and another that is missing a portion, making it resemble a Y. Wilson performed tests only on the testes as eggs were too fatty for his staining procedures. After her discoveries, Wilson reissued his original paper and acknowledged Stevens for this finding. Stevens at Bryn Mawr was breeding Drosophila melanogaster in the laboratory as subjects of her research some years before Morgan adopted it as his model organism. At 50 years old, and only 9 years after completing her Ph.D., Stevens died of breast cancer on May 4, 1912 in Baltimore, Maryland. Her career span was short, but she published approximately 40 papers. Nettie Maria Stevens was buried in the Westford, Massachusetts, cemetery alongside the graves of her father, Ephraim, and her sister, Emma. Source:

Dorothy VAUGHANMain achievements: First African-American woman to supervise a NASA staff. Dorothy Johnson Vaughan (September 20, 1910 – November 10, 2008) was an African American mathematician and human computer who worked for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and NASA, at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. In 1949, she became acting supervisor of the West Area Computers, the first African-American woman to supervise a staff at the center. She later was promoted officially to this position. During her 28-year career, Vaughan prepared for the introduction of machine computers in the early 1960s by teaching herself and her staff the programming language of FORTRAN; she later headed the programming section of the Analysis and Computation Division (ACD) at Langley. Vaughan is one of the women featured in Margot Lee Shetterly's history Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016). It was adapted as a biographical film of the same name, also released in 2016. Vaughan was born September 20, 1910 in Kansas City, Missouri, the daughter of Annie and Leonard Johnson. Her family moved to Morgantown, West Virginia, where she graduated from Beechurst High School in 1925. Receiving a full-tuition scholarship, she graduated at the age of 19 with a B.A. in mathematics in 1929 from Wilberforce University, a historically black college located in Wilberforce, Ohio. Although encouraged by professors to do graduate study at Howard University, Vaughan soon started working as a teacher. She wanted to assist her family during the Great Depression. Dorothy married Howard S. Vaughan Jr. in 1932, and the couple had six children. In 1943, Vaughan began what developed as a 28-year-career as a mathematician and programmer at Langley Research Center. She specialized in calculations for flight paths, the Scout Project, and FORTRAN computer programming. One of her children also later worked at NASA. After college, Vaughan worked as a mathematics teacher at R.R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. Virginia's public schools and other facilities were still racially segregated under Jim Crow laws. President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to ensure the war effort drew from all of American society after the United States entered World War II in 1942. He issued Executive Order 8802, to desegregate the defense industry, and Executive Order 9346 to end racial segregation and discrimination in hiring and promotion among federal agencies and defense contractors. The US believed that the war was going to be won in the air. It had already ramped up airplane production, creating a great demand for engineers, mathematicians, craftsmen and skilled tradesmen. With many men being swept into service, federal agencies such as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) expanded their hiring and increased recruiting of women to support war production of airplanes. In 1943 Vaughan started to work at NACA, which in 1935 had established a section of women mathematicians, who performed complex calculations. Vaughan was assigned to the West Area Computers of the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. This segregated group consisted of African-American women who made complex mathematical calculations by hand, using tools of the time. Their work expanded in the postwar years to support research and design for the United States' space program, which was emphasized under President John F. Kennedy. Vaughan moved into the area of electronic computing in 1961, after NACA introduced the first digital (non-human) computers to the center. Vaughan became proficient in computer programming, teaching herself FORTRAN and teaching it to her coworkers to prepare them for the transition. She contributed to the space program through her work on the Scout Launch Vehicle Program. In 1949, Vaughan was assigned as the acting head of the West Area Computers, taking over from a white woman who had died. She was the first Black supervisor at NACA and one of few female supervisors. She led a group composed entirely of African-American women mathematicians. She served for years in an acting role before being promoted officially to the position as supervisor. Vaughan worked for opportunities for the women in West Computing as well as women in other departments. Seeing that machine computers were going to be the future, she taught the women programming languages and other concepts to prepare them for the transition. Mathematician Katherine Johnson was initially assigned to Vaughan's group, before being transferred to Langley's Flight Mechanics Division. Vaughan continued after NASA, the successor agency, was established in 1958. At that time, the agency ended racial segregation at the facility. In a 1994 interview, Vaughan recalled that working at Langley during the Space Race felt like being on "the cutting edge of something very exciting." Regarding being an African-American woman during that time, she remarked, "I changed what I could, and what I couldn't, I endured." Vaughan worked in the Numerical Techniques division through the 1960s. She later became part of the Analysis and Computation Division (ACD). She worked at NASA-Langley for a total of twenty-eight years. During her career at Langley, Vaughan was also raising her six children. One of them later also worked at NASA-Langley. Vaughan lived in Newport News, Virginia and commuted to work at Hampton via public transportation. Vaughan retired from NASA in 1971, at the age of 60. She lived until November 10, 2008, aged 98. Vaughan was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, an African-American sorority. She was also an active member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, where she participated in music and missionary activities. Vaughan is one of the women featured in Margot Lee Shetterly's 2016 non-fiction book Hidden Figures, and the feature film of the same name, which recounts the stories of Vaughan (played by Octavia Spencer), . Source:

Mary JACKSONMain achievements: NASA's first black female engineer. Mary Winston Jackson was an African American mathematician and aerospace engineer at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which in 1958 was succeeded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). She worked at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, for most of her career. She started as a computer at the segregated West Area Computing division. She took advanced engineering classes and in 1958 became NASA's first black female engineer. After 34 years at NASA, Jackson had earned the most senior engineering title available. She realized she could not earn further promotions without becoming a supervisor. She accepted a demotion to become a manager of both the Federal Women’s Program, in the NASA Office of Equal Opportunity Programs, and of the Affirmative Action Program. In this role, she worked to influence both the hiring and promotion of women in NASA's science, engineering, and mathematics careers. Jackson's story features in the non-fiction book Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016). She is one of the three protagonists in Hidden Figures, the film adaptation released the same year. Mary Winston was born on April 9, 1921, to Ella and Frank Winston. She grew up in Hampton, Virginia, where she graduated from the all-black George P. Phenix Training School with highest honors. Mary Jackson earned bachelor's degrees in mathematics and physical science from Hampton Institute in 1942. She was a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first sorority founded by and for African-American women. Jackson served for more than thirty years as a Girl Scout leader. She was noted in the 1970s for helping black children in her community create a miniature wind tunnel for testing airplanes. Jackson was married with two children. She died on February 11, 2005, at age 83. After graduation, Jackson taught math at a black school in Calvert County, Maryland, for a year. Public schools were still segregated across the South. She also began tutoring high school and college students, which she continued to do throughout her life. By 1943, she had returned to Hampton, where she became a bookkeeper at the National Catholic Community Center there. She worked as a receptionist and clerk at the Hampton Institute's Health Department; she returned home for the birth of her son. In 1951 she became a clerk at the Office of the Chief, Army Field Forces at Fort Monroe. In 1951 Jackson was recruited by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which in 1958 was succeeded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). She started as a research mathematician, or computer, at the Langley Research Center in her hometown of Hampton, Virginia. She worked under Dorothy Vaughan in the segregated West Area Computing Section. In 1953 she accepted an offer to work for engineer Kazimierz Czarnecki in the Supersonic Pressure Tunnel. The 4 by 4 foot (1.2 by 1.2 m), 60,000 horsepower (45,000 kW) wind tunnel used to study forces on a model by generating winds at almost twice the speed of sound. Czarnecki encouraged Jackson to undergo training so that she could be promoted to an engineer. She needed to take graduate-level courses in math and physics to qualify for the job. They were offered in a night program by the University of Virginia, held at the all-white Hampton High School. Jackson petitioned the City of Hampton to allow her to attend the classes. After completing the courses, she was promoted to aerospace engineer in 1958, and became NASA's first black female engineer. She analyzed data from wind tunnel experiments and real-world aircraft flight experiments at the Theoretical Aerodynamics Branch of the Subsonic-Transonic Aerodynamics Division at Langley. Her goal was to understand air flow, including thrust and drag forces, in order to improve United States planes. Jackson worked as an engineer in several NASA divisions: the Compressibility Research Division, Full-Scale Research Division, High-Speed Aerodynamics Division, and the Subsonic-Transonic Aerodynamics Division. She ultimately authored or co-authored 12 technical papers for NACA and NASA. She worked to help women and other minorities to advance their careers, including advising them how to study in order to qualify for promotions. After 34 years at NASA, Jackson had achieved the most senior title within the engineering department. She decided to take a demotion in order to serve as an administrator in the Equal Opportunity Specialist field. After undergoing training at NASA Headquarters, she returned to Langley. She worked to make changes and highlight women and other minorities who were accomplished in the field. She served as both the Federal Women’s Program Manager in the Office of Equal Opportunity Programs and as the Affirmative Action Program Manager, and she worked to influence the career paths of women in science, engineering, and mathematics positions at NASA. She continued to work at NASA until her retirement in 1985. The 2016 film Hidden Figures recounts the NASA careers of Jackson, , specifically their work on Project Mercury during the Space Race. The film is based on the book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly. Jackson is portrayed in the film by Janelle Monae. Source:

Celia Grillo BORROMEOMain achievements: Discovery of the . Clelia Grillo Borromeo Arese or Celia Grillo Borromeo was an Italian (Genovese) mathematician and scientist. Borromeo was born in Genoa, the daughter of duke Marcantonio of Mondragone and Maria Antonia Imperial. In 1707, she married count Giovanni Borromeo Arese Benedict (1679–1744), and became the mother of eight children. Borromeo was educated in several languages, mathematics, natural science and mechanics. She spoke eight languages and was interested in geometry, natural science and mathematics. She was educated first by her mother and then in a convent, but it is unknown where she received education in the subjects she became known for. She was famous for her ability to solve every mathematical problem presented to her. Borromeo was described as an independent person, which was regarded as eccentric because it was not considered natural for her gender. She was criticized for entertaining many scientists, both foreign and Italian, who were known as atheists. One of her guests was Antonio Vallisineri (1661–1733). She founded the academy nell'Academia Vigilantium Clelia in her salon in Milan, which was active in 1719–1726. During the war in 1746, Borromeo took the side of Spain against Austria and was therefore exiled. When she was allowed to return to Milan, she was celebrated as a heroine. The so-called has been named from her by the mathematician don Luigi Guido Grandi: when the longitude and co-latitude of a point P on a sphere are denoted by q and ƒ and if P moves so that q = mƒ, where m is a constant, then the locus of P is called a Clélie. Borromeo died in Milan. The city of Genoa honored her with a medal with the inscription Genuensium Gloria (The Honor of Genoa). Source:

Barbara LISKOVMain achievements: . Barbara Liskov is an American computer scientist who is an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ford Professor of Engineering in its School of Engineering's electrical engineering and computer science department. She was one of the first women to be granted a doctorate in computer science in the United States and is a Turing award winner who developed the . Liskov was born November 7, 1939 in Los Angeles, California, the eldest of Jane and Moses Huberman's four children. She earned her BA in mathematics with a minor in physics at the University of California, Berkeley in 1961. In her classes she had one other female classmate, the rest were male. After she graduated, she applied to graduate mathematics programs at Berkeley and Princeton. At the time Princeton was not accepting female students in mathematics. She was accepted at Berkeley but instead of studying she moved to Boston and began working at Mitre Corporation. It was there that she became interested in computers and programming. She worked at Mitre for one year before taking a programming job at Harvard where she worked on language translation. She then decided to go back to school and applied again to Berkeley, but also to Stanford and Harvard. In 1968 she became one of the first women in the United States to be awarded a Ph.D. from a computer science department when she was awarded her degree from Stanford University. At Stanford she worked with John McCarthy and was supported to work in artificial intelligence. The topic of her Ph.D. thesis was a computer program to play chess endgames. After graduating from Stanford, Liskov returned to Mitre to work as research staff. Liskov has led many significant projects, including the Venus operating system, a small, low-cost and interactive timesharing system; the design and implementation of CLU; Argus, the first high-level language to support implementation of distributed programs and to demonstrate the technique of promise pipelining; and Thor, an object-oriented database system. With Jeannette Wing, she developed a particular definition of . She leads the Programming Methodology Group at MIT, with a current research focus in Byzantine fault tolerance and distributed computing. Liskov is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). In 2002, she was recognized as one of the top women faculty members at MIT, and among the top 50 faculty members in the sciences in the U.S. In 2004, Barbara Liskov won the John von Neumann Medal for "fundamental contributions to programming languages, programming methodology, and distributed systems". On 19 November 2005, Barbara Liskov and Donald E. Knuth were awarded ETH Honorary Doctorates. Liskov and Knuth were also featured in the ETH Zurich Distinguished Colloquium Series. Liskov received the in the 1970s and Argus in the 1980s. The ACM cited her contributions to the practical and theoretical foundations of "programming language and system design, especially related to data abstraction, fault tolerance, and distributed computing." In 2012 she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Source:

Shafi GOLDWASSERMain achievements: cryptosystems. Shafrira Goldwasser is an American-Israeli computer scientist. She is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, and a professor of mathematical sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Born in New York City, Goldwasser obtained her B.S. (1979) in mathematics and science from Carnegie Mellon University, and M.S. (1981) and PhD (1984) in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of Manuel Blum, who is well known for advising some of the most prominent researchers in the field. She joined MIT in 1983, and in 1997 became the first holder of the RSA Professorship. She became a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science, concurrent to her professorship at MIT, in 1993. She is a member of the Theory of Computation group at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Goldwasser was a co-recipient of the 2012 Turing Award. Goldwasser's research areas include computational complexity theory, cryptography and computational number theory. She is the co-inventor of zero-knowledge proofs, which probabilistically and interactively demonstrate the validity of an assertion without conveying any additional knowledge, and are a key tool in the design of cryptographic protocols. Her work in complexity theory includes the classification of approximation problems, showing that some problems in NP remain hard even when only an approximate solution is needed. Goldwasser has twice won the Gödel Prize in theoretical computer science: first in 1993 (for "The knowledge complexity of interactive proof systems"), and again in 2001 (for "Interactive Proofs and the Hardness of Approximating Cliques"). Other awards include the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award (1996) for outstanding young computer professional of the year and the RSA Award in Mathematics (1998) for outstanding mathematical contributions to cryptography. In 2001 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 2004 she was elected to the National Academy of Science, and in 2005 to the National Academy of Engineering. She was selected as an IACR Fellow in 2007. Goldwasser received the 2008-2009 Athena Lecturer Award of the Association for Computing Machinery's Committee on Women in Computing. She is the recipient of The Franklin Institute's 2010 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science. She received the IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award in 2011, and was awarded the along with Silvio Micali for their work in the field of cryptography. Source:

Frances ALLENMain achievements: High-performance computing, parallel computing, compiler organization, optimization. Frances Elizabeth "Fran" Allen is an American computer scientist and pioneer in the field of optimizing compilers. Her achievements include seminal work in compilers, code optimization, and parallelization. She also had a role in intelligence work on programming languages and security codes for the National Security Agency. Allen was the first female IBM Fellow and in 2006 became the first woman to win the Turing Award. Allen grew up on a farm in Peru, New York and graduated from The New York State College for Teachers (now State University of New York at Albany, SUNY) with a B.Sc. degree in mathematics in 1954. She earned an M.Sc. degree in mathematics at the University of Michigan in 1957 and began teaching school in Peru, New York. Deeply in debt, she joined the Thomas J. Watson Research Center at IBM on July 15, 1957, where she taught incoming employees the basics of FORTRAN. She planned to stay only until her school loans were paid, which were ordered[clarification needed] for the Los Alamos National Lab. However, she ended up staying for her entire 45-year career. To quote her A.M. Turing Award citation: "Fran Allen's work has had an enormous impact on compiler research and practice. Both alone and in joint work with John Cocke, she introduced many of the abstractions, algorithms, and implementations that laid the groundwork for automatic program optimization technology. Allen's 1966 paper, "Program Optimization," laid the conceptual basis for systematic analysis and transformation of computer programs. This paper introduced the use of graph-theoretic structures to encode program content in order to automatically and efficiently derive relationships and identify opportunities for optimization. Her 1970 papers, "Control Flow Analysis" and "A Basis for Program Optimization" established "intervals" as the context for efficient and effective data flow analysis and optimization. Her 1971 paper with Cocke, "A Catalog of Optimizing Transformations," provided the first description and systematization of optimizing transformations. Her 1973 and 1974 papers on interprocedural data flow analysis extended the analysis to whole programs. Her 1976 paper with Cocke describes one of the two main analysis strategies used in optimizing compilers today. Allen developed and implemented her methods as part of compilers for the IBM STRETCH-HARVEST and the experimental Advanced Computing System. This work established the feasibility and structure of modern machine- and language-independent optimizers. She went on to establish and lead the PTRAN project on the automatic parallel execution of FORTRAN programs. Her PTRAN team developed new parallelism detection schemes and created the concept of the program dependence graph, the primary structuring method used by most parallelizing compilers." Allen was a professor at New York University from 1970–73. Allen became the first female IBM Fellow in 1989. In 2007, the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Award was created in her honor. Allen is a Fellow of the IEEE and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). In 2000, she was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum "for her contributions to program optimization and compiling for parallel computers." She is currently on the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, the Computer Research Associates (CRA) board and National Science Foundation's CISE Advisory Board. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Philosophical Society.[citation needed] She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994. She received the IEEE Computer Society Charles Babbage Award in 1997. In 1997, Allen was inducted into the WITI Hall of Fame. She retired from IBM in 2002 and won the Augusta Ada Lovelace Award that year from the Association for Women in Computing. In 2007, Allen was recognized for her work in high performance computing when she received the . She became the first woman recipient in the forty-year history of the award, which is considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for computing and is given by the Association for Computing Machinery. She was awarded an honorary doctorate of science degree at the winter commencement at SUNY at Albany. In interviews following the award she hoped it would give more "opportunities for women in science, computing and engineering". In 2009 she was awarded an honorary doctor of science degree from McGill university for "pioneering contributions to the theory and practice of optimizing compiler techniques that laid the foundation for modern optimizing compilers and automatic parallel execution". In her lecture presented to the ACM, Allen describes her work. Source:

Olga TAUSSKY-TODDMain achievements: Corrected David Hilbert's papers. Olga Taussky-Todd was an Austrian and later Czech-American mathematician. She is famous for her more than 300 research papers in algebraic number theory, integral matrices, and matrices in algebra and analysis. Olga Taussky was born into a Jewish family in what is now Olomouc, Czech Republic, on August 30, 1906. Her father, Julius David Taussky, was an industrial chemist and her mother, Ida Pollach, was a housewife. She was the second of three children. At the age of three, her family moved to Vienna and lived there until the middle of World War I. Later Taussky's father accepted a position as director of a vinegar factory at Linz in Upper Austria. At a young age, Taussky displayed a keen interest in mathematics. After her father died during her last year at school, she worked through the summer at her father's vinegar factory and was pressured by her family to study chemistry in order to take over her father's work. Once her older sister qualified in chemistry and took over her father's work, however, Taussky became free to study mathematics when she enrolled at the University of Vienna in the fall of 1925. Taussky worked first in algebraic number theory, with a doctorate at the University of Vienna supervised by Philipp Furtwängler, a famous number theoretician from Germany. During that time in Vienna she also attended the meetings of the Vienna Circle. Taussky is most well known for her work in matrix theory (in particular the computational stability of complex matrices) algebraic number theory, group theory, and numerical analysis. According to Gian-Carlo Rota, as a young mathematician she was hired by a group of German mathematicians to find and correct the many mathematical errors in the works of David Hilbert, so that they could be collected into a volume to be presented to him on his birthday. There was only one paper, on the continuum hypothesis, that she was unable to repair. Later, she started to use matrices to analyze vibrations of airplanes during World War II, at the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom. During this time she wrote several articles that were published by the Ministry of Aircraft Production in London. She later described herself as a torchbearer for matrix theory. In 1935, she moved to England and became a Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge University, as well as at Bryn Mawr College. Soon after, in 1938, she married the British mathematician John Todd (1911-2007), a colleague at the University of London. In 1945 the Todds emigrated to the United States and worked for the National Bureau of Standards. In 1957 she and her husband both joined the faculty of California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California. She also supervised Caltech's first female Ph.D. in Math, Lorraine Foster. Taussky retired from teaching in 1977, but continued her correspondence with other mathematicians regarding her work in matrix theory. Tausskey received the Ford Prize for an article on sum of squares published in 1970 in American Mathematical Monthly. She went on to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Vienna and an honorary DSc by the University of Southern California in 1988. She was a Fellow of the AAAS, a Lecturer and a recipient of the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class (1978). In 1993, the International Linear Algebra Society established a lecture series to honor the contributions to the field of linear algebra made by Taussky-Todd and her husband. Source:

Anna MANIMain achievements: India’s pioneering women scientists who made significant contributions in the field of solar radiation, ozone and wind energy instrumentation. Anna Mani was an Indian physicist and meteorologist. She was the Deputy Director General of the Indian Meteorological Department. She made significant contributions in the field of meteorological instrumentation. She conducted research and published numerous papers on solar radiation, ozone and wind energy measurements. Anna Mani was born in Peerumedu, Travancore. Her father was a civil engineer. She was the seventh of eight children in her family. During her childhood, she was a voracious reader. She was impressed by the activities of Gandhi during Vaikom satyagraha. Inspired by the nationalist movement, she took to wearing only Kh?d? garments. She wanted to pursue medicine, but she decided in favor of physics because she liked the subject. In 1939, she graduated from the Presidency College in Madras, with a B.Sc Honors degree in physics and chemistry. After graduating from the Presidency college, she worked under Prof. C V Raman, researching the optical properties of ruby and diamond. She authored five research papers, but she was not granted a PhD because she did not have a master's degree in physics. Then she moved to Britain to study pursue physics, but she ended up studying meteorological instruments at Imperial College London. After returning to India in 1948, she joined the Meteorological department in Pune. She published numerous research papers on meteorological instrumentation. She retired as the deputy director general of the Indian Meteorological department in 1976. Devoted to her studies and research, Mani never married. Passionate about nature, trekking and bird watching, she was a member of many scientific organizations – Indian National Science Academy, American Meteorological Society, and the International Solar Energy Society etc. In 1987, she received the INSA K. R. Ramanathan Medal for her achievements. In 1994, she suffered from a stroke that left her immobilized for the rest of her life. She passed away on August 16, 2001, in Thiruvananthapuram. Source:

Janaki AMMALJanaki Ammal Edathil Kakkat was an Indian botanist who conducted scientific research in cytogenetics and phytogeography. Her most notable work involves those on sugarcane and the eggplant. She has collected various valuable plants of medicinal and economic value from the rain forests of Kerala. Janaki Ammal was born in 1897 in Tellichery, Kerala. Her father was Dewan Bahadur Edavalath Kakkat Krishnan, sub-judge of the Madras Presidency. Her mother, Devi (1864-1941) was an illegitimate daughter of John Child Hannyngton and Kunchi Kurumbi. She had six brothers and five sisters. In her family, girls were encouraged to engage in intellectual pursuits and in the fine arts, but Ammal chose to study botany. After schooling in Tellichery, she moved to Madras where she obtained the bachelor's degree from Queen Mary's College, and an honours degree in botany from Presidency College in 1921. Under the influence of teachers at the Presidency College, Janaki Ammal acquired a passion for cytogenetics. Ammal taught at Women's Christian College, Madras, with a sojourn as a Barbour Scholar at the University of Michigan in the US where she obtained her master's degree in 1925. Returning to India, she continued to teach at the Women's Christian College. She went to Michigan again as the first Oriental Barbour Fellow and obtained her D.Sc. in 1931. Janaki is mentioned among Indian Americans of the Century in an India Currents magazine article published on January 1, 2000, by S.Gopikrishna & Vandana Kumar: "In an age when most women didn't make it past high school, would it be possible for an Indian woman to obtain a Ph.D. at one of America's finest public universities and also make seminal contributions to her field? The Kerala born Ammal was arguably the first woman to obtain a Ph.D. in botany in the U.S. (1931), and remains one of the few Asian women to be conferred a D.Sc. (honoris causa) by her alma mater, the University of Michigan. During her time at Ann Arbor she lived in the Martha Cook Building, a all-female residence hall and worked with Harley Harris Bartlett, Professor at the Department of Botany. She evolved a cross known as "Janaki Brengal", brengal being the Indian name for eggplant. Her Ph.D. thesis titled "Chromosome Studies in Nicandra Physaloides" was published in 1932. After her doctorate Janaki returned to India to take up a post as Professor of Botany at the Maharaja's College of Science, Trivandrum, and taught there from 1932 to 1934. From 1934 to 1939 she worked as a geneticist at the Sugarcane Breeding Institute, Coimbatore along with Charles Alfred Barber. Her work during these years included cytogenetic analysis of Saccharum spontaneum as well as generation of several intergeneric crosses such as Saccharum x Zea, Saccharum x Sorghum. Ammal's work at the Institute on the cytogenetics of Saccharum officinarum (sugarcane) and interspecific and intergeneric hybrids involving sugarcane and related grass species and genera such as Bamboo (bambusa) were epochal. From 1940 to 1945 she worked as Assistant Cytologist at the John Innes Horticultural Institution in London, and as cytologist at the Royal Horticultural Society at Wisley from 1945 to 1951. During this period she published counts of chromosome numbers in species such as Sclerostachya fusca. She is best remembered for co-authoring the monumental work, "Chromosome Atlas of Cultivated Plants" along with C. D. Darlington. The John Innes staff file notes a statement by Ellis Marks that "She smuggled a palm squirrel into the country and it was kept at J.I.I. for many years. Its name was 'Kapok'". She published chromosome counts in species of Rhododendron and Nerines. On the invitation of Jawaharlal Nehru, she returned to India in 1951 to reorganise the Botanical Survey of India (BSI). She was appointed as Officer on Special Duty to the BSI on 14 October 1952. She served as the Director-General of the BSI. Ammal made several intergeneric hybrids: Saccharum x Zea, Saccharum x Erianthus, Saccharum x Imperata and Saccharum x Sorghum. From then onwards, Ammal was in the service of the government of India in various capacities including heading the Central Botanical Laboratory at Allahabad, and was officer on special duty at the Regional Research Laboratory in Jammu. She worked for a brief period at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Trombay before settling down in Madras in November 1970 as an Emeritus Scientist at the Centre for Advanced Study in Botany, University of Madras. She lived and worked in the Centre's Field Laboratory at Maduravoyal near Madras until her demise in February 1984. Her obituary states "She was devoted to her studies and research until the end of her life." Aptly chosen lines from the Rig Veda that highlight her fondness for plants mark her obituary, "The sun receive thine eye, the wind thy spirit; go as thy merit is, to earth or heaven. Go, if it be thy lot, unto water; go make thine house in plants with all thy members " During the years 1939–1950 she spent in England, she did chromosome studies of a wide range of garden plants. Her studies on chromosome numbers and ploidy in many cases threw light on the evolution of species and varieties. The Chromosome Atlas of Cultivated Plants which she wrote jointly with C. D. Darlington in 1945 was a compilation that incorporated much of her own work on many species. Ammal also worked on the genera Solanum, Datura, Mentha, Cymbopogon and Dioscorea besides medicinal and other plants. She attributed the higher rate of plant speciation in the cold and humid northeast Himalayas as compared to the cold and dry northwest Himalayas to polyploidy. Also, according to her, the confluence of Chinese and Malayan elements in the flora of northeast India led to natural hybridisation between these and the native flora in this region, contributing further to plant diversification. Following her retirement, Ammal continued to work focusing special attention on medicinal plants and ethnobotany. She continued to publish the original findings of her research. In the Centre of Advanced Study Field Laboratory where she lived and worked she developed a garden of medicinal plants. She also worked on cytology and ethnobotany. As a geneticist working for the Royal Horticultural Society's Garden Wisley in the early 1950s, Dr. Janaki was investigating the effects of colchicine on a number of woody plants, including Magnolia, where a stock solution in water is made up and applied to the growing tip of young seedlings once the cotyledons (seed leaves) have fully expanded. Doubling of chromosomes occurs, giving the cells twice the usual number. The resulting plants have heavier textured leaves; their flowers are variable, often with thicker tepals, helping them last longer. As Magnolia kobus seeds were available in quantity, a number of seedlings were treated by Dr Janaki Ammal and ultimately planted on Battleston Hill at Wisley. Ammal was elected Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1935, and of the Indian National Science Academy in 1957. The University of Michigan conferred an honorary LL.D. on her in 1956. The Government of India conferred the Padma Shri on her in 1977. In 2000, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry of the Government of India instituted the National Award of Taxonomy in her name in 2000. Source:

Anandi JOSHIAnandi Joshi was one of the first Indian female physicians. She was the first female of Indian origin to study and graduate with a degree in medicine in the United States. She is also believed to be the first woman to set foot on American soil from India. Anandi Joshi was born as Yamuna, in Kalyan of the Thane district in present-day Maharashtra, to an orthodox Hindu family. Her family used to be landlords in Kalyan but lost their economic wealth. As was the practice at that time, Yamuna was married at the age of nine to Gopalrao, a widower almost twenty years her senior, due to pressure laid by her family. After marriage, her husband renamed her Anandi. Gopalrao worked as a postal clerk in Kalyan. Later, he was transferred to Alibag, and then, finally, to Calcutta (today, Kolkata). He was a progressive thinker, and supported education for women, which was not very prevalent at the time. It was common for Brahmins in those times to be proficient in Sanskrit. However, influenced by Lokhitawadi's Shat Patre, Gopalrao regarded learning English as more pragmatic than learning Sanskrit. Noticing Anandi's interest, he helped her receive an education and learn English. At the age of fourteen, Anandi gave birth to a boy, but the child lived only for ten days because the medical care necessary for his survival was unavailable. This situation proved to be a turning point in Anandibai's life, and inspired her to become a physician. Gopalrao encouraged Anandi to study medicine. In 1880, he sent a letter to Royal Wilder, a well-known American missionary, stating Anandibai's interest in studying medicine in the United States, and inquiring about a suitable post in the US for himself. Wilder offered to help if the couple would convert to Christianity. This proposition, however, was not acceptable to the Joshi couple. Wilder published the correspondence in his Princeton's Missionary Review. Theodicia Carpenter, a resident of Roselle, New Jersey, happened to read it while waiting to see her dentist. Anandi's desire to study medicine, and Gopalrao's support for his wife impressed her, and she wrote to them offering Anandibai accommodation in America. An exchange of many letters between Anandibai and Theodicia ensued in which they discussed, among other things, Hindu culture and religion. While the Joshi couple was in Calcutta, Anandi's health was declining. She suffered from weakness, constant headaches, occasional fever, and, sometimes, breathlessness. Theodicia sent her medicines from America, without results. In 1883, Gopalrao was transferred to Serampore, and he decided to send Anandibai by herself to America for her medical studies despite her poor health. Though apprehensive, Gopalrao convinced her to set an example for other women by pursuing higher education. A physician couple named Thorborn suggested Anandi Joshi to apply to the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania. On learning of Anandibai's plans to pursue higher education in the West, orthodox Hindu society censured her very strongly. Many Christians supported her decision, but they wanted her to convert to Christianity. Anandi Joshi addressed the community at Serampore College Hall, explaining her decision to go to America and obtain a medical degree. She discussed the persecution she and her husband had endured. She stressed the need for Hindu female doctors in India, and talked about her goal of opening a medical college for women in India. She also pledged that she would not convert to Christianity. Her speech received publicity, and financial contributions started pouring in from all over India. Anandi Joshi traveled to New York from Calcutta by ship, chaperoned by two English female acquaintances of the Thorborns. In New York, Theodicia Carpenter received her in June 1883. Anandi Joshi wrote to the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, asking to be admitted to their medical program, (which was the second women's medical program in the world). Rachel Bodley, the dean of the college, enrolled her. Anandi Joshi began her medical education at age 19. In America, her declining health worsened because of the cold weather and unfamiliar diet. She contracted tuberculosis. Nevertheless, she graduated with an MD on 11 March 1886; the topic of her thesis was "Obstetrics among the Aryan Hindoos". On her graduation, Queen Victoria sent her a congratulatory message. In late 1886, Anandi Joshi returned to India, receiving a hero's welcome. The princely state of Kolhapur appointed her as the physician-in-charge of the female ward of the local Albert Edward Hospital. Anandi Joshi died early the next year on 26 February 1887 before turning 22. Her death was mourned throughout India. Her ashes were sent to Theodicia Carpenter, who placed them in her family cemetery in Poughkeepsie, New York. Source:

Asima CHATTERJEEAsima Chatterjee was an Indian chemist noted for her work in the fields of organic chemistry and phytomedicine. Her most notable work includes research on vinca alkaloids, and the development of anti-epileptic and anti-malarial drugs. She also authored a considerable volume of work on medicinal plants of the Indian subcontinent. Asima Chatterjee was born on 23 September 1917 in Bengal. An excellent student, Chatterjee grew up in Calcutta, attending school and subsequently enrolling at the Scottish Church College, of the University of Calcutta, graduating with honours in chemistry in 1936. Asima Chatterjee graduated in 1938 with a master's degree in organic chemistry from the University of Calcutta, completing a doctoral degree there in 1944. Her doctoral research focused on the chemistry of plant products and synthetic organic chemistry. Among her notable instructors at the time were Prafulla Chandra Roy and Prof S.N. Bose. Additionally she also had research experience from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and the Caltech. Chaterjee's research centered around natural products chemistry and resulted in anti-convulsive, anti-malarial and chemotherapy drugs. She joined the Lady Brabourne College, of the University of Calcutta in 1940 as the founding head of the department of chemistry. In 1944, Chatterjee became the second woman to be conferred a Doctorate of Science by an Indian University. In 1954, Asima Chatterjee joined the University College of Science of the University of Calcutta, as reader in pure chemistry. In 1962, Chatterjee was appointed the prestigious Khaira professorship of Chemistry at the University of Calcutta, a position she held till 1982. Awards and recognition: She was a Premchand Roychand Scholar of the University of Calcutta. She was the second woman after to be conferred Doctorate of Science by an Indian University, the University of Calcutta in 1944. From 1962 to 1982, she was the Khaira Professor of Chemistry, one of the most prestigious and coveted chairs of the University of Calcutta. In 1972, she was appointed as the Honorary Coordinator of the Special Assistance Programme to intensify teaching and research in natural product chemistry, sanctioned by the University Grants Commission (India). In 1960, she was elected a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi. In 1961, she received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in chemical science, in the process becoming the first female recipient of this award. In 1975, she was conferred the prestigious Padma Bhushan and became the first lady scientist to be elected as the General President of the Indian Science Congress Association. She was conferred the D Sc (Honoris causa) degree by a number of universities. She was nominated by the President of India as a Member of the Rajya Sabha from February 1982 to May 1990. Source:

Pelageia KOCHINAPelageia Polubarinova's parents were Yakov Stepanovich Polubarinov, an accountant, and Anisiya Panteleimonovna. Pelageia was the second eldest of the family of four children, having one older and one younger brother and a younger sister. It was in Astrakhan, the city of her birth, that Pelageia began her schooling. The city is situated in the delta of the Volga River, 100 km from the Caspian Sea. Yakov Stepanovich Polubarinov decided that Astrakhan did not provide the educational opportunities that he wanted for his four children, so the family moved to St Petersburg which was the capital of the Russian Empire at this time. While Pelageia Polubarinova was attending the Pokrovskii Women's Gymnasium in St Petersburg, World War I broke out. Then the town of St Petersburg had a German name and the war of 1914 led to much anti-German feeling, so the city's name was changed to its Russian version of Petrograd. She graduated from the Gymnasium in 1916 and entered the women's programme which was affiliated to the University of Petrograd. At first she was supported by her family but her father Yakov Stepanovich died in 1918 and so Pelageia Polubarinova took a job at the Main Geophysical Laboratory to bring in enough money to allow her to continue her education. It was hard work studying pure mathematics and also working at the Laboratory but things became even worse when she and her sister both contracted tuberculosis. Pelageia Polubarinova recovered and went on to complete her degree course, graduating with a degree in pure mathematics in 1921. Her sister did not make a recovery, however, and died as a result of the illness. After graduating Pelageia Polubarinova continued working at the Main Geophysical Laboratory under A A Friedmann. At that time Friedmann was working on hydrodynamics writing his two part thesis The Hydromechanics of a Compressible Fluid; the first part was on the kinematics of vortices and the second on the dynamics of a compressible fluid. It was this work with Friedmann which turned Pelageia Polubarinova's interests towards hydrodynamics and this would be the focus of much of the work she undertook throughout her life. Nikolai Yevgrafovich Kochin graduated from the University of Petrograd in 1923. As an undergraduate he had already met Pelageia Polubarinova and the two found that they had much in common for Kochin's research was on meteorology, gas dynamics and shock waves in compressible fluids. Kochin was appointed to Leningrad State University in 1924. This was the new name that the University of Petrograd took on when the city changed its name again in 1924 from Petrograd to Leningrad. In 1925 Pelageia Polubarinova and Nikolai Yevgrafovich Kochin married by simply registering the event. This was all that was necessary in Russia following the revolution. Kochina had two daughters Ira and Nina following her marriage. Because of this she left her post at the Main Geophysical Laboratory in order to look after her children but it did not mean that she gave up her academic studies for she continued to undertake research during the following ten years and also taught at various schools and Institutes. In 1934 she returned to a full time post being appointed as professor at Leningrad University. In the following year her husband Kochin was appointed to Moscow University and the family moved to Moscow. Kochina gave up the teaching that she had been doing and turned her attention to full time research. She was appointed as a researcher in the Mechanics Section of the Steklov Mathematical Institute where her husband had been appointed. In 1939 Kochin became Head of the Mechanics Section of the Mechanics Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences when his section became part of the Academy. Kochina continued her researches in the Mechanics Institute and in the following year she was awarded a Doctorate in Physical and Mathematical Science. Of course the year 1940 when Kochina received her doctorate was after the start of World War II. The German armies reached the outskirts of Moscow in late 1941 and Kochina and her two daughters were evacuated to Kazan. Her husband, however, remained in Moscow carrying out military research. By 1943 the German army had suffered defeats by Soviet troops and Moscow was safe enough for Kochina to return. This she did, but her husband became ill and died before the end of the war. At the time of his death he had been in the middle of lecture courses and Kochina took over the courses and completed delivering them. On the 4 December 1946 Kochina was elected a Corresponding Member of the Division of Technical Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences. By this time she was lecturing on her research, not only at the Mechanics Institute, but also at the Hydrometeorological and Aircraft Building Institute and at the Aviation Academy which was attached to Moscow State University. Also in 1946 Kochina was awarded the State Prize for her major contributions. Although by 1958 she was nearly 60 years old, the Academy proposed a major task for her to carry out. She was elected Academician of the Siberian Branch on 28 March 1958 and asked to take on the task of building the Siberian Branch. For the next twelve years she worked in Novosibirsk where she was Director at the Hydrodynamics Institute and also Head of the Department of Theoretical Mechanics at the University of Novosibirsk. She was named Hero of Socialist Labour in 1969. In 1970 Kochina returned to Moscow where she became the Director in the Mathematical Methods of Mechanics Section of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1979 Kochina was awarded the Order of the Friendship of Nations, then in 1994 an international conference was held in St Petersburg on complex analysis and free boundary layer problems to celebrate her 95th birthday. Kochina delivered the opening address at the Conference. In 1996 she was awarded the M V Keldysh Gold Medal for a series of studies into hydrodynamics and the theory of filtration. Let us now say a little about Kochina's two main areas of mathematical research, namely fluid mechanics and the history of mathematics. Fluid mechanics was her main research area and we will look briefly at a number of her publications. An application of the theory of linear differential equations to some problems of ground-water motion published in 1940 is quite typical of many of her papers. After considering the problem of conformal mapping on the half-plane of finite polygonal regions bounded by straight lines and circular arcs she applied these ideas to the physical problem of the two-dimensional seepage flow of ground water in an earth dam of a particular shape. Again looking at porous media, Kochina studied the flow of fluids into oil wells and the problem of the motion of subterranean water in a medium composed of horizontal strata of ground of various permeabilities. In 1947 she wrote a major survey The theory of seepage of a fluid in porous media examining many contributions to the theory of seepage of an incompressible fluid through a porous medium. Other major texts included Theory of motion of ground water in 1952 with a second completely revised and enlarged edition appearing in 1977. Komkov, reviewing this second edition, wrote: "This book is a widely quoted source for researchers in filtration theory. Updating of its contents is most timely in view of the recent interest in mathematical modelling of oil field development techniques. As well as studying the application of mathematics to physical problems, Kochina sometimes published papers on solving mathematical problems motivated by the physics. For example in 1948 she studied numerical solutions of a partial differential equation in On a nonlinear partial differential equation arising in the theory of filtration. In 1991 a volume of selected works by Kochina on hydrodynamics and filtration theory was published. The papers in this book are divided into eight sections: Kinematics of atmospheric motions; Hydrodynamics; Applications of the analytical theory of linear differential equations in filtration theory; Steady flow in the presence of porous media; Unsteady motion of groundwater; Problems on oil filtration; Gas filtration through coal layers; and Filtration of liquids through porous media. Finally we must look at the important contribution Kochina has made to the history of mathematics. The first point that we should make here is that Kochina's publications were the result of research undertaken practically throughout her whole life. She published many works on , the first being "The scientific work of S V Kovalevskaya" in 1950. She published the article Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass (on the 150-year jubilee) in 1966 and, in 1985, she published the major text Karl Weierstrass, 1815-1897. R L Cooke reviewed this book and wrote: "This biography is a welcome contribution to our understanding of Weierstrass. The author has consulted an enormous number of sources and expounds the results of this research in clear, comprehensible language. The book contains a detailed biography of Weierstrass' entire life and as thorough an exposition of his mathematical work as is possible in a study of this scope. When one considers that Kochina was 86 years old when this brilliant scholarly book was published, one can only marvel. But, as if this achievement was not enough for someone of her age, Kochina published another major biography two years later: Gosta Mittag-Leffler 1846-1927. R L Cooke also reviewed this book and wrote: "This book, devoted to a nineteenth-century mathematician who has long deserved a good full-length biography, is very welcome indeed. ... The author has worked on [the correspondence of Mittag-Leffler] (except for a 12-year hiatus when she was in Novosibirsk) for several decades. The result, in the present case, is an excellent biography of Mittag-Leffler that does not allow his considerable contributions as a mathematician to be overshadowed by his extensive social activities on behalf of mathematics. There are chapters devoted to his family, his education, his public activity, his scientific activity, his relations with , and finally, Mittag-Leffler, the man." In 1988 Kochina published a 624 page book on her reminiscences and works. The book is described by the publisher as follows: "The chief part of the book of the outstanding Soviet specialist in fluid mechanics, the teacher of several generations of mechanical engineers, academician P Ya Kochina, is taken up by her "Reminiscences", which have been revised and supplemented since the first edition in 1974. In addition to the autobiographical material in the "Reminiscences", there are striking portraits of outstanding scholars - contemporaries of the author, and a discussion of the major events in her scholarly life. The author travelled a great deal both in her native land and abroad, which is reflected in her brilliantly written travel notes. The book also contains articles devoted to various problems of applied fluid mechanics." Further works were to appear by Kochina. She published a major biography of A A Friedmann in 1989, jointly written with A S Monin and V I Khlebnikov. She also wrote a biography of her husband Nikolai Yevgrafovich Kochin which the publisher described as follows: "This book is devoted to the life and scientific work of the outstanding Russian scholar, Academician Nikolai Yevgrafovich Kochin (1901-1944), who contributed greatly to hydromechanics and theoretical meteorology. The book also gives an account of the teachers of N Y Kochin and his colleagues: V I Smirnov, A A Friedmann, Aleksei Krylov, I M Vinogradov, S A Chaplygin, S L Sobolev, S A Khristianovich, I A Kibel et al. The author knew all these men and shares her memories of them." In 1999, when Kochina was 100 years old, she published Some properties of a fractional-linear transformation written jointly with N N Kochina. We quote from their own summary in that paper: "We point out seven properties of a fractional-linear analytic function, many of which are also preserved in the domain of real variables. In this and other cases, these properties are important for applications to problems of underground hydromechanics." Source:

Olga LADYZHENSKAYAOlga Alexandrovna Ladyzhenskaya's father was Aleksandr Ivanovich Ladyzhenskii, descended from Russian nobility, and her mother, Anna Mikhailovna, was from Estonia. Olga's birth place Kologriv was surrounded by 'wild' forests, near the picturesque river Unzha. Her mother was a hard-working housewife, looking after her husband and three daughters of whom Olga was the youngest. She was the closest to her father who was a mathematics teacher and the catalyst for Olga's life long interest in mathematics. He started teaching his daughters mathematics in the summer of 1930 beginning with giving explanations of the basic notions of geometry, then he formulated a theorem and in turn made his daughters prove it. It became apparent that Olga showed a strong talent for logical thinking from an early age. Not only did she love to discuss mathematics with her father but she also studied calculus with him as an equal. Olga's grandfather, Gennady Ladyzhensky, was a famous painter. All her life Olga carefully kept beautiful landscape paintings by her grandfather, some of them depicting fine views of the Unzha. Their house contained many books, including books on history and fine arts. Books were almost the only source of cultural education, especially since Kologriv was too far from cultural centres. One would assume she had a pleasant upbringing in a quiet rural area with parents ensuring her mathematical gift was realized. In fact this was not the case, though the story could only be told after the communist rule of Russia ended. During Olga's upbringing, times were very hard especially for intellectuals descended from Russian nobility for whom everything was in short supply including food, paper and clothes. However, this did not stop her father inspiring his pupils and his daughters. Olga's two sisters were forbidden to finish their studies, being expelled from school, but the authorities allowed Olga to finish her studies. However, Olga had problems continuing her education since she was the daughter of an "enemy of the nation". When she was fifteen years old, in 1937, her father was arrested by Stalinist authorities and executed without trial. Alexander Solschenizyn recalls in his epic of The Gulag Archipelago that although Olga's father had been warned by a peasant that he was on the list of enemies of the state, he refused to run and hide. He stood his ground and continued with his work since he believed his students depended on him. It is believed that he died in an NKVD (Narodny Kommissariat Vnutrennikh Del) torture chamber during the week between 23 and 30 October 1937 (one of many excellent teachers killed there). The NKVD was the forerunner of the KGB and it is important to note that in 1956 all the teachers killed by them were fully exonerated. During this time millions of suspected enemies were killed so that Stalin remained unchallenged as Soviet leader until his death. Reports have it that all the men from the old and well-off noble Ladyzhenskii family, who had not left Russia, vanished by the start of 1940s. This tragedy deeply affected Ladyzhenskaya and the family was placed in a very difficult situation with her mother and sisters having to do craft work and make dresses, shoes, soap, as this was their only way for their family to survive. In 1939, despite leaving secondary school with excellent marks, Olga was forbidden to enter Leningrad State University as her father was thought of as an "enemy of the nation". She was given a placement in the Pokrovski Teachers' Training College, remarkably only based on her word, as Leningrad (now St Petersburg) had not yet returned her academic documents. It is possible she received this placement partly due to the fact that the state policy had changed during the difficult wartime period. When World War II began she was left with no choice but to leave Leningrad, first moving to Gorodets where she taught in an orphanage, and then moving with her mother and older sister to return to Kologriv. There she taught mathematics at the same local secondary school that her father had previously taught in. Following the same footsteps as her father, she taught not only at school, but also at home without payment. In 1943 she became a student at Moscow State University (MGU) due to the intervention of the mother of one of her pupils who, on returning to Moscow, persuaded the rector to invite Olga to MGU. It was not easy for her to leave her teaching post and there were many battles with the school authorities before she could become a student. At University Olga's love of mathematics blossomed and she was awarded a Stalin stipend and a labourers ration card without which she would have been unable to survive. It was here where she first started studying algebra, number theory and subsequently partial differential equations. She became interested in the theory of partial differential equations due to the influence of Petrovsky as well as the book by Hilbert and Courant. Being a talented student, the authorities often ignored absences at compulsory lectures while she attended research seminars including the algebra seminars of Kurosh and Delone and the seminar on differential equations headed by Stepanov, Petrovsky, Tikhonov, Vekua and their students and colleagues. She was later invited to attend Gelfand's seminar. At the end of her fourth year she organized a youth seminar to study the theory of partial differential equations and persuaded Myshkis, a student of Petrovsky, to go with her to ask Petrovsky to chair the seminar. In addition to chairing this seminar, he attended the seminar for the whole year, clearing up questions and expressing his opinions on the topics. Not only did friends and colleagues of Petrovsky come to the seminars, but it also prompted him to write a paper published in Uspekhi Matematicheskikh Nauk in 1946 which was highly influential. Olga chose the following two problems from that paper: Find the least restrictive conditions on the behaviour of parabolic equations under which the uniqueness theorem holds for the Cauchy problem. For hyperbolic equations, construct convergent difference schemes for the Cauchy problem and for initial-boundary problems. After she graduated in 1947, Olga moved once again to Leningrad due to family circumstances and became a postgraduate at the Leningrad State University on the recommendation of MGU. There she began her long-standing friendship with Smirnov, who was in charge of several branches of mathematics as well as seismology, hydrodynamics and aerodynamics. It was also here that she was strongly influenced to study the equations of mathematical physics. During that year she married Andrei Alexevich Kiselev, a specialist in the number theory and history of mathematics, in the city of Leningrad. They were a loving couple yet their marriage was brief as Andrei wanted to have children, but Olga did not as she wished to devote her life to mathematics and she felt that children might be an obstacle. Olga remained single for the rest of her life. In 1949 Olga defended her doctoral dissertation (comparable to an habilitation) which was on the development of finite differences methods for linear and quasilinear hyperbolic systems of partial differential equations, formally supervised by Sobolev though in practice it was Smirnov. Her aim was to prove the solubility of boundary and initial-boundary problems. In the early 1950's the theory of PDEs was popular with researchers due to progress in physics which needed new mathematical methods for theoretical and numerical study. Olga started to prepare her diploma thesis on a problem suggested by Petrovsky. Among her teachers were Kurosh, Stepanov, Petrovsky and Gelfand. In 1951 she completed her thesis but it could not be published until the death of Stalin in 1953. In another article it has been said that it was delayed until 1952 due to "technical difficulties with typesetting the formulas". Her work was praised by Petrovsky and referees, and was recommended for publication in Matematicheskii Sbornik. Her first book published in 1953 called Mixed Problems for a Hyperbolic Equation used the finite difference method to prove theoretical results, mainly the solvability of initial boundary-value problems for general second-order hyperbolic equations. In 1954, she was made a teachers at Leningrad State University and initially became a researcher at the Steklov Mathematical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. As in the previous decade, during the 1960s she continued obtaining results about existence and uniqueness of solutions of linear and quasilinear elliptic, parabolic, and hyperbolic partial differential equations. She then studied the equations of elasticity, the Schrödinger equation, the linearized Navier-Stokes equations, and Maxwell's equations. The Navier-Stokes equations were of great interest to her and continued to be so for the rest of her life. In 1961 another of her books, The Mathematical Theory of Viscous Incompressible Flow was an outstanding success in the area of nonlinear problems of mathematical physics and has since become a classic. Many papers written jointly by Olga and Nina Ural'tseva were devoted to the investigation of quasilinear elliptic and parabolic equations of the second order. At the start of the last century Sergei Bernstein proposed an approach to the study of the classical solvability of boundary-value problems for equations based on a priori estimates for solutions as well as describing conditions that are necessary for such solvability. From the mid-1950's Olga and her students made advances in the study of boundary-value problems for quasilinear elliptic and parabolic equations. They developed a complete theory for the solvability of boundary-value problems for uniformly parabolic and uniformly elliptic quasilinear second-order equations and of the smoothness of generalized solutions. One result gave the solution of Hilbert's 19th problem for one second-order equation. The following are a few of the numerous awards and achievements in Ladyzhenskaya's life. In 1954, and again in 1961, she was awarded the First Prize of the Leningrad State University. From 1961 to 1991 she held the position of the Head of the Laboratory of Mathematical Physics at the Steklov Mathematical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1969 she received the Chebyshev Prize of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the State Prize of the USSR. She was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1981), a foreign member of the The German Academy of Scientists Leopoldina (1985) and of the Accademia dei Lincei (1989), a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1990), and a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2001). She was awarded the S V Kovalevsky prize in 1992, an honorary doctorate from the University of Bonn on 13 May 2002, and the Golden Lomonosov Medal, the Ioffe Medal, and the St Petersburg University Medal in 2003. In 1998, she delivered the John von Neumann Lecture at the SIAM Annual Meeting in Toronto. From 1959 she was a member of the St Petersburg Mathematical Society when the Society was recreated and she served as its Vice-President from 1970 to 1990 and its President between 1990 and 1998, after which she was elected Honorary Member of the Society. In the Museum of Science (Boston, USA) Olga Ladyhenskaya's name is among other influential mathematicians of the 20th century carved on a large marble desk in the Mathematics Exhibition Hall. The year 1989 brought about the end of Communist rule and the turn towards democracy and market economy in Russia. Russian mathematicians could travel more freely and some visited Western countries for the first time. Olga had not been allowed to travel outside Eastern Europe, apart from in 1958 when she attended the International Congress of Mathematicians in Edinburgh, and not again until 30 years later in 1988. It was only after the death of Stalin that visitors were allowed to enter the Soviet Union and have the opportunity to meet scientists. It was then that Leray saw the sights of Leningrad for the first time, including the Hermitage, Peterhof, and on meeting Olga realized that they had been researching the same topics. When Olga first started to work on the Navier-Stokes equation, she was unaware of the work of Leray and Eberhard Hopf. Think what a powerful team they could have been had they worked together. Olga, was not only interested in mathematics and science, but she had a passion for arts and was an active participant in the intellectual community of St Petersburg. Olga's reputation as an independent spirit was furthered by her friendship with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the author and dissident. Anna Akhmatova a famous Russian poet, knew Ladyzhenskaya so well that she devoted a poem to her. She was a nature lover especially of animals, mushrooms and flowers and she took pleasure in watching squirrels climb trees and feeding sea gulls out of her hand. She was an enthusiastic traveller. Her deep religious beliefs strengthened her amazing character. She had the gift of being a wonderful storyteller when sharing her stories with friends. She was touched by many things such as injustice and the misfortunes of others; she helped lonely and the destitute. Once a member of the city council of people's deputies, she helped mathematicians and their families in Leningrad to get free accommodation. She openly expressed her views on social matters, even during the time of totalitarian political regime, often neglecting her own safety. She died unexpectedly in her sleep on 12 January 2004 shortly before her 82nd birthday. She loved St Petersburg but she was also a sun worshipper and had been due to be in Florida from January 12th during the long dark days of winter in St Petersburg. However on the eve of 11 January she went to rest before her long trip and passed away. Two days before her death her spirits were high, she had sketched a paper on some computational aspects in hydrodynamics and planned to finish it in Florida. Even up till her death was she coping with the challenge of serious eye problems affecting her sight especially during winter darkness so she used special pencils for writing. Source:

Elisaveta KARAMICHAILOVAMain achievements: Cosmic ray, radioluminescence and ionization studies. First observation of neutron radiation together with . Elisabeth Ivanova Kara-Michailova, alternatively Elisabeth Karamichailova was a Bulgarian physicist of Bulgarian and English origin. She was among the handful of female nuclear physics pioneers at the beginning of the 20th century, established the first practical courses of particle physics in Bulgaria and was the first woman to hold a professorial title in the country. Elisabeth Karamichailova was born in 1897 in Vienna, to Ivan Mikhaylov and Mary Slade. Both her parents had studied at the University of Vienna - Ivan, born in Shumen, was studying medicine, while Mary, a native of Minster Lovell in Oxfordshire, studied music. After her father graduated in 1907, the family remained in Vienna for two years before moving to Bulgaria in 1909 where they acquired a spacious house in central Sofia. Karamichailova grew up in both an artistic and scientific environment. Her father turned the upper floor of his house into a Red Cross Hospital where he treated his patients without requiring payment. She enrolled in the Sofia Girls College and graduated there in 1917, after which she departed to study at the University of Vienna. In 1922 Karamichailova graduated as a PhD in Physics and Mathematics. She wrote her thesis, entitled "About Electric Figures on Different Materials, Especially On Crystals" under the direction of Karl Przibram. Karamichailova continued her work at the Institute for Radium Studies afterwards, becoming particularly interested in radioluminescence. She cooperated with observed a specific type of previously unknown radiation emitted from polonium, which would later be confirmed by James Chadwick as neutron radiation, leading to his discovery of neutrons. In 1933 the position of "research assistant", under which she worked in Vienna, was terminated. Karamichailova had to continue her research without tuition until 1935, when she obtained a 3-year Alfred Yarrow Research Fellowship from Girton College, Cambridge. She was subsequently employed at the Cavendish Laboratory. In December 1937, she applied for a position as a docent in Experimental Physics at Sofia University. Karamichailova managed to extend her scholarship by 10 months, and finally returned to Bulgaria in 1939, where she was appointed as a docent of Experimental Atomistics with Radioactivity at SU. She set up an atomic physics course, introducing the latest knowledge from her studies in Austria and England and some of her equipment. The outbreak of World War II halted any further expansion of nuclear research activities. Her studies now involved cosmic rays as well. Karamichailova used photographic plates to continue her work in this field, which she had collaborated on with . She attempted to continue the study of multiple ionization, but this was impossible without the sophisticated equipment she had access to while in England. When Karamichailova began her work in Sofia in 1940, she only had a microscope and a dark room. After the left-wing uprising in 1944, the newly established far-left authorities in Bulgaria labeled Karamichailova as "unreliable" due to her anti-communist views and prohibited her from going abroad. She continued her work in the field of radioactivity in Bulgaria, initially at Sofia University and later, at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, where she received the title of "professor". Karamichailova died of cancer in 1968, most likely from long-term radiation exposure. Source:

Marietta BLAUMain achievements: Using nuclear emulsions to detect neutrons. Nominated for the 1950 Nobel Prize in Physics by Erwin Schrödinger. Marietta Blau was an Austrian physicist. Blau was born in a middle-class Jewish family, to Mayer (Markus) Blau, a court lawyer and music publisher, and his wife, Florentine Goldzweig. After having obtained the general certificate of education from the girls high school run by the Association for the Extended Education of Women, she studied physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna from 1914 to 1918; her PhD graduation was in March 1919. Blau is credited with developing (photographic) nuclear emulsions that were usefully able to image and accurately measure high energy nuclear particles and events. Additionally, this established a method to accurately study reactions caused by cosmic ray events. Her nuclear emulsions significantly advanced the field of particle physics in her time. For her work she was nominated for the 1950 Nobel Prize in Physics by Erwin Schrödinger. From 1919 to 1923, Blau held several positions in industrial and University research institutions in Austria and Germany; in 1921, she moved to Berlin to work at a manufacturer of x-ray tubes, a position she left in order to become an assistant at the Institute for Medical Physics at the University of Frankfurt am Main. From 1923 on, she worked as an unpaid scientist at the Institute for Radium Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. A stipend by the Austrian Association of University Women made it possible for her to do research also in Göttingen and Paris (1932/1933). In her Vienna years, Blau's main interest was the development of the photographic method of particle detection. The methodical goals which she pursued were the identification of particles, in particular alpha-particles and protons, and the determination of their energy based on the characteristics of the tracks they left in emulsions; there, she developed a photographic emulsion technique used in the study of cosmic rays, being the first scientist use nuclear emulsions to detect neutrons. For this work, Blau and her former student Hertha Wambacher received the Lieben Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1937. It was her greatest success when, also in 1937, she and Wambacher discovered "disintegration stars" in photographic plates that had been exposed to cosmic radiation at an altitude of 2,300 metres (≈7,500 feet) above sea level. These stars are the patterns of particle tracks from nuclear reactions (spallation events) of cosmic-ray particles with nuclei of the photographic emulsion. Because of her Jewish descent, Blau had to leave Austria in 1938 after the country's annexation by Nazi Germany, a fact which caused a severe break in her scientific career. She first went to Oslo. Then, through the intercession of Albert Einstein, she obtained a teaching position at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional in Mexico City and later at Vasco de Quiroga University. But since conditions in Mexico made research extremely difficult for her, she seized an opportunity to move to the United States in 1944. In the United States, Blau worked in industry until 1948, afterwards (until 1960) at Columbia University, Brookhaven National Laboratory and the University of Miami. At these institutions, she was responsible for the application of the photographic method of particle detection in high-energy experiments at particle accelerators. In 1960, Blau returned to Austria and conducted scientific work at the Institute for Radium Research until 1964 – again without pay. She headed a working group analyzing particle-track photographs from experiments at CERN and supervised a dissertation in this field. In 1962, she received the Erwin Schrödinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, but an attempt to make her also a corresponding member of the Academy was not successful. Marietta Blau died in Vienna from cancer in 1970. Her illness was related to her unprotected handling of radioactive substances as well as her cigarette smoking over many years. No obituary appeared in any scientific publication. Source :

Kamala SOHONIEMain achievements: First Indian woman to get a Ph.D in a scientific discipline in a British university. Kamala Sohonie (née Bhagvat) was an Indian biochemist. She was the first Indian woman to get a Ph.D in a scientific discipline. Kamala Sohonie was born in 1912 in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India. Her father, Narayanarao Bhagvat, was a chemist. Kamala graduated in 1933 with a B.Sc degree in chemistry (principal) and physics (subsidiary) from Bombay University. She then applied to the Indian Institute of Science for a research fellowship, but her application was turned down by the then Director Prof. C V Raman on the grounds that women were not competent enough to pursue research. After some persuasion, she was granted admission at the IISc, the first woman to be admitted, on the condition that she would be on probation during the first year of her research. While Kamala Bhagvat was not the first Indian woman to get a PhD in the sciences- (who became Director General of the Botanical Survey of India) got her PhD in 1930 while Kamala Bhagvat got her degree in the late 30s. However, she was the first Indian woman to get a PhD in the sciences at a British university. Kamala agreed to Prof. C.V Raman's conditions and started to work at IISc in 1933. Her mentor was Sri. Srinivasayya. Prof. Raman was impressed by her performance and gave her permission to pursue further research. She worked on proteins present in food items, and the research earned her an M.Sc degree in biochemistry. She was invited to Cambridge University to work under Dr. Derek Richter in the Frederick G. Hopkins laboratory. She then worked under Dr. Robin Hill, and discovered the cellular enzyme cytochrome. She earned a PhD degree from the Cambridge University for her studies on cytochrome c. Her research findings were very short, which consisted of only 40 pages. She returned to India in 1939. She was appointed as the Professor and Head of biochemistry department at Lady Hardinge Medical College in New Delhi. Later, she worked at the Nutrition Research Lab, Koonoor. After marrying Mr. M.V Sohonie in 1947, she moved to Mumbai. She joined the Royal Institute of Science in Bombay as the professor of biochemistry department. At the institute, she worked on the nutritional aspect of legumes. She was presented with the Rashtrapati Award for her work on the drink 'Neera' which is an important food for malnourished children. Kamala Sohonie collapsed and died shortly after being honored in a ceremony organized by the Indian Council of Medical Research in New Delhi. Source:

Nancy ROMANMain achievements: Planning of the
Nancy Grace Roman is an American astronomer who was one of the first female executives at NASA. She is known to many as the "Mother of Hubble" for her role in planning the Hubble Space Telescope. Throughout her career, Roman has also been an active public speaker and educator, and an advocate for women in the sciences. Roman was born in Nashville, Tennessee to music teacher Georgia Smith Roman and geophysicist Irwin Roman. Because of her father’s work, the family relocated to Oklahoma soon after Roman's birth. Roman and her parents moved to Houston, New Jersey, and to Michigan and Nevada later on. After 1955, she lived in Washington, DC. Roman considered her parents to be major influences in her interest in science. Outside of her work Roman enjoyed going to lectures and concerts and was active in the American Association of University Women. When Roman was eleven years old she showed interest in astronomy by forming an astronomy club among her classmates in Nevada. She and her classmates got together and learned about constellations from books once a week. Although discouraged by those around her, Roman knew by the time she was in high school that she wanted to pursue her passion for astronomy. She attended Western High School in Baltimore where she participated in an accelerated program and graduated in three years. Roman attended Swarthmore College in 1946 where she received her Bachelor of Arts in Astronomy. While she studied there, she worked at the Sproul Observatory. After this she went on to receive her PhD in the same field at the University of Chicago in 1949. She stayed at the university for six more years working at the Yerkes Observatory, sometimes traveling to the McDonald Observatory in Texas to work as a research associate with W.W. Morgan. The research position was not permanent so Roman became an instructor and later an assistant professor. Roman eventually left her job at the university because of the difficulty for a woman at the time to receive tenure for a research position. Roman continued to be involved with her alma maters as she worked on the Board of Managers for Swarthmore College from 1980 to 1988. Whilst working at Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago, Roman observed the star AG Draconis and serendipitously discovered that its emission spectrum had completely changed since earlier observations. She later credited the publication of that discovery as a stroke of luck that substantially raised her profile within the astronomical community, contributing to her career progression. After leaving the University of Chicago, Roman went to the Naval Research Laboratory and entered the radio astronomy program. Roman’s work at the NRL included using nonthermal radio source spectra and doing geodetic work. In the program she became the head of the microwave spectroscopy section. At a lecture by Harold Urey, Roman was approached by Jack Clark who asked if she knew someone interested in creating a program for space astronomy at NASA. She interpreted that as an invitation to apply, and was the one who accepted the position. Roman was the first Chief of Astronomy in NASA's Office of Space Science, setting up the initial program; she was the first woman to hold an executive position at the space agency. Part of her job was traveling the country and speaking at astronomy departments, where she discussed the fact that the program was in development. Roman also was looking to find out what other astronomers wanted and educate them on the advantages of observing from space. She was chief of astronomy and solar physics at NASA from 1961 to 1963. She held various other positions in NASA, including Chief of Astronomy and Relativity. During her employment at NASA, Roman developed and budgeted various programs, and organized their scientific participation. She was involved in launching three Orbiting Solar Observatories and three Small Astronomical Satellites. These satellites used ultraviolet and x-ray technology for observing the sun, space and sky. She also oversaw the launches of other Orbiting Astronomical Observatories that used optical and ultraviolet measurements, working with Dixon Ashworth. Her other launches included four Geodetic satellites. She planned for other smaller programs such as the Astronomy Rocket Program, High Energy Astronomy Observatories, the Scout Probe to measure the relativistic gravity redshift and other experiments on Spacelab, Gemini, Apollo and Skylab. Roman worked with Jack Holtz, too, on the Small Astronomy Satellite and Don Burrowbridge on Space Telescope. The last program in which she set up the committee and with which she was highly involved was the Hubble Telescope. Roman was very involved with the early planning and specifically the setting up of the program's structure. Because of her contribution she is often called the “Mother of Hubble." NASA’s current chief astronomer, who worked with Roman at the agency, calls her “the mother of the Hubble Space Telescope.” “Which is often forgotten by our younger generation of astronomers who make their careers by using Hubble Space Telescope," says Ed Weiler. "Regretfully, history has forgotten a lot in today’s Internet age, but it was Nancy in the old days before the Internet and before Google and e-mail and all that stuff, who really helped to sell the Hubble Space Telescope, organize the astronomers, who eventually convinced Congress to fund it.” After working for NASA for twenty-one years, she continued, until 1997, her work for contractors who supported the Goddard Space Flight Center. Roman was also a consultant for ORI, Inc. from 1980 to 1988. Roman faced the problems of being a woman in the sciences in the mid twentieth century like most other women. She was discouraged from going into astronomy by people around her and was one of very few women in NASA at the time, being the only female with an executive position. She attended courses called "Women in Management" in Michigan and at Penn State to learn about issues regarding being a woman in a management position. However, Roman stated in an interview in 1980 that the courses were dissatisfying and addressed women’s interests rather than women’s problems. One of Nancy Roman’s earliest publications was in 1955, after her work in the Yerkes and McDonald Observatories, in the Astrophysical Journal: Supplemental Series and was a catalog of high velocity stars. She documented new “spectral types photoelectric magnitudes and colors and spectroscopic parallaxes for about 600 high-velocity stars.” Then in 1959, Roman wrote a paper on the detection of extraterrestrial planets. Roman also discovered that stars made of hydrogen and helium move faster than stars composed of other heavier elements. One of her other discoveries was finding that not all stars that were common were the same age. This was proven by comparing hydrogen lines of the low dispersion spectra in the stars. She noticed that the stars with the stronger lines moved closer to the center of the Milky Way and the others moved in more elliptical patterns off of the plane of the galaxy. She also did research and published on the subjects of locating constellations from its 1875.0 position explaining how she found this and a paper on the Ursa Major Group for her thesis. Source:

Marthe GAUTIERMarthe Gautier is a French medical doctor and researcher, best known for her role in discovering the link of diseases to chromosome abnormalities. Marthe Gautier discovered a vocation for pediatrics at an early age. In 1942 she joined her sister Paulette who was about to complete her medical studies in Paris intending to become a pediatrician. She passed the entrance exam of the "Internat des hôpitaux de Paris" and spent the next four years as an intern gaining clinical experience in pediatrics. In 1955 she submitted and defended her thesis in pediatric cardiology under the direction of Robert Debré. Her thesis focused on the study of clinical and anatomical pathology of fatal forms of rheumatic fever (rheumatic endocarditis) due to streptococcus infection. Robert Debré, in charge of pediatrics in France at the time, offered Gautier a scholarship for one year at Harvard University in order to acquire knowledge in pediatric cardiology with two main objectives. The first was to eradicate rheumatic fever, using penicillin and the treatment of sometimes life-threatening cardiovascular disease with cortisone; the second was to create a department for diagnosis and surgery of congenital heart diseases for newborns and young children. In September 1955, Gautier left for Boston. She was accompanied by Jean Alcardi and Jacques Couvreur, both Fulbright scholars, and the three became the first interns of the Hôpitaux de Paris to be awarded scholarships for the US. At Harvard, one of the tasks of her internship was to be trained as a laboratory technician working on cell culture. Besides the two objectives that had been set initially, Gautier was also working half-time as a technician in a laboratory for cell culture to obtain in-vitro cultures of fibroblast starting from aorta fragments. After a year in Boston, Gautier returned to Paris. Meanwhile her job in the pediatric cardiology service at the Bicêtre Hospital in Paris had been given to a colleague during her absence. However, she learned that there was a position available at the Trousseau Hospital, in Raymond Turpin's team. Turpin's research was focused on polymalformative syndromes, of which the most common is trisomy, characterized by intellectual disability and morphological abnormalities. At the time, Turpin favored the hypothesis of a chromosomal origin of trisomy but there was no laboratory for cell culture in France and the number of human chromosomes was estimated at 48, but without any certainty. Laboratory cell culture In 1956, biologists from Lund University in Sweden announced that humans have exactly 46 chromosomes. Turpin had many years earlier proposed the idea of culturing cells to count the number of chromosomes in trisomy. Gautier had recently joined the pediatrics group he headed at the Armand-Trousseau Hospital, and she offered to attempt this, since she had been trained in both cell culture and tissue staining techniques in the United States. Turpin agreed to provide her with tissue samples from patients with Down syndrome. With very limited resources Gautier set up the first in vitro cell culture laboratory in France. In order to count the chromosomes, Gautier worked on fibroblasts derived from connective tissue, which were easier to obtain under local anesthesia. Although the principle of cell culture is simple, there were many practical obstacles to getting it to work under the primitive conditions available to Gautier, who was forced to use a personal loan to purchase laboratory glassware and, at times, her own blood as a source of human serum. She eventually confirmed that the protocol worked, using connective tissue from a neighbouring surgeon, taken during planned interventions in children. She used the "hypotonic shock" method followed by drying the slide after attachment in order to disperse the chromosomes of dividing cells and make them easier to count. Using this protocol, Gautier found that the cells of normal children have 46 chromosomes. In May 1958, she observed an additional chromosome in the cells of a trisomic boy, the first evidence of chromosomal abnormalities in individuals with Down syndrome.
Announcement of results At the time, the laboratories at the Armand-Trousseau hospital did not have a microscope capable of capturing images of the slides. Gautier entrusted her slides to Jérôme Lejeune, an intern at CNRS, who offered to take pictures in another laboratory better equipped for this task. In August 1958 the photographs identified the supernumerary chromosome in Down syndrome patients. However Lejeune did not return the slides, but instead reported the discovery as his own. In January 1959, by studying new cases and to forestall similar research by the English, the Trousseau laboratory announced the results of the analysis of the slides in the Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences through a paper published with Lejeune as first author, Gautier second (her surname misspelled) and Turpin last author. The Turpin team identified the first translocation and the first chromosomal deletion, resulting in publications Gautier co-signed. Attribution of the discovery In April 1960, the condition was named trisomy 21. As of 1970 the Lejeune foundation started to promote the discovery as sole work of Leujeune - omitting the co-authors. Gautier has told how she was put to one side by Turpin and by Lejeune who claimed responsibility for the discovery, even though it relied on the work that she had initiated and directed technically. Aware of having been manipulated Gautier decided to abandon trisomy 21 and to return to caring for children affected by cardiopathy. On 31 January 2014, Gautier was due to speak about her role in the discovery at the seventh biennial congress on human and medical genetics in Bordeaux, and to receive the grand prize of the French Federation of Human Genetics. The Jérôme Lejeune Foundation obtained authorisation from the Bordeaux Tribunal de Grande Instance for bailiffs to be sent to film this session. At the last minute, concerned that the recording might be used in legal proceedings it could not afford to defend, the congress organisers decided to cancel her presentation and she received her award privately instead. The ethics committee of the INSERM has issued a note in July 2014, reminding the decisive role of Marthe Gautier, and has built upon this case to remind the international rules currently in vigor for scientific publications and authors list. The note precises that "history of discovery is not identical to the history of science, and the process of validating knowledge remains very different«. The technical approach is a necessary condition for discovery- key role of Marthe Gautier : but quite often it must be extended pour make recognition emerge – priori contribution of Raymond Turpin and thereafter Jérôme Lejeune. As the discovery of trisomy would have been impossible without the mandatory contributions of Raymond Turpin and Marthe Gautier, it is regrettable that their names were not sustematically associated with this discovery, as much in terms of communication but also in the assignement of various awards and distinctions." Marthe Gautier was directly appointed to the rank of Officer of the French Legion of Honor and was decorated on September 16th, 2014. Marthe Gautier has, in the past, declined this distinction twice before consenting to it "by indignation towards the impudence of the Lejeune Foundation”

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Alice BALLAlice Augusta Ball was an African American chemist who developed an injectable oil extract that was the most effective treatment for leprosy until the 1940s. She was the first woman and first African American to receive a master's degree from the University of Hawaii, she was also the first female chemistry professor at the university. Alice Augusta Ball was born on July 24, 1892 in Seattle, Washington with James Presley and Laura Louise (Howard) Ball. Ball was one of four children. She had two older brothers, William and Robert, along with a younger sister named Addie. Her family was considered middle class to upper-middle class, as Ball's father was a newspaper editor, photographer, and a lawyer. Her grandfather, James Ball Sr., was a famous photographer, and was one of the first African Americans in the United States to learn to daguerreotype, which is a process of printing photographs onto metal plates. Alice Ball and her family moved from Seattle to Honolulu during Alice's childhood in hopes that the warm weather would help with her grandfather's, James Ball Sr.'s, arthritis. He died shortly after their move and they relocated back to Seattle only after a year of living in Hawaii. After returning to Seattle, Ball attended Seattle High School and received top grades in the sciences. She graduated from Seattle High School in 1910. Ball studied chemistry at the University of Washington, While she was at the University of Washington she earned a bachelor's degree in pharmaceutical chemistry and two years later she received a second degree in pharmacy two years later. With her pharmacy instructor, she published a 10-page article in the prestigious Journal of the American Chemical Society titled "Benzoylations in Ether Solution." This kind of accomplishment was very rare for not only African American women, but women of any race. Following her graduation, Ball was offered many scholarships. She had offers to attend both the University of California Berkeley and the University of Hawaii. She decided to move back to Hawaii to pursue a master's degree in chemistry. While she was studied at the University of Hawaii she studied chaulmoogra oil and its chemical properties. While chaulmoogra oil had previously been used for leprosy, however Alice Ball revolutionized it and made it injectable by discovering the ester ethyl form, meaning that it was water-soluble and able to dissolve in the bloodstream. In 1915, she became the first woman and first African American to graduate with a master's degree from the University of Hawaii. Alice Ball was also the first African American and woman chemistry professor at the University of Hawaii's chemistry department. In her postgraduate research career at the University of Hawaii, Ball investigated the chemical makeup and active principle of Piper methysticum (kava) for her master's thesis. From 1866 to 1942 whenever a patient was diagnosed with leprosy they were arrested and sent to the Hawaiian island of Molokai. Dr. Harry T. Hollmann was a doctor during the time at Kalihi Hospital in Hawaii. He was one of the few physicians that was not satisfied with the inconsistent results of the Chaulmoogra oil in its natural form. He needed an assistant to help develop a method to isolate the active chemical compounds in chaulmoogra oil and reached out to Alice Ball who was working on her thesis The Chemical Constituents of Piper Methysticum. Chaulmoogra oil had previously been used in the treatment of Hansen's disease (leprosy) with mixed results and every form of the treatment had problems. Chaulmoogra oil was first used as a topical straight from the tree in eastern medicine starting in the 1300s. However, it was originally too sticky to be used effectively as a topical and it was extremely painful to be used as an injection. However, some hospitals still attempted to use it as an injection even though the sticky consistency of the oil caused it to clump under the skin and form blisters. These blisters formed in perfect rows and made the skin "look as if the patient's skin had been replaced by with bubble wrap." Ingesting the oil was not effective either because it had an acrid taste that usually made the patients vomit upon attempting to swallow it. At just the young age of 23, Ball developed a technique that would allow the oil from chaulmoogra tree seeds to become injectable and absorbable by the body. Her newly developed technique involved isolating ethyl ester compounds from the fatty acids of the chaulmoogra oil. This isolation technique, known as the "Ball Method", was the only treatment for Hansen's disease that was effective and "left no abscesses or bitter taste,". Unfortunately, due to her untimely death, Alice was unable to publish her revolutionary findings. Arthur L. Dean, a chemist and the president of the University of Hawaii, continued her work, published the findings, and began producing large quantities of the injectable chaulmoogra extract. Dean published the findings without giving credit to Ball, and renamed the technique the Dean Method, until Hollmann spoke out about this. In 1918, a Hawaii physician reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that a total of 78 patients were released from Kalihi Hospital by the board of health examiners after treatment with injections. The isolated ethyl ester remained the preferred treatment for Hansen's disease until sulfonamide drugs were developed in the 1940s. Alice Augusta Ball died on December 31, 1916, at the age of 24. She had become ill during her research and returned to Seattle for treatment a few months before her death. A 1917 newspaper article from the Pacific Commercial Advertiser suggested that the cause may have been chlorine poisoning due to exposure that occurred while teaching a laboratory. It was reported that Ball was giving a demonstration on how to properly use a gas mask in preparation for an attack since World War I was raging in Europe. However, the cause of her death is unknown as her original death certificate was altered, giving the cause of death as tuberculosis. Alice Ball's work directly impacted the eight thousand people that were diagnosed with leprosy and taken out of their homes. Because of her research patients were no longer exiled to Kalaupapa, Molokai; instead they were able to be treated out of their own homes. Families no longer had to hold funerals for their loved ones before they were exiled because there was no cure, and they had Alice Ball to thank for this. Although her research career was short, Ball introduced a new treatment of Hansen's disease which continued to be used until the 1940s. The University of Hawaii did not recognize her work for nearly ninety years. In 2000, the university finally honored Ball by dedicating a plaque to her on the school's lone chaulmoogra tree behind Bachman Hall. On the same day, the former Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii, Mazie Hirono, declared February 29 "Alice Ball Day" which is now celebrated every four years. More recently, Ball was honored by the University of Hawaii Board of Regents with a Medal of Distinction in 2007 by mounting a plaque in her honor on the only chaulmoogra tree on the campus. In March 2016, Hawai'i Magazine ranked Ball in a list of the most influential women in Hawaiian history. Source:

Donna STRICKLANDMain achievements: Intense laser-matter interactions, Nonlinear optics, Short-pulse intense laser systems, Chirped pulse amplification, Ultrafast optics

Donna Strickland is a Canadian associate professor who is a pioneer in the field of lasers. She is the third woman to win the . She won the prize for the work she did as a PhD student. The technique she developed with her PhD advisor, Gérard Mourou, called chirped pulse amplification, is used for producing ultrashort pulses of very high intensity, useful in laser micromachining, surgery, medicine, and in fundamental science studies. Strickland graduated with a B.Eng in Engineering Physics from McMaster University and obtained her PhD in Optics Physics at the University of Rochester in 1989. Strickland is an associate professor at the University of Waterloo, where she leads an ultrafast laser group that develops high-intensity laser systems for nonlinear optics investigations. On 2 October 2018, Strickland was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for her work on chirped pulse amplification with Gérard Mourou, who was her PhD supervisor. Her pioneering work on the "Compression of amplified chirped optical pulses" was published in 1985, and led to the development of the field of high intensity, ultrashort pulses of light beams. Strickland's recent work has focused on pushing the boundaries of ultrafast optical science to new wavelength ranges such as the mid-infrared and the ultraviolet, using techniques such as two-color or multi-frequency techniques, as well as Raman generation. She is also working on the role of high power lasers in the microcrystalline lens of the human eye, during the process of micromachining of the eye lens to cure presbyopia. In her professional capacity, she has served as the vice-president (2011) and the president (2013) of the Optical Society, and was a topical editor of the journal Optics Letters from 2004 to 2010. Awards and honors 1998 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship 1999 Premier's Research Excellence Award 2000 Cottrell Scholars Award from Research Corporation 2008 Fellow of the Optical Society of America 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics Source:

Frances ARNOLDFrances Hamilton Arnold is an American scientist, engineer and Nobel laureate. She is the fifth woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry after . She pioneered methods of directed evolution to create useful biological systems, including enzymes, metabolic pathways, genetic regulatory circuits, and organisms. She is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology, where she studies evolution and its applications in science, medicine, chemicals and energy. She earned her B.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University in 1979 and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. There, she did her postdoctoral work in biophysical chemistry before moving to Caltech in 1986. Arnold was born to nuclear physicist William Howard Arnold and grew up in Edgewood, Pennsylvania, a small suburb of Pittsburgh. As a high schooler, she hitchhiked to Washington, D.C. to protest the Vietnam War and lived on her own working as a cocktail waitress at a local jazz club and a cab driver. Arnold studied mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University, graduating in 1979 and went on to earn PhD in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1985. After graduating, she performed postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley and Caltech. Arnold lives in La Canada Flintridge, California. She was married to James E. Bailey and they had one son, James. She was later remarried to Andrew E. Lange and they had two sons, William and Joseph. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005 and is a breast cancer survivor. Her work has been recognized by many awards, including the 2011 Draper Prize and a 2013 National Medal of Technology and Innovation. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011. Arnold has the rare honor of being elected to all three National Academies in the United States - The National Academy of Sciences, The National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. Arnold is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Microbiology, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and an International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK. A member of the Advisory Board of the DOE-funded Joint BioEnergy Institute and the Packard Fellowships in Science and Engineering, Arnold also serves on the President's Advisory Council of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). She is currently serving as a judge for The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. In 2016 she became the first woman to win the Millennium Technology Prize, which she won for pioneering directed evolution. In 2017, Arnold was awarded the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in Convergence Research by the National Academy of Sciences, which recognizes extraordinary contributions to convergence research. In 2018 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work in directed evolution. She is co-inventor on numerous patents and co-founded Gevo, Inc. in 2005. Arnold pioneered the use of directed evolution to design enzymes (molecules that catalyze, or speed up, chemical reactions) that perform novel functions and/or work more effectively or efficiently than natural enzymes. In nature, evolution by natural selection can lead to proteins (including enzymes) well-suited to carry out biological tasks, but natural selection can only act on existing sequence variations (mutations) and typically occurs over long time periods. Arnold speeds up the process by introducing mutations in the underlying sequences of proteins; she then tests these mutations’ effects. If a mutation improves the proteins function she can keep iterating the process to optimize it further. This strategy has broad implications because it can be used to design proteins for a wide variety of applications. For example, she has used directed evolution to design enzymes that can be used to produce renewable fuels and pharmaceutical compounds with less harm to the environment. One advantage of directed evolution is that the mutations don't have to be completely random; instead they can be random enough to discover unexplored potential, but not so random as to be inefficient. The number of possible mutation combinations is astronomical, but instead of just randomly trying to test as many as possible, Arnold integrates her knowledge of biochemistry to narrow down the options, focusing on introducing mutations in areas of the protein that are likely to have the most positive affect on activity and avoiding areas in which mutations would likely be, at best, neutral and at worst, detrimental (such as disrupting proper protein folding). Arnold was the first person to apply directed evolution to the optimization of enzymes; her seminal work, published in 1993, used the method to engineer a version of subtilisin E that was active in a highly unnatural environment, namely in the organic solvent DMF. She carried out the work using four sequential rounds of mutagenesis of the enzyme's gene, expressed by bacteria, through error-prone PCR. After each round she screened the enzymes for their ability to hydrolyze the milk protein casein in the presence of DMF by growing the bacteria on agar plates containing casein and DMF. The bacteria secreted the enzyme and, if it were functional, it would hydrolyze the casein and produce a visible halo. She selected the bacteria that had the biggest halos and isolated their DNA for further rounds of mutagenesis. Using this method, she designed an enzyme that had 256 times more activity in DMF than the original. Following her seminal work, Arnold has further develeoped her methods and applied them under different selection criteria in order to optimize enzymes for different functions. She showed that, whereas naturally evolved enzymes tend to function well at a narrow temperature range, enzymes could be produced using directed evolution that could function at both high and low temperatures. In addition to improving the existing functions of natural enzymes, Arnold has designed enzymes that perform functions for which no previous specific enzyme existed, such as when she evolved cytochrome P450 to carry out cyclopropanation and carbene and nitrine transfer reactions. Arnold has also co-evolved enzymes in biosynthetic pathways, such as those involved in the production of carotenoids and L-methionine in E. coli (which has the potential to be used as a whole-cell biocatalyst). Arnold has applied her work to biofuel production. One potential biofuel is isobutanol; it can be produced in Escherichia coli bacteria, but the production pathway requires the cofactor NADPH, whereas E. coli makes the cofactor NADH. To circumvent this problem, Arnold evolved the enzymes in the pathway to use NADH instead of NADPH, allowing for the production of isobutanol. Arnold has also used directed evolution to design highly specific and efficient enzymes that can be used as environmentally-friendly alternatives to some industrial chemical synthesis procedures. Arnold also uses structure-guided protein recombination to combine parts of different proteins to form protein chimeras with unique functions. She developed computational methods, such as SCHEMA, to predict how the parts can be combined without disrupting their parental structure, so that the chimeras will fold properly, and then applies directed evolution to further mutate the chimeras to optimize their functions. Arnold's Caltech research is in green chemistry and alternative energy, including the development of highly active enzymes (cellulolytic and biosynthetic enzymes) and microorganisms to convert renewable biomass to fuels and chemicals. Awards Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2018) Elected an International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (2018) Society of Women Engineers 2017 Achievement Award Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science from Dartmouth College (2017) Millennium Technology Prize (2016) Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science from the ETH Zurich (2015) Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2014) Emanuel Merck Lecture of the Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany (2013) National Medal of Technology and Innovation[23] (2013) ENI award (2013) Charles Stark Draper Prize (2011) Enzyme Engineering Award from Engineering Conferences International and Genencor (2007) President Obama Honors Nation's Top Scientists and Innovators Source:

Ruby PAYNE-SCOTTMain achievements: First person to consider the possibility of radio astronomy

Ruby Violet Payne-Scott was an Australian pioneer in radiophysics and radio astronomy, and was the first female radio astronomer. Payne-Scott was born on 28 May 1912 in Grafton, New South Wales, the daughter of Cyril Payne-Scott and his wife Amy (née Neale). She later moved to Sydney to live with her aunt. She attended the Penrith Public Primary School from 1921 to 1924. She attended the Cleveland-Street Girls High School in Sydney from 1925 to 1926. She completed secondary schooling at Sydney Girls High School. Her school Leaving Certificate included honours in mathematics and botany. She won two scholarships to undertake tertiary education at the University of Sydney, where she studied physics, chemistry, mathematics and botany. She completed a B.Sc. in Physics in 1933, an M.Sc. in Physics in 1936, and a Diploma of Education in 1938. One of the more outstanding physicists Australia has ever produced and one of the first people in the world to consider the possibility of radio astronomy, and thereby responsible for what is now a fundamental part of the modern lexicon of science, she was often the only woman in her classes at the University of Sydney. In 1936 she conducted research with William H. Love at the Cancer Research Laboratory at the University of Sydney. They determined that the magnetism of the earth had little or no effect on the vital processes of beings living on the earth by cultivating chick embryos with no observable differences despite being in magnetic fields up to 5000 times as powerful as that of the earth. Some decades earlier it was a widely held belief that the earth's magnetic field produced extensive effects on human beings, and many people would sleep only with the head to the north and the body parallel to the magnetic meridian. Her career arguably reached its zenith while working for the Australian government's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (then called CSIR, now known as CSIRO) at Dover Heights, Hornsby and especially Potts Hill in Sydney. Some of her fundamental contributions to solar radio astronomy came at the end of this period. She is the discoverer of Type I and Type III bursts[14] and participated in the recognition of Type II and IV bursts. Payne-Scott played a major role in the first-ever radio astronomical interferometer observation from 26 January 1946, when the sea-cliff interferometer was used to determine the position and angular size of a solar burst. This observation occurred at either Dover Heights (ex Army shore defence radar) or at Beacon Hill, near Collaroy on Sydney's north shore (ex Royal Australian Air Force surveillance radar establishment – however this radar did not become active until early 1950). During World War II, she was engaged in top secret work investigating radar. She was the expert on the detection of aircraft using PPI (Plan Position Indicator) displays. She was also at the time a member of the Communist Party and an early advocate for women's rights. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) was interested in Payne-Scott and had a substantial file on her activities, with some distortions. Ruby Payne-Scott and William ("Bill") Holman Hall secretly married in 1944; at this time, the Commonwealth government had legislated for a marriage bar specifying that married woman could not hold a permanent position within the public service. She continued to work for CSIRO while secretly married until the regulations of the new CSIRO in 1949 raised the issue of her marriage. The following year, her treatment by CSIRO resulted in hostile written exchanges with Sir Ian Clunies Ross (Chairman of CSIRO) about the status of married women in the work place. She lost her permanent position in CSIRO. However, her salary was maintained at a level comparable to that of her male colleagues. In 1951, she resigned a few months before her son Peter was born; there was no maternity leave at this time. She changed her name to Ruby Hall only after she left CSIRO. Ruby and Bill Hall had two children: Peter Gavin Hall, a mathematician working in theoretical statistics and probability theory, and Fiona Margaret Hall, one of Australia's more prominent artists, whose career is described by Julie Ewington in her 2005 book Fiona Hall. Ruby Payne-Scott died in Mortdale, New South Wales, 25 May 1981, three days short of her 69th birthday. She suffered from Alzheimer's disease in the last years of her life. In 2018 the New York Times wrote a belated obituary for her. Source:

Lene HAUMain achievements: Slowing and stopping a beam of light

Lene Vestergaard Hau is a Danish physicist who is currently the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics at Harvard University. She received a PhD from Aarhus University. In 1999, she led a Harvard University team who, by use of a Bose-Einstein condensate, succeeded in slowing a beam of light to about 17 metres per second, and, in 2001, was able to stop a beam completely. Later work based on these experiments led to the transfer of light to matter, then from matter back into light, a process with important implications for quantum encryption and quantum computing. More recent work has involved research into novel interactions between ultracold atoms and nanoscopic-scale systems. In addition to teaching physics and applied physics, she has taught Energy Science at Harvard, involving photovoltaic cells, nuclear power, batteries, and photosynthesis. As well as her own experiments and research, she is often invited to speak at international conferences, and is involved in structuring the science policies of various institutions. She was keynote speaker at EliteForsk-konferencen 2013 ("Elite Research Conference") in Copenhagen, which was attended by government ministers, as well as senior science policy and research developers in Denmark. In acknowledgment of her many achievements, Discover Magazine recognized her in 2002 as one of the 50 most important women in science. After being awarded her bachelor's degree in Mathematics in 1984, Hau continued to study at the University of Aarhus for her master's degree in Physics which was awarded two years later. For her doctoral studies in quantum theory Hau worked on ideas similar to those involved in fibre optic cables carrying light, but her work involved strings of atoms in a silicon crystal carrying electrons. While working towards her doctorate Hau spent seven months at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics near Geneva. She received her doctorate from the University of Aarhus in Denmark in 1991, but by this time her research interests had changed direction. In 1991 she joined the Rowland Institute for Science at Cambridge, Massachusetts as a scientific staff member, beginning to explore the possibilities of slow light and cold atoms. In 1999, Hau accepted a two-year appointment as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. Her formalized training is in theoretical physics but her interest moved to experimental research in an effort to create a new form of matter known as a Bose–Einstein condensate. "Hau applied to the National Science Foundation for funds to make a batch of this condensate but was rejected on the grounds that she was a theorist for whom such experiments would be too difficult to do." Undeterred, she gained alternative funding, and became one of the first handful of physicists to create such a condensate. In September 1999 she was appointed the Gordon Mckay Professor of Applied Physics and Professor of Physics at Harvard. She was also awarded tenure in 1999, and is now Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard. In 2001 she became the first person to stop light completely, using a Bose–Einstein condensate to achieve this. Since then she has produced copious research, and new experimental work, in electromagnetically induced transparency, various areas of quantum physics, photonics and contributed to the development of new quantum devices and novel nanoscale applications. Hau and her associates at Harvard University "have demonstrated exquisite control over light and matter in several experiments, but her experiment with 2 condensates is one of the most compelling". In 2006 they successfully transferred a qubit from light to a matter wave and back into light, again using Bose–Einstein condensates. Details of the experiment are discussed in the February 8, 2007 publication of the journal Nature. The experiment relies on the way that, according to quantum mechanics, atoms may behave as waves as well as particles. This enables atoms to do some counterintuitive things, such as passing through two openings at once. Within a Bose–Einstein condensate a light pulse is compressed by a factor of 50 million, without losing any of the information stored within it. In this Bose–Einstein condensate, information encoded in a light pulse can be transferred to the atom waves. Because all the atoms move coherently, the information does not dissolve into random noise. The light drives some of the cloud's roughly 1.8 million sodium atoms to enter into "quantum superposition" states, with a lower-energy component that stays put and a higher-energy component that travels between the two[clarification needed] clouds. A second 'control' laser then writes the shape of the pulse into the atom waves. When this control beam is turned off and the light pulse disappears, the 'matter copy' remains. Prior to this, researchers could not readily control optical information during its journey, except to amplify the signal to avoid fading. This experiment by Hau and her colleagues marked the first successful manipulation of coherent optical information. The new study is "a beautiful demonstration", says Irina Novikova, a physicist at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA. Before this result, she says, light storage was measured in milliseconds. "Here it's fractional seconds. It's a really dramatic time." Of its potential, Hau said "While the matter is traveling between the two Bose–Einstein condensates, we can trap it, potentially for minutes, and reshape it – change it – in whatever way we want. This novel form of quantum control could also have applications in the developing fields of quantum information processing and quantum cryptography." Of the developmental implications, "This feat, the sharing around of quantum information in light-form and in not just one but two atom-forms, offers great encouragement to those who hope to develop quantum computers," said Jeremy Bloxham, dean of science in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Hau was awarded the George Ledlie Prize for this work, Harvard's Provost Steven Hyman noting "her work is path-breaking. Her research blurs the boundaries between basic and applied science, draws on the talent and people of two Schools and several departments, and provides a literally glowing example of how taking daring intellectual risks leads to profound rewards." In 2009 Hau and team laser-cooled clouds of one million rubidium atoms to just a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. They then launched this millimeter-long atomic cloud towards a suspended carbon nanotube, located some two centimeters away and charged to hundreds of volts. The results were published in 2010, heralding new interactions between cold atoms and nanoscale systems.[16] They observed that most atoms passed by, but approximately 10 per million were inescapably attracted, causing them to dramatically accelerate both in movement and in temperature. "At this point, the speeding atoms separate into an electron and an ion rotating in parallel around the nanowire, completing each orbit in just a few trillionths of a second. The electron eventually gets sucked into the nanotube via quantum tunneling, causing its companion ion to shoot away – repelled by the strong charge of the 300-volt nanotube – at a speed of roughly 26 kilometers per second, or 59,000 miles per hour." Atoms can rapidly disintegrate, without having to collide with each other in this experiment. The team is quick to note that this effect is not produced by gravity, as calculated in blackholes that exist in space, but by the high electrical charge in the nanotube. The experiment combines nanotechnology with cold atoms to demonstrate a new type of high-resolution, single-atom, chip-integrated detector that may ultimately be able to resolve fringes from the interference of matter waves. The scientists also foresee a range of single-atom, fundamental studies made possible by their setup. Source:

Helen EDWARDSHelen Thom Edwards was an American physicist. She was the lead scientist for the design and construction of the Tevatron at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. "She knew how to bring the right people together to carry out a project and how to encourage them to success. In private life, she was a nature lover and is remembered as a very gentle and caring person." Edwards was best known for leadership in the design, construction, commissioning and operation of the Tevatron, which for 25 years was the most powerful particle collider in the world. Tevatron recorded its first proton-antiproton collisions in 1985 and was used to find the top quark in 1995 and the tau neutrino in 2000, two of the three fundamental particles discovered at Fermilab. Between 1989-92, Edwards was also deeply involved in the eventually abandoned project of the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas. After 1992, as a guest scientist at Fermilab, she made significant contributions to the development of high-gradient, superconducting linear accelerators as well as bright and intense electron sources. Edwards earned a bachelor's degree in physics from Cornell University. After her undergraduate work, she continued studying at Cornell University, where she earned her M.S. degree in the physics department under Kenneth Greisen working with the development of electromagnetic showers. Edwards eventually earned her PhD from Cornell in 1966, working under the direction of Boyce McDaniel in the Laboratory of Nuclear Studies. After earning her PhD at Cornell in 1966, Edwards continued her work in Nuclear Studies at Cornell as a research associate at the 10 GEV Electron Synchrotron under the supervision of Robert R. Wilson. Edwards then joined Wilson when he transitioned to Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in 1970. When she first began her work at Fermilab, she was put in charge of the accelerator division. In her most well-known work, she oversaw the building of the Tevatron, one of the highest energy super-conducting particle accelerators ever constructed. Her work was supervised by Leon M. Lederman. Helen Edwards, one of the most vital contributors to the success of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory over its five-decade history, died on June 21 at the age of 80. Edwards was a giant in the field of accelerator science, best known for overseeing the design, construction, commissioning and operation of the Tevatron, which for 25 years was the most powerful particle collider in the world. The Tevatron turned on in 1983, when it began delivering particle beams for Fermilab’s fixed-target experiments. It recorded its first proton-antiproton collisions in 1985 and was used by scientists to find the top quark in 1995 and the tau neutrino in 2000, two of the three fundamental particles discovered at Fermilab. “Her vision was superb. She was a great architect — the architect of the Tevatron as a system,” said John Peoples, Fermilab’s director from 1989 to 1999. “She was terrific for Fermilab, and terrific period.” Her work on the Tevatron earned her the MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the Genius Grant, in 1988 and the National Medal of Technology in 1989. She also received the Department of Energy’s E.O. Lawrence Award and the Robert R. Wilson Prize of the American Physical Society. Source:

Hedy LAMARRHedy Lamarr was an Austrian-born American film actress and inventor. After a brief early film career in Czechoslovakia, including the controversial Ecstasy (1933), she fled from her husband, a wealthy Austrian ammunition manufacturer, and secretly moved to Paris. Traveling to London, she met Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio head Louis B. Mayer, who offered her a movie contract in Hollywood, where she became a film star from the late 1930s to the 1950s. Among Lamarr's best known films are Algiers (1938), Boom Town (1940), I Take This Woman (1940), Comrade X (1940), Come Live With Me (1941), H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941), and Samson and Delilah (1949). At the beginning of World War II, she and composer George Antheil developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes that used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of jamming by the Axis powers. Although the US Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s, the principles of their work are incorporated into Bluetooth technology and are similar to methods used in legacy versions of CDMA and Wi-Fi. This work led to their induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. Although Lamarr had no formal training and was primarily self-taught, she worked in her spare time on various hobbies and inventions, which included an improved traffic stoplight and a tablet that would dissolve in water to create a carbonated drink. The beverage was unsuccessful; Lamarr herself said it tasted like Alka-Seltzer. Among the few who knew of Lamarr's inventiveness was aviation tycoon Howard Hughes. She suggested he changes the rather square design of his aeroplanes (which she thought looked too slow) to a more streamlined shape, based on pictures of the fastest birds and fish she could find. Lamarr discussed her relationship with Hughes during an interview, saying that while they dated, he actively supported her "tinkering" hobbies. He put his team of scientists and engineers at her disposal, saying they would do or make anything she asked for. During World War II, Lamarr learned that radio-controlled torpedoes, an emerging technology in naval war, could easily be jammed and set off course. She thought of creating a frequency-hopping signal that could not be tracked or jammed. She contacted her friend, composer and pianist George Antheil, to help her develop a device for doing that, and he succeeded by synchronizing a miniaturized player-piano mechanism with radio signals. They drafted designs for the frequency-hopping system, which they patented. Antheil recalled: "We began talking about the war, which, in the late summer of 1940, was looking most extremely black. Hedy said that she did not feel very comfortable, sitting there in Hollywood and making lots of money when things were in such a state. She said that she knew a good deal about munitions and various secret weapons... and that she was thinking seriously of quitting MGM and going to Washington, DC, to offer her services to the newly established Inventors' Council." Their invention was granted a patent under US Patent 2,292,387 on August 11, 1942 (filed using her married name Hedy Kiesler Markey). However, it was technologically difficult to implement, and at that time the U.S. Navy was not receptive to considering inventions coming from outside the military. In 1962, (at the time of the Cuban missile crisis), an updated version of their design at last appeared on Navy ships. In 1997, Lamarr and Antheil received the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award and the Bulbie Gnass Spirit of Achievement Bronze Award, given to individuals whose creative lifetime achievements in the arts, sciences, business, or invention fields have significantly contributed to society. Lamarr was featured on the Science Channel and the Discovery Channel. In 2014, Lamarr and Antheil were posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Source :

Maryna VIAZOVSKAMaryna Sergiivna Viazovska is a Ukrainian mathematician who, in 2016, solved the sphere-packing problem in dimension 8 and, in collaboration with others, in dimension 24. Previously, the problem had been solved only for three or fewer dimensions, and the proof of the three-dimensional version (the Kepler conjecture) involved long computer calculations. In contrast, Viazovska's proof for 8 and 24 dimensions is "stunningly simple". As a student at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Viazovska competed at the International Mathematics Competition for University Students in 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005, and was one of the first-place winners in 2002 and 2005.[9] Viazovska earned a candidate degree from the Institute of Mathematics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 2010, a master's from the University of Kaiserslautern, and a doctorate (Dr. rer. nat.) from the University of Bonn in 2013. Her doctoral dissertation, Modular Functions and Special Cycles, concerns analytic number theory and was supervised by Don Zagier and Werner Müller. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Berlin Mathematical School and the Humboldt University of Berlin and a Minerva Distinguished Visitor at Princeton University. Since January 2018 she is full professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland after a short stint as tenure-track assistant professor. As well as for her work on sphere packing, Viazovska is also known for her research on spherical designs with Bondarenko and Radchenko. With them she proved a conjecture of Korevaar and Meyers on the existence of small designs in arbitrary dimensions. This result was one of the contributions for which her co-author Andriy Bondarenko won the Vasil A. Popov Prize for approximation theory in 2013. In 2016, she received the Salem Prize[14] and, in 2017, the Clay Research Award and the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize for her work on sphere packing and modular forms. In December 2017, she was awarded a 2018 New Horizons Prize in Mathematics. She was an invited speaker at the 2018 International Congress of Mathematicians. Source :

Karen UHLENBECKKaren Keskulla Uhlenbeck is a professor and Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chairholder in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Texas in Austin. In 2019, Uhlenbeck became the first woman to win the Abel Prize, with the award committee citing “the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry and mathematical physics". Uhlenbeck received her B.A. (1964) from the University of Michigan. She began her graduate studies at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, and married biophysicist Olke C. Uhlenbeck in 1965. When her husband went to Harvard, she moved with him and restarted her studies at Brandeis University, where she earned a M.A. (1966) and Ph.D. (1968) from Brandeis under the supervision of Richard Palais. Her doctoral dissertation was titled The Calculus of Variations and Global Analysis. After temporary jobs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California, Berkeley, and having difficulty finding a permanent position with her husband because of the "anti-nepotism" rules then in place that prevented hiring both a husband and wife even in distinct departments of a university, she took a faculty position at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1971. However, she disliked Urbana and ended up divorcing her husband and moving to the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1976. She moved again to the University of Chicago in 1983, and to the University of Texas at Austin as the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chairholder in 1988, where she supervised a number of PhD students, including Mark Haskins. In 2019, Uhlenbeck became the first woman to win the Abel Prize, with the award committee citing “the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry and mathematical physics". She participates or has participated in research in the fields of geometric partial differential equations, the calculus of variations, gauge theory, topological quantum field theory, and integrable systems. Uhlenbeck developed tools and methods in global analysis, which are now in the toolbox of every geometer and analyst. Her work also lays the foundation for contemporary geometric models in mathematics and physics. Inspired by a fellow Abel Prize laureate, the late Sir Michael Atiyah, Uhlenbeck became interested in gauge theory. Gauge theory is the mathematical language of theoretical physics, and Uhlenbeck’s fundamental work in this area is essential for the modern mathematical understanding of models in particle physics, string theory and general relativity. Uhlenbeck is a mathematician, but she is also a role model and a strong advocate for gender equality in science and mathematics. As a child, she loved reading and dreamed of becoming a scientist. Today, Uhlenbeck is Visiting Senior Research Scholar at Princeton University as well as Visiting Associate at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS). She is one of the founders of the Park City Mathematics Institute (PCMI) at IAS, which aims to train young researchers and promote mutual understanding of the interests and challenges in mathematics. She is also the co-founder of the Institute’s Women and Mathematics program (WAM), created in 1993 to recruit and empower women to lead in mathematics research at all stages of their academic careers. “Karen Uhlenbeck receives the Abel Prize 2019 for her fundamental work in geometric analysis and gauge theory, which has dramatically changed the mathematical landscape. Her theories have revolutionized our understanding of minimal surfaces, such as those formed by soap bubbles, and more general minimization problems in higher dimensions.” – Hans Munthe-Kaas, Chair of the Abel Committee. The many awards and honors won by Uhlenbeck include: MacArthur Fellow, 1983. University of Michigan alumna of the year, 1984. Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1985. Member of National Academy of Sciences, 1986, the first female mathematician in the national academy. Noether Lecturer, 1988. Plenary speaker at International Congress of Mathematicians, 1990, as only the second woman (after Emmy Noether) to give such a lecture. Sigma Xi Common Wealth Award for Science and Technology, 1995. National Medal of Science, 2000. Honorary doctorate from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2000. Guggenheim Fellow, 2001. Honorary doctorate from University of Ohio, 2001. Honorary doctorate from University of Michigan, 2004. American Mathematical Society Steele Prize "for her foundational contributions in analytic aspects of mathematical gauge theory in the papers "Removable singularities in Yang–Mills fields" (1982) and "Connections with bounds on curvature", 2007. Honorary doctorate from Harvard University, 2007. Honorary member of the London Mathematical Society, 2008. Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, 2012. Honorary doctorate from Princeton University, 2012. Abel Prize, 2019. Sources:

Tatiana AFANASSIEVATatyana Alexeyevna Afanasyeva (also known as Tatiana Ehrenfest-Afanaseva or spelled Afanassjewa) was a Russian/Dutch mathematician and physicist who made contributions to the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics. On 21 December 1904, she married Austrian physicist Paul Ehrenfest (1880–1933). They had two daughters and two sons; one daughter, Tatyana Pavlovna Ehrenfest, also became a mathematician. Afanasyeva was born in Kiev, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. Her father was Alexander Afanassjev, a chief engineer on the Imperial Railways, who would bring Tatyana on his travels around the Russian Empire. Her father died while she was still young, so she moved to St Petersburg in Russia to live with her aunt Sonya, and uncle Peter Afanassjev, a professor at the St Petersburg Polytechnic Institute. Tatyana attended normal school in St Petersburg with a specialty in mathematics and science. At the time, women were not allowed to attend universities in Russian territory, so after graduating from normal school, Tatyana began studying mathematics and physics at the Women's University in St Petersburg under Orest Chvolson. In 1902, she transferred to University of Göttingen in Germany to continue her studies with Felix Klein and David Hilbert. At the University of Gottingen, Tatyana met Paul Ehrenfest. When Ehrenfest discovered that Tatyana could not attend a mathematics club meeting, he argued with the school to have the rule changed. A friendship developed between the two, and they married in 1904, later returned to St Petersburg in 1907. Under Russian law, marriage was not allowed between two people of different religions. Since Tatyana was a Russian Orthodox and Ehrenfest was Jewish, they both decided to officially renounce their religions in order to remain married. In 1912 they moved to Leiden in the Netherlands, where Paul Ehrenfest was appointed to succeed H.A. Lorentz as professor at the University of Leiden, and where the couple lived throughout their career. Tatyana collaborated closely with her husband, most famously on their classic review of the statistical mechanics of Boltzmann. The Conceptual Foundations of the Statistical Approach in Mechanics, by Paul and Tatyana Ehrenfest was originally published in 1911 as an article for the German Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences, and has since been translated and republished. She published many papers on various topics such as randomness and entropy, and teaching geometry to children. Source :

Cynthia DWORKCynthia Dwork is an American computer scientist at Harvard University, where she is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science, Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and Affiliated Professor, Harvard Law School. She is a distinguished scientist at Microsoft Research. Dwork received her B.S.E. from Princeton University in 1979, graduating Cum Laude, and receiving the Charles Ira Young Award for Excellence in Independent Research. Dwork received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1983 for research supervised by John Hopcroft. Dwork is known for her research placing privacy-preserving data analysis on a mathematically rigorous foundation, including the co-invention of differential privacy, a strong privacy guarantee frequently permitting highly accurate data analysis (with McSherry, Nissim, and Smith, 2006). The differential privacy definition provides guidelines for preserving the privacy of people who may have contributed data to a dataset, by adding small amounts of noise either to the input data or to outputs of computations performed on the data. She uses a systems-based approach to studying fairness in algorithms including those used for placing ads. Dwork has also made contributions in cryptography and distributed computing, and is a recipient of the Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize for her early work on the foundations of fault-tolerant systems. Her contributions in cryptography include Nonmalleable Cryptography with Danny Dolev and Moni Naor in 1991, the first lattice-based cryptosystem with Miklós Ajtai in 1997, which was also the first public-key cryptosystem for which breaking a random instance is as hard as solving the hardest instance of the underlying mathematical problem ("worst-case/average-case equivalence"). With Naor she also first presented the idea of, and a technique for, combating e-mail spam by requiring a proof of computational effort, also known as proof-of-work - a key technology underlying hashcash and bitcoin. She was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) in 2008, as a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2008,[citation needed] as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2014, as a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 2015, and as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2016. She received the Dijkstra Prize in 2007 for her work on consensus problems together with Nancy Lynch and Larry Stockmeyer. In 2009 she won the PET Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies. 2017 Gödel Prize was awarded to Cynthia Dwork, Frank McSherry, Kobbi Nissim and Adam Smith for their seminal paper that introduced differential privacy. Source :

Charlotte FROESE FISCHERCharlotte Froese Fischer is a Canadian-American applied mathematician and computer scientist who gained world recognition for the development and implementation of the Multi-Configurational Hartree–Fock approach to atomic-structure calculations and for her theoretical prediction concerning the existence of the negative calcium ion. For this last accomplishment, she was elected to grade of Fellow of the American Physical Society. Charlotte Froese was born on September 21, 1929, in the village of Pravdivka (formerly Nikolayevka), in the Donetsk region, in the present-day Ukraine, to parents of Mennonite descent. Her parents immigrated to Germany in 1929 on the last train allowed to cross the border before its closure by Soviet authorities. After a few months in a refugee camp, her family was allowed to immigrate to Canada, where they eventually established themselves in Chilliwack, British Columbia. She obtained both a B.A. degree, with honors, in Mathematics and Chemistry and an M.A. degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of British Columbia in 1952 and 1954, respectively. She then obtained her Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and Computing at Cambridge University in 1957, pursuing coursework in quantum theory with Paul Dirac. She worked under the supervision of Douglas Hartree, whom she assisted in programming the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator for atomic-structure calculations. She served on the mathematics faculty of the University of British Columbia from 1957 till 1968, where she introduced numerical analysis and computer courses into the curriculum and was instrumental in the formation of the Computer Science Department. Froese Fischer spent 1963-64 at the Harvard College Observatory, where she extended her research on atomic-structure calculations. While at Harvard, she was the first woman-scientist to be awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship. In 1991 she became a Fellow of the American Physical Society, in part for her contribution to the discovery of negative calcium. In 1995 she was elected a member of the Royal Physiographic Society in Lund, in 2004 a foreign member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, and in 2015 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Technology from Malmö University, Sweden. She is the author of over 300 research articles on computational atomic theory, many of which have had far-reaching impact in the area of atomic-structure calculations. The early version of the MCHF program, published in the first volume of Computer Physics Communications received two Citation Classics Awards in 1987. One of her largest efforts in the field is the recent calculation of the complete lower spectra of the beryllium-like to argon-like isoelectronic sequences, amounting to the publication of data covering 400 journal pages and a total of over 150 ions. She is currently an emerita research professor of computer science at Vanderbilt University and a guest scientist of the Atomic Spectroscopy Laboratory at NIST. She is the widow of Patrick C. Fischer, himself a noted computer scientist and former professor at Vanderbilt. Source:

Carrie DERICKCarrie Matilda Derick was a Canadian botanist and geneticist, the first female professor in a Canadian university, and the founder of McGill University's Genetics Department. Born in the Eastern Townships in Clarenceville, Quebec in 1982, Derick was educated at the Clarenceville Academy (a Montreal grammar school). She began teaching by the age of fifteen. Derick later received teacher training at the McGill Normal School, graduating in 1881 as a Prince of Wales Gold Medal winner. She then went on to become a school teacher in Clarenceville and Montreal, and later serving as a principal (at the age of nineteen) of the Clarenceville Academy. In 1889, Derick pursued a B.A. from McGill University, and graduated in 1890, at the top of her class in natural science with first-class honours, the highest GPA (94%) that year, and received the Logan Gold Medal. Her graduating class included two other notable Canadian women: Elizabeth Binmore and . She began teaching at the Trafalgar Institute for Girls in 1890, while also working part-time as McGill's first female botany demonstrator. In 1891, Derick began her master's program at McGill under David Penhallow and received her M.A. in botany within four years (1896), while holding two simultaneous jobs. She then attended the University of Bonn, Germany, in 1901 and completed the research required for a Ph.D. but was not awarded an official doctorate since the University of Bonn did not give women Ph.D. degrees at the time. Derick also studied at Harvard University for three summers, the Royal College of Science, London in 1898, and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts for seven summers. Following her PhD research, Derick then returned to McGill University. Given her previous seven years of teaching, researching, administration work and publishing (without pay) at McGill University, Derick wrote directly to Principal Peterson and was promoted to the position of assistant professor at one-third the salary of her male counterparts in 1905. In 1909, when Penhallow (Derick's former Master's supervisor, then chair for McGill University's Botany Department) fell ill, Derick assumed his role as chair. Penhallow passed away in 1910. Following Penhallow's death, Derick continued to run the department for three years. In 1912, McGill University began a search for a new department chair and did not recruit Derick, despite her previous experience or the strong support she received. Instead, Derick was officially appointed as professor of morphological botany by McGill University in 1912. This made Derick the first woman both at McGill University and in Canada to achieve university professorship. However, morphological botany was not Derick's research expertise, and this new position did not come with a pay rise, or a seat on the faculty. Derick was told by the McGill University president that this was a 'courtesy title' and she was not actually a professor. Furthermore, the new botany department chair assigned Derick work suitable for a demonstrator, not a professor. Derick continued to persevere in her role, and returned to teaching and research after a new demonstrator was hired. She later petitioned to have her title changed to professor of comparative morphology and genetics to be more representative of her expertise and research interests. Derick founded McGill University's Genetics department. She created the Evolution and Genetics course (the first of its kind in Canada) and published a number of academic publications on botany. She was one of the few women to be listed in the American Men of Science (1910). Due to poor health, Derick retired in 1929. McGill University awarded Derick the honorary title of "professor emerita," making her the first female professor emeritus in Canada. Derick was a leader in early feminism: fighting for women's right to education, the vote, and work. Derick also co-founded and was a lifelong member of the National Council of Women. Her co-founder was : McGill's pioneer cardiologist and curator of the Medical Museum. Derick was a member of the Mu Iota Society, a group whose name was later changed to The Alumnae Society. She was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, vice president of the Natural History Society of Montreal, and a member of the Botanical Society of America, the American Genetics Association, the Montreal Philosophical Club, the Canadian Public Health Association, the Executive Committee of the National Council of Education, and the first woman on the Protestant Committee of Public Instruction, Quebec, from 1920 to 1937. Derick was also president of the Montreal Suffrage Association from 1913 to 1919. She publicly supported birth control in Canada (which was then illegal from 1891 to 1969). In 1915, Derrick confronted then Quebec premier Sir Lomer Gouin regarding his views on the topic of birth control. Derick also supported other social causes, including the need for mandatory school attendance for children, and care for 'abnormal' children. In 1914, Derick supported Annie Langstaff, the first female law graduate from McGill University, in her unsuccessful bid to be join Quebec's bar. One of Derick's students, Faith Fyles, went on to become assistant botanist on the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa. A street (Rue Carrie-Derick) is named after her in Montreal's Southwest borough. An award has been created in her honour at McGill University, titled the Carrie M. Derick Award for Graduate Supervision and Teaching. Derick was designated as a National Historic Person in 2007. On her 155th birthday (i.e. January 14 2017), she was recognized through a Google Doodle. Source :

Maude ABBOTTMaude Elizabeth Seymour Abbott was a Canadian physician, among Canada's earliest female medical graduates, and an internationally known expert on congenital heart disease. She was one of the first women to obtain a BA from McGill University. In 1869, Abbot was born in St. Andrews East, Quebec as Maude Elizabeth Seymour Babin. Both of her parents were absent during infancy, as her mother had died and her father had abandoned her. With her sister Alice, she was legally adopted and raised by her maternal grandmother, Mrs. William Abbott, who was then 62. She was a cousin of John Abbott, Canada's third Prime Minister. In 1885, she graduated from a private Montreal seminary high school. Abbott was admitted to McGill University's Faculty of Arts, with a scholarship, even though she had previously been rejected and received her B.A in 1890. In 1894, she received her M.D., C.M. from Bishop's University with honours, and the only woman in her class. She received the Chancellor’s Prize, and Senior Anatomy Prize for having the best final examination. Later that year, she opened her own practice in Montreal, worked with the Royal Victoria hospital, and was nominated and elected as the Montreal Medico-Chirurgical Society's first female member. Some time afterwards, she did her post-graduate medical studies in Vienna. In 1897, she opened an independent clinic dedicated to treating women and children. There she did much first-hand research in pathology. Much of Abbott's work concerned the nature of heart disease, especially in newborn babies. This would cause her to be recognized as a world authority on heart defects. In 1898, she was appointed Assistant Curator at the McGill Pathological Museum, becoming curator 1901. In 1905, she was invited to write the chapter on 'Congenital Heart Disease' for Dr. Osler's System of Modern Medicine. He declared it "the best thing he had ever read on the subject." The article would place her as the world authority in the field of congenital heart disease. In 1906, she co-founded the International Association of Medical Museums, with Dr. William Osler. She became its international secretary in 1907. She would edit the institutions articles for thirty-one years (1907-1938). In 1910, Abbott was awarded an honorary medical degree from McGill and was made a Lecturer in Pathology; this was eight years prior to the university admitting female students to the Faculty of Medicine. After a much conflict with Dr. Horst Oërtel, she left McGill to take up a position at the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1923. In 1925, Abbott returned to McGill becoming an Assistant Professor. In 1924, she was a founder of the Federation of Medical Women of Canada, a Canadian organization committed to the professional, social and personal advancement of women physicians. In 1936, she wrote the Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease. The work illustrated a new classification system and described records of over a thousand cases of clinical and postmortem records. The same year she retired from her professorial position. On 2 September 1940, Abbott died from a brain hemorrhage, in Montreal. In 1943, Diego Rivera painted her in his mural for the National Institute of Cardiology of Mexico City. She was the only Canadian, and the only woman depicted in the work. In 1958, the International Academy of Pathology established the 'Maude Abbott Lecture'. In 1993, she was named a "Historic Person" by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada and a plaque was erected outside the McIntyre Medical Sciences Building at McGill University in Montreal. In 1994, she was posthumously inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. In 2000, a bronze plaque was erected in her honour on the McIntyre Medical Building. In the same year, Canada Post issued a forty-six cent postage stamp entitled The Heart of the Matter in her honour. McGill University Health Centre has also recognized Maude Abbott by naming their congenital heart defect clinic the “Maude Clinic”. The clinic has carried her name proudly for many years - originally at the Royal Victoria Hospital site and now continuing at the new M.U.H.C. Glen site. Source:

Harriet BROOKSHarriet Brooks was the first Canadian female nuclear physicist. She is most famous for her research on nuclear transmutations and radioactivity. Ernest Rutherford, who guided her graduate work, regarded her as being next to in the calibre of her aptitude. She was among the first persons to discover radon and to try to determine its atomic mass. Harriet Brooks was born in Exeter, Ontario, on July 2, 1876 to George and Elizabeth Warden Brooks. She was the third of nine children. Her father, George Brooks, worked at his own flour mill until it burned down and was not covered by insurance. He then supported the family by working as a commercial traveler for a flour firm. Brooks moved around Quebec and Ontario with her family during her childhood. At some point, she attended the Seaforth Collegiate Institute in Ontario. Her family finally settled in Montreal. Of the nine Brooks children, only Harriet and her sister Elizabeth would attend university. Harriet Brooks entered McGill University in 1894, only six years after McGill graduated its first female student. Brooks won a scholarship for the final two years of her Bachelor's degree, but being a woman disqualified her from receiving a scholarship for her first two years. Brooks graduated with a first-class honours B.A. in mathematics and natural philosophy in 1898, and was awarded the Anne Molson Memorial prize for outstanding performance in mathematics. Brooks was the first graduate student in Canada of Sir Ernest Rutherford, under whom she worked immediately after graduating. With Rutherford, she studied electricity and magnetism for her master's degree. Even before her thesis was completed, her work was published in the Transactions of the Canadian Section of the Royal Society in 1899. The same year, Brooks received an appointment as nonresident tutor at the newly formed Royal Victoria College, the women's college of McGill University. In 1901, she became the first woman at McGill to receive a master's degree. After her master's degree under Rutherford, she also did a series of experiments to determine the nature of the radioactive emissions from thorium. These experiments served as one of the foundations for the development of nuclear science. Papers by Rutherford and Brooks in 1901 and 1902 were published in Royal Society Transactions and in the Philosophical Magazine. In 1901, Brooks obtained a fellowship to study for her doctorate of physics at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. During her year there, Brooks won the prestigious Bryn Mawr European Fellowship. Rutherford arranged for Brooks to take this fellowship at his former lab at the University of Cambridge, where she became the first woman to study at the Cavendish Laboratory. While Brooks completed significant work during her time at Cambridge, her supervisor, J.J. Thomson, was preoccupied with his own research and ignored her progress. In 1903, Brooks returned to her position at Royal Victoria College and rejoined Rutherford's group, carrying out research that was published in 1904. The following year, Brooks was appointed to the faculty of Barnard College in New York City. In 1906, she became engaged to a Columbia University physics professor. Dean Laura Gil of Barnard responded to Brooks' engagement by saying "that whenever your marriage does take place it ought to end your official relationship with the college". This began a heated exchange of letters in which Brooks conveyed that she felt she had a duty to both her profession and her sex to continue her work even after marriage. Brooks was backed by the head of Barnard's physics department, Margaret Maltby. However, Dean Gil cited the college's trustees, who argued that one could not be both a married woman and a successful academic. Brooks broke off her engagement and agreed to stay at Barnard. At the end of 1906, Brooks moved to a retreat in the Adirondacks run by John and Prestonia Martin, two prominent Fabian Socialists. Through the Martins, she also became acquainted with Russian author Maxim Gorky. In October 1906, Brooks traveled with Gorky and a group of other Russians to the Italian island of Capri. During this time, Brooks met , and shortly after started working as one of Curie's staff at the Institut du Radium in Paris, France. Though none of Brooks' research was published under her name during this period, her contributions were considered valuable and she was cited in three contemporary articles published under the aegis of the Curie Institute. During this time, Brooks worked to secure a position at the University of Manchester. In the letter of recommendation Rutherford wrote for Brooks' application, he noted that "next to Mme Curie she is the most prominent woman physicist in the department of radioactivity. Miss Brooks is an original and careful worker with good experimental powers and I am confident that if appointed she would do most excellent research work in Physics". However, Brooks decided to terminate her physics career for unknown reasons. In 1907, Harriet Brooks married McGill physics instructor Frank Pitcher and settled in Montreal. She became the mother of three children, two of whom tragically died in their teens. She remained active in organizations of university women, but no longer did any work in the field of physics. The obituary of Harriet Brooks was published by the New York Times on April 18, 1933, recording that she had died the previous day in Montreal at the age of 57, crediting her as the "Discoverer of the Recoil of a Radioactive Atom." She died "of a ‘blood disorder’," probably leukaemia caused by radiation exposure. Rutherford wrote a highly laudatory . The importance of Harriet Brooks' contributions to physics became recognized in the 1980s as foundational work in the field of nuclear science. She was the first person to show that the radioactive substance emitted from thorium was a gas with molecular weight of 40-100, a discovery crucial to the determination that the elements undergo some transmutation in radioactive decay. Her research of radon and actinium was pioneering, and her brief research career was exceedingly accomplished. The Harriet Brooks Building, a nuclear research laboratory at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories was named for her. She was inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame in 2002. Source :

Inge LEHMANNInge Lehmann was a Danish seismologist and geophysicist. In 1936, she discovered that the Earth has a solid inner core inside a molten outer core. Before that, seismologists believed Earth's core to be a single molten sphere, being unable, however, to explain careful measurements of seismic waves from earthquakes, which were inconsistent with this idea. Lehmann analysed the seismic wave measurements and concluded that Earth must have a solid inner core and a molten outer core to produce seismic waves that matched the measurements. Other seismologists tested and then accepted Lehmann's explanation. Lehmann was also the longest-lived woman scientist, having lived for over 104 years. Inge Lehmann was born and grew up in Osterbro, a part of Copenhagen. Her mother was Ida Sophie Torsleff; her father was experimental psychologist Alfred Georg Ludvik Lehmann. She received her school education at a pedagogically progressive high school led by Hanna Adler, Niels Bohr's aunt. According to Lehmann, her father and Adler were the most significant influences on her intellectual development. She studied mathematics at the University of Copenhagen and University of Cambridge, interrupted by poor health. She continued her studies of mathematics in Cambridge from 1910 to 1911 at Newnham College. In 1911, she returned from Cambridge feeling exhausted from the work and put her studies aside for a while. She developed good computational skills in an actuary office she worked in for a few years until she resumed studies at Copenhagen University in 1918. She completed the candidatus magisterii degree in physical science and mathematics in two years. When she returned to Denmark in 1923, she accepted a position at Copenhagen University as an assistant to J.F. Steffensen, the professor of actuarial science. Lehmann had a younger sister, Harriet, who became a movie writer and who had family and children in contrast to Lehmann, who lived by herself all her life. In 1925 Lehmann became an assistant to the geodesist Niels Erik Norlund, who assigned her the task of setting up seismological observatories in Denmark and Greenland. Based on her studies in seismology, in 1928 she earned the magister scientiarum degree (equivalent to an MA) in geodesy and accepted a position as state geodesist and head of the department of seismology at the Geodetical Institute of Denmark led by Norlund. Lehmann looked into improving the co-ordination and analysis of measurements from Europe's seismographic observatories, as well as many other scientific endeavours. In a paper titled P' (published in 1936), Lehmann was the first to interpret P wave arrivals—which inexplicably appeared in the P wave shadow of the Earth's core—as reflections from an inner core, for example from the strong 1929 Murchison earthquake. Other leading seismologists of the time, such as Beno Gutenberg, Charles Richter, and Harold Jeffreys, adopted this interpretation within two or three years, but it took until 1971 for the interpretation to be shown correct by computer calculations. Lehmann was significantly hampered in her work and maintaining international contacts during the German occupation of Denmark in World War II. She served as the Chair of the Danish Geophysical Society in 1940 and 1944 respectively. In 1952, Lehmann was considered for a professorship in geophysics at Copenhagen University, but was not appointed. In 1953, she retired from her position at the Geodetic Institute. She moved to the US for several years and collaborated with Maurice Ewing and Frank Press on investigations of Earth's crust and upper mantle. During this work, she discovered another seismic discontinuity, which lies at depths between 190 and 250 km and was named for her, the Lehmann discontinuity. Francis Birch noted that the "Lehmann discontinuity was discovered through exacting scrutiny of seismic records by a master of a black art for which no amount of computerization is likely to be a complete substitute." Lehmann received many honours for her outstanding scientific achievements, among them the Gordon Wood Award (1960), the Emil Wiechert Medal (1964), the Gold Medal of the Danish Royal Society of Science and Letters (1965), the Tagea Brandt Rejselegat (1938 and 1967), her election as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1969, the (1971, as the first woman), and the Medal of the Seismological Society of America in 1977. She was awarded honorary doctorates from Columbia University in 1964 and from the University of Copenhagen in 1968, as well as numerous honorific memberships. The asteroid 5632 Ingelehmann was named in her honour and in 2015 (which was the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in Denmark) Lehmann got, in recognition of her great struggle against the male-dominated research community that existed in Denmark in the mid-20th century, a new beetle species named after her: Globicornis (Hadrotoma) ingelehmannae sp. n., Jiri Hava & Anders Leth Damgaard, 2015. Because of her contribution to geological science, in 1997, the American Geophysical Union established the annual Inge Lehmann Medal to honour "outstanding contributions to the understanding of the structure, composition, and dynamics of the Earth's mantle and core." A memorial dedicated to Lehmann was installed on Frue Plads in Copenhagen in 2017. Source :

Lucy WILLSLucy Wills was a leading English haematologist. She conducted seminal work in India in the late 1920s and early 1930s on macrocytic anaemia of pregnancy. Her observations led to her discovery of a nutritional factor in yeast which both prevents and cures this disorder. Macrocytic anaemia is characterised by enlarged red blood cells and is life-threatening. Poor pregnant women in the tropics with inadequate diets are particularly susceptible. The nutritional factor identified by Lucy Wills (the ‘Wills Factor’) was subsequently shown to be folate, the naturally occurring form of folic acid. Lucy Wills was born on 10 May 1888 in Sutton Coldfield near Birmingham, United Kingdom. Her paternal great-grandfather, William Wills, had been a prosperous Birmingham attorney from a non-conformist Unitarian family. His son, her grandfather, had bought an edge-tool business in Nechells, AW Wills & Son, which manufactured such things as scythes and sickles and which her father continued to manage. The family was comfortably off. Lucy Wills’s father, William Leonard Wills (1858–1911), was a science graduate of Owens College Manchester. Her mother, Gertrude Annie Wills née Johnston (1855–1939), was the only daughter (with six brothers) of a well-known Birmingham doctor, Dr. James Johnston. The family had a strong interest in scientific matters. Lucy Wills’s great-grandfather, William Wills, had been involved with the British Association for the Advancement of Science and wrote papers on meteorology and other scientific observations. Lucy Wills’s father was particularly interested in botany, zoology, geology and natural sciences generally, as well as in the developing science of photography. Her brother, Leonard Johnston Wills carried this interest in geology and natural sciences into his own career with great success. English girls had few opportunities for education and entry into the professions (particularly medicine) until towards the end of the nineteenth century. Lucy Wills was of a generation which benefited from the work of various radical Victorian reformers, and the three educational establishments to which she went, The Cheltenham Ladies' College, Newnham College Cambridge, and the London School of Medicine for Women, typified their achievements. They also share an elegant, confident, late-Victorian architecture. In September 1903 Lucy Wills went to the Cheltenham Ladies' College, which had been founded in 1854 by Dorothea Beale, a prominent Victorian pioneer of reform of women's education. Miss Beale was a supporter of women's suffrage, having been one of the signatories of John Stuart Mill's 1867 petition to Parliament to give women the vote, and was Principal of the College from 1858 until her death in 1906. Lucy Wills's elder sister Edith was in the same house, Glenlee, two years ahead of her. Glenlee was then more expensive and socially exclusive than the other houses. Miss Beale created a school which, while being socially and intellectually privileged, was radical and progressive. It provided girls with a high standard of academic education in which there was a strong emphasis on science and mathematics. It encouraged independence, public-spiritedness and ambition in professional and academic life. Marion Russell Watson, a protégée of Ruskin's, attended the school and Ruskin donated to it a number of important and valuable books and manuscripts. Lucy Wills's examination record was good. She passed the 'Oxford Local Senior, Division I' in the autumn of 1905; the 'University of London, Matriculation, Division II' in the autumn of 1906; and 'Part I, Class III and Paley, exempt from Part II and additional subjects by matriculation (London), Newnham entrance' in 1907. In September 1907, Lucy Wills went up to Newnham College, Cambridge. Newnham was the second of the Cambridge women’s colleges. Girton had been established in 1869, Newnham in 1872, mainly because of the pioneering work of Henry Sidgwick, then a Fellow of Trinity. He died in 1890, but his widow Eleanor was Principal of the College when Lucy Wills arrived. Eleanor’s brother, Arthur Balfour, had been Prime Minister from 1902 to 1905 and sometimes visited the college when Lucy Wills was there. Newnham’s first Principal, Anne Clough, and the Sidgwicks all shared a commitment to the higher education of women in a college with no particular religious affiliation. Newnham and its founders had to struggle for recognition from the University of Cambridge authorities. The university allowed women (then from the two colleges of Girton and Newnham) to sit its examinations, but refused to grant them full degrees until 1948. At Cambridge, Lucy Wills was strongly influenced by the botanist Albert Charles Seward, and also by the paleobiologist Herbert Henry Thomas who worked on carboniferous palaeobotany. Lucy Wills finished her course in 1911 and obtained a Class 2 in Part 1 of the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1910 and Class 2 in Part 2 (Botany) in 1911. Because she could not receive a degree, she received a certificate that she had taken and been successful in the Tripos exams. In 1928 she received the 'titular degree' of MA Cantab, a stage between certificates and full degrees which operated from 1921 to 1948. In February 1911, Lucy Wills’s father died at the early age of 52. She had been very close to him and it is likely that his unexpected death affected her final exam results that summer. In 1913 her elder sister Edith died at the age of 26. Later that year, Lucy Wills and her mother traveled by sea to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, where they visited relatives and friends. In 1914 she and her younger brother Gordon traveled by sea to South Africa. A friend from Newnham, Margaret (Margot) Hume, was lecturing in botany at the South African College, then part of the University of the Cape of Good Hope. She and Lucy Wills were both interested in Sigmund Freud’s theories. At the outbreak of war in August 1914, Gordon enlisted in the Transvaal Scottish Regiment. Lucy Wills spent some weeks doing voluntary nursing in a hospital in Cape Town, before she and Margot Hume returned by sea to England, arriving in Plymouth in December. In January 1915, Lucy Wills enrolled as a medical student at the London (Royal Free Hospital) School of Medicine for Women ('The School'), then already part of the University of London. The school had been established in 1874 as the London School of Medicine for Women and was the first medical school in Britain to train women. The foundation of the school was due to Sophia Jex-Blake and her supporters. These included Charles Darwin, Lord Shaftesbury and Thomas Huxley, together with a number of pioneering women physicians, among them the first woman in England to obtain a medical qualification, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. In 1877 the Royal Free Hospital agreed to allow the school students access to the wards and out-patient departments, and in 1898 the two institutions joined forces, with the school changing its name to the London (Royal Free Hospital) School of Medicine for Women. It became part of the University of London. It was in Hunter Street, next to Brunswick Square in Bloomsbury, while the Royal Free Hospital was then in Gray’s Inn Road, about a quarter of a mile away. The school had strong links with India, and had a number of Indian women students, including Dr Jensha Jhirad, the first Indian woman to qualify with a degree in obstetrics and gynaecology in 1919, the year before Lucy Wills graduated. Lucy Wills became a legally qualified medical practitioner with the qualification of Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians London awarded in May 1920 (LRCP Lond 1920), and the University of London degrees of Medical Bachelor and Bachelor of Science awarded in December 1920 (MB BS U Lond) - then 32. On qualifying, Lucy Wills decided not to practise as a physician, but to research and teach in the Department of Pregnant Pathology at the Royal Free. There she worked with Christine Pillman (later Mrs Ulysses Williams) who had been at Girton at the same time Lucy was at Newnham, on metabolic studies of pregnancy. In 1928 Lucy Wills began her seminal research work in India on macrocytic anaemia in pregnancy. This was prevalent in a severe form among poorer women with dietary deficiencies, particularly those in the textile industry. Dr Margaret Balfour of the Indian Medical Service had asked her to join the Maternal Mortality Inquiry sponsored by the Indian Research Fund Association at the Haffkine Institute in Bombay. Lucy Wills was in India between 1928 and 1933, mostly based at the Haffkine Institute in Bombay. In the summer of 1929, from April to October, she moved her work to the Pasteur Institute of India in Coonoor (where Sir Robert McCarrison was Director of Nutrition Research), and in early 1931 she was working at the Caste and Gosha Hospital in Madras. In each of the summers of 1930, 1931 and 1932 she returned to England for a few months and continued her work in the pathology laboratories at the Royal Free. She was back at the Royal Free full-time in 1933, but there was another 10-week working visit to the Haffkine Institute from November 1937 to early January 1938. On this occasion, and for the first time, Lucy Wills travelled by air to Karachi and onwards by sea. The air journey in October 1937 was in an Imperial Airways flying boat, on their recently inaugurated route carrying mail and some passengers. The flying boat was a Short ‘C’ Class Empire flying boat, the Calypso, G AEUA. The route started at Southampton and involved landings on water for refuelling at Marseilles, Bracciano near Rome, Brindisi, Athens, Alexandria, Tiberias, Habbaniyah to the west of Baghdad, Basra, Bahrein, Dubai, Gwador and Karachi, with overnight stops at Rome, Alexandria, Basra and Sharjah (just outside Dubai). The five-day flight was the first of the Imperial Airways flights to go beyond Alexandria. Lucy Wills was well introduced in India, probably through Dr Margaret Balfour and Sir Robert McCarrison. In Bombay she was on dining terms with the governors and their wives at Government House – Sir Leslie Wilson in 1928 and Sir Frederick Sykes in 1929. In 1929 she visited Mysore and wrote to her brother that 'I was most fortunate to be under the wing of Sir Charles Todhunter, who is a very important person there'. Todhunter had been Governor of Madras and in 1929 was the secretary to the Maharajah of Mysore. Lucy Wills observed an apparent correlation between the dietary habits of different classes of Bombay women and the likelihood of their becoming anaemic during pregnancy. Poor Muslim women were the ones with both the most deficient diets and the greatest susceptibility to anaemia. This anaemia was then known as ‘pernicious anaemia of pregnancy’. However, Lucy Wills was able to demonstrate that the anaemia she observed differed from true pernicious anaemia, as the patients did not have achlorhydria, an inability to produce gastric acid. Furthermore, while patients responded to crude liver extracts, they did not respond to the ‘pure’ liver extracts (vitamin B12) which had been shown to treat true pernicious anaemia. She postulated that there must have been another nutritional factor responsible for this macrocytic anaemia other than vitamin B12 deficiency. For some years this nutritional factor was known as the ‘Wills Factor’, and it was later shown, in the 1940s, to be folate, of which the synthetic form is folic acid. Lucy Wills decided to investigate possible nutritional treatments by first studying the effects of dietary manipulation on a macrocytic anaemia in albino rats. This work was done at the Nutritional Research Laboratories at the Pasteur Institute of India in Coonoor. Rats fed on the same diet as Bombay Muslim women became anaemic, pregnant ones dying before giving birth. The rat anaemia was prevented by the addition of yeast to synthetic diets which had no vitamin B. This work was later replicated using rhesus monkeys. Back in Bombay, Lucy Wills conducted clinical trials on patients with the macrocytic anaemia and established experimentally that this type of anaemia could be both prevented and cured by yeast extracts, of which the cheapest source was Marmite. Lucy Wills was back again at the Royal Free from 1938 until her retirement in 1947. During the Second World War she was a full-time pathologist in the Emergency Medical Service. Work in the pathology department was disrupted for a few days in July 1944 (and a number of people killed) when the hospital suffered a direct hit from a V1 flying bomb. By the end of the war, she was in charge of pathology at the Royal Free and had established the first haematology department there. After her retirement, Lucy Wills traveled extensively, including to Jamaica, Fiji and South Africa, continuing her observations on nutrition and anaemia. Lucy Wills died on 26 April 1964. The obituary in the British Medical Journal the following month included the following comments: "The excellence of her work on tropical megaloblastic anaemia has long been recognized by nutritionists and haematologists. Every medical student has heard of its cure by her discovery of the Wills factor in yeast extract, which paved the way for the subsequent work on folic acid. It was one of the simple but great observations which are landmarks in the history and treatment of the nutritional anaemias... Lucy Wills even in her seventies was always a tireless worker and seeing her example other people found themselves working harder than they had believed possible. Though impatient with laziness and with half-baked opinions, she was compassionate to other human failings. She held strong convictions on social questions and steadily upheld them as a borough councilor in Chelsea during the last decade of her life. She had wide interests, particularly loving books, gardens, music, and the theatre, and enjoying life always with keen intelligence and humour. Her generosity and magnanimity, combined with outstanding ability and resolution, made friends of all who ever worked with her and found her worthy of profound respect and deep affection." Obituaries and other publications describe her as independent, autocratic, not a sufferer of fools, a joyous and enthusiastic teacher, an indomitable walker and skier, an enthusiastic traveler, a lover of the beauty of nature, mirthful and entertaining. Source:

Yvonne CHOQUET BRUHATYvonne Choquet-Bruhat is a French mathematician and physicist. Her work lies in the intersection of mathematics and physics, notably in Einstein's general theory of relativity. She is one of the pioneers of the study of General relativity, and she is particularly known as the first to prove the well-posedness of the Einstein equations. Her work was applied in the detection of gravitational waves. She was the first woman to be elected to the Académie des Sciences Française ("French Academy of Sciences") and is a Grand Officier of the Légion d'honneur. Yvonne was born in Lille in 1923. Her mother was the philosophy professor Berthe Hubert, her father was the physicist Georges Bruhat (1887 - 1945) (who died in the concentration camp Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen) and her brother was the mathematician François Bruhat. Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat undertook her secondary school education in Paris. In 1941 she entered the Concours General, a competition to determine the best pupils in the whole of France, and won the silver medal for physics. From 1943 to 1946 she studied at the École Normale Supérieure ("ENS") in Paris and from 1946 was a teaching assistant there and undertook research advised by André Lichnerowicz. From 1949 to 1951 she was a research assistant at the French National Centre for Scientific Research ("CNRS"), as a result of which she received her doctorate. Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat has worked in a range of areas in mathematical physics, applying results from the analysis of partial differential equations and differential geometry to provide a firm basis for solutions in physics. From 1951-1952 she worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, under the supervision of Albert Einstein, where she proved the local existence and uniqueness of solutions to the vacuum Einstein Equations. Her work proves the well-posedness of the Einstein equation, and started the study of dynamics in General Relativity. The following year Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat joined the faculty at Marseilles and in 1958 she was awarded the CNRS Silver Medal. From 1958 to 1959 she taught at the University of Reims. In 1960 she became a professor at the Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie (UPMC) in Paris, and has remained professor or professor emeritus until her retirement in 1992. At the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie she continued to make significant contributions to mathematical physics, notably in general relativity, supergravity, and the non-Abelian gauge theories of the standard model. Her work in 1981 with Demetrios Christodoulou showed the existence of global solutions of the Yang-Mills, Higgs, and Spinor Field Equations in 3+1 Dimensions. Additionally in 1984 she made perhaps the first study by a mathematician of supergravity with results that can be extended to the currently important model in D=11 dimensions. In 1978 Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat was elected a correspondent to the Academy of Sciences and on 14 May 1979 became the first woman to be elected a full member. From 1980 to 1983 she was President of the Comité international de relativité générale et gravitation ("International committee on general relativity and gravitation"). In 1985 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1986 she was chosen to deliver the prestigious Lecture by the Association for Women in Mathematics. Choquet-Bruhat's main theorem is one of the milestones of mathematical General relativity. Her theorem indeed establishes that General relativity has a well-posed initial value formulation. The theorem says the following: "Given an initial data for the Einstein equation, which is a triple (M, g, K) where M is a 3-manifold, g a Riemannian metric and K a symmetric 2-tensor, which satisfies the constraint equations, there exists a maximal globally hyperbolic spacetime which verifies the Einstein equation with the given initial data." The proof makes use of a clever choice of coordinates, the wave coordinates (which are the Lorentzian equivalent to the harmonic coordinates), in which the Einstein equation becomes a hyperbolic PDE, for which well-posedness results can be applied. Awards - Médaille d'Argent du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1958 - Prix Henri de Parville of the Académie des Sciences, 1963 - Member, Comite International de Relativite Generale et Gravitation (President 1980-1983) - Member, Académie des Sciences, Paris (elected 1979) - Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1985 - Association for Women in Mathematics Noether Lecturer, 1986 - Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur, 1997 - Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics, 2003 - Elevated to the 'Grand Officier' and 'Grand Croix' dignities in the Légion d'Honneur, 2008 Source:

Mary CARTWRIGHTDame Mary Lucy Cartwright was a British mathematician. With J. E. Littlewood Cartwright was one of the first mathematicians to study what would later become known as chaos theory. She saw a large number of solutions to a problem she was studying and this would later be seen as an example of the butterfly effect. Cartwright was born in Aynho, Northamptonshire, where her father, William Digby Cartwright, was vicar. Through her grandmother Jane Holbech she was descended from the poet John Donne and William Mompesson, the Vicar of Eyam. She had four siblings, two older and two younger: John (born 1896), Nigel (born 1898), Jane (born 1905), and William (born 1907). Cartwright's early education was at Leamington High School (1912–1915) then Gravely Manor School in Boscombe (1915–1916) before completion in Godolphin School in Salisbury (1916–1919). Cartwright studied mathematics at St Hugh's College, Oxford, graduating in 1923 with a first class degree. She was the first woman to attain the final degree lectures and to obtain a first. She then taught at Alice Ottley School in Worcester and Wycombe Abbey School in Buckinghamshire before returning to Oxford in 1928 to read for her D.Phil. Cartwright was supervised by G. H. Hardy in her doctoral studies. During the academic year 1928–9 Hardy was at Princeton, so it was E. C. Titchmarsh who took over the duties as a supervisor. Her thesis "The Zeros of Integral Functions of Special Types" was examined by J. E. Littlewood whom she met for the first time as an external examiner in her oral examination for this 1930 D.Phil. She would later establish an enduring collaboration with Littlewood. In 1930, Cartwright was awarded a Yarrow Research Fellowship and she went to Girton College, Cambridge, to continue working on the topic of her doctoral thesis. Attending Littlewood's lectures, she solved one of the open problems which he posed. Her mathematical theorem, now known as Cartwright's theorem, gives an estimate for the maximum modulus of an analytic function that takes the same value no more than p times in the unit disc. To prove the theorem she used a new approach, applying a technique introduced by Lars Ahlfors for conformal mappings. In 1936, Cartwright became director of studies in mathematics at Girton College, and in 1938 she began work on a new project which had a major impact on the direction of her research. The Radio Research Board of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research produced a memorandum regarding certain differential equations which came out of modelling radio and radar work. They asked the London Mathematical Society if they could help find a mathematician who could work on these problems and Cartwright became interested in this memorandum. The dynamics lying behind the problems were unfamiliar to Cartwright so she approached Littlewood for help with this aspect. They began to collaborate studying the equations. Littlewood wrote: "For something to do we went on and on at the thing with no earthly prospect of "results"; suddenly the whole vista of the dramatic fine structure of solutions stared us in the face". The fine structure which Littlewood describes here is today seen to be a typical instance of the . The collaboration led to important results, and these have greatly influenced the direction that the modern theory of dynamical systems has taken. In 1945, Cartwright simplified Hermite's elementary proof of the irrationality of π. Her version of the proof was published in an appendix to Sir Harold Jeffreys' book Scientific Inference. In 1947, she was elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society and, although she was not the first woman to be elected to that Society, she was the first female mathematician. Cartwright was appointed Mistress of Girton in 1948 then, in addition, a Reader in the Theory of Functions in Cambridge in 1959, holding this appointment until 1968. From 1957 to 1960 she was president of the Cambridge Association of University Women. After retiring from Girton, Cartwright was a visiting professor at Brown University from 1968 to 1969 and at Claremont Graduate School from 1969 to 1970. Source:

Mary TSINGOU-MENZELMary Tsingou-Menzel is an American physicist and mathematician of Greek ancestry. She is known for being one of the first programmers on the computer at Los Alamos National Laboratory and for work in conjunction with Enrico Fermi, John Pasta, and Stanislaw Ulam which became the inspiration for the fields of chaos theory and scientific computing. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, her parents moved to the US from Bulgaria and were Greek. She spent several years in Bulgaria before returning to the US to attend high school and college. Mary Tsingou-Menzel attended the University of Wisconsin where she majored in mathematics and education. She is known in the computational physics community for having helped in the coding of the problem at the Los Alamos National Laboratory while working as a programmer in the MANIAC group. The result was an important stepping stone for chaos theory. After Fermi's death, James L. Tuck and Tsingou-Menzel repeated the original FPU results and provided strong indication that the nonlinear FPU problem might be integrable. In 2008, a published in Physics Today called to rename the FPU problem to the FPUT problem to give her proper credit for her contribution. Subsequent papers referencing the FPUT problem reflect this change. Source:

Yvette CAUCHOISYvette Cauchois was a French physicist known for her contributions to x-ray spectroscopy and x-ray optics, and for pioneering European synchrotron research. Cauchois attended school in Paris, and pursued undergraduate studies at the Sorbonne who awarded her a degree in the physical sciences in July 1928. Cauchois undertook graduate studies at the Laboratory of Physical Chemistry with the support of a National Fund for Science studentship, and was awarded her doctorate in 1933 for her work on the use of curved crystals for high-resolution x-ray analysis. After completing her doctoral studies, Cauchois was appointed research assistant in the laboratory of Jean Perrin at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). She was promoted to research associate in 1937, and in the same year participated in the launch of the Palais de la Découverte. In January 1938 Cauchois was named head of the Physical Chemistry Laboratory in the Faculty of Sciences of Paris. When World War Two broke out, Cauchois maintained continuity at the Laboratory, acting as Head of Studies when Jean Perrin had to flee to the United States. In 1945, when the Liberation led to the dismissal of Louis Dunoyer de Segonzac, Cauchois was promoted to Professor at the Sorbonne. She became Chair of Chemical Physics in 1954, succeeding Edmond Bauer to take charge of the laboratory. With the number of researchers outgrowing the available space in the Laboratory, Cauchois founded the Centre de Chimie Physique at Orsay in 1960. She directed this organization for ten years, whilst simultaneously continuing her work at the Sorbonne. She joined the University of Paris VI in 1971 following the division of the Sorbonne. Cauchois chaired the French Society of Physical Chemistry from 1975-1978. She was only the second woman to do so, after Marie Curie. From 1978 until her retirement in 1983, Cauchois was Professor Emeritus at the University of Paris VI. Cauchois was still conducting active laboratory research as late as 1992 (aged 83). Over her lifetime she produced more than 200 publications, which continue to be cited today. In the early 1930s, Cauchois established the fundamental principles of a new x-ray spectrometer that was both easy to use and had a high resolution, satisfying the Bragg reflection condition. The new spectrometer was named after her, and from 1934 she used it to observe gas emissions and multiplets. The new technique was used around the world for the analysis of x-rays and gamma rays and prompted a wave of new scholarship in radiation studies. Cauchois pioneered developments in x-ray imaging and observed that x-ray radiation could be focused using curved crystal for use in monochromators and x-ray scattering. Cauchois' work on soft x-ray distributions was the first step in determining the photo-absorption spectra. She used the radiation reflected from crystals to study the electronic structure of materials. Cauchois systematically studied the x-ray spectra of heavy elements and actinides. In 1936, Cauchois and Horia Hulubei claimed to have discovered element 85 via X-ray analysis, conducting further research and publishing on follow-up studies in 1939. Cauchois, Sonia Cotelle, and Hulubei proved the presence of polonium and neptunium, and Cauchois later pioneered studies on the x-ray spectra of transuranic elements. A fascination with astrophysics led Cauchois to study extraterrestrial x-ray radiation, especially the solar x-ray spectrum using missile experiments. In 1970 she produced x-ray images of the sun. Synchrotron and solar research From 1962, Cauchois initiated a research program in collaboration with the Istituto Superiore di Sanità at the Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati to explore the possibilities of synchrotron research. She was the first person in Europe to realize the potential of the radiation emitted by electrons rotating in the synchrotron as a source for understanding the properties of matter. In the early 1970s, Cauchois carried out her experiments at LURE (Laboratoire pour l'utilisation des radiations électromagnétiques). Cauchois was particularly interested in assisting young and underprivileged people. She also enjoyed poetry and music, and was a skilled grand piano player. After meeting a priest from the monastery of Bârsana and discussing religious themes with him, Cauchois decided to be baptized in the Orthodox religion. She travelled to Maramures, Romania in 1999, aged 90, and was baptized there. Cauchois contracted bronchitis on this trip, and died a few days after returning to Paris. She was buried in the Monastery Bârsana, to whom she bequeathed her assets. Awards Ancel Prize from the Société chimique de France (1933) Henri Becquerel Prize from the French Academy of Sciences (1935) Gizbal-Baral Prize from the French Academy of Sciences (1936) Henry de Jouvenel Prize for selfless scientific activity from the Ministry of National Education (France) (1938) Jerome Ponti Prize from the French Academy of Sciences (1942) Triossi Prize from the French Academy of Sciences (1946) Commander of the Order of the Ministry of Education Officer of the Legion of Honour Officer of the National Order of Merit (France) Medal of the Czechoslovak Society of Spectroscopy (1974) Gold medal of the University of Paris (1987) Doctor honoris causa of the University of Bucharest (1993) Cauchois' name was given to a street of the new university area of Moulon in Gif-sur-Yvette and a street in Tomblaine (Meurthe-et-Moselle). Source:

Rozsa PETERRózsa Péter, born Rózsa Politzer, was a Hungarian mathematician and logician. She is best known as the "founding mother of recursion theory". Péter was born in Budapest, Hungary, as Rózsa Politzer. She attended Pázmány Péter University (now Eötvös Loránd University), originally studying chemistry but later switching to mathematics. She attended lectures by Lipót Fejér and József Kürschák. While at university, she met László Kalmár; they would collaborate in future years and Kalmár encouraged her to pursue her love of mathematics. After graduating in 1927, Péter could not find a permanent teaching position although she had passed her exams to qualify as a mathematics teacher. Due to the effects of the Great Depression, many university graduates could not find work and Péter began private tutoring. At this time, she also began her graduate studies. Initially, Péter began her graduate research on number theory. Upon discovering that her results had already been proven by the work of Robert Carmichael and L. E. Dickson, she abandoned mathematics to focus on poetry. However, she was convinced to return to mathematics by her friend, László Kalmár, who suggested she research the work of Kurt Gödel on the theory of incompleteness. She prepared her own, different proofs to Gödel's work. Péter presented the results of her paper on recursive theory, "Rekursive Funktionen," to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zurich, Switzerland in 1932. For her research, she received her PhD summa cum laude in 1935. In 1936, she presented a paper entitled "Über rekursive Funktionen der zweiten Stufe" to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Oslo. These papers helped to found the modern field of recursive function theory as a separate area of mathematical research. In 1937, she was appointed as contributing editor of the Journal of Symbolic Logic. After the passage of the Jewish Laws of 1939 in Hungary, Péter was forbidden to teach because of her Jewish origin and was briefly confined to a ghetto in Budapest. During World War II, she wrote her book "Playing with Infinity: Mathematical Explorations and Excursions", a work for lay readers on the topics of number theory and logic. Originally published in Hungarian, it has been translated into English and at least a dozen other languages. With the end of the war in 1945, Péter received her first full-time teaching appointment at the Budapest Teachers Training College. In 1952, she was the first Hungarian woman to be made an Academic Doctor of Mathematics. After the College closed in 1955, she taught at Eötvös Loránd University until her retirement in 1975. She was a popular professor, known as "Aunt Rózsa" to her students. In 1951, she published her key work, Recursive Functions (Rekursive Funtionen). She continued to publish important papers on recursive theory throughout her life. In 1959 she presented a major paper "Über die Verallgemeinerung der Theorie der rekursiven Funktionen für abstrakte Mengen geeigneter Struktur als Definitionsbereiche" to the International Symposium in Warsaw (later published in two parts in 1961 and 1962). Beginning in the mid-1950s, Péter applied recursive function theory to computers. Her final book, published in 1976, was "Recursive Functions in Computer Theory". Originally published in Hungarian, it was the second Hungarian mathematical book to be published in the Soviet Union because its subject matter was considered indispensable to the theory of computers. It was translated into English in 1981. Péter was awarded the Kossuth Prize in 1951. She received the Manó Beke Prize by the János Bolyai Mathematical Society in 1953, the Silver State Prize in 1970, and the Gold State Prize in 1973. In 1973, she became the first woman to be elected to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Source:

Jeanne VILLEPREUXJeanne Villepreux-Power née Jeanne Villepreux was a pioneering French marine biologist who in 1832 was the first person to create aquaria for experimenting with aquatic organisms. The English biologist Richard Owen referred to her as the "Mother of Aquariophily." Villepreux-Power was born in Juillac, Corrèze, the eldest child of a shoemaker. At the age of 18, she walked to Paris to become a dressmaker, a distance of over 400 kilometres (250 mi). In 1816, she became well known for creating the wedding gown of Princess Caroline in her wedding to Charles-Ferdinand de Bourbon. She met and married the English merchant, James Power, in 1818 and the couple moved to Sicily. In Sicily she began to study natural history; in particular she made physical observations and experiments on marine and terrestrial animals. She wanted to inventory the island's ecosystem. In 1834, a professor, Carmelo Maravigna, wrote in the Giornale Letterario dell’Accademia Gioenia di Catania that Villepreux-Power should be credited with the invention of the aquarium and systematic application of it to the study of marine life. She created three types of aquarium: a glass aquarium for her study, a submersible glass one in a cage, and a cage for larger molluscs that would anchor at sea. Her first book was published in 1839 describing her experiments, called "Observations et expériences physiques sur plusieurs animaux marins et terrestres". Her second book, Guida per la Sicilia, was published in 1842. It has been republished by the Historical Society of Messina. She also studied molluscs and their fossils; in particular she favoured Argonauta argo. At the time, there was uncertainty over whether the Argonaut species produced its own shell, or acquired that of a different organism (similar to hermit crabs). Villepreux-Power's work showed that they do indeed produce their own shells. She also published in 1860 the book Villepreux-Power was also concerned with conservation, and is credited with developing sustainable aquaculture principles in Sicily. She was the first woman member of the Catania Accademia Gioenia, and a correspondent member of the London Zoological Society and sixteen other learned societies. Villepreux-Power and her husband left Sicily in 1843, and many of her records and scientific drawings were lost in a shipwreck. Although she continued to write, she conducted no further research. She and husband divided their time between Paris and London. She fled Paris during a siege by the Prussian Army in the winter of 1870, returning to Juilliac. She died in January 1871. In 1997 her name, "Villepreux-Power," was given to a crater on Venus discovered by the Magellan probe. Popular culture. A biographical song about Jeanne Villepreux is featured on "26 Scientists Volume Two: Newton to Zeno". A 2008 album by the California band Artichoke. Source:

Madeleine BRESMadeleine Brès, née Gebelin, was the first French woman to obtain a medical degree. Born Madeleine Gebelin, she told in the Medical Chronicle on 1 April 1895 how her medical career was born - "I was barely eight years old when my father, who was a wheelwright by trade - it is not a silly job - drove me to the sisters' home where he carried out his work..." In the hospital of Nîmes, one nun took an affection to her and taught her some small procedures, such as the preparation of herbal teas and poultices. She was twelve when the Gebelin family left for Paris, and only fifteen and one month when she married Adrien-Stéphane Brès, a tram conductor. Thanks to the efforts of Julie-Victoire Daubié, French degrees became open to women since 1861. She first had to obtain the consent of her husband, as at the time French law judged married women to be the legal responsibility of their husbands. In 1866, she presented herself to the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, Charles Adolphe Wurtz, and asked him for permission to enroll to study medicine. The latter announced that he would do it, but on the condition that she first obtained a degree in Arts and Sciences—a task which she accomplished in three years. She presented herself again to the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Paris and remarked to him that nothing now opposed her enrollment in the medical course, and that there were three female foreigners - the American Mary Putnam, the Russian Catherine Gontcharoff and the English Elizabeth Garrett Anderson - were holders of nationally known equivalent degrees. She finally obtained the right to study the medicine course at the faculty. The dean's decision was met with opposition from the university and medical community. The doctor Henri Montanier wrote in 1868 in the Hospitals Gazette "to make a woman a doctor, it is necessary to make her lose her sensitivity, her timidity, her modesty, harden her to the sight of the most horrible and frightening things. When the woman arrives at that, I ask myself, what remains of the woman? A being who is no longer either a young girl nor a woman; neither a wife, nor a mother." It is difficult to be more eloquent in closing, with the help of misogynistic arguments, the doors of medicine to women. Despite his personal endorsement, the Dean Würtz took this application to the Minister of Education, Victor Duruy, who approved the acceptance of Brès, but pre-emptively brought the matter to the Council of Ministers. The Empress Eugénie who, referring to the law passed on 10 March 1803 proclaiming the freedom of the job, advocated for Madeleine Brès to be accepted. Finally, after deliberation by the Council of Ministers, Brès was accepted to enroll to study medicine. Brès was by then 26 years old, mother to three children; the mayor of the Ve district received the consent of her husband and she became a medical student in 1869 in the service of Professor Broca at Mercy Hospital. With the Franco-Prussian War and the departure of a number of the hospitals' doctors for the front, she was named, at the proposal of Professor Broca, temporary intern until July 1871. Strengthened by her experience as a temporary intern, Madeleine Brès decided to pursue a hospital career and sat the external exams, then the internal. Despite the support of Professor Broca, the director of the hospital's Public Assistance publicly refused her this possibility on 21 December 1871. Eventually, Madeleine Brès decided against further pursuit of a hospital job. Widowed, she was the single mother of three children. She decided to become a pediatrist and to move to the city. She prepared her thesis in the laboratory of Professor Würtz and, on 3 June 1875, produced it on the subject Of Breasts and Breastfeeding. She received honors on her thesis and became the first French woman to be a Doctor in medicine. This thesis wrote in its desired specialty about everything related to the relationship between the mother and her baby, as well as the hygiene of young children. Technically, she was not the first woman to obtain a doctorate of medicine in France - the Englishwoman Elizabeth Garrett Anderson had been ahead of her by five years. During her career, she worked as a professor of hygiene and taught headmistresses of nursery schools in the city of Paris. She headed the journal Hygiene of the Woman and the Child, and was the author of several childcare books. On a mission for the Internal Minister, she left for Switzerland to study the organization and function of crèches. On 28 May 1893, the first crèche in France was opened by Théophile Roussel, on Nollet Road, in the Batignolles district. She died at the age of 79, in poverty. Works and publications - "Of Breasts and Breastfeeding" ("De la mamelle et de l'allaitement") [thesis for the doctorate of medicine, presented and supported on Thursday 3 June 1875] full text printed by E. Martinet, 1875. - "Artificial Feeding and the Bottle" (), G. Masson (Paris) Source:

Marie-Louise DUBREIL-JACOTINMarie-Louise Dubreil-Jacotin was a French mathematician, the second woman to obtain a doctorate in pure mathematics in France after , the first woman to become a full professor of mathematics in France, and an expert on fluid mechanics and abstract algebra. Marie-Louise Jacotin was the daughter of a lawyer for a French bank, and the grand-daughter (through her mother) of a glassblower from a family of Greek origin. Her mathematics teacher at the lycée was a sister of mathematician Élie Cartan, and after passing the baccalaureate she was allowed (through the intervention of a friend's father, the head of the institution) to continue studying mathematics at the Collège de Chaptal. On her second attempt, she placed second in the entrance examination for the École Normale Supérieure in 1926 (tied with Claude Chevalley), but by a ministerial decree was moved down to 21st position. After the intervention of Fernand Hauser, the editor of the Journal of the ENS, she was admitted to the school. Her teachers there included Henri Lebesgue and Jacques Hadamard, and she finished her studies in 1929. With the encouragement of ENS director Ernest Vessiot she traveled to Oslo to work with Vilhelm Bjerknes, under whose influence she became interested in the mathematics of waves and the work of Tullio Levi-Civita in this subject. She returned to Paris in 1930, married another mathematician, Paul Dubreil, and joined him on another tour of the mathematics centers of Germany and Italy, including a visit with Levi-Civita. The Dubreils returned to France again in 1931. While her husband taught at Lille, Dubreil-Jacotin continued her research, finishing a doctorate in 1934 concerning the existence of infinitely many different waves in ideal liquids, under the supervision of Henri Villat.[2][3][4] Before her, the only women to obtain doctorates in mathematics in France were Marie Charpentier in 1931 (also in pure mathematics) and Edmée Chandon in 1930 (in astronomy and geodesy). Following her husband, she moved to Nancy, but was unable to obtain a faculty position there herself because that was viewed as nepotism; instead, she became a research assistant at the University of Rennes. She was promoted to a teaching position in 1938, and became an assistant professor at the University of Lyon in 1939, while also continuing to teach at Rennes. In 1943 she became a full professor at the University of Poitiers, the first woman to become a full professor of mathematics in France, and in 1955 she was given a chair there in differential and integral calculus. In 1956 she moved to the University of Paris and after the university split she held a professorship at Pierre and Marie Curie University. In the 1950s, motivated by the study of averaging operators for turbulence, Dubreil-Jacotin's interests turned towards abstract algebra, and she later performed research in semigroups and graded algebraic structures. She was the author of two textbooks, one on lattice theory and the other on abstract algebra. As well as her technical publications, Jacotin was the author of a work in the history of mathematics, Portraits of women mathematicians. In semigroup theory, the Dubreil-Jacotin semigroups are named after her, as is the Dubreil-Jacotin–Long equation, "the standard model for internal gravity waves" in fluid mechanics. Source:

Marguerite PEREYMarguerite Catherine Perey was a French physicist and a student of Marie Curie. In 1939, Perey discovered the element francium by purifying samples of lanthanum that contained actinium. In 1962, she was the first woman to be elected to the French Académie des Sciences, an honor denied to her mentor Curie. Perey died of cancer in 1975. Perey was born in 1909 in Villemomble, France, just outside Paris where the Curie's Radium Institute was located. Although she hoped to study medicine, the death of her father left the family in financial difficulties. Perey earned a chemistry diploma from Paris' Technical School of Women's Education in 1929; while not a "degree", it did qualify her to work as a chemistry technician. At the age of 19, she interviewed for a job with Marie Curie at Curie's Radium Institute in Paris, France, and was hired. took on a mentoring role to Perey, taking her on as her personal assistant. Under Marie Curie's guidance at the Radium Institute, Perey learned how to isolate and purify radioactive elements, focusing on the chemical element actinium (discovered in Curie's laboratory in 1899 by chemist André-Louis Debierne). Perey spent a decade sifting out actinium from all the other components of uranium ore, which Curie then used in her study of the decay of the element. died of aplastic anemia only five years after Perey began working with her, but Perey and Debierne continued their research on actinium and Perey was promoted to radiochemist. In 1935, Perey read a paper by American scientists claiming to have discovered a type of radiation called beta particles being emitted by actinium and was skeptical because the reported energy of the beta particles didn't seem to match actinium. She decided to investigate for herself, theorizing that actinium was decaying into another element (a daughter atom) and that the observed beta particles were actually coming from that daughter atom. She confirmed this by isolating extremely pure actinium and studying its radiation very quickly; she detected a small amount of alpha radiation, a type of radiation that involves the loss of protons and therefore changes an atom's identity. Loss of an alpha particle (consisting of 2 protons and 2 neutrons) would turn actinium (element 89, with 89 protons) into the theorized but never-before-seen element 87. Perey named the element francium, after her home country, and it joined the other alkali metals in Group 1 of the periodic table of elements. Perey received a grant to study at Paris' Sorbonne, but because she didn't have a bachelor's degree, the Sorbonne required her to take courses and obtain the equivalent of a B.S. to fulfill their PhD program requirements before she could earn her doctorate. She graduated from the Sorbonne in 1946 with a Doctorate of Physics. After obtaining her PhD, Perey returned to the Radium Institute as a senior scientist and worked there until 1949. Perey was made the head of the department of nuclear chemistry at the University of Strasbourg in 1949, where she developed the University's radiochemistry and nuclear chemistry program and continued her work on francium. She founded a laboratory that in 1958 became the Laboratory of Nuclear Chemistry in the Center for Nuclear Research, for which she served as director. She also served as a member of the Atomic Weights Commission from 1950 to 1963. Ironically Perey hoped that francium would help diagnose cancer, but in fact it itself was carcinogenic, and Perey developed bone cancer which eventually killed her. Perey died on May 13, 1975 (age 65). She is credited with championing better safety measures for scientists working with radiation. Perey's archives with materials dating from 1929 to 1975 were left at the Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg. They include laboratory notebooks, course materials from her work as professor of nuclear chemistry, papers from her laboratory directorship, and publications. All documents are now currently held at the Archives départamentales du Bas-Rhin (Departamental archives of the Bas-Rhin). Perey was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1962, making her the first woman elected to the Institut de France. Although a significant step, her election as a "corresponding member" rather than a full member came with limited privileges. Awards The French Academy of Science Wilde Prize (1950) The French Academy of Science Le Conte Prize (1960) The City of Paris Science Grand Prize (1960)[3] Officier of the Légion d'Honneur (1960) Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris (1960) Elected correspondante of the Académie des Sciences (Paris, 1962). First woman to be elected to the Académie since its founding in 1666. Lavoisier Prize of the Académie des Sciences (1964) Silver Medal of the Société Chimique de France (1964) Commandeur of the Ordre National du Mérite (1974) Source:

Claudine PICARDETClaudine Picardet was a chemist, mineralogist, meteorologist and scientific translator. Among the French chemists of the late eighteenth century she stands out for her extensive translations of scientific literature from Swedish, English, German and Italian to French. She translated three books and thousands of pages of scientific papers, which were published as well as circulated in manuscript form. She hosted renowned scientific and literary salons in Dijon and Paris, and was an active participant in the collection of meteorological data. She helped to establish Dijon and Paris as scientific centers, substantially contributing to the spread of scientific knowledge during a critical period in the chemical revolution. Poullet was born in Dijon and died in Paris. She was the eldest daughter of a royal notary, François Poulet de Champlevey. In 1755, Poullet married Claude Picardet, a barrister. Claude Picardet served as a councillor of the Table de marbre, and later a member of the Académie royale des sciences, arts, et belles-lettres de Dijon. This gave her a broad entrée to scientific, bourgeoisie and high society circles. She attended lectures and demonstrations and became active as a scientist, salonnière, and translator. She published initially as "Mme P*** de Dijon". The couple had one son, who died in 1776, at age 19. After she became a widow in 1796, she moved to Paris. In 1798 she married Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, a close friend and scientific colleague of many years. Guyton de Morveau served as a deputy in the Council of five hundred and was director and professor of chemistry of the École polytechnique in Paris. She continued her translations and scientific work and hosted an elite scientific salon. During the reign of Napoleon, she was styled Baroness Guyton-Morveau. “Madame Picardet is as agreeable in conversation as she is learned in the closet; a very pleasing unaffected woman; she has translated Scheele from the German, and a part of Mr. Kirwan from the English; a treasure to M. de Morveau, for she is able and willing to converse with him on chymical subjects, and on any others that tend either to instruct or please.” Little is known of her between her second husband's death in 1816, and her own in 1820. Picardet translated thousands of pages of scientific works, many of them by the leading scientists of the day, from multiple languages, for publication in French. Her work can be seen in the context of a shift in the nature of scientific translation, away from the work of "solitary translators". Guyton de Morveau headed a group of translators at Dijon Academy, the Bureau de traduction de Dijon, in response to a demand for timely full translations of foreign scientific texts, particularly in the fields of chemistry and mineralogy. Those engaged in this "collective enterprise" needed local and international connections to acquire the original printed works, and linguistic and scientific expertise to develop and validate the accuracy of their translations. In addition to the linguistic work of translation, they carried out laboratory experiments to replicate experimental instructions and confirm the results observed. Mineralogical observations about materiality, such as the color, odor and shape of crystals, were made to confirm the factual information given in the original text. The group at Dijon Academy played a "pioneering role" in making the work of foreign scientists available in France. Some translations were published in books and journals. Others were circulated as manuscript copies within scientific and social circles. In addition, experiments were presented at public lectures and demonstrations. Claudine Picardet was the only non-academic among the group, the only woman, and more prolific than any of the half dozen men involved. She was the only translator in the group to work in five languages, and the only one to publish in journals besides the Annales de chimie. The Annales de chimie was established by Guyton de Morveau, Antoine Lavoisier, Claude Louis Berthollet and others beginning in 1789. The rules of the editorial board stated, as of January 1789, that translators were to be paid comparably to authors. Some later writers, beginning with a "strange obituary" by Claude-Nicolas Amanton, have given Guyton de Morveau and others in the group credit for Picardet's work. Scholar Patrice Bret describes this as a misogynous and "metaphoric tale", contradicted by attributions in the published works and other evidence. By 1774, at the urging of Guyton de Morveau, Picardet was translating John Hill's Spatogenesia: the Origin and Nature of Spar; Its Qualities and Uses (English, 1772) for publication in Jean-André Mongez's Journal de physique. She became a prominent contributor to Mongez's journal, although her early publications identify her only as Mme. P or "Mme P*** de Dijon". By 1782, Guyton de Morveau's letters indicate that Claudine Picardet had translated works from English, Swedish, German, and Italian into French. Picardet's translation of Mémoires de chymie de M. C. W. Scheele Picardet created the first published collection of the chemical essays of Carl Wilhelm Scheele, translated from papers in Swedish and German, as Mémoires de chymie de M. C. W. Scheele, in two volumes (French, 1785). Mme. Picardet is credited with bringing Scheele's work on oxygen to the notice of scientists in France. Picardet was publicly identified as a translator, for the first time, in a review of the book by Jérôme Lalande which appeared in the Journal des savants in July 1786. Picardet wrote the first translation of Abraham Gottlob Werner's 1774 work Von den äusserlichen Kennzeichen der Fossilien (On the External Characters of Fossils, or of Minerals; Germany, 1774) Werner's major work, it was the first modern textbook on descriptive mineralogy, developing a comprehensive color scheme for the description and classification of minerals. Picardet's translation, Traité des caractères extérieurs des fossiles, traduit de l'allemand de M. A. G. Werner (Treatise on the external characteristics of fossils) was eventually published in Dijon in 1790, 'par le traducteur des "Mémoires de chymie" de Scheele.' Because the original text was substantially expanded and annotated, Picardet's translation is often considered to have constituted a new edition of the work. In both of these translations, contributions by other authors (such as annotations) are clearly identified. Chemist and historian of science James R. Partington credits Picardet with the greater part of a French translation of the first two volumes of Torbern Olof Bergman’s six-volume Opuscula physica et chemica (Latin, 1779–1790). Published under the title Opuscules chymiques et physiques de M. T. Bergman (Dijon, 1780–1785), it has been generally credited to Guyton de Morveau. On the basis of letters between Guyton de Morvea and Bergman, Partington suggests that Picardet and others helped to translate Bergman's works without being credited. Mme. Picardet is variously credited with inspiring and possibly helping to write Madame Lavoisier's translation and critique of Richard Kirwan's 1787 Essay on Phlogiston. She translated some of Kirwan's papers. Claudine Picardet translated scientific papers from Swedish (Scheele, Bergman), German (Johann Christian Wiegleb, Johann Friedrich Westrumb, Johann Carl Friedrich Meyer, Martin Heinrich Klaproth), English (Richard Kirwan, William Fordyce), Italian (Marsilio Landriani) and possibly Latin (Bergman). Although she most frequently translated works on chemistry and mineralogy, she did translate some meteorological works. These included "Observationes astron. annis 1781, 82, 83 institutæ in observatorio regio Havniensi" (1784), reporting the astronomical observations of the longitude of the Mars knot, made in December 1783 by Thomas Bugge. Picardet's translation was published as "Observations de la longitude du nœud de Mars faite en Décembre 1873, par M. Bugge" in the Journal des savants (1787). Picardet had attended Morveau's chemistry courses and had studied the minerals in the Dijon Academy's collection. With Guyton de Morveau and other members of the Bureau de traduction de Dijon she carried out chemical experiments and mineralogical observations to confirm the content of the works they were translating. The "Translator's Advertisement" for Werner's treatise on minerals clearly states that she was skilled in laboratory and cabinet observations. She even developed her own terms in French, based on her direct observations of minerals, to capture Werner's neologisms. Picardet was also active in Antoine Lavoisier’s network for gathering meteorological data. From as early as 1785, she took daily barometric observations with an instrument from the Dijon Academy. M. Picardet sent her results to Lavoisier and they were presented to the Royal Academy of Science in Paris. As early as 1782, Guyton de Morveau had proposed a systematic approach to chemical nomenclature in which simple substances received simple names indicative of their chemical structure, such as hydrogen and oxygen. Compounds received names indicative of their constituent parts, such as sodium chloride and ferric sulfate. From 1786 to 1787, Guyton de Morveau, Antoine Lavoisier, Claude-Louis Berthollet, and Antoine-François Fourcroy met almost daily, working intensively to write Méthode de nomenclature chimique (“Method of Chemical Nomenclature”), which they intended to be "a complete and definitive reform of names in inorganic chemistry". A and Mme. Picardet. Mme. Lavoisier stands at the left of the group. The woman next to her is believed to be Mme. Picardet, holding a book emblematic of her work as a translator. It was due to the work of both Claudine Picardet and her second husband Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau that Dijon was recognized internationally as a scientific center. As one of the two most prolific translators in chemistry during the 1780s, Madame Picardet increased the availability of chemical knowledge at a crucial time during the chemical revolution, particularly the knowledge of salts and minerals. Her activities supported the publication of specialized scientific journals and helped to establish the use of editorial features such as the date of first publication. The value of her work as a translator was recognized by scholars of her time both nationally and internationally. Source:

Hilde MANGOLDHilde Mangold (née Proescholdt) was a German embryologist who was best known for her 1923 dissertation which was the foundation for her mentor, Hans Spemann's, 1935 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the embryonic organizer, "one of the very few doctoral theses in biology that have directly resulted in the awarding of a Nobel Prize". The general effect she demonstrated is known as embryonic induction, that is, the capacity of some cells to direct the developmental trajectory of other cells. Induction remains a fundamental concept and area of ongoing research in the field. Hilde Proescholdt was born in Gotha, Thuringia, a province in central-eastern Germany on October 20, 1898. She was the middle daughter of soap factory owner Ernest Proescholdt and his wife Gertrude. She attended the University of Jena in Germany for two semesters in 1918 and 1919 and then transferred to the University of Frankfurt in Germany where she also spent two semesters. It was here that she saw a lecture by the renowned embryologist Hans Spemann on experimental embryology. This lecture inspired her to pursue her education in this field. After Frankfurt, she attended the Zoological Institute in Freiburg. It was here that she met and married her husband, Otto Mangold, who was Spemann’s chief assistant. Under Spemann's direction, she completed her 1923 dissertation, entitled “Über Induktion von Embryonalanlagen durch Implantation artfremder Organisatoren”, or “Induction of Embryonic Primordia by Implantation of Organizers from a Different Species.” After earning her PhD in zoology, Hilde moved with her husband and infant son, Christian, to Berlin. Shortly after the move, Hilde died from severe burns as a result of a gas heater explosion in her Berlin home. She never lived to see the publication of her thesis results. Her son died in World War II. Mangold performed very delicate transplantation experiments with embryos (a feat even more impressive before the discovery of antibiotics to prevent infection after surgery). She demonstrated that tissue from the dorsal lip of the blastopore grafted into a host embryo can induce the formation of an extra body axis, creating conjoined twins. Crucially, by using two species of newt with different skin colors for host and donor, she showed that the amphibian organizer did not form the extra axis by itself, but recruited host tissue to form the twin (although the full implications of this result were not understood until a year after her death). This was the basis of the discovery of the "organizer", which is responsible for gastrulation. Source:

Frieda ROBSCHEITFrieda Robscheit-Robbins was a German-born American pathologist who worked closely with George Hoyt Whipple, conducting research into the use of liver tissue in treatment of pernicious anaemia, co-authoring 21 papers between 1925 and 1930. Whipple received a Nobel Prize in 1934 in recognition of this work, but Robscheit-Robbins was not recognized in this award, although Whipple did share the prize money with her. Had she won the Nobel Prize alongside Whipple, Robscheit-Robbins would have been the second woman after to win the prestigious international award, and the first American woman to do so. Robscheit-Robbins was described in 1981, as a woman "of considerable presence" who was often seen wearing diamonds and with "elegantly coiffured" hair. In 2002, a Discover magazine article entitled "The 50 Most Important Women in Science" noted that the contributions of Robscheit-Robbins "deserve greater notice". Born in Germany, Robscheit-Robbins moved to the United States as a child. She obtained her BS from the University of Chicago, her MS from the University of California, and her PhD from the University of Rochester. Whipple and Robscheit-Robbins established an animal model of anemia. They found that when dogs lost a large amount of blood, they exhibited symptoms similar to anemia. Once they established this experimental model, they could test experimental therapies. They tested diets based on different organs: spleen, lung, liver, intestines, etc. They found that dogs fed a diet of liver recovered the quickest, suggesting that anemia is associated with malfunctioning livers. Preliminary research was conducted in the early 1920s at the George William Hooper Foundation, University of California, where apricots were found to be valuable in treating induced anaemia in dogs. This result was so surprising to the researchers that it was not published. However, work continued at the University of Rochester, New York from 1922, where the researchers compared the efficacy of different substances in treatment of anaemia. Robscheit-Robbins started working with Whipple in 1917, and was his research partner for 18 years. Over the length of her collaboration with Whipple from 1917 to 1935, she wrote over 100 articles on her research findings along with various medical textbook chapters on the subject of anemia. She was the first-named author on Whipple's single most important paper, and the first author is usually the one primarily responsible for the work on which the paper is based and in many fields of research the last author is the director of the laboratory or principal investigator responsible for the direction of the work. Of the 23 papers that Whipple cited in his Nobel address, Robscheit-Robbins was co-author of ten of them. In 1951, Robscheit-Robbins was elected president of the American Society for Experimental Pathology, becoming the first woman to hold that position. Source:

Reka ALBERTRéka Albert is a Romanian-born Hungarian scientist. She is professor of physics and adjunct professor of biology at Pennsylvania State University and is noted for the Barabási–Albert model and research into scale-free networks and Boolean modeling of biological systems. Albert obtained her B.S. and M.S. degrees from Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in 1995 and 1996, respectively. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame in 2001. Albert is co-creator, together with Albert-László Barabási, of the for generating scale-free random graphs via preferential attachment. Her work extends to networks in a very general sense, involving for instance investigations on the error tolerance of the world-wide web and on the vulnerability of the North American power grid. Her focuses on dynamic modeling of biological networks and systems biology. Albert was selected as a Sloan Research Fellow in 2004, was awarded an NSF CAREER Award in 2007 and received the . Source:

Mildred REBSTOCKMildred Catherine Rebstock was an American pharmaceutical chemist. She and her team were the first to fully synthesize chloromycetin, also known as chloramphenicol. This was the first instance of an antibiotic being fully synthesized. Mildred Catherine Rebstock, the daughter of Redna and Adolph Rebstock, was born Nov. 29, 1919 in Elkhart, Indiana. In 1938 she graduated from Elkhart High School, and then went on to further her education at North Central College. During her time at North Central, she was a member of a biology honors society, Beta Beta Beta, and was a member of the college's zoology club. She also retained a flawless grade-point average while studying under professors I.A. Koten and Harold Eigenbrodt of chemistry and zoology respectively. It was with these two professors where she found the inspiration to apply to their alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to pursue a doctoral degree after she graduated North Central with a bachelor's in 1942. With her impeccable grade-point average and passion for the sciences, she was able to receive a full fellowship to research ascorbic acid while studying at the university She earned her master's degree in 1943 and her doctorate in 1945. Dr. Rebstock was hired at Parke-Davis Research Labs from 1945 to 1977 as a junior research chemist and was later promoted to a research leader in 1959. Around this time she and her team were researching a newly discovered antibiotic streptomycin, first discovered by Albert Schatz. Parke-Davis's team of Dr. Rebstock and her team consisting of John Controulis, Harry Crooks, and Quentin Bartz discovered that greater chemical stability could be achieved through catalytic hydrogenation of streptomycin, and this new compound was named dihydrostreptomycin. This discovery was simultaneously made by a team at Merck & Co. Although the use of this antibiotic in humans has ceased, it is still used in veterinary medicine. Soon after her work with dihydrostreptomycin, Dr. Rebstock was tasked with synthesizing a new antibiotic found by John Ehrlich in a culture of Streptomyces venezuela. The molecule of this antibiotic was much simpler than those of previous antibiotics, which made. Rebstock's task easier. It was discovered that the key constituent of this molecule was a nitrobenzene ring, which was something the lab had already had prior experience with. Rebstock had found a way to fully synthesize this antibiotic around November 1947. This was a rare case where the synthetization of a molecule was more cost effective than fermenting it through organic processes. The team published their work in 1949. Because of the availability of chloromycetin after Rebstock's work, it was abundantly used to treat Rocky Mountain fever and Typhoid fever, and is still used today as a secondary course of action for extreme cases of meningitis, cholera, and other infectious bacterial diseases. Since its discovery, chloromycetin has been linked to an increased risk of fatal aplastic anemia leading to a decline in its use in humans in the United States. Although it has fallen out of favor in developed nations it is still a vital antibiotic used abundantly in developing nations. Because of this it is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, which is a list of the most necessary medicines needed in a health system. Because of her groundbreaking research, Time Magazine devoted an article to her in 1949, noting that "the achievement was due to teamwork. But a large part of the credit goes to pretty Dr. Mildred Rebstock, a 28-year-old research chemist." Dr. Rebstock advocated for women in scientific research during an interview with the Smithsonian Institution Archives, she stated that, of all the researchers in the field only about three percent of them were women, but she would remain hopeful for the future. In 1950, Rebstock was awarded the "Science Woman of the Year" by the Women's National Press Club of Washington DC organization, and it was presented to her by President Truman. Rebstock continued her pharmaceutical research for the remainder of her career and spent the latter part of it researching fertility drugs and the synthesis of blood-lipid agents. She died at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbour, MI on February 17, 2011. Source:

Kathleen LONSDALEDame Kathleen Lonsdale was an Irish pacifist, prison reformer and crystallographer. She proved, in 1929, that the benzene ring is flat by using X-ray diffraction methods to elucidate the structure of hexamethylbenzene. She was the first to use Fourier spectral methods while solving the structure of hexachlorobenzene in 1931. During her career she attained several firsts for female scientists, including being one of the first two women elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1945 (along with ), first woman tenured professor at University College London, first woman president of the International Union of Crystallography, and first woman president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. She was born Kathleen Yardley at Newbridge, County Kildare, Ireland, the tenth child of Harry Yardley, the town postmaster, and Jessie Cameron. Her family moved to Seven Kings, Essex, England, when she was five years old. She studied at Woodford County High School for Girls, then transferred to Ilford County High School for Boys to study mathematics and science, because the girls' school did not offer these subjects. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree from Bedford College for Women in 1922, graduating in physics with an MSc from University College London in 1924. In 1924 she joined the crystallography research team headed by William Henry Bragg at the Royal Institution. From 1929 to 1934, she started a family and largely stayed at home while continuing her work calculating structure factors. In 1934, Lonsdale returned to work with Bragg at the Royal Institution as a researcher. She was awarded a DSc from University College London in 1936 while at the Royal Institution. In addition to discovering the structure of benzene and hexachlorobenzene, Lonsdale worked on the synthesis of diamonds. She was a pioneer in the use of X-rays to study crystals. Lonsdale was one of the first two women elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1945 (the other was the biochemist Marjory Stephenson). In 1949 Lonsdale was appointed professor of chemistry and head of the Department of Crystallography at University College London. She was the first tenured woman professor at that college, a position she held until 1968 when she was named Professor Emeritus. Legacy and honours She was elected an Honorary Member of the Women's Engineering Society in 1946 in recognition of her “brilliant and important work". 1956, she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. 1966, she was elected as the first woman president of the International Union of Crystallography. 1967, active in encouraging young people to study science, she was elected as the first woman president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. There are buildings named in her honour at University College London, at the University of Limerick, and at Dublin City University. 1969, she was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Science) by the University of Bath. Lonsdaleite, an allotrope of carbon, was named in her honour; it is a rare harder form of diamond found in meteorites. Source:

Marjory STEPHENSONMarjory Stephenson was a British biochemist. In 1945, she was one of the first two women (the other being ) elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. She wrote Bacterial Metabolism (1930), which ran to three editions and was a standard textbook for generations of microbiologists. A founder of the Society for General Microbiology, she also served as its second president. In 1953, the Society established the Marjory Stephenson Memorial Lecture (now the Marjory Stephenson Prize Lecture) in her memory. This is the Society's principal prize, awarded biennially for an outstanding contribution of current importance in microbiology. Stephenson grew up in Burwell, a village on the edge of the Fens in Cambridgeshire, between Newmarket and Cambridge. Her father Robert (1847–1929) was a farmer, surveyor and owner of a cement-manufacturing company; her mother was Sarah Rogers (1848–1925). Robert Stephenson was a prominent figure in the local community, appointed as a Justice of the Peace and then Deputy Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire; he was also a chairman of the County Council. He employed many local people in his cement works. Both Stephenson's grandfathers, Robert Matthew Stephenson (1815–1870) and Samuel Rogers, were racehorse trainers in Newmarket, a major horse-racing centre. Samuel Rogers had been a jockey before becoming a trainer. Stephenson was the youngest of the family by nine years. She was first inspired to take an interest in science by her governess Anna Jane Botwright, the daughter of a carpenter from Bungay. (The governess later married a solicitor and named one of her daughters Marjory). Stephenson later studied at the Berkhamsted School for Girls in Hertfordshire. In 1903 she went to Newnham College, Cambridge. Alice Mary Stephenson, one of her sisters, had studied history at Newnham College (she became headteacher of Francis Holland School in London), and a brother, Robert, graduated from Pembroke College, Cambridge. Stephenson read Natural Sciences, taking courses in chemistry, physiology and zoology for Part I of the Natural Sciences Tripos. At this time women were still excluded from Cambridge University's chemistry and zoology laboratories; Newnham College had its own chemistry laboratory and women attended biology practicals in the Balfour Laboratory. Stephenson originally intended to study medicine after Newnham, but her plans changed due to a lack of funds and she became a domestic science teacher, first at Gloucester County Training College and then at King's College of Household Science, London. In London she shared a flat with historian Myra Curtis, who was later Principal of Newnham College. As Stephenson did not find domestic science fulfilling, she was grateful when Robert Plimmer, co-founder of the Biochemical Club (later Society), invited her to become a researcher in his laboratory at University College London. Here she investigated fat metabolism, and also taught nutrition. She was awarded a Beit Memorial Fellowship in 1913, but her work was interrupted by the First World War. After joining the Red Cross, Stephenson ran hospital kitchens in France; later she became a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) commandant in Salonika. She was mentioned in despatches, and, in December 1918, she was awarded the MBE and an Associate Royal Red Cross in recognition of her service. As a result of her war-time experience, she became a pacifist. Later she was an active member of the Cambridge Scientists' Anti-War Group. After the end of the war, Stephenson returned to Cambridge to carry out research and teach in the department of biochemistry. Under the leadership of Frederick Gowland Hopkins, a group of scientists became the centre of modern biochemical studies. Here Stephenson began research on bacteria and their metabolism. The department had an unusually high proportion of women amongst its researchers (15 per cent), but it was still very rare for a woman to be offered a University appointment. Stephenson was financed by her Beit Fellowship and later by the Medical Research Council. She was finally appointed a University lecturer in biochemistry in 1943. Meanwhile, she became an associate and later a fellow of her old College, Newnham. In 1936 the University awarded her an ScD degree for her research. Stephenson's main area of research was bacterial metabolism. With Margaret Whetham and Juda Quastel, she developed the washed suspension technique, which had originated with Louis Pasteur, for extracting enzymes from bacteria. With Leonard Stickland, she was the first to isolate a bacterial enzyme from the cell in 1928, when they obtained lactic dehydrogenase from Escherichia coli. In the 1930s, she continued to work with Stickland and demonstrated that a particular enzyme, formate hydrogenlyase, was present in cell extracts only when the bacteria had been grown in the presence of formate. This was one of the first examples of 'adaptive enzymes.' (This is now understood as the rapid transcriptional activation of the gene encoding the formate hydrogenlyase when the inducer molecule, formate, is added to the culture). Later in the 1930s Stephenson worked with Ernest Gale on enzyme adaptation and amino acid metabolism, and with Arthur Trim on metabolic studies of nucleic acids. During her time at the laboratory, Stephenson produced, as author or co-author, more than twenty papers. She is most widely remembered for her seminal book, Bacterial Metabolism, which ran to three editions between 1930 and 1949. Last reprinted in 1966, it was the standard work on the subject for generations of microbiologists and biochemists. In 1902 . During the World War II, Stephenson served on the Toxin Committee. One of the founders of the Society for General Microbiology, and Alexander Fleming tried to induce her to take the role of the Society's first President, but she declined; Stephenson was elected as its second president in 1947. After the war the Rockefeller Foundation and the Medical Research Council funded a new laboratory at Cambridge (known as the "Bug Hut"), to which she moved in 1947. Stephenson was also influential in improving teaching of microbial biochemistry; she helped set up a special Part II Biochemistry (Microbial) in Cambridge in the same year. Also in 1947 she was finally recognised by the university for her many years of service; they appointed her as the first Reader in Chemical Microbiology, a permanent position. She died of cancer on 12 December 1948, a year after the university appointment. Her biographer said of Stephenson: "She made her way in science by pioneering her own field, and her life was her work and her friends." She also found time to do gardening and to travel, visiting the United States and the USSR in the 1930s. Source:

Jeanne BARETJeanne Baret (sometimes spelled Baré or Barret) was a member of Louis Antoine de Bougainville's expedition on the ships La Boudeuse and Étoile in 1766–1769. Baret is recognized as the first woman to have completed a voyage of circumnavigation of the globe. Jeanne Baret joined the expedition disguised as a man, calling herself Jean Baret. She enlisted as valet and assistant to the expedition's naturalist, Philibert Commerçon (anglicized as Commerson), shortly before Bougainville's ships sailed from France. According to Bougainville's account, Baret was herself an expert botanist. Jeanne Baret was born on July 27, 1740, in the village of La Comelle in the Burgundy region of France. Her record of baptism survives and identifies her as the legitimate issue of Jean Baret and Jeanne Pochard. Her father is identified as a day laborer and seems likely to have been illiterate, as he did not sign the parish register. Nothing definitive is known of Baret's childhood or young adulthood. She later told Bougainville that she had been orphaned and lost her fortune in a lawsuit before taking to disguising herself as a man. While she might well have been an orphan given the low life expectancies of the time, historians agree that other details of the story she gave Bougainville were a fabrication to shield Commerson from complicity in her disguise. Burgundy was at this time one of the more backward provinces of France in terms of the condition of the peasant classes, and it is likely that Baret's family was quite impoverished. One of the mysteries of Baret's life is how she obtained at least the rudiments of an education, as her signature on later legal documents provides evidence that she was not illiterate. One of her biographers, Glynis Ridley, suggests that her mother might have been of Huguenot extraction, a group that had a higher tradition of literacy than was otherwise typical of the peasant classes of the time. Another biographer, John Dunmore, suggests that she was taught by the parish priest or taken on as a charity case by a member of the local gentry. At some point between 1760 and 1764, Baret became employed as housekeeper to Commerson, who had settled in Toulon-sur-Arroux, some 20 km to the south of La Comelle, upon his marriage in 1760. Commerson's wife, who was the sister of the parish priest, died shortly after giving birth to a son in April 1762, and it seems most likely that Baret took over management of Commerson's household at that time, if not before. It is also evident that Baret and Commerson shared a more personal relationship, as Baret became pregnant in 1764. French law at that time required women who became pregnant out of wedlock to obtain a "certificate of pregnancy" in which they could name the father of their unborn child. Baret's certificate, from August 1764, survives; it was filed in a town 30 km away and witnessed by two men of substance who likewise had travelled a considerable distance from their homes. She refused to name the father of her child, but historians do not doubt that it was Commerson and that it was Commerson who had also made the arrangements with the lawyer and witnesses on her behalf. Shortly afterwards, Baret and Commerson moved together to Paris, where she continued in the role of his housekeeper. Baret apparently changed her name to "Jeanne de Bonnefoy" during this period. Her child, born in December 1764, was given the name Jean-Pierre Baret. Baret gave the child up to the Paris Foundlings Hospital. He was quickly placed with a foster mother but died in the summer of 1765. (Commerson had left his legitimate son from his marriage in the care of his brother-in-law in Toulon-sur-Arroux and never saw him again in his lifetime.) In 1765, Commerson was invited to join Bougainville's expedition. He hesitated in accepting because he was often in poor health; he required Baret's assistance as a nurse as well as in running his household and managing his collections and papers. His appointment allowed him a servant, paid as a royal expense, but women were completely prohibited on French navy ships at this time. At some point, the idea of Baret disguising herself as a man in order to accompany Commerson was conceived. To avoid scrutiny, she was to join the expedition immediately before the ship sailed, pretending to be a stranger to Commerson. Before leaving Paris, Commerson drew up a will in which he left to "Jeanne Baret, known as de Bonnefoi, my housekeeper", a lump sum of 600 livres along with back wages owed and the furnishings of their Paris apartment. Thus, while the story Baret concocted for Bougainville's benefit to explain her presence on board ship was carefully designed to shield Commerson from involvement, there is clear documentary evidence of their previous relationship, and it is highly improbable that Commerson was not complicit in the plan himself. Baret and Commerson joined the Bougainville expedition at the port of Rochefort in late December 1766. They were assigned to sail on the storeship, the Étoile. Because of the vast quantity of equipment Commerson was bringing on the voyage, the ship's captain, François Chesnard de la Giraudais, gave up his own large cabin on the ship to Commerson and his "assistant". This gave Baret significantly more privacy than she would have had otherwise on board the crowded ship. In particular, the captain's cabin gave Baret access to private toilet facilities so that she did not have to use the shared head with other members of the crew. In addition to Bougainville's published account, Baret's story figures in three other surviving memoirs of the expedition: a journal kept jointly by Commerson and Pierre Duclos-Guyot; a journal by the Prince of Nassau-Siegen, a paying passenger on the Boudeuse; and a memoir by François Vivès, surgeon on the Étoile. Vivès has the most to say about Baret, but his memoir is problematical because he and Commerson were on bad terms throughout the voyage, and his account – largely written or revised after the fact – is full of innuendo and spiteful comments directed at both Commerson and Baret. Commerson suffered badly from both seasickness and a recurring ulcer on his leg in the early part of the voyage, and Baret probably spent most of her time attending to him. Aside from the ceremony of "crossing the line", which Commerson described in some detail in his memoir, there was little for the botanists to do until the Étoile reached Montevideo. There they set out on expeditions to the surrounding plains and mountains. Commerson's leg was still troubling him, and Baret seems to have done much of the actual labor, carrying supplies and specimens. In Rio de Janeiro – a much more dangerous place, where the Étoile's chaplain was murdered ashore soon after their arrival – Commerson was officially confined to the ship while his leg healed, but he and Baret nonetheless collected specimens of a flowering vine, which he named Bougainvillea. After a second visit to Montevideo, their next opportunity to collect plants was in Patagonia while the ships of the expedition were waiting for favorable winds to carry them through the Strait of Magellan. Here Baret accompanied Commerson on the most troublesome excursions over rugged terrain and gained a reputation for courage and strength. Commerson, still hampered by his leg injury, referred to Baret as his "beast of burden" on these expeditions. In addition to the manual labor she performed in collecting plants, stones, and shells, Baret also helped Commerson organize and catalog their specimens and notes in the weeks that followed, as the ships entered the Pacific. Surviving accounts of the expedition differ on when Baret's gender was first discovered. According to Bougainville, rumors that Baret was a woman had circulated for some time, but her gender was not finally confirmed until the expedition reached Tahiti in April 1768. As soon as she and Commerson landed on shore, Baret was immediately surrounded by Tahitians who cried out that she was a woman. It was necessary to return her to the ship to protect her from the excited Tahitians. Bougainville recorded this incident in his journal some weeks after it happened, when he had an opportunity to visit the Étoile to interview Baret personally. In his account, Vivès reports much speculation about Baret's gender early in the voyage and asserts that Baret claimed to be a eunuch when confronted directly by La Giraudais (whose own official log has not survived). Bougainville's account of Baret's unmasking on Tahiti is not corroborated by the other journal accounts of the expedition, although Vivès describes a similar incident in which Baret was immediately pointed out as a woman by the Tahitian Ahu-toru on board the ship. Vivès also describes a different incident on New Ireland in mid-July in which Baret was caught off-guard, stripped, and "examined" by a group of other servants on the expedition. Duclos-Guyot and Nassau-Siegen also recorded that Baret had been discovered to be a woman on New Ireland, but without mentioning details. Ahu-toru travelled back to France with the expedition and was subsequently questioned at some length about Baret. Modern scholars now believe that Ahu-toru actually thought that Baret was a transvestite, or mahu. However, other Tahitian natives reported the presence of a woman in Bougainville's expedition to later visitors to the island, including James Cook in 1769 and Domingo de Bonechea in 1772, which indicates that her gender was known to the Tahitians if not to her shipmates at the time she visited the island. After crossing the Pacific, the expedition was desperately short of food. After a brief stop for supplies in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), the ships made a longer stop at the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. This island, known as Isle de France, was then an important French trading station. Commerson was delighted to find that his old friend and fellow botanist Pierre Poivre was serving as governor on the island, and Commerson and Baret remained behind as Poivre's guests. Probably Bougainville also actively encouraged this arrangement, as it allowed him to rid himself of the problem of a woman illegally on board his expedition. On Mauritius, Baret continued in her role as Commerson's assistant and housekeeper. It is likely that she accompanied him in plant-collecting on Madagascar and Bourbon Island in 1770–1772. Commerson continued to have serious health problems, and he died in Mauritius in February 1773. His financial resources on the island had dwindled, his patron Poivre had been recalled to Paris, and Baret was left without the means to immediately return to France to claim the money due her from Commerson's will. After Commerson's death, Baret seems to have found work running a tavern in Port Louis for a time. Then, on May 17, 1774, she married Jean Dubernat, a non-commissioned officer in the French Army who was most likely on the island on his way home to France. There is no record of exactly when Baret and her husband arrived in France, thus completing her voyage of circumnavigation. Most likely it was sometime in 1775. In April 1776, she received the money that was due to her under Commerson's will after applying directly to the Attorney General. With this money, she settled with Dubernat in his native village of Saint-Aulaye where he possibly became the blacksmith. In 1785, Baret was granted a pension of 200 livres a year by the Ministry of Marine. The document granting her this pension makes clear the high regard with which she was held by this point: Jeanne Barré, by means of a disguise, circumnavigated the globe on one of the vessels commanded by Mr de Bougainville. She devoted herself in particular to assisting Mr de Commerson, doctor and botanist, and shared with great courage the labours and dangers of this savant. Her behaviour was exemplary and Mr de Bougainville refers to it with all due credit.... His Lordship has been gracious enough to grant to this extraordinary woman a pension of two hundred livres a year to be drawn from the fund for invalid servicemen and this pension shall be payable from 1 January 1785. Commerson named many of the plants he collected after friends and acquaintances. One of them, a tall shrub with dark green leaves and white flowers that he found on Madagascar, he named Baretia bonafidia. But Commerson's name for this genus did not survive, as it had already been named by the time his reports reached Paris; it is currently known as Turraea. While over seventy species are named in honor of Commerson, only one, Solanum baretiae, honors Baret. The New York Botanical Garden includes a plant specimen, attributed to Comerson but believed to be collected by Baret with him, in their herbarium. For many years, Bougainville's published journal – a popular bestseller in its day, in English translations as well as the original French – was the only widely available source of information about Baret. More recent scholarship has uncovered additional facts and documentation about her life, but much of the new information remained little-known and inaccessible to the general public, particularly outside France. The first English-language biography of Baret, by John Dunmore, was not published until 2002, and then only in New Zealand. Other articles appeared only in scholarly journals. The 2010 biography of Baret by Glynis Ridley, The Discovery of Jeanne Baret, brought Baret to the attention of a wider audience and helped to overturn some of the old misconceptions about her life. However, Ridley's biography has also been highly criticized by some reviewers for its reliance on improbable chains of speculation that are not corroborated by any other primary or secondary sources. 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Orra WHITE HITCHCOKOrra White Hitchcock was one of America's earliest women botanical and scientific illustrators and artists, best known for illustrating the scientific works of her husband, geologist Edward Hitchcock (1793–1864), but also notable for her own artistic and scientific work. Orra White was born to a prosperous farming family (Jarib and Ruth Sherman White) in South Amherst, Massachusetts. She was educated by a tutor and at two “ladies” schools, proved herself a child prodigy in numerous scientific and classical subjects, and showed early promise in drawing and painting. From 1813 to 1818 she taught young girls natural sciences, and the fine and decorative arts at Deerfield Academy. Her early training grounded her in both science and art, and she has been called the Connecticut River Valley's "earliest and most often published woman artist." On May 31, 1821 Orra White married geologist Edward Hitchcock, principal of Deerfield Academy, minister, professor and third president of Amherst College. Hitchcock's art was integral to the work of her husband. She made hundreds of illustrations for Edward Hitchcock's scientific publications, including detailed landscapes of the Connecticut River Valley for his Massachusetts geological survey volumes, and custom designed charts that illustrated his local discoveries and his classroom lectures. In addition, she made detailed drawings of native flowers and grasses and small precise watercolors of small local mushrooms. Her work is a time-focused chronicle of the scenic, botanically and geologically diverse Connecticut River Valley in western Massachusetts. Orra White Hitchcock, a scientist in her own right, had the contemporary reputation as one of the valley's “most distinguished naturalists.” Between 1817 and 1821 Hitchcock and her husband collected native plants for a conventional herbarium. At the same time, she created a 64-page album of watercolors of about 175 local flower and grass specimens for her Herbarium parvum, pictum. This painted herbarium is in the Deerfield Academy Archives. In the summer and fall, she created a small watercolor album of native mushrooms and lichens, Fungi selecti picti. Edward Hitchcock labeled and catalogued the specimens. This painted album is in the Smith College Archives; a facsimile has been published by the Mortimer Rare Book Room, Smith College. Hitchcock made drawings for more than 200 plates and 1,000 wood-engraved or woodcut illustrations for Edward's professional publications. The subjects included landscapes, geologic strata, specimens, and more. The most well known appear in her husband's seminal works, the 1833 Report on the Geology, Mineralogy, Botany, and Zoology of Massachusetts and its successor, the 1841 Final Report produced when he was State Geologist. For the 1833 edition, Pendleton's Lithography (Boston) lithographed nine of Hitchcock's Connecticut River Valley drawings and printed them as plates for the work. In 1841, B. W. Thayer and Co., Lithographers (Boston) printed revised lithographs and an additional plate. The hand-colored plate "Autumnal Scenery. View in Amherst" Hitchcock's most frequently seen work. Between 1828 and the 1840s, Hitchcock made hundreds of large and dramatic classroom charts of geologic cross-sections, prehistoric beasts (like the Megatherium), fossils and ichnological (later called dinosaur) footprints. She copied scientific illustrations from contemporary works and made original illustrations of her husband's new ideas or discoveries, like Ornithichnites, He considered them "indispensable aids" for his lectures. The Amherst College Archives and Special Collections holds an extensive collection of classroom charts. Hitchcock's first documented published drawing is from an 1818 article by her husband in the periodical Port Folio. On rare occasions, she created illustrations for other scientists. Hitchcock's last documented work was her symbolic illustrations for her husband's Religious Lectures on Peculiar Phenomena in the Four Seasons, including an emblematic representation of spring and a stylized rainbow. Hitchcock raised 6 surviving children, taught them art and science and was Edward Hitchcock's partner in his scientific undertakings. She traveled with her husband in the United States and to England and Europe (in 1850). She is the mother of geologist Charles Henry Hitchcock (1836–1919) and physical education and hygiene pioneer Edward Hitchcock, Jr. (1828–1911). Edward acknowledged his wife's essential contributions to his work in the dedication of The Religion of Geology, citing her drawings as more powerful than his pen. Orra White Hitchcock died at 67 on May 26, 1863 from consumption. Though she was not a trained professional, Hitchcock's scientific intellect and the artistic ability to visually transcribe key scientific principles and natural phenomena, flora and fauna, enabled her to make substantial contributions to the understanding of geology and botany in the first half of the nineteenth century in the United States. While published illustrations exist, only a small number of Hitchcock's original works survives. The Amherst College Archives and Special Collections has the most extensive documentation of her life and work, in the Edward and Orra White Hitchcock Papers and copies of all of Edward Hitchcock's scientific publications. Major works illustrated - Edward Hitchcock's article in the American Journal of Science - Edward Hitchcock, Report on the Geology, Mineralogy, Botany, and Zoology of Massachusetts, (Amherst, Mass.: J.S. & C. Adams,1833). - Edward Hitchcock, Final Report on the Geology, Mineralogy, Botany and Zoology of Massachusetts, (Amherst, Mass.: J.S. & C. Adams; Northampton, Mass.: J. H. Butler, 1841). - Edward Hitchcock, Sketch of the Scenery of Massachusetts. With Plates From the Geological Report of Prof. Hitchcock, (Northampton, Mass.: J.H. Butler, 1842). - Edward Hitchcock. Religious Lectures on Peculiar Phenomena in the Four Seasons, (Amherst, Mass.: J.S. & C. Adams, 1850). Source:

Mary Agnes CHASEMary Agnes Meara Chase was an American botanist who worked at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Smithsonian Institution. She is "considered one of the world's outstanding agrostologists" and is known for her work on the study of grasses and for her work as a suffragist. Chase was born in Iroquois County, Illinois and held no formal education beyond grammar school. Chase made significant contributions to the field of botany, authored over 70 scientific publications, and was conferred with an honorary doctorate in science from the University of Illinois. She specialized in the study of grasses and conducted extensive field work in North and South America. Her field books from 1897 to 1959 are archived in the Smithsonian Institution Archives. In 1893, Mary had visited the Colombian Exposition in Chicago with her nephew, who was a botanist, and this had inspired her to study plants in Northern Illinois. In 1901, Chase became a botanical assistant at the Field Museum of Natural History under Charles Frederick Millspaugh, where her work was featured in two museum publications: Plantae Utowanae (1900) and Plantae Yucatanae (1904).[6] Two years later, Chase joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as a botanical illustrator and eventually became a scientific assistant in systematic agrostology (1907), assistant botanist (1923), and associate botanist (1925), all under Albert Spear Hitchcock. Chase worked with Hitchcock for almost twenty years, collaborating closely and also publishing (The North American Species of Panicum [1910]). The Hitchcock-Chase Collection consists of 2,707 drawings (mostly ink, but some pencil) of grasses, representing hundreds of genera. Following Hitchcock's death in 1936, Chase succeeded him to become senior botanist in charge of systematic agrostology and custodian of the Section of Grasses, Division of Plants at the Smithsonian's United States National Museum (USNM). Chase retired from the USDA in 1939 but continued her work as custodian of the USNM grass herbarium until her death in 1963. Awards and honors 1956, Certificate of Merit from the Botanical Society of America 1958, Honorary doctorate from the University of Illinois 1959, Honorary Fellow from the Smithsonian Institution 1961, Fellow from the Linnean Society of London Source:

Joan CLARKEJoan Elisabeth Lowther Murray was an English cryptanalyst and numismatist best known for her work as a code-breaker at Bletchley Park during the Second World War. Although she did not personally seek the spotlight, her role in the Enigma project that decrypted Nazi Germany's secret communications earned her awards and citations, such as appointment as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), in 1946. Joan Elisabeth Lowther Clarke was born on 24 June 1917 in West Norwood, London, England. She was the youngest child of Dorothy (née Fulford) and the Revd William Kemp Lowther Clarke, a clergyman. She had three brothers and one sister. Clarke attended Dulwich High School for Girls in south London and won a scholarship in 1936, to attend Newnham College, Cambridge, where she gained a double first degree in mathematics and was a Wrangler. She was denied a full degree, as Cambridge only awarded these to men until 1948. Clarke's mathematical abilities were first discovered by Gordon Welchman, in an undergraduate Geometry class at Cambridge. Welchman was one of the top four mathematicians to be recruited in 1939 to supervise decoding operations at Bletchley Park. After noticing Clarke's mathematical abilities he recruited her to join him at Bletchley Park and be a part of the 'Government Code and Cypher School' (GCCS). The GCCS started up in 1939 with only one purpose, to break the German Enigma Code. The Enigma Code was a machine the Germans invented to encrypt their messages; they strongly believed their machine was unbreakable. Clarke first arrived at Bletchley Park on 17 June 1940. She was first placed in a group only made up of women referred to as "The Girls", that mainly did routine clerical work. At this time, cryptology was not considered a job for a woman in England. According to Clarke, she only knew of one other female cryptologist that worked at Bletchley Park. n June 1940, Clarke was recruited by her former academic supervisor, Gordon Welchman, to the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS). She worked at Bletchley Park in the section known as Hut 8 and quickly became the only female practitioner of Banburismus, a cryptanalytic process developed by Alan Turing which reduced the need for bombes —electromechanical devices as used by British cryptologists Welchman and Turing to decipher German encrypted messages during World War II. Clarke's first work promotion was to Linguist Grade which was designed to earn her extra money despite the fact that she did not speak another language. This promotion was a recognition of her workload and contributions to the team. In 1941, trawlers were captured as well as their cipher equipment and codes. Before this information was obtained, wolf packs had sunk 282,000 tons of shipping a month from March to June 1941. By November, Clarke and her team were able to reduce this number to 62,000 tons. Hugh Alexander, head of Hut 8 from 1943 to 1944, described her as "one of the best Banburists in the section". Alexander himself was regarded as the best of the Banburists. He and I. J. Good considered the process more an intellectual game than a job. It was "not easy enough to be trivial, but not difficult enough to cause a nervous breakdown". Clarke became deputy head of Hut 8 in 1944, although she was prevented from progressing because of her gender, and was paid less than the men. Clarke and Turing had been close friends since soon after they met, and continued to be until Turing's death in 1954. They shared many hobbies and had similar personalities. They became very good friends at Bletchley Park. Turing arranged their shifts so they could work together, and they also spent much of their free time together. In early 1941, Turing proposed marriage to Clarke, and subsequently introduced her to his family. Although privately admitting his homosexuality to her—she was reportedly "unfazed" by the revelation—Turing decided that he could not go through with the marriage, and broke up with Clarke in mid-1941. Clarke later admitted that she suspected Turing's homosexuality for some time, and it was not much of a surprise when he made the admission to her. After the war, Clarke worked for Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) where she met Lieutenant-Colonel John Kenneth Ronald Murray, a retired army officer who had served in India. They married on 26 July 1952 in Chichester Cathedral. Shortly after their marriage, John Murray retired from GCHQ due to ill health and the couple moved to Crail in Fife where they lived at Priorscroft, 14 Nethergate. They returned to work at GCHQ in 1962 where Clarke remained until 1977 when she retired aged 60. Following her husband's death in 1986, Clarke moved to Headington, Oxfordshire, where she continued her research into coinage. During the 1980s, she assisted Sir Harry Hinsley with the appendix to volume 3, part 2 of British Intelligence in the Second World War. She also assisted historians studying war-time code breaking at Bletchley Park. Due to continuing secrecy among cryptanalysts, the full extent of her accomplishments remains unknown. After meeting her husband, who had published work on the Scottish coinage of the 16th and 17th centuries, Clarke developed an interest in numismatic history. She established the sequence of the complex series of gold unicorn and heavy groat coins that were in circulation in Scotland during the reigns of James III and James IV. In 1986, her research was recognised by the British Numismatic Society when she was awarded the Sanford Saltus Gold Medal. Issue No. 405 of the Numismatic Circular described her paper on the topic as "magisterial". Source:

Ingrid DAUBECHIESIngrid Daubechies is a Belgian physicist and mathematician. She is best known for her work with wavelets in image compression. Daubechies is one of the world's most cited mathematicians, recognized for her study of the mathematical methods that enhance image-compression technology. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also a 1992 MacArthur Fellow. The name Daubechies is widely associated with the orthogonal and the biorthogonal CDF wavelet. A wavelet from this family of wavelets is now used in the JPEG 2000 standard. Her research involves the use of automatic methods from both mathematics, technology and biology to extract information from samples like bones and teeth. She also developed sophisticated image processing techniques used to help establish the authenticity and age of some of the world's most famous works of art including paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Rembrandt. Daubechies was born in Houthalen, Belgium, as the daughter of Marcel Daubechies (a civil mining engineer) and Simonne Duran (then a homemaker, later a criminologist). She remembers that when she was a little girl and could not sleep, she did not count numbers, as you would expect from a child, but started to multiply numbers by two from memory. Thus, as a child, she already familiarized herself with the properties of exponential growth. Her parents found out that mathematical conceptions, like cone and tetrahedron, were familiar to her before she reached the age of 6. She excelled at the primary school, moved up a class after only 3 months. After completing the Lyceum in Hasselt she entered the Vrije Universiteit Brussel at 17. Daubechies completed her undergraduate studies in physics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 1975. During the next few years, she visited the CNRS Center for Theoretical Physics in Marseille several times, where she collaborated with Alex Grossmann; this work was the basis for her doctorate in quantum mechanics. She obtained her Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1980. Daubechies continued her research career at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel until 1987, rising through the ranks to positions roughly equivalent with research assistant-professor in 1981 and research associate-professor 1985, funded by a fellowship from the NFWO (Nationaal Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek). Daubechies spent most of 1986 as a guest-researcher at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. At Courant she made her best-known discovery: based on quadrature mirror filter-technology she constructed compactly supported continuous wavelets that would require only a finite amount of processing, in this way enabling wavelet theory to enter the realm of digital signal processing. In July 1987, Daubechies joined the Murray Hill AT&T Bell Laboratories' New Jersey facility. In 1988 she published the result in Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics. From 1994 to 2010, Daubechies was a professor at Princeton University, where she was active within the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics. She was the first female full professor of mathematics at Princeton.[6] In January 2011 she moved to Duke University to serve as a professor of mathematics. As of 2019, she is currently the James B. Duke professor in the department of mathematics and electrical and computer engineering at Duke University. In 2016, she and Heekyoung Hahn founded Duke Summer Workshop in Mathematics for female rising high school seniors. Between 2004 and 2011 she was the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor in the mathematics and applied mathematics departments at Princeton University. She taught at Princeton for 16 years. In January 2011 she moved to Duke University as a James B. Duke Professor of mathematics. Daubechies is on the board of directors of Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE), a program that helps women entering graduate studies in the mathematical sciences. She was the first woman to be president of the International Mathematical Union (2011–2014). Daubechies received the Louis Empain Prize for Physics in 1984, awarded once every five years to a Belgian scientist on the basis of work done before the age of 29. Between 1992 and 1997 she was a fellow of the MacArthur Foundation and in 1993 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1994 she received the American Mathematical Society Steele Prize for Exposition for her book Ten Lectures on Wavelets and was invited to give a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zurich. In 1997 she was awarded the AMS Ruth Lyttle Satter prize. In 1998, she was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences and won the Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation from the IEEE Information Theory Society She became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999. In 2000, Daubechies became the first woman to receive the National Academy of Sciences Award in Mathematics, presented every 4 years for excellence in published mathematical research. The award honored her "for fundamental discoveries on wavelets and wavelet expansions and for her role in making wavelets methods a practical basic tool of applied mathematics". She was awarded the Basic Research Award, German Eduard Rhein Foundation and the NAS Award in Mathematics. In January 2005, Daubechies became the third woman since 1924 to give the Josiah Willard Gibbs Lecture sponsored by the American Mathematical Society. Her talk was on "The Interplay Between Analysis and Algorithm". Daubechies was the 2006 Emmy Noether Lecturer at the San Antonio Joint Mathematics Meetings. In September 2006, the Pioneer Prize from the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics was awarded jointly to Daubechies and Heinz Engl. In 2010 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). In 2011, Daubechies was the SIAM John von Neumann Lecturer, and was awarded the IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal, the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research from the American Mathematical Society, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering from the Franklin Institute. In 2012, King Albert II of Belgium granted Daubechies the title of Baroness. She also won the 2012 Nemmers Prize in Mathematics, Northwestern University, and the 2012 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Basic Sciences category (jointly with David Mumford). In 2015, Daubechies gave the Gauss Lecture of the German Mathematical Society. The Simons Foundation, a private foundation based in New York City that funds research in mathematics and the basic sciences, gave Daubechies the Math + X Investigator award, which provides money to professors at American and Canadian universities to encourage new partnerships between mathematicians and researchers other fields of science. She was the one to suggest Simons that the foundation should fund not new research but better mechanisms for interpreting existing data. In 2018, Daubechies won the William Benter Prize in Applied Mathematics from City University of Hong Kong (CityU). She is the first female recipient of the award. Prize officials cited Professor Daubechies's pioneering work in wavelet theory and her "exceptional contributions to a wide spectrum of scientific and mathematical subjects...her work in enabling the mobile smartphone revolution is truly symbolic of the era." In December 16, in Shanghai, she won the Fudan-Zhongzhi Science award. Daubechies won the 2018 Fudan-Zhongzhi Science Award and academician of the National Academy of Sciences(NAS) and delivered a speech on her report A Few Mathematical Chapters at the ceremony. She is part of the 2019 class of fellows of the Association for Women in Mathematics.

Annie EASLEYAnnie J. Easley was an African-American computer scientist, mathematician, and rocket scientist. She worked for the Lewis Research Center (now Glenn Research Center) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). She was a leading member of the team which developed software for the Centaur rocket stage, and was one of the first African-Americans to work as a computer scientist at NASA. Annie Easley was born to Samuel Bird Easley and Mary Melvina Hoover in Birmingham, Alabama. Before the Civil Rights Movement, educational and career opportunities for African-American children were very limited. African American children were educated separately from white children, and their schools were most often inferior to white schools. Annie was fortunate in that her mother told her that she could be anything she wanted but she would have to work at it. She encouraged Annie to get a good education. From the fifth grade through high school, Annie attended Holy Family High School, and was valedictorian of her graduating class. After high school she went to Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana, which was then an African-American Roman Catholic University, and majored in pharmacy for about two years. In 1954, she returned to Birmingham. As part of the Jim Crow laws that established and maintained racial inequality, African Americans were required to pass an onerous literacy test and pay a poll tax in order to vote. She remembers the test giver looking at her application and saying only, "You went to Xavier University. Two dollars." Subsequently, she helped other African Americans prepare for the test. In 1963, racial segregation of Birmingham's downtown merchants ended as a result of the Birmingham campaign, and in 1964, the Twenty-fourth Amendment outlawed the poll tax in Federal elections. It was not until 1965 that the Voting Rights Act eliminated the literacy test. Shortly thereafter, she moved to Cleveland for personal reasons, with the intention of continuing her studies. Unfortunately, the local university had ended its pharmacy program a short time before and no nearby alternative existed. Throughout the 1970s, Easley advocated for and encouraged female and minority students at college career days to work in STEM careers. In 1955, she read a story in a local newspaper about twin sisters who worked for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) as "computers". She applied for a job the next day, and was hired two weeks later - one of four African Americans of about 2500 employees. She began her career as a mathematician and computer engineer at the NACA Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory (which became NASA Lewis Research Center, 1958–1999, and subsequently the John H. Glenn Research Center) in Cleveland, Ohio. She continued her education while working for the agency, and in 1977, obtained a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Cleveland State University. As part of a continuing education, Easley worked through specialization courses offered by NASA. Her 34-year career included developing and implementing computer code that analyzed alternative power technologies, supported the Centaur high-energy upper rocket stage, determined solar, wind and energy projects, identified energy conversion systems and alternative systems to solve energy problems.[5] Her energy assignments included studies to determine the life use of storage batteries, such as those used in electric utility vehicles. Her computer applications have been used to identify energy conversion systems that offer the improvement over commercially available technologies. She retired in 1989 (some sources say 1991). Easley's work with the Centaur project helped lay the technological foundations for future space shuttle launches and launches of communication, military and weather satellites. Her work contributed to the 1997 flight to Saturn of the Cassini probe, the launcher of which had the Centaur as its upper stage. Annie Easley was interviewed in Cleveland, on August 21, 2001 by Sandra Johnson. The interview is stored in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Johnson Space Center Oral History Program. The 55 page interview transcript includes material on the history of the Civil Rights Movement, Glenn Research Center, Johnson Space Center, space flight, and the contribution of women to space flight. Source:

Ellen FETTERFetter was born to Frank Fetter and Elizabeth Garrett Pollard. Her mother created an endowment for chamber music at Swarthmore College, which has been supported by successive generations of her family. Fetter attended the Ecole Préalpina in Chexbres, Switzerland and New Trier High School, from which she graduated in 1957. She studied mathematics at Mount Holyoke College and graduated in 1961. In 1961, Fetter interviewed with a member of the team who used a LGP-30 in MIT's Department of Nuclear Engineering, who recommended her to . Hamilton soon moved on to another project, and Fetter took over the computational work for Edward Lorenz's research, plotting the motion of a particle experiencing fast convection in an idealised beaker. The work was the foundation of chaos theory. At the end of his paper, Edward Loren wrote: "Special thanks are due to Miss Ellen Fetter for handling the many numerical computations and preparing the graphical presentations of the numerical material". In 1963, Fetter married John Gille, who was studying geophysics at MIT. They moved to Florida State University, where she worked on programming for several years. In the 1970s, she and her husband moved to Colorado, where Gille is now a senior scientist emeritus at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Fetter took computer science classes at the University of Colorado Boulder, but soon left to work in tax preparation. Source:

Anna ATKINSAnna Atkins was an English botanist and photographer. She is often considered the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images. Some sources claim that she was the first woman to create a photograph. Atkins was born in Tunbridge, Kent, England in 1799. Her mother, Hester Anne Children, "didn't recover from the effects of childbirth" and died in 1800. Anna was close to her father John George Children, a renowned chemist, mineralogist, and zoologist. Anna "received an unusually scientific education for a woman of her time." Her detailed engravings of shells were used to illustrate her father's translation of Lamarck's Genera of Shells. In 1825 she married John Pelly Atkins, a London West India merchant, and moved to Halstead Place, the Atkins family home in Halstead, near Sevenoaks, Kent. They had no children. Atkins pursued her interests in botany by collecting dried plants, which were probably used as photograms later. She was elected a member of the London Botanical Society in 1839. John George Children and John Pelly Atkins were friends of William Henry Fox Talbot. Anna Atkins learned directly from Talbot about two of his inventions related to photography: the "photogenic drawing" technique (in which an object is placed on light-sensitized paper which is exposed to the sun to produce an image) and calotypes. Atkins was known to have had access to a camera by 1841. Some sources claim that Atkins was the first female photographer. Other sources name Constance Fox Talbot as the first female photographer. As no camera-based photographs by Anna Atkins nor any photographs by Constance Talbot survive, the issue may never be resolved. Sir John Herschel, a friend of Atkins and Children, invented the cyanotype photographic process in 1842. Within a year, Atkins applied the process to algae (specifically, seaweed) by making cyanotype photograms that were contact printed "by placing the unmounted dried-algae original directly on the cyanotype paper". Atkins self-published her photograms in the first installment of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions in October 1843. She planned to provide illustrations to William Harvey’s Manual of British Algae which had been published in 1841. Although privately published, with a limited number of copies, and with handwritten text, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions is considered the first book illustrated with photographic images. Eight months later, in June 1844, the first fascicle of William Henry Fox Talbot's The Pencil of Nature was released; that book was the "first photographically illustrated book to be commercially published" or "the first commercially published book illustrated with photographs". Atkins produced a total of three volumes of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions between 1843 and 1853. Only 17 copies of the book are known to exist, in various states of completeness. Because of the book's rarity and historical importance, it is quite expensive. One copy of the book with 411 plates in three volumes sold for £133,500 at auction in 1996. Another copy with 382 prints in two volumes which was owned by scientist Robert Hunt (1807–1887) sold for £229,250 at auction in 2004. In 2018, the New York Public Library opened an exhibition on Atkins' life and work, featuring various versions of Photographs of British Algae. In addition to Photographs of British Algae, Atkins published five fictional novels between 1852 and 1863. These included The Perils of Fashion, Murder will Out: a story of real life, and A Page from the Peerage. In the 1850s, Atkins collaborated with Anne Dixon (1799–1864), who was "like a sister" to her, to produce at least three presentation albums of cyanotype photograms: Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Ferns (1853), now in the J. Paul Getty Museum; Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns (1854), disassembled pages of which are held by various museums and collectors; An album inscribed to "Captain Henry Dixon," Anne Dixon's nephew (1861). Atkins retained the algae, ferns and other plants that she used in her work and in 1865 donated the collection to the British Museum. She died at Halstead Place in 1871 of "paralysis, rheumatism, and exhaustion" at the age of 72. Source:

Maria Pasquala CARO SUREDA Maria Pasquala Caro Sureda was born to the marqués de La Romana, Pere Caro Fontes, and Margalida Sureda de Togores. She was given a high education and taught Latin, which was not usual for women, and her mother arranged for all her children to be given a formal education. She was allowed to study at the University of Valencia, which was highly unusual for a woman, and was even allowed to graduate: she became a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Valencia in 1779, as the second of her sex in Spain, and published her work in physics and mathematics, Ensayo de Historia, Física y Matemáticas, in 1781. She is described as simple, humble and beautiful. In 1789, she entered the Santa Catalina de Siena Dominican convent in Palma de Mallorca, where she became prioress. During her life in the convent, she became known for her religious mystic poems. Source:

Maru Andrea CASAMAYORMaria Andresa Casamayor de La Coma was a Spanish mathematician, writer and Spanish girls school teacher. She stood out for her mathematical thinking and work with numbers and made significant contributions to arithmetic, which at the time was considered the exclusive domain of men. She is one of the few 18th century Spanish women scientists and mathematicians whose work has been preserved, including María Pascuala Caro Sureda. Maria Andresa Casamayor de La Coma was born on November 30 (Saint Andrew's Day), 1720. She was baptized the next day in the Church of El Pilar (Spanish: Iglesia del Pilar) and given the name of Maria Juana Rosa Andresa. Born into a wealthy family of textile merchants, Maria Andresa spent her childhood in a house on Pilar Street (Spanish: Calle del Pilar). Her father was the French merchant Juan Joseph Casamayor born in Oloron (France), son of Maria Abales and Juan Casamayor. Her mother was a Saragossan, Juana Rosa de La Coma, daughter of merchant Juan de La Coma and of Maria Alexandre, both of French origins. At the time, the French community was made up of a large number of individuals who maintained tight trade connections and dominated the trade in Saragossa. Her parents married on April 13, 1705, and Maria Andresa was the seventh of nine children. She published two books on arithmetic: Her first published book is entitled Tyrocinio aritmético (1738). From a mathematical point of view, the book is eminently practical and written in a fresh and supple language. A great number or examples based on real cases are given to the reader. Thus, one can learn directly the four rules of arithmetic: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. In addition, the examples covered in this book indicate that she had precise knowledge of length, weight, and currency units that were used to perform the daily trade activities in the 18th century. As the Dominican priest Pedro Martínez, a friend and collaborator of Maria Andresa, revealed in the review of the book, "her aim, in this brief piece of work, is to bring the education to the many who have no means to achieve it". Thus, according to her professional profile, Maria Andresa Casamayor is to be commended for her unusually great arithmetic ability and deep concern for education. El para sí solo, her second book, is a 109-page unpublished manuscript on advanced arithmetic. She wrote under a male pseudonym, her nom de plume being Casandro Mamés de La Marca y Araioa. This name was a perfect anagram formed by rearranging all the letters that compose her own name, Maria Andresa Casamayor de La Coma. Oddly enough, there is a name spelling mistake in the source of this information, a quotation from the “New Bibliography of Aragonese Writers”, (Spanish: Biblioteca nueva de los escritores aragoneses) by Félix Latassa. In Latassa's catalogue, Maria Andresa is listed under the name of “Maria Andrea”. Following Latassa, the name Maria Andrea is still used today. However, according to the baptismal certificate, she was named Maria Andresa. In the Tyrocinio, Casandro claimed to be a "disciple of the Piarist School" (Spanish: Escuela Pía) and dedicated the book to the same school, “Escuela Pía del Colegio de Santo Tomás de Zaragoza”. With the death of her father in 1738, and that of the friend and collaborator, Pedro Martínez, in 1739, the young Maria Andresa Casamayor had lost her main support. Maria Andresa never married or entered a religious order, as expected from women in the Aragonese society of that time. She had to work to support herself financially. For the greater part of her life, she taught at a girls’ school, working as a teacher of primary education in the public schools of the city. She lived in a house that had been given to her as part of her payment. The building still exists today and is located on Palomar street (Spanish: Calle Palomar) in Saragossa. In 2009, the City Council of Saragossa renamed a street in her honor (originally "Grupo Jose Antonio Girón"). A street named after Saragossa's famous woman scientist can also be found in Gijon. In 2018, she was included in the periodic table of women scientists (Spanish: La Tabla Periódica de las Científicas), which represents women in science from around the world. Source:

Martha DANIELL LOGANMartha Daniell Logan was an early American botanist who was instrumental in seed exchanges between Britain and the North American colonies. She wrote an influential gardening advice column and was a major collector of plants endemic to the Carolinas. Born in St. Thomas Parish, South Carolina, on 29 December 1704, to a wealthy family. She was the daughter of Robert Daniell and Martha Wainwright. Her father, Robert Daniell, was appointed to two terms as South Carolina's lieutenant governor and was a prominent merchant. Martha Daniell was taught to read and write by a private tutor. After her father's death in 1718, Martha Daniell inherited his property along the Wando River. In 1719, Martha married George Logan, Jr. Over the next sixteen years, she gave birth to eight children, six surviving to adulthood. The Logans moved from their Wandon home to a plantation near Charleston, South Carolina, and began her botanical collections in the nearby woods. After her husband died in 1742, Martha experienced financial difficulties. In 1742, Martha placed an advertisement in the South Carolina Gazette, offering to board children and teach them to read and write. Her son Robert began to advertise imported seeds, flower roots, and fruit stones, sparking further interest into horticulture. In 1751, Martha wrote a column titled "Gardener's Kalendar" for the South Carolina Gazette. Though further financial trouble caused her to have to sell her plantation in 1753. Martha moved to Charleston and sold rare seeds and roots and delved more seriously into her studies of botany. She continued to collect plants, seeds, and other botanical materials, and also began to correspond extensively with the royal botanist at the time, John Bartram. Bartram, stationed in Philadelphia, exchanged samples and communicated regularly with Logan. Logan died in Charleston at the age of 75, on the 28 June 1779. Source:

Mary EDWARDSMary Edwards was a human computer for the British Nautical Almanac and one of a very few women paid directly by the Board of Longitude, and to earn a living from scientific work at the time. She was one of 35 human computers who calculated the position of the sun, moon and planets at different times of day for annual nautical almanacs used for navigation at sea. Edwards was introduced to the almanac project and to Nevil Maskelyne, the fifth English Astronomer Royal, through her husband John Edwards (c 1748–1784) who had taken on piece-work as a computer to supplement the family income and received payment for work on 6 months' worth of each almanac from 1773 until his death in 1784. It was revealed that Mary had done most of the calculations when she wrote to Maskelyne to ask if she could continue work to support herself and her daughters after her husband's death. On her husband’s death Mary Edwards officially took over his computing work on a full-time basis and as her sole source of income. Maskelyne may have known all along that She undertook the calculations because he had visited the family on several occasions. However when Maskelyne died in 1811 she found that the new Astronomer Royal John Pond did not give her enough work. The Board of Longitude eventually ruled that Pond should continue to allocate work to her. Over time, her reputation for reliability and accuracy meant she could take on more work. She continued until her death in 1815. Her daughter, Eliza Edwards (1779-1846), also worked as a computer, initially helping from a young age and then independently after her mother's death in 1815. She continued to work for the Nautical Almanac until 1832, at which date computing work was centralised in London and in the new HM Nautical Almanac Office there was no place for women employees as Civil Service rules made the employment of women very difficult. The minor planet 12627 Maryedwards was named in her honour. Source:

Eva EKEBLADEva Ekeblad (née De la Gardie; 10 July 1724 – 15 May 1786) was a Swedish countess, salon hostess, agronomist, and scientist. She was widely known for discovering a method in 1746 to make alcohol and flour from potatoes, allowing greater use of scarce grains for food production, significantly reducing Sweden's incidence of famine. Ekeblad was the first female member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1748). Eva De la Gardie was born to statesman count Magnus Julius De la Gardie (1668–1741) and the amateur politician and salonist Hedvig Catharina Lilje: sister of Captain Carl Julius De la Gardie and Hedvig Catharina De la Gardie and the aunt of Axel von Fersen the Younger. Her brother was married to Catherine Charlotte De la Gardie and the brother-in-law of the royal favorite Hedvig Taube. In 1740, Eva married at the age of 16 the riksråd count Claes Claesson Ekeblad, and became the mother of seven children; one son and six daughters, Claes Julius Ekeblad (1742–1808) and Hedda Piper among them. Their spouses belonged to the elite of the Swedish nobility. Upon her marriage, her father, Julius De la Gardie, gave Eva the estates Mariedal Castle and Lindholmen Castle, Västergötland. Her husband, additionally, owned the Stola Manor estate as well as a residence in the capital of Stockholm. Because of the frequent absence of her husband on business, Eva Ekeblad was given the responsibility of the management of the three estates, including the tasks of supervising the bailiffs and presiding at the country-assemblies of the parishes of the estates. She is described as imposing and temperamental with great authority: fair toward the peasantry, whom she protected against abuse from the bailiffs in return for obedience, and as someone who did not hesitate to rectify and punish wrongdoings during conflicts with local dignitaries. She also had a leading role in the local aristocracy, and Stola manor was renowned for its good order. In the Ekeblad residence in Stockholm, she hosted a cultural salon and was described by the wife of the Spanish Ambassador de marquis de Puentefuerte as "one of few aristocratic ladies whose honor was considered untainted". The first concert performances of the mass music of Johan Helmich Roman were performed in her salon at the Ekeblad House. She was on friendly terms with queen Louisa Ulrika. After the death of her husband in 1771, she retired to the countryside. Mariedal and Lindholmen estates served as her dower estates, the former being her personal residence. She initially also kept control of her son's estate Stola, he being also absent from his estates like his father because of his career. In 1775, her son Claes Julius Ekeblad (1742–1808) married Brita Horn, and three years afterwards Stola manor was granted to her daughter-in-law as a dower. In November 1778, Eva Ekeblad attended the royal court by making use of her rank in her capacity as riksrådinna (wife or widow of a riksråd) and was present as a witness at the birth of the future Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden. She stayed in the capital for two years, during which time she was much celebrated. She was offered to succeed Ulrika Strömfelt as överhovmästarinna (chief lady-in-waiting) to the queen, as well as offered the position of royal governess for the Crown Prince. However, though she was reportedly flattered, she was forced to refuse the offers of a position at court because her hitherto good health was affected by an illness that year which left her much weakened and made her periodically bedridden for her remaining eight years. She spent her last six years in Mariedal Castle, where she continued to be celebrated by the local aristocracy until she died. In 1746, Ekeblad wrote to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on her discoveries of how to make flour and alcohol out of potatoes. Potatoes had been introduced into Sweden in 1658, but had been cultivated only in the greenhouses of the aristocracy. Ekeblad's work turned potatoes into a staple food in Sweden, and increased the supply of wheat, rye and barley available for making bread, since potatoes could be used instead to make alcohol. This greatly improved the country's eating habits and reduced the frequency of famines. She also discovered a method of bleaching cotton textile and yarn with soap in 1751, and of replacing the dangerous ingredients in cosmetics of the time by using potato flour (1752); she is said to have advertised the plant by using its flowers as hair ornaments. In 1748, Eva Ekeblad became the first woman elected to Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. There are no records of her ever having participated in the meetings of the Academy. In 1751, the Academy came to refer to her as an honorary rather than a full member, as the statutes confined membership to men. Source:

Maria Clara EIMMARTMaria Clara Eimmart was a German astronomer, engraver and designer. She was the daughter and assistant of Georg Christoph Eimmart the Younger. Maria Clara Eimmart was a German astronomer born in Nuremberg. She was the daughter of painter, engraver, and amateur astronomer Georg Christoph Eimmart the Younger, who was also director of the Nuremberg Academy of Art, the Malerakademie, from 1699 to 1704. Her grandfather, Georg Christoph Eimmart the Elder, was also an engraver and painter of portraits, still-lifes, landscapes, and historical subjects. The profession of Maria Clara Eimmart’s father was lucrative, but he spent all of his earnings in the purchase of astronomical instruments and on building (in 1678) a private observatory on the Nuremberg city wall. He was a diligent observer and published his results in various memoirs and scientific transactions. Because of the strength of the crafts tradition in Germany, Maria Clara Eimmart was able to take advantage of the opportunity to train as an apprentice to her father. Through him, she received a broad education in French, Latin, mathematics, astronomy, drawing, and engraving. Her skills as an engraver allowed her to assist her father in his work, and she became known for her depictions of the phases of the moon. In addition, she illustrated flowers, birds, and classical subjects, but most of these paintings have been lost. In 1706, Eimmart married Johann Heinrich Muller (1671-1731), her father’s pupil and successor, who had become director of the Eimmart observatory in 1705. Muller also taught physics at the Nuremberg Gymnasium, where Eimmart assisted her husband. Muller was so influenced by the family love for astronomy that he became a diligent amateur and afterwards a professor at Altorf, where he used his skill in depicting comets, sun-spots, and lunar mountains aided by Maria Clara. In the early years of their marriage, their associates included the two Rost Brothers, who were novelists and astronomers, and Doppelmayer, a historian of astronomy. Just a year after her marriage, Maria Clara Eimmart died in childbirth in Nuremberg. Eimmart is best known for her exact astronomical illustrations done in pale pastels on dark blue cardboard. Between 1693 and 1698, Eimmart made over 350 drawings of the phases of the moon. This collection of drawings, drawn solely from observations through a telescope, was entitled Micrographia stellarum phases lunae ultra 300. Twelve of these were given to Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, a scientific collaborator of her father's, and ten survive in Bologna, together with three smaller studies on brown paper. Eimmart’s continuous series of depictions became the basis for a new lunar map. In 1706, Eimmart made two illustrations of a total eclipse. There are also some drawings of planets and comets. Schiebinger states that some sources claim Eimmart published a work under her father’s name in 1701, the Ichnographia nova contemplationum de sole. However, there is no evidence to support that this was her work and not her father’s. Source:

Mary ANNINGMary Anning was an English fossil collector, dealer, and palaeontologist who became known around the world for important finds she made in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis in the county of Dorset in Southwest England. Her findings contributed to important changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth. Anning searched for fossils in the area's Blue Lias cliffs, particularly during the winter months when landslides exposed new fossils that had to be collected quickly before they were lost to the sea. She nearly died in 1833 during a landslide that killed her dog, Tray. Her discoveries included the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton; the first two nearly complete plesiosaur skeletons; the first pterosaur skeleton located outside of Germany; and important fish fossils. Her observations played a key role in the discovery that coprolites, known as bezoar stones at the time, were fossilised faeces. She also discovered that belemnite fossils contained fossilised ink sacs like those of modern cephalopods. When geologist Henry De la Beche painted Duria Antiquior, the first widely circulated pictorial representation of a scene from prehistoric life derived from fossil reconstructions, he based it largely on fossils Anning had found, and sold prints of it for her benefit. A Dissenter and a woman, Anning did not fully participate in the scientific community of 19th-century Britain, who were mostly Anglican gentlemen. She struggled financially for much of her life. Her family was poor, and her father, a cabinetmaker, died when she was eleven. She became well known in geological circles in Britain, Europe, and America, and was consulted on issues of anatomy as well as about collecting fossils. Nonetheless, as a woman, she was not eligible to join the Geological Society of London and she did not always receive full credit for her scientific contributions. Indeed, she wrote in a letter: "The world has used me so unkindly, I fear it has made me suspicious of everyone." The only scientific writing of hers published in her lifetime appeared in the Magazine of Natural History in 1839, an extract from a letter that Anning had written to the magazine's editor questioning one of its claims. After her death in 1847, her unusual life story attracted increasing interest. An uncredited author in All the Year Round, edited by Charles Dickens, wrote of her in 1865 that "[t]he carpenter's daughter has won a name for herself, and has deserved to win it." It has often been claimed that her story was the inspiration for the 1908 tongue-twister "She sells seashells on the seashore" by Terry Sullivan. In 2010, 163 years after her death, the Royal Society included Anning in a list of the ten British women who have most influenced the history of science. Source:

Etheldred BENETTEtheldred Benett was an early English geologist often credited with being the "First Female Geologist", having devoted much of her life to collecting and studying fossils that she discovered in South West England. She worked closely with many principal geologists and her fossil collection, considered one of the largest at the time, played a part in the development of geology as a field of science. Gideon Mantell, discoverer of the Iguanadon, was so inspired by Benett's work he named a Cretaceous ammonite after her called Hoplites bennettiana. Etheldred Benett was born into a wealthy family as the eldest daughter of Thomas Benett (1729–1797) of Wiltshire and Catherine née Darell (d. 1790); her brother, John (1773–1852), was a member of Parliament for Wiltshire and later South Wiltshire from 1819 to 1852. From 1802 she lived at Norton House in Norton Bavant, near Warminster, Wiltshire. Very little is known about Benett’s home life, beyond her contributions to geology, and there is no known portrait of her. From at least 1809 until her death, she devoted herself to collecting and studying the fossils of her native county, beginning with the Warminister area. Benett was knowledgeable in stratigraphy, which aided her searches, and her wealth enabled her to hire collectors and purchase prepared specimens. Her interest in geology was encouraged by her sister in-law's half brother, the botanist Aylmer Bourke Lambert. Lambert was an avid fossil collector who contributed to James Sowerby’s Mineral Conchology; he was a founding member of the Linnean Society, a member of the Royal Society, and an early member of the Geological Society. It was through him that Benett developed her love of fossils and relationships with many leading geologists of the time, and it is only through works by these men that most references to her work were made. For example, she contributed to Gideon Mantell's work on stratigraphy, and also worked with Sowerby. Benett was unmarried and financially independent, and so was able to dedicate much of her life to the developing field of geology through the collection and study of fossils. Benett's speciality was in the Middle Cretaceous Upper Greensand in Wiltshire's Vale of Wardour. Her collection was one of the largest and most diverse of its time, resulting in many visitors to her home. Some fossils in her collection were the first to be illustrated and described, whilst some were extremely rare or unusually well preserved. Benett had contact with many authors of fossil works including the Sowerbys. Forty-one of her specimens were included in Sowerby's Mineral Conchology, a major fossil reference work, in which she had the second highest number of contributions. After viewing part of her collection, and assuming she was male, Tsar Nicholas I granted her a Doctorate of Civil Law from the University of St. Petersberg at a time when women were not admitted into higher education institutions. In response to her honorary doctorate, Benett noted that "scientific people in general have a very low opinion of the abilities of my sex." Most of her fossil collection is currently housed at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia after purchase by Thomas Bellerby Wilson. A few items are in British museums, in particular Leeds City Museum, and possibly in St. Petersburg. These collections contain many type specimens and some of the first fossils found with the soft tissues preserved (as recognized shortly after her death). Benett's entire collection was assumed lost in the early 20th century, as specific specimens could not be located. However, the Philadephia Academy's revived interest in early English fossil collections, and particularly Benett's collection, led to formal recognition again. This ultimately led to the discussion of her two publications, the elaboration of her taxonomic names, and the photographic illustration of many vital pieces of her collection. Benett also took an interest in conchology and spent time collecting and detailing shells, many of which were new records. In a letter to Mantell in 1817, she claimed her shell collecting had left her with no time to look at his fossils. Her unusual first name caused many to suppose that she was a man. This mistake was detected when the Natural History Society of Moscow awarded membership to her under the name of Master Etheldredus Benett in 1836. This was evident again when she was granted the Doctorate of Civil Law by Tsar Nicholas I. This doctorate was given to her from the University of St Petersburg at a time when women were not allowed to be accepted into higher institutions. Benett's contribution to the early history of Wiltshire geology is significant as she felt at ease with, and corresponded extensively with, fellow geologists such as George Bellas Greenough (the first president of the Geological Society), Gideon Mantell, William Buckland, and Samuel Woodward. She freely gave her ideas and items from her fossil collection to worthy causes such as museums, sending one to St. Petersburg. Through exchanging numerous fossils with Mantell, a thorough understanding of the Lower Cretaceous sedimentary rocks of Southern England was reached. Her work was recognised and appreciated by notable individuals of the time. Mantell described her as "A lady of great talent and indefatigable research," whilst the Sowerbys note her "labours in the pursuit of geological information have been as useful as they have been incessant". Benett produced the first measured sections of the Upper Chicksgrove quarry near Tisbury in 1819, drawn to scale, but unfortunately there is no scale indicated on the drawing. She called this "the measure of different beds of stone in Chicksgrove Quarry in the Parish of Tisbury". However, the stratigraphic section was published by naturalist James Sowerby without her knowledge. Later, she contradicted some of the Sowerby's conclusions based on her own research. In 1825, her painting of the meteorite which fell on County Limerick in September 1813 was deposited in Geological Society of London archives, presented in the University of Oxford by Reverend John Griffiths of Bishopstrow. The meteorite is 19 pounds in weight, and the streaked and dotted part represents the fracture. Because of her extensive collection, she wrote and privately published a monograph in 1831, which contains many of her drawings and sketches of mollusca and sponges such as her sketches of fossil Alcyonia (1816) from the Green Sand Formation at Warminster Common and the immediate vicinity of Warminster in Wiltshire. The Society holds two copies: one was given to George Bellas Greenough, and another to her friend Gideon Mantell. This work established her as a true, pioneering biostratigrapher, following but not always agreeing with the work of William Smith. Illness during the last twenty years of Benett's life meant she spent less time collecting specimens and instead commissioned local collectors. After spending 34 years gathering what was the most extensive collection of Wiltshire fossils, Benett died at her home, Norton House, at the age of 69, two years before fellow fossil collector Mary Anning. Her fossil collection was later sold to physician Thomas Wilson of Newark, Delaware, who donated the collection to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia . Works A catalogue of the organic remains of the county of Wiltshire, 1831. A brief enquiry into the antiquity, honour and estate of the name and family of Wake, 1833 (written by her great grandfather William Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, but prepared for publication and footnoted by Etheldred Benett) Source:

Mary BUCKLANDMary Morland Buckland was an English palaeontologist, marine biologist and scientific illustrator. Buckland was born in 1797 in Sheepstead House, Abingdon-on-Thames, to Benjamin Morland, a solicitor, Her mother, Harriet Baster Morland, died when she was a baby, and her father remarried, producing a large family of half-brothers and sisters. She was educated in Southampton, and spent a part of her childhood under the care of Sir Christopher Pegge, a Regius Professor of Anatomy in Oxford, who along with his wife supported her scientific interests. In the midst of her teenage years she was intrigued by the studies conducted by Georges Cuvier and provided him with specimens, and illustrations. Buckland established a name for herself as a scientific draughtswoman, who helped Conybeare, Cuvier and soon to be husband, William Buckland. Mary Buckland started her career as a teenager producing illustrations and providing specimens for George Cuvier, widely regarded as the founder of paleontology, as well as for the British geologist William Conybeare. She made models of fossils, and labelled fossils for the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, studied marine zoophytes and repaired broken fossils inline with her husband's instructions. Mary Buckland assisted her husband greatly by writing as he dictated, editing, producing elaborate illustrations for his books, taking notes of his observations, and writing much of it herself. Her skills as an artist are on display in Mr. Buckland's largely illustrated work Reliquiae diluvianae, published in 1823, and in his Geology and Mineralogy in 1836. Her son noted that she was particularly "neat and clever in mending fossils" with specially developed cementing, and in assisting William Buckland's experiments to reproduce fossil tracks and many others. She assisted him when he was commissioned to contribute a volume to The Bridgewater Treatises. Although Mary Buckland was in poor health after her husband's death, she continued her husband's work and branched out her own research. Examining micro forms of marine life through a microscope, with her daughter Carolin, and arranging a large collection of zoophytes and sponges, which she collected during her visits to the Channel islands of Guernsey and Sark with her husband. Much of her fossil reconstructions are held by the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Source:

Marjorie COURTENAY-LATIMERMarjorie Eileen Doris Courtenay-Latimer was a South African museum official, who in 1938, brought to the attention of the world the existence of the coelacanth, a fish thought to have been extinct for sixty-five million years. Courtenay-Latimer was born in East London, South Africa. She was the daughter of a stationmaster for South African Railways. She was born two months prematurely and was sickly throughout her childhood, nearly dying on one occasion due to a diphtheria infection. Despite her frailty, from a young age she was an avid naturalist and enjoyed outdoor activities. When she visited her grandmother on the coast, she was fascinated by the lighthouse on Bird Island. At age eleven, she vowed she would become an expert on birds. After school, she trained to become a nurse at King William's Town but, just before finishing her training, she was alerted to a job opening at the recently opened East London Museum, East London, Eastern Cape. Although never having received any formal training, she impressed her interviewers with her range of South African naturalistic knowledge and was hired at the age of twenty-four in August 1931. Courtenay-Latimer spent the rest of her career at the museum, retiring first to a farm at Tsitsikamma where she wrote a book on flowers and then headed back to East London. She busily worked on collecting rocks, feathers, shells, and the like for her museum, and made her desire to see unusual specimens known to fishermen. On 22 December 1938, she received a telephone call that such a fish had been brought in. She went to the docks to inspect the catch of Captain Hendrik Goosen. "I picked away at the layers of slime to reveal the most beautiful fish I had ever seen," she said. "It was five feet (150 cm) long, a pale mauvy blue with faint flecks of whitish spots; it had an iridescent silver-blue-green sheen all over. It was covered in hard scales, and it had four limb-like fins and a strange puppy dog tail." She hauled the fish to her museum in a taxi and tried to find it in her books without success. Eager to preserve the fish and, having no facilities at the museum, Courtenay-Latimer took it to the morgue, which refused to assist her. She tried to contact J. L. B. Smith, a friend who taught at Rhodes University, to help her identify it, but he was away. Courtenay-Latimer reluctantly sent it to a taxidermist to skin and gut it. When Smith finally arrived on 16 February 1939, he instantly recognized the fish as a coelacanth. "There was not a shadow of a doubt", he said. "It could have been one of those creatures of 200 million years ago come alive again". Smith would give it the scientific name Latimeria chalumnae after his friend and the Chalumna River, where it was found. It would be fourteen more years before another was brought in. Publications: Gray's Beaked Whale, Mesoplodon Grayi. Annals of the Cape Provincial Museums Vol.3 1963. Source:

Eliza Maria GORDON-CUMMINGLady Eliza Maria Gordon-Cumming was a Scottish aristocrat, horticulturalist, palaeontologist and scientific illustrator. Lady Cumming collected and studied Devonian fish fossils from the Old Red Sandstone of Morayshire, Scotland. She amassed a large and well-known collection which she illustrated, along with her daughter Lady Anne Seymour. Lady Cumming worked with other palaeontologists and geologists of the time including Louis Agassiz, William Buckland (who was the husband of ) and Roderick Murchison. Lady Cumming was born Eliza Maria Campbell in 1795 in Inveraray to Lady Charlotte Campbell (later Lady Charlotte Bury) and Colonel John Campbell. Her mother was a diarist and novelist and father a soldier and politician. Lady Cumming was a skilled painter and keen horticulturalist who took up the study of the fossils on her Altyre estate near the Moray Firth around 1839. She collected fossils and instructed workers in the quarries on the estate to bring her any they found. She collected a large number of specimens of fossil fish from the Devonian period and began a correspondence with the most famous geologists of the time; Louis Agassiz, William Buckland and Roderick Murchison all visited her collection in Scotland. She sent illustrations, letters and specimens around Europe, and intended to publish her illustrations and theories on how these fish would have appeared in life. Some of these illustrations survive in the archives of the Geological Society. Some of her ideas about how the fossil remains should be interpreted were later discredited as more fossil evidence came to light, but her illustrations were highly respected. Her work was praised by Hugh Miller: "...collected these remains and distributed them amongst geologists with the greatest liberality. Lady Cumming had studied the remains with great care, and prepared a series of drawings of all the most perfect specimens with a precision of detail and artistic talent, which few naturalists can hope to attain" After his visit to Altyre, Agassiz named a species Cheirolepis cummingae (also sometimes spelled cummingii) in honour of Cumming. This species name was later discovered to be a synonym of Cheirolepis trialli. Many of the fossils in Cumming's collection were personally identified by Agassiz, and the collection is now held by the National Museum of Scotland, the Natural History Museum, London, and the University of Neuchatel. Lady Cumming married Sir William Gordon Gordon-Cumming of Altyre, 2nd Baronet in 1815. They had 13 children. During her 13th pregnancy Cumming was impatient to get back to her studies, writing to Roderick Murchison "I am breathless to be at work again." However, she died on 21 April 1842 due to complications following the birth. Source:

Elizabeth GRAYElizabeth Gray (born Elizabeth Anderson) was a Scottish early fossil collector. Gray created scientifically organised collections of fossils for several museums. Elizabeth Anderson was born in Alloway in 1831. She and her family moved to Enoch near Girvan in Ayrshire where they farmed and Elizabeth attended a small private school. Her father was described as an enthusiastic collector of fossils who had a type of trilobite named after him. Anderson was sent to a boarding school in Glasgow when she was fifteen. She stayed for a year and then returned to help in the home. She married Robert Gray on 8 April 1856 and they both shared an interest in collecting fossils each holiday back in Girvan. She was assisted by their children when they were able. They lived in Glasgow, where Robert worked in a bank, and their holidays were spent back in Ayrshire. Elizabeth's interest lay in documenting and discovering fossils and she trained her children to document their findings too. Robert co-founded the Natural History Society of Glasgow where much of their findings were exhibited. It was traditional that men took the lead and Mrs Robert Gray was a name she used. Robert would present and take credit for his family's work. At the time you needed to publish papers to join learned societies. Elizabeth's specimens were frequently used at the start of meetings of the Natural History Society of Glasgow but with poor attribution that implied that her husband or she were possibly those responsible. However, in 1866 the first Gray collection was given to the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow by the two of them. The curator of the Hunterian Museum was John Young who was the Regius Professor of Natural History at the University of Glasgow and a strong supporter for women's higher education. He ran classes for women and in 1869 he invited Elizabeth to attend lectures in geology at his university. Her finds and their scientific descriptions became type specimens. Many of her finds are type specimens; the mollusc Lophospira trispiralis, the starfish Hudsonaster grayae and the echinoderm Archophiactis grayae are all defined by fossils she found. From 1874 they were able to use the expertise of the palaeontologists of Edinburgh as the family moved to follow Robert's new job. The Ordovician fossils were described and classified. Robert died in 1887. Elizabeth Gray's work was drawn upon by many publications, such as Charles Lapworth's Girvan Succession of 1882. Lapworth noted her work's significance as "the very first collection in which the exact localities and horizons of every individual fossil...[were] written down at the time of collection." Elizabeth was offered the chance to learn how to scientifically describe her own finds by Doctor Ramsay Traquair of the Royal Scottish Museum, but she wanted to concentrate on finding specimens for others to study as she felt that others had more experience. The palaeontologist Thomas Davidson benefited from Gray's lack of interest and he described collections of fossils that Gray sent to him between 1857 and 1885. In 1878–1880, R. Etheridge and H. Alleyne Nicholson published a Monograph of the Silurian Fossils of the Girvan District in Ayrshire using Gray's collection. When Nicholson's funding ran out so did his interest and Gray turned to F.R.Cowper Reed of Cambridge for assistance. He was thought of as a recluse but he was able to publish several papers based on Gray's fossils and it is thought that he never visited the site to see where they had been collected. William Kingdon Spencer worked on her fossils as did Jane Longstaff who sorted out the fossil gastropods. Gray was constantly organising and begging for assistance to ensure that her finds were described correctly and to this end she had a long and at times impatient correspondence with Francis Bather at the British Museum. In 1900 Gray was made an honorary member of the Geological Society of Glasgow, and in 1903, aged 72, Gray was awarded the Murchison geological fund in recognition of her lifelong contributions to the field. The ODNB notes that Gray was "a woman of considerable character, determination, and resourcefulness, with a phenomenally retentive memory." Gray continued gathering fossils until the age of 92, and died in Edinburgh in 1924. After her death, her work was continued by her daughters, Alice and Edith. Gray has left extensive collections of Scottish fossils in a number of British museums. She and her family worked in Girvan from 1855 to 1941. The family created scientifically organised collections of fossils for several museums including the Natural History Museum. Alice, assisted by Edith, continued to visit Girvan until 1941. Alice described it as the recreation of her childhood. They would cover where they had been working to avoid others discovering their current interest and they would not retire for the night until the days findings had been catalogued. Even the chippings from their specimens were retained so that they could be further split, in their house, to find a further fossils. Excluding her father's work the family's interest in actively collecting fossils lasted for 86 years. Source:

Carlotta MAURYCarlotta Joaquina Maury was a geologist, stratigrapher, paleontologist, and was one of the first women to work as a professional scientist in the oil and gas industry. The international fuel corporation offered her a job in 1910. Prejudice against professional women at the time did not affect Maury due to her extensive knowledge, recognized technical skills, and capabilities. Carlotta Joaquina Maury was born on January 6, 1874 in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. Maury's father was the Reverend Mytton Maury, a direct descendant of the Reverend James Maury and one of the sons of Sarah Mytton Maury. Maury's mother was Virginia Draper, a daughter of Antonia Coetana de Paiva Pereira Gardner and Dr. John William Draper. Her Grandfather, Daniel Gardner was the Emperor of Brazil's physician. Her sister, Antonia Maury became an astronomer and worked as a scientist and a mathematician in Harvard Observatory. Maury had another sister, Sarah Mytton Maury who died in infancy. Her brother, John William Draper was a well known New York surgeon who died in 1931. Maury was also the granddaughter of John William Draper and a niece of Henry Draper, both pioneering astronomers who privately funded the Harvard Observatory. Maury was educated at Radcliffe College from 1891 to 1894, she later attended Jardin des Plantes in Paris from 1899 to 1900 and Columbia University. After spending a year at Sorbonne for post-graduate studies, she completed her PhD at Cornell University in 1902, making her one of the first women to receive her PhD in paleontology. Upon completion of her degree, Maury started teaching at Erasmus High School in Brooklyn, New York in 1900. She went on to become a paleontologist assistant at Columbia University in 1904 and a lecturer in geology at Columbia College and Barnard College until 1912. C.J. Maury returned to the field and joined a team led by G.D. Harris, her former Cornell advisor. The team’s objective was to investigate oil-rich areas off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. The information provided was the first significant geological information about the oil-producing area it is today. Maury’s specific contribution to the team’s research efforts was assembling data based on paleontologist findings in order to create a structure map of a large region. The team’s analysis has only needed minor adjustments since being published in 1910. In 1910, she started working for the Royal Dutch Shell as a consulting geologist and stratigrapher - she became the first female to be hired as a consultant, and then for General Asphalt Co. as part of a team to explore areas of Old Eocene beds in Trinidad and Venezuela. Her findings of fossils and fauna were the first of their kind in the Caribbean and South America. After teaching at Huguenot College in Wellington, South Africa, she returned to the Caribbean in 1916 as a leader of the "Maury Expedition" to the Dominican Republic, despite political instability in the area at the time. Her goal was to order the stratigraphic layers of the Miocene and Oligocene eras, which were composed of sedimentary rock with heavy fossil deposits. This resulted in the discovery of 400 new species. Her work formed the foundation of the present day International Dominican Republic Project, which is a research effort that aims to dissect evolutionary change in the Caribbean from the Miocene era to the present day. In 1925, Maury published "Fosseis Terciarios do Brazil with Descripcao de Nova Cretaceas Forms". In this work she describes a various amount of species of mollusks from the northeaster coast of South America. Using her stratigraphy knowledge, she was able to find a correlation of those faunas with similar faunas around the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. C.J. Maury was known for working speedily, while paying attention to detail and upholding a high level of enthusiasm. Her skills and capabilities were highly acknowledged that she became an official paleontologist with the Geological and Mineralogical Service of Brazil. While in this position, she published multiple monographs and Mineralogical Service Bulletins between 1919-1937. Most of her work after 1923 was completed inside a private lab in her apartment in Yonkers, New York. Since she was financially independent she was able to hire other specialists on the work she wasn’t as confident in.

Maury died January 3, 1938 in Yonkers, New York. She was buried at Cold Springs, New York on January 6. Source:

Alice WILSONAlice Evelyn Wilson was Canada's first female geologist. Her scientific studies of the rocks and fossils of the Ottawa region between 1913 and 1963 remain a respected source of knowledge. Wilson grew up in Cobourg, Ontario. The canoeing and camping trips with her father and brothers sparked her interest in fossils. Her family also encouraged scholarly thought and the pursuit of scientific knowledge. In 1901 Wilson began studying modern language and history at the Victoria College in Toronto. She did not finish her last year of studies due to ill health. But she was hired by the Mineralogy Division of the University of Toronto Museum, thus beginning her career in geology. She later completed her degree and, in 1907, was hired into a permanent position as a museum technician at the Geological Survey of Canada, which was headquartered at the Victoria Memorial Museum in Ottawa. Wilson persisted through seven years of being denied time off to pursue a higher degree in geology. Eventually, the Canadian Federation of University Women awarded her a scholarship so that she could embark on graduate studies at the University of Chicago. She graduated in 1929 with a doctorate in geology. At the GSC, Wilson could not participate in fieldwork that required living in camps with men in remote regions. Instead, Wilson created her own niche and did fieldwork at local sites in the Ottawa area. For the next fifty years she studied this area on foot, by bicycle and eventually by car. The GSC published the results of her fieldwork in 1946 and her Geology of the St. Lawrence Lowland, Ontario and Quebec was the first major geological publication about the area. In addition to a comprehensive discussion of its geology, Wilson covered the area's economic resources, including building stone, sand, gravel and drinking water. From 1948 until 1958 Wilson was a lecturer in Paleontology at Carleton College (later Carleton University). Carleton recognized Wilson both as a geologist and as an inspiring teacher with an honorary degree in 1960. Wilson also worked to bring geology to a broader public. She wrote a children's book, The Earth Beneath our Feet, aimed at encouraging broader knowledge and interest in the science she was so passionate about. Wilson became a respected member of the GSC and mentor to many young geologists. She retired at the age of 65, as was required by law. However, she kept her office at the GSC and continued her work until her death in 1964. Wilson was the first woman geologist hired by the Geological Survey of Canada (1909), one of the first two women elected as Fellows of The Royal Canadian Geographical Society (1930); the first Canadian woman to be admitted to the Geological Society of America (1936) and the first female Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (1938). In 1935, when the government of R.B. Bennett was looking to honour a woman in the federal civil service, Wilson was chosen to become a Member of the Order of the British Empire. In 1991 the Royal Society of Canada established the Alice Wilson Awards for emerging women scholars. Wilson was inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame in 2005. Source:

Madeleine FRITZMadeleine Alberta Fritz was a Canadian palaeontologist. She was a professor at the University of Toronto, where she taught vertebrate studies in the department of Geology. Fritz's writing on the fossil Bryozoa and her research on the stratigraphy of Toronto and the surrounding areas were major contributions to the geological field. As one of the pioneering researchers on the Palaeozoic fossil Bryozoa, a type of sea creatures that bond together to build joint skeletons composed of tiny chambers, Fritz later became known as "the great-grandmother of Palaeozoic Bryozoa". Fritz worked at The Royal Ontario Museum as an associate director from 1936 to 1955, and then she later became the Invertebrate Palaeontology Curator at the ROM from 1955 to 1957. In 1956, she became a palaeontology professor at University of Toronto under the Department of Geology until her official retirement in 1967. Fritz was a member of the Geological Association of Canada and the Geological Society of America. She also belonged to the Canadian Confederation of University Women and the International Federation of University Women. Madeleine Fritz was born in Saint John, New Brunswick. The area in which she grew up sparked an early interest in her fascination to the formation of mountains. Her father was a sea captain, so she spent many of her early years in and around the ocean. As a young girl she often played on the beach with marine life, which also fostered her initial interest in fossil invertebrates. Fritz studied Arts and English at McGill University in Montreal. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1919, she went on to teach at Elmwood Private Girls School in Ottawa, Canada. While living in Ottawa, she meet Alice Wilson, an assistant palaeontologist at the Geological Survey of Canada, which was based out of Ottawa. Wilson was the first woman in Canada to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (in 1942, Fritz would become the second). When they met, Wilson was preparing to embark on a geological expedition to Lake Winnipeg. Since gender rules were still quite strict at the time, Wilson would not have been permitted to travel with any male colleagues. Therefore, she invited Fritz to join her on the expedition as her assistant while school was out for the summer. Fritz signed up as a "cook and canoeman," and accompanied Wilson for the six week expedition in Manitoba. After returning from her expedition with Wilson, Fritz remained a teacher at Elmwood for one more year before deciding to enroll in the geology program offered at the University of Toronto. While attending the University of Toronto in 1920, Fritz was the only female graduate student in the geology department. Despite this, Fritz mentioned that she felt accepted by those in her class and that no one ever tried to deter her from pursuing her degree in geology. She completed her M.A. in 1923 and her Ph.D. in 1926, making her the first woman in Canada to have ever received a Ph.D. within the geology/palaeontology field. In 1927, Fritz was hired as an assistant at the Royal Ontario Museum of Palaeontology, which was affiliated with the University of Toronto. This position made her the only female geologist in Canada to hold an academic position in the field of geology during the interwar years. In 1935, Fritz was hired as an assistant professor in the geology department at the University of Toronto. In 1955, Fritz became the curator of the Department of Invertebrate Palaeontology of the Royal Ontario Museum of Palaeontology, the first woman to hold this position. In 1956, Fritz became a full professor at the University of Toronto. It is important to note the length of time that it took for her to be promoted from assistant professor to full professor; this demonstrates lateral segregation. Fritz officially ended her career with retirement in 1967, but she continued to research human evolution and origin of the Earth for the majority of her life. Fritz's career was a reflection of a successful female academic breakthrough in a field mainly dominated by males since it was associated with rugged work like mining and exploration. She broke barriers regarding the role of women in society as having one, mainly maternal career and pursued her graduate degree instead of marrying. Fritz, continued these accomplishments through participating in field work and publishing numerous research paper's while actively maintaining her administration and teaching roles. Madeleine Fritz's contribution to palaeontology is remembered during the "Madeleine Fritz Annual Lecture in Palaeontology" event where namely women guest speakers discuss advancements in the geological field. It is also a space for discussion about new research and findings in the field. This event is held at the royal Ontario Museum. Fritz received several honours, in 1942 she entered the Royal Society of Canada as the second woman to receive such honour within Canada. In 1967, Fritz received the Canadian Centennial Medal. In 1975, Fritz was one of 19 Canadian female scientists honoured in a display at National Museum of Natural Science. Source:

Zofia KIELAN JAWOROWSKAZofia Kielan-Jaworowska was a Polish paleobiologist. She was born in Sokolow Podlaski, Poland, on April 25, 1925. In 1928, her father, Franciszek Kielan, was offered a job for the Association of Agriculture and Trade Cooperatives in Warsaw where her family moved for 5 years. Zofia and family returned to Warsaw in 1934 and lived in the small town of Zoliborz. She began her studies in Warsaw, following the destruction after the war when the Nazis had attempted to completely destroy the city, resulting in the Department of Geology joining the ruins. She attended lectures given instead by the Polish paleontologist, Roman Kozlowski, in his own home. This is her where her passion began. She subsequently earned a master's degree in zoology and a paleontology doctorate at Warsaw University, where she later became a professor. 15 years later, she organized the first Polish-Mongolian paleontological quest to the Gobi Desert, and returned seven times. She became the first woman to serve on the committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences. Her findings remain arguably unmatched by any living expert.

She was employed by the Institute of Paleobiology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She held a number of functions in professional organizations in Poland and the United States.

Her work included the study of Devonian and Ordovician trilobites from Central Europe (Poland and Czech Republic), leading several Polish-Mongolian paleontological expeditions to the Gobi Desert, and the discovery of new species of crocodiles, lizards, turtles, dinosaurs (notably Deinocheirus), birds and multituberculates. She is the author of the book Hunting for Dinosaurs, and a co-author of the book Mammals from the Age of Dinosaurs. Her work was published widely in peer reviewed scientific journals, books and monographs.

While at the University of Warsaw, she started her master's research. This allowed her to join expeditions with other paleontologists and make various contributions. Kielan-Jaworowska participated in her first paleontological excavation in 1947 along with a group of researchers from the Museum of Earth and the National Geological Institute. The excavations, led by the geologist Jan Czarnocki, took place in Poland's Swietokrzyskie Mountains in exposures of Middle Devonian strata. The group's work involved digging for soft rock and rinsing away the sediment, consisting of yellow marl, in running water while using a sieve to collect any fossils that were present. Kielan-Jaworowska spent two months with the group and specifically sought trilobite fossils, which became the focus of her master's thesis. She returned to specific sites in the Swietokrzyskie Mountains over the next three summers to continue developing her collection, which grew to over one hundred trilobite specimens.

Kielan-Jaworowska was awarded her master's degree in 1949. She had been employed as an assistant in the University of Warsaw's Department of Paleontology since fall 1948. She worked there until 1952, teaching classes in paleontology for biology and geology students.

During her expeditions from 1963 to 1971 to the Gobi Desert, she unearthed many dinosaurs and mammals from the Cretaceous and early Tertiary. Her findings were so extensive that, in 1965, her team had shipped over 20 tons of fossils back to Poland. One of her most notable finds was in 1971, when she discovered a Protoceratops and a young Velociraptor tangled in a struggle. The fossilization process of how these two remained intact in this position is still debated. Although her findings were mainly dinosaurs, she did not focus all her research on them. From 1949 to 1963, she concentrated on Paleozoic invertebrates, especially three-lobed water bugs called trilobites. They were among the oldest fossils commonly found. This led her to shift her focus on researching Mesozoic mammals in 1963.

Kielan-Jaworowska has added a great deal of contribution to monographs that detail findings of fossils and wrote her own book, Hunting for Dinosaurs, which give brief descriptions of her paleontological endeavors in the Gobi Desert. The book was written in Polish and translated to English and published in 1969. The book notes her exchange with the Mongolian people, as well as the hardships she faced to achieve success in her life's work. In her research, she explored the asteroid theory regarding the mass extinction of dinosaurs. Kielan-Jaworowska concluded the book with noting how the research of the mass extinctions could promote awareness for future decades. Kielan-Jaworowska and her book gained international attention and fame.

From 1960 to 1982, she was the director of the Institute of Paleobiology. In 1982, she stepped down from her position to undertake a visiting professorship at the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, which lasted for two years. Soon after her return to Warsaw, she was appointed Professor of Paeleontology at the University of Oslo, which lasted from 1986 to 1995 when she was appointed Professor Emerita in the institute of Paleobiology.

In 1988, she was awarded the Walter Granger Memorial Award. In 1999, Kielan-Jaworowska received the Righteous Among the Nations Medal. She was awarded the Romer-Simpson Medal in 1996, becoming the 8th recipient of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's award, which honors sustained and outstanding scholarly excellence in the discipline of vertebrate paleontology. In 2002, she also became the recipient of the Commander's Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta. Her book, Mammals from the Age of Dinosaurs, won her the prestigious Prize of the Foundation for Polish Science in 2005. Her work was recognized "for a creative synthesis of research on the Mesozoic evolution of mammals".

Kielan-Jaworowska's co-author, Zhe-Xi Lou, describes her contribution to paleontology as unmatched by any living experts, and that "in the whole of Mesozoic mammalian studies for the last 100 years, only the late American paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson would be her equal". "She is the rarest among the rare – she has been a leader in making important scientific contributions, and also a gregarious and charismatic figure, both of which have made paleontology a better science, and paleontologists worldwide a better community."

She was a member of the Polish Geological Society, Academia Europaea, Palaeontological Association, Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Norwegian Paleontological Society, Polish Academy of Sciences as well as an honorary member of the Linnean Society of London, Polish Copernicus Society of Naturalists and the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. She worked at the Harvard University (1973-74), Paris Diderot University (1982-84), University of Oslo (1987-95) and the Polish Academy of Sciences.

A number of extinct animals have been named in her honour including Kielanodon, Zofiabaatar, Kielantherium, Zofiagale as well as Indobaatar zofiae.

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Cristina ROCCATICristina Roccati was an Italian physicist and poet who earned a degree at the University of Bologna (1751). This was only the third academic qualification ever bestowed on a woman by an Italian university. Roccati was born to Giovan Battista and Antonia Campo, who belonged to a well-off family in Rovigo, Italy. Roccati studied classical languages under Peter Bertaglia Arquà, rector of the seminary at Rovigo, and at the age of 15 she won accolades from the Accademia dei Concordi Ordna for her poems. In 1747, she was given permission by her parents to study natural philosophy at the University of Bologna under the guardianship of Bertaglia. There, she was admitted to the University the same year as the first non-Bolognese student. She studied literature, logic, metaphysics, morality, meteorology and astronomy, but she concentrated much of her effort on physics and natural science. She was decorated for her poems and sonnets in Bologna, just as she had been in Rovigo. She became a member of the Academy of Concordia (1749), the Accademia degli Apatisti in Florence (1750) and the Accademia nell'Arcadia (under the name Aganice Aretusiana) (1753), as well as the Accademia degli Ardenti in Bologna and the Ricoverati in Padua. On 5 May 1751, during a time when opportunities for higher education were often denied to women, Roccati, who was considered a prodigy, was awarded a degree in philosophy becoming, according to Wertheim, "only the third woman ever to gain academic qualifications." She went on to study at the University of Padua with concentrations in Newtonian physics, Greek and Hebrew, while continuing to cultivate her literary interests and compose new verses. Beginning in 1751, she was active as a teacher in physics at the Accademia dei Concordi di Rovigo (and taught there until at least 1777). In 1752, however, her family fell into financial ruin forcing her to interrupt her studies at Padua and return home to Rovigo where she taught physics. At the Accademia dei Concordi in Rovigo, Roccatti held evening courses in Newtonian physics for other members. Of her lesson plans for those lectures, only 51 have been found. In 1754, she was elected president of the Accademia dei Concordi of Rovigo. Cristina Roccati died in Rovigo on 16 March 1797. Source:

Anna Barbara REINHARTAnna Barbara Reinhart was a Swiss mathematician. She was considered an internationally respected mathematician of her era. Anna Barbara Reinhart was the daughter of councilman Salomon Reinhart (1693 - 1761) and Anna Steiner. Her childhood was overshadowed by a horseback riding accident, which confined her to her bed for longer periods of time. Her physician, however, noticed her aptitude to mathematics and began to teach her. Henceforth, she studied mathematics by the books of Leonhard Euler, Gabriel Cramer, Pieter van Musschenbroek and Jérôme Lalande. Reinhart corresponded with several mathematicians of the period, such as Christoph Jezler, and also received them as guests. She was active as a teacher of mathematics and was the instructor of Ulrich Hegner and Heinrich Bosshard von Rümikon among others. It is said that she edited the works of several of her contemporaries and wrote a manuscript commenting on the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton, which however has been lost. Several contemporaries commended Reinhart in their work, such as Daniel Bernoulli who praised her for expanding and improving the pursuit curve as discussed by Pierre Louis Maupertuis. Reinhart died at the age of 66 caused by gout and as a consequence of the accident in her childhood from which never fully recovered. Source:

Huang LUHuang Lü was a Chinese scientist. Huang Lü was the daughter of the education officer Huang Choi, who encouraged her to educate herself. She studied science such as astronomy and arithmetic. She became acquainted with Zheng Fuguang, who had studied the Eastern optics which had at that time been introduced in Japan. She constructed a type of telescope and a prototype of a camera, as well as a type of thermometer. Chen Wenshu (1775–1845) described her as "an extremely talented woman in every aspect of art and technology" in his poem "Tianjing ge yong Huang Yingqin". Source:

Marie-Anne LIBERTMarie-Anne Libert was a Belgian botanist and mycologist. She was one of the first women plant pathologists. Marie-Anne Libert was born in Malmedy in April 1782, twelfth of the thirteen children of Henri-Joseph Libert and his wife Marie-Jeanne-Bernadine Libert (née Dubois). The parents, educated members of the middle class who ran a tanning business, recognised her intellectual potential. She was initially a pupil of the Sépulcrines of Malmedy. At the age of eleven her parents sent her to stay in Prüm in Germany to learn German and the violin, both of which she quickly mastered. Her father recognised his daughter's emerging interest in the exact sciences and taught her algebra and geometry, so that she could follow him into the business. She was enthusiastic and pushed the education well beyond the needs of commerce. Marie-Anne Libert was motivated by a thirst for knowledge: everything interested her, she wanted to know everything[citation needed]. Nature drew her in particular; she spent long hours walking in the area of Malmedy, particularly in the High Fens. She observed, gathered many minerals and plants then identified them in her father's office, cataloguing and classifying them. As most reference works were written in Latin, she began to teach herself Latin. Her work in botany, or more precisely in cryptogams, of an undeniable scientific rigour, earned her an international reputation. She corresponded with scientists in Belgium and elsewhere. She also collaborated for a time with Dr. Lejeune of Verviers, who was preparing a catalogue of the plants of the Department of Ourthe. Dr. Lejeune introduced Libert to the Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramis de Candolle, who encouraged her to work on crytogamic flora. Libert's later produced a cyptogamic flora of the Ardennes. She was one of the first to identify the organism responsible for the disease disease of the potato, which she named Botrytis vastatrix Lib. and of which she gave a detailed description in a report written in August 1845. The German mycologist Anton de Bary built on this discovery, among other work, when he showed in 1876 that the oomycete, Phytophthora infestans as he renamed it, was the cause of late blight, and not the consequence as was still believed at the time. She also described several plant pathogenic Ascomycetes, including Alternaria cheiranthi (Lib.) PC Bolle (basionym: Helminthosporium cheiranthi Lib.) a pathogen of wallflower, and Fusarium coeruleum Lib. ex Sacc., the causative agent of dry rot of potato. In total, she described over 200 new taxa. The study of ancient languages had directed her attention towards archaeology. In the last years of her life, when her age no longer allowed her to run around the countryside, she devoted considerable time to the history of the Principality of Stavelot-Malmedy. She gave to history and archeology the same scientific rigour as to her botanical studies, using all available sources. In addition to her herbarium, she formed a remarkable collection of pearls obtained from large pearl mussels found in abundance in the river Amblève and its tributaries. She also assembled a large collection of coins. This intense scientific activity was no obstacle to business. She took that with the same determination as her research, the same desire to do well. With her brothers, she was able to make a large extension to the small tannery which they had inherited from their parents. After a short illness, Marie-Anne Libert died in Malmedy on 14 January 1865. The taxa Libertia (a genus of the family Iridaceae) and Libertiella (ascomycete fungi) were named after her. Source:

Martine BERTEREAUMartine Bertereau also known as Baroness de Beausoleil was a pioneering French woman mining engineer and the first recorded female mineralogist, who traveled extensively in Europe in search of mineral deposits. She surveyed the sites of hundreds of potential mines in France in the service of the French King. Her writings describe the use of divining-rods as well as much useful scientific and practical advice which she derived largely from the Roman engineer Vitruvius's book on architecture, De architectura. They are a unique glimpse into the craft-skills involved in mining in the seventeenth century. Martine Bertereau came from a noble French family in the Touraine who were traditionally engaged in mining. She married Jean de Chastelet, Baron de Beausoleil et d'Auffenbach an expert in mining. The Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph, had made him the commissioner general of the mines of Hungary. In this capacity they traveled widely visiting mines in South America, Hungary and Germany. In 1626, they were commissioned by King Henry IV to survey France for possible mine locations and revive the French mining industry. They established a base at Morlaix in Brittany. Their activity aroused suspicions in the provincial clergy that their methods involved magic and a priest, the Prevot Provincial named, Touche-Grippé searched their châteaux looking for incriminating material. No charges we made but the couple were forced to leave France. They were invited back under King Louis XIII to continue their work. The baroness wrote two reports on their work, the first, Véritable déclaration de la découverte des mines et minières was published in 1632 and listed 150 French mines the couple had discovered. The second was in the form of poem addressed to Cardinal de Richelieu La restitution de pluton, (1640) is really a plea for them to be paid for the work undertaken which they had carried out at their own expense. In it she seeks to defend her unusual position as a woman in the mining industry. "But how about what is said by others about a woman who undertakes to dig holes in and pierce mountains: this is too bold, and surpasses the forces and industry of this sex, and perhaps, there is more empty words and vanity in such promises (vices for which flighty persons are often remarked) than the appearance of truth. I would refer this disbeliever, and all those who arm themselves with such and other like arguments, to profane histories, where they will find that, in the past, there have been women who were not only bellicose and skilled in arms, but even more, expert in arts and speculative sciences, professed so much by the Greeks as by the Romans.” It is speculated that the demand for money made the government move against them on charges of withcraft. Jean de Chastelet was imprisoned in the Bastille and Martine and her eldest daughter in Vincennes. Both died in prison. Source:

Florence BASCOMFlorence Bascom was the second woman to earn her Ph.D in geology in the United States, and the first woman to receive a Ph.D from Johns Hopkins University, which occurred in 1893. She also became the first woman to work for the United States Geological Survey, in 1896. As well as being one of the first women to earn a master's degree in geology, she was known for her innovative findings in this field, and led the next generation of female geologists. Geologists consider her to be the "first woman geologist in this country America." Florence Bascom was born in Williamstown, Massachusetts on July 14, 1862. The youngest of five children, Bascom came from a family who, unlike most at the time, encouraged women's entrance into society. Her father, John Bascom, was a professor at Williams College, and later President of the University of Wisconsin. He was the driving factor of her career and her first contact in the field of Geology. Her mother, Emma Curtiss Bascom, was a women's rights activist involved in the suffrage movement. Her parents were steadfast supporters of women's rights and encouraged women to obtain a college education. She was born at a time when Civil War was splitting the country. She grew up in a household where her family emphasized the importance of gender equality. Her father commemorated women and their importance in society. She had a very high maturity level from a very young age and was very close to her father. Her father had struggled with mental illness and used his children as a way to help him overcome it. He did so by bringing his children to the mountains and did this to promote natural science. Florence graduated with high grades from Madison High School at the age of 16. She earned a bachelor's degree in arts and letters in 1882, and a Bachelor of Science in 1884 from the University of Wisconsin. After persuasion from her father and a rejection from another school, Bascom obtained her first science degree, which turned her interest towards geology. In 1887 she obtained her Master of Science degree from the same university. During this time women had limited access to educational resources, such as the library and gymnasium, but also limited access to classrooms if men were already in them. Her professors at the University of Wisconsin, Roland Duer Irving and Charles R. Van Hise, were part of the USGS. Bascom received her Ph.D at Johns Hopkins University. While studying at Johns Hopkins she was forced to sit behind a screen so as not to disturb the men in the class, whose education was the priority. Since Geology at the time was purely a male discipline, Bascom faced many challenges getting her education and establishing herself in her field; this led to her becoming known as the "Pioneer of Women Geologists." She was the second woman to obtain a Ph.D. in Geology. She was the first female geologist to present a paper before the Geological Survey of Washington, in 1901. She was also the first woman elected to the Council of the Geological Society of America (in 1924; no other woman was elected for more than two decades). She was the first female officer of the Geological Society of America, and in 1930 became the second Vice-President. After receiving her B.A in 1884, she started her college teaching career at the Hampton School of Negroes and American Indians (currently known as Hampton University), working there for a year before going back to University of Wisconsin for her master's. While attending the University of Wisconsin Florence Bascom was a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter. Bascom was one of the first members to join an all women's fraternities between 1867 and 1902. Florence Bascom contributed to a special type of identification for acidic volcanoes. Her journal, The Structures, Origin, and Nomenclature of Acidic Volcanic Rocks of South Mountain, begins by identifying various rock structures formed by the volcano. Bascom argues that South Mountain's rock formations have changed over time, with some rocks originally showing signs of being rhyolite, but now holocrystalline rock. These rocks defy the nomenclature used to identify rocks invented by German and English scientists, so she created prefixes to add to these pre-existing names, to identify acidic changes in rocks. The prefixes she came up with are meta, epi, and apo. Florence presented a second notable new conclusion regarding the cycles of erosion within Pennsylvania; earlier scientific thought was that the Piedmont province of Pennsylvania was made by two to three erosion cycles, while she had evidence there were at least nine cycles. Florence found this by compiling a stratigraphic record of Atlantic deposit in the province, listing the depth, unconformities, and different grain sizes (like sand, clay, or gravel). The cycles occurred over a large period of time, with six cycles occurring in the post-Cretaceous period and three occurring in the Cretaceous period. This conclusion gave scientists new ideas about erosion cycles regarding their rate of occurrence and how to define a cycle. In 1896 Bascom worked as an assistant for the (USGS). Her role in the team was to study crystalline schists in a square degree of area along eastern Pennsylvania and Maryland, as well as a portion of northwest Delaware. For part of her life as a teacher, she simultaneously worked in the geological survey. Her work lead to a multitude of comprehensive reports of geologic folios. She also held a career as a teacher. She taught mathematics and science at Rockford College from 1887 to 1889, and later at Ohio State University from 1893 to 1895. She left Ohio State University to work at Bryn Mawr College where she could conduct original research and teach higher-level geology courses. Bascom even took a leave from her teachings in 1907 due to her interest to study petrography and mineralogy. She spent a year learning and researching advanced crystallography in the laboratory of Victor Goldschmidt and Heidelberg before going back to teaching as she did not want to spend time doing “overspecialistic research,” that she would not be able to teach to her students in the courses offered. At Bryn Mawr College, geology was considered adjunct in comparison to other natural sciences. Her workspace consisted of storage space in a building constructed solely for chemistry and biology. Over two years she managed to develop a substantial collection of minerals, fossils, and rocks. Bascom founded Bryn Mawr's department of Geology in 1901. She proceeded to teach and train a generation of young women in this department. In 1937, 8 out of 11 of the women who were Fellows of the Geological Society of America were graduates of Bascom's course at Bryn Mawr College. In the first third of the 20th century, Bascom's graduate program was considered to be one of the most rigorous in the country, with a strong focus on both lab and fieldwork. It was known for training the most American female geologists. Her students did not just graduate, they often succeeded in important geology careers for themselves. Bascom took a leave from her teachings in 1907 due to her interest to study petrography and mineralogy. Many got positions in government as University teachers, as well as federal and in-state surveyors. Additionally during WW2 some of her students were involved in confidential work for the Military Geology Unit in the U.S. Geological Survey. She was known to set high standards for her students as well as herself. Though she was extremely tough on her students, they were grateful for the quality of education that she gave to them. Bascom retired from teaching in 1928 but continued to work at the United States Geological Survey until 1936. Source:

Regina FLESZAROWARegina Fleszarowa was a Polish geographer and geologist, who participated in women's rights and served as a Senator in the Second Polish Republic between 1935 and 1938. Studying at the Sorbonne, in 1913, she received the first PhD in natural sciences awarded to a Polish woman. Considered a pioneer in establishing earth sciences in Poland, she published over 100 works concerning the geography and geology of the country. Her 5 volume bibliography on the history of earth sciences in Poland is considered her greatest achievement. She was awarded the 1st Class Banner of the Order of Labor in 1960. Regina Zofia Danysz was born on 28 March 1888 in Wisniewo in the Siedlce Governorate of Russian Poland to Piotr Danysz. Her parents owned a small estate in Brusow, where she was raised and completed her elementary education. She went on to study in Warsaw and Kiev, before moving to Zurich in 1906. Focusing her education on geography, Danysz moved to Paris in 1907, to attend lectures on geography and geology, participating in research trips during the semester breaks to the Tatra Mountains and Kujawy, which were led by Ludomir Sawicki. In 1910, she received her licencieée in science from the University of Paris in 1910, continuing on with doctoral studies. Studying with Eugeniusz Romer and Charles Vélain, she prepared a thesis, Etude critique d'une carte ancienne de Pologne dresée par Stanislas Staszic (1806) (Critical study of an old map of Poland created by Stanislas Staszic) which analyzed his topographical work in the Carpathian Mountains. Early in 1913, she received the first PhD of natural sciences awarded to a Polish woman. Beginning in 1912, Danysz lectured on topology and was active in the Rifle Association, as well as the women's legionnaires. She began her career in 1913 working with Romer, who was at the University of Lviv, compiling information on atmospheric precipitation over various locations throughout Poland. While working with Romer, she met a fellow geologist, Albin Fleszar, whom she would later marry. Danysz and Romer published their findings in Warsaw in 1913. Moving to Zakopane around 1915, she became active in the press for women's rights and served as chair of the Council of Polish Women, attending the European conventions of the International Council of Women in Brussels, Dubrovnik and Edinburgh. She and Felszar married and had a son, Mieczyslaw Albin. The couple worked together on geological surveys in the Carpathian Mountains. After her husband's death in 1916, Fleszarowa and her son moved to Warsaw, where she worked for a short time at the Ministry of Public Enlightenment. In 1918, she helped found the Polish Geographical Society (Polish: Polskie Towarzystwo Geograficzne, PTG). In 1919, Fleszarowa became the librarian for the National Geological Institute in Warsaw and acquired a collection of over 30,000 volumes during her tenure, which lasted until World War II. She simultaneously continued her research, publishing articles such as Stanislaw Staszic jako przyrodnik (Stanislaw Staszic as a naturalist, 1926) and Spis jaskin krajowych (List of National Caves, 1933) in scientific journals. Between 1920 and 1939, Fleszarowa published 18 texts for the Geological Bibliography of Poland. She also worked as an editor for Ziemia, the journal of the Geographical Society starting in 1929. Over her lifetime, Fleszarowa published over 100 articles on the scientific history and geography of Poland, including compiling studies of Russian scientists on Polish territories, gathering information through questionnaires about the geological work done during the Occupation, as well as publishing a biographical dictionary of Polish geologists. Fleszarowa was appointed in 1935 to serve as a Senator by the President of the Polish Republic. During her tenure, she focused on formal organization of scientific pursuits and expanding the rights of citizens. In 1937 was one of the organizers of the Democratic Club of Warsaw, serving as its vice-president and Democratic Alliance Party. Her Senate term ended in 1938 and during the Occupation of Poland, she joined the underground movement, participating in the Home Army. Working in developing information and propaganda for the Home Army, she distributed maps and published literature, setting up an editorial office for underground writings. She worked to hide Jews, and led secret meeting of librarians, leading the effort to hide the archive of the Association of Polish Librarians. Fleeing the city before the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, Fleszarowa went to Lublin and worked as a contact to the Polish Committee of National Liberation. In October 1944, she was appointed head of the Library Department of the Ministry of Education. In 1945, she served as co-founder in reorganizing the Women's League and was appointed to serve in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic Party government. Participating in peace conferences held in Moscow, Paris, Potsdam and Prague, she was one of the cartographers who delineated the western Polish border. From 1945 to 1948, she served on the City Council of Warsaw. In 1951 she began working at the Museum of Earth for the Polish Academy of Sciences. She prepared a bibliography on the history of earth sciences in Poland, covering a 200 year period, prior to her retirement in 1958. This work was her "greatest scientific achievement", covering material from the mid-eighteenth century through the mid-twentieth century in 5 volumes. The first volumes, published in 1957 covered the twentieth century and the last volume, published in 1966 covered the material through the end of the 19th century, summarizing documents found in the records published by the Polish Geological Institute. Because she retired before the second volume was published, other editors worked to complete the publishing. After her retirement, Fleszarowa continued her work with the Women's League and attending meetings of the Polish Academy of Sciences, publishing works such as the Materialach i Studiach z Dziejow Nauki Polskiej (Materials and Studies of the History of Polish Science) and two extensive studies. One of them evaluated the 200 year old geological map of Poland by J.S. Guetard and the other discussed Warsaw as it was described in The Physiographic Diary between 1881 and 1921. In 1960, she was awarded the 1st Class Banner of the Order of Labor. Source:

Catherine JEREMIECatherine Jérémie was a midwife and botanist in New France. Catherine Jérémie was baptized in Champlain, Quebec on September 22, 1664 to Jeanne Pelletier and trader Noël Jérémie. She was the eldest of 11 siblings. Jérémie married Jacques Aubuchon in Champlain, Quebec, on January 28, 1681, and together they had one daughter. On November 3, 1688, Jérémie married Michel LePailleur in Batiscan, Quebec. Jérémie and LePailleur together had 10 or 11 children. In 1702 Jérémie settled in Montreal with husband Michel LePailleur where she pursued her studies and research in botany and midwifery. She was particularly interested in the medicinal practices of the Indigenous populations of Canada. She studied these medicinal plant uses and further discovered many remedies. She applied these findings to her knowledge of women's bodily experiences. Jérémie was one of the earliest botanists in Canada and the first female naturalist known to date. She was known in the French scientific world for providing the French naturalist scientists with detailed reports of the plants they collected and sent their collections to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris (see pictures above), encouraged by the French Académie des Sciences in order to collect Canada's flora and fauna. Colony intendant Gilles Hocquart noted her practices as significant in his reports to France and these collections are now preserved at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Overall, Jérémie made a large contribution to natural science in New France. Jérémie's knowledge of herbal plants increased her reputation and practice as a midwife, as she was able to apply these uses specifically to women's bodily experiences such as abortion, pregnancy and birth. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most midwives engaged in a private practice, were less costly than doctors, and stayed at their client's homes for longer periods of time while helping with household chores. Jérémie used the interventionist approach to healthcare, which contradicted the laissez-faire approach of many English scholars. She soon became known as a famed midwife and was referred to as "la magicienne de ma vie au Quebec" (the magician of my life in Quebec) by one of her clients. Source:

Andrea GHEZAndrea Mia Ghez is an American astronomer and professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA, known for studying the center of the Milky Way galaxy. In 2020, she became the fourth woman to be awarded the in Physics, sharing one half of the prize with Reinhard Genzel (the other half of the prize being awarded to Roger Penrose). The Nobel Prize was awarded to Ghez and Genzel for their discovery of a supermassive compact object, now generally recognized to be a black hole, in the Milky Way's galactic center. Ghez was raised in Chicago and attended the University of Chicago Lab School. The Apollo program's Moon landings inspired Ghez to want to become the first female astronaut and her mother supported her goal. Her most influential female role model was her high school chemistry teacher. She started out in college by majoring in mathematics but changed to physics. She received a BS in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987 and her Ph.D. under the direction of Gerry Neugebauer at the California Institute of Technology in 1992. Her current research involves using high spatial resolution imaging techniques, such as the adaptive optics system at the Keck telescopes, to study star-forming regions and the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way known as Sagittarius A*. She uses the kinematics of stars near the center of the Milky Way as a probe to investigate this region. The high resolution of the Keck telescopes gave a significant improvement over the first major study of galactic center kinematics by Reinhard Genzel's group. In 2004, Ghez was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and in 2019, she was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society. She has appeared in a long list of notable media presentations. The documentaries have been produced by organizations such as the BBC, Discovery Channel, and The History Channel, and in 2006 there was a presentation on the PBS television series Nova. She was identified as a Science Hero by The My Hero Project. In 2004, Discover magazine listed Ghez as one of the top 20 scientists in the United States who have shown a high degree of understanding in their respective fields. By imaging the Galactic Center at infrared wavelengths, Ghez and her colleagues have been able to peer through heavy dust that blocks visible light, and to produce images of the center of the Milky Way. Thanks to the 10 m aperture of the W.M. Keck Telescope and the use of adaptive optics to correct for the turbulence of the atmosphere, these images of the Galactic Center are at very high spatial resolution and have made it possible to follow the orbits of stars around the black hole, which is also known as Sagittarius A* or Sgr A*. The partial orbits of many stars orbiting the black hole at the Galactic Center have been observed. One of the stars, S2, has made a complete elliptical orbit since detailed observations began in 1995. Several decades more will be required to completely document the orbits of some of these stars; these measurements may provide a test of the theory of general relativity. In October 2012, a second star was identified by her team at UCLA, S0-102, orbiting the Galactic Center. Using Kepler's third law, Ghez's team has used the orbital motion to show that the mass of Sgr A* is 4.1±0.6 million solar masses. Because the Galactic Center (where Sgr A* is located) is one hundred times closer than M31 (where the next nearest known supermassive black hole M31* is located), it is now one of the best demonstrated cases for a supermassive black hole. In 2020, Ghez shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Roger Penrose and Reinhard Genzel, for their discoveries relating to black holes. Specifically, Ghez and Genzel were awarded one half of the prize for their discovery that a supermassive black hole, most likely, governs the orbits of stars at the center of the Milky Way. Source:

Emmanuelle CHARPENTIEREmmanuelle Charpentier is a French professor and researcher in microbiology, genetics and biochemistry. Since 2015, she has been a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, Germany. In 2018, she founded an independent research institute, the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens. In 2020, Emmanuelle Charpentier and in Chemistry "for the development of a method for genome editing". Born in 1968 in Juvisy-sur-Orge in France, Charpentier studied biochemistry, microbiology and genetics at the Pierre and Marie Curie University (today the Faculty of Science of Sorbonne University) in Paris. She was a graduate student at the Institut Pasteur from 1992 to 1995, and was awarded a research doctorate. Charpentier's PhD project investigated molecular mechanisms involved in antibiotic resistance. Charpentier worked as a university teaching assistant at Pierre and Marie Curie University from 1993 to 1995 and as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institut Pasteur from 1995 to 1996. She moved to the US and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Rockefeller University in New York from 1996 to 1997. During this time, Charpentier worked in the lab of microbiologist Elaine Tuomanen. Tuomanen's lab investigated how the pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae utilizes mobile genetic elements to alter its genome. Charpentier also helped demonstrate how S. pneumoniae develop vancomycin resistance. Charpentier worked as an assistant research scientist at the New York University Medical Center from 1997 to 1999. There she worked in the lab of Pamela Cowin, a skin-cell biologist interested in mammalian gene manipulation. Charpentier published a paper exploring the regulation of hair growth in mice.[9] She held the position of Research Associate at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and at the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine in New York from 1999 to 2002. After five years in the United States, Charpentier returned to Europe and became lab head and a guest professor at the Institute of Microbiology and Genetics, University of Vienna, from 2002 to 2004. In 2004, Charpentier published her discovery of an RNA molecule involved in the regulation of virulence-factor synthesis in Streptococcus pyogenes. From 2004 to 2006 she was lab head and an assistant professor at the Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology. In 2006 she became private docent (Microbiology) and received her habilitation at the Centre of Molecular Biology. From 2006 to 2009 she worked as lab head and Associate Professor at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories. Charpentier moved to Sweden and became lab head and associate professor at the Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS), at Umeå University. She held these positions from 2009 till 2014, and was promoted to lab head as Visiting Professor in 2014. She moved to Germany to act as department head and W3 Professor at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig and the Hannover Medical School from 2013 until 2015. In 2014 she became an Alexander von Humboldt Professor. In 2015 Charpentier accepted an offer from the German Max Planck Society to become a scientific member of the society and a director at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin. Since 2016, she has been a Honorary Professor at Humboldt University in Berlin, and since 2018, she is the Founding and Acting Director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens. Charpentier retained her position as Visiting Professor at Umeå University until the end of 2017, where a new donation from the Kempe Foundations and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation has given her the opportunity to offer more young researchers positions within research groups of the MIMS Laboratory. Charpentier is best known for her role in deciphering the molecular mechanisms of the bacterial CRISPR/Cas9 immune system and repurposing it into a tool for genome editing. In particular, she uncovered a novel mechanism for the maturation of a non-coding RNA which is pivotal in the function of CRISPR/Cas9. Specifically, Charpentier demonstrated that a small RNA called tracrRNA is essential for the maturation of crRNA. In 2011, Charpentier met at a research conference and they began a collaboration. Working with Jennifer Doudna's laboratory, Charpentier's laboratory showed that Cas9 could be used to make cuts in any DNA sequence desired. The method they developed involved the combination of Cas9 with easily created synthetic "guide RNA" molecules. Synthetic guide RNA is a chimera of crRNA and tracrRNA; therefore, this discovery demonstrated that the CRISPR-Cas9 technology could be used to edit the genome with relative ease. Researchers worldwide have employed this method successfully to edit the DNA sequences of plants, animals, and laboratory cell lines. In 2013, Charpentier co-founded CRISPR Therapeutics along with Shaun Foy and Rodger Novak. Source:

Jennifer DOUDNAJennifer Anne Doudna is an American biochemist known for her pioneering work in CRISPR gene editing, for which she was awarded the 2020 . She is a Li Ka Shing Chancellor Chair Professor in the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Doudna grew up in Hilo, Hawaii. She graduated from Pomona College in 1985 and earned a Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1989. She has been an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) since 1997, and since 2018 she holds the position of senior investigator at the Gladstone Institutes as well as that of professor at the University of California, San Francisco. Doudna has been a leading figure in what is referred to as the "CRISPR revolution" for her fundamental work and leadership in developing CRISPR-mediated genome editing. In 2012, Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier were the first to propose that CRISPR-Cas9 (enzymes from bacteria that control microbial immunity) could be used for programmable editing of genomes, which is now considered one of the most significant discoveries in the history of biology. Doudna has made fundamental contributions in biochemistry and genetics and received many prestigious awards and fellowships including the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the 2000 Alan T. Waterman Award for her research on the structure as determined by X-ray crystallography of a ribozyme, and the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology (with Charpentier). She has been a co-recipient of the Gruber Prize in Genetics (2015), the Canada Gairdner International Award (2016), and the Japan Prize (2017). In 2020, Doudna and were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for the development of a method for genome editing". Outside the scientific community, she has been named one of the Time 100 most influential people in 2015 (with Charpentier), and she was listed as a runner-up for Time Person of the Year in 2016 alongside other CRISPR researchers. Source:

Alice RECOQUEAlice Recoque was a French computer scientist, computer engineer and computer architecture specialist. She worked on the designs of mini-computers in the 1970s and led research focused on artificial intelligence. She was born in 1929 in Cherchell, Algeria. She finished École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles in 1954 with a title of graduate engineer. She started working at Société d'électronique et d'automatisme (SAE) in 1954. At SAE she worked on core memories of CAB1101. In 1956 Alice Recoque and Françoise Becquet started designing the mini-computer CAB500 - the first conversational desktop computer. The computer was released in 1960. The was a French low cost mini-computer, the purpose of which was to do complex, scientific calculations. After the merger of SAE and CAE, the Compagnie internationale pour l'informatique (CII) was born in 1966. She continued her work at CII when she worked on designing Mitra computers. The first design, Mitra 15, launched in 1972. Both the Mitra 15 and CAB500 were commercial successes in France. She led the Bull Group at CII. In 1985 the Bull Group focused on the research on highly parallel machines and artificial intelligence. During that period she helped develop the language KOOL (knowledge representation object-oriented language) with its implementation in LISP. She was a speaker at The European Association for microprocessing and microprogramming in August 1975. Honors: In 1979 she received the Ordre national du Mérite, Au grade de Chevalier. In 1985 she was promoted for the Officier de l'ordre national du Mérite. In 2016 she became an honor member of Société informatique de France. Sourec:

Geneviève THIROUX D'ARCONVILLEMarie Geneviève Charlotte Thiroux d'Arconville was a French novelist, translator and chemist who is known for her study on putrefaction. She discussed her study on putrefaction in her Essay on the History of Putrefaction in 1766. As a young child, she enjoyed sculpture and art however when she learned to write at age eight, writing books became a new interest. She told friends later in life that she hardly had an idea without a pen in her hand. At fourteen years old, Thiroux d'Arconville requested to be married to Louis Lazare Thiroux d'Arconville. The two were married on 28 February 1735. Together the couple had three sons. As a married woman, Thiroux d'Arconville enjoyed theater and opera, similar to many wealthy women. However, when she was 22, Thiroux d'Arconville suffered from a case of smallpox that left her badly scarred. After this experience she withdrew from society and spent her time studying and focusing on religion. Thiroux d'Arconville studied English and Italian at her home and attended science classes at Jardin des Plantes, the Kings's Garden in Paris and a center of medical education that was founded in 1626 by King Louis XIII. She also often gathered well-known scientists in her home. The Garden offered courses on physics, anatomy, botany and chemistry to both men and women. It is thought that Thiroux d'Arconville took both anatomy and chemistry classes. Similar to many aristocratic women of the time, Thiroux d'Arconville also collected rare plants and stones. While she enjoyed these activities, she wanted to learn more so she set up a laboratory in her home and stocked it with chemistry equipment. She also ordered books from Bibliothèque nationale de France, the national library of France. Initially Thiroux d'Arconville worked as a botanist, she sent specimens to Jardin des Plantes. Eventually she turned to chemistry and started working under the guidance of Pierre Macquer, a professor of chemistry and pharmacology at the Garden. Women had long been a part of the literary community in France; critics thought this indicative of the advanced French society. Scholars viewed the idea of the "woman writer" as a sign of modernity and women in society were aware of the large body of work written by female scholars; in this sense, Thiroux d'Arconville was not an anomaly. However, because of her disfiguration, she chose to withdraw from the social space of the French salons, and establish herself in the research laboratory instead. Thiroux d'Arconville stated translating various English works, on a variety of subjects, to French. Translating works was not uncommon for women during this time period; it was a way for women to engage in scholarship. Thiroux d'Arconville often added commentary to the works she translated; however she did not put her name on these texts. As a woman scholar during this time, she faced restrictions and gender-based expectations. In her work Sur les femmes, she wrote about women "Do they show science or wit? If their works are bad, they are jeered at; if they are good, they are taken from them, and they are left only with ridicule for letting themselves be called authors". It has been said that Thiroux d'Arconville suffered from insomnia and worked on multiple projects at a time to prevent herself from growing bored. The first text she published was Advice from a Father to his Daughter in 1756. Advice from a Father to his Daughter was a translation of a text on morality written by George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax. In the preface of the translation Thiroux d'Arconville discussed how unqualified governesses often raised daughters because mothers did not want to raise them. In 1759, she translated Peter Shaw's Chemical Lectures, at the encouragement of Macquer. Thiroux d'Arconville did not hesitate to fix any errors in Shaw's work and added information on the history of practical chemistry to the beginning of Shaw's text. In discussing the history of chemistry, she started with alchemy, which she claimed was not a true science. According to her, true chemistry began with men like Johann Joachim Becher, Herman Boerhaave, Georg Ernst Stahl, Nicolas Lemery and Étienne François Geoffroy, men helped nature reveal to humanity. Also in 1759, Thiroux d'Arconville translated Alexander Monro's Treatise on Osteology. In order to write her preface for Treatise on Osteology, Thiroux d'Arconville looked to Jean-Joseph Sue, a professor of anatomy in the royal schools of surgery and painting and a royal censor for books of surgery, for help. In the preface, recognizing the limits to her knowledge on the subject, she redirected readers to other text that provided more in depth information. She also reorganized Monro's text and added illustrations. It is thought that the images were created under the direction of Jean-Joseph Sue with added input by Thiroux d'Arconville while being financed by her. The skeletons seemed to have been modeled after her; they had a large, broad pelvis and narrow lower limbs, thought to have been caused by corsets Thiroux d'Arconville wore throughout her life. However part of the illustration was inaccurate; the proportion of the female skull to the body was smaller than the proportion of the male skull to the body, it should have been the other way around. Since, like her other works, she remained anonymous with this text, Sue was thought to be the lone author of the text. While working on these various texts, Thiroux d'Arconville also started studying putrefaction, or how plant and animal matter rot. She initially looked to the research of John Pringle, a military doctor who researched what makes wounds turn gangrenous. Thiroux d'Arconville thought that in order to understand putrefaction one needed to understand how matter is transformed. For ten years, she recorded the results of experiments involving rotting food under various conditions to see if putrefaction could be delayed. She found that protecting matter from air and exposing it to copper, camphor and cinchona could delay rotting. She published "Essay on the History of Putrefaction" in 1766. The book included details of over 300 experiments, painstakingly carried out. She again remained anonymous, with one reviewer writing that the author of the essay "must be a highly distinguished physician with a deep knowledge of both chemistry and medicine". In her essay she paid homage to Pringle while also emphasizing the differences between their findings; she disagreed with Pringle in that he thought chamomile could delay rotting but she found that it did not. In the essay, Thiroux d'Arconville remarked that her work might have enhanced Pringle's text and that she was very careful when she conducted her experiments. She also discussed her reasons for going into the field of putrefaction, saying it was because the field was not well explored and society would benefit from learning more about it. Thiroux d'Arconville's reasons for studying putrefaction were reflective of the ideologies of the eighteenth century. During this time, the benefits that society could gain from more knowledge about a certain subject were heavily emphasized. Women were responsible for gaining knowledge in order to pass that knowledge down and better educate the next generation. So Thiroux d'Arconville's desire to study putrefaction to better society would have been accepted during this time. Source:

Alice HAMILTONAlice Hamilton was an American physician, research scientist, and author who is best known as a leading expert in the field of occupational health and a pioneer in the field of industrial toxicology. Hamilton trained at the University of Michigan Medical School. She became a professor of pathology at the Woman's Medical School of Northwestern University in 1897. In 1919, she became the first woman appointed to the faculty of Harvard University. Her scientific research focused on the study of occupational illnesses and the dangerous effects of industrial metals and chemical compounds. In addition to her scientific work, Hamilton was a social-welfare reformer, humanitarian, peace activist, and a resident-volunteer at Hull House in Chicago from 1887 to 1919. She was the recipient of numerous honors and awards, most notably the Albert Lasker Public Service Award for her public-service contributions. Hamilton studied science with a high school teacher in Fort Wayne and anatomy at Fort Wayne College of Medicine for a year before enrolling at the University of Michigan Medical School in 1892. There she had the opportunity of studying with "a remarkable group of men" – John Jacob Abel (pharmacology), William Henry Howell (physiology), Frederick George Novy (bacteriology), Victor C. Vaughan (biochemistry) and George Dock (medicine). During her last year of study she served on Dr. Dock's staff, going on rounds, taking histories and doing clinical laboratory work. Hamilton earned a medical degree from the university in 1893. In 1893–94, after graduation from medical school, Hamilton completed internships at the Northwestern Hospital for Women and Children in Minneapolis and at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Roxbury, a suburban neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, to gain some clinical experience. Hamilton had already decided that she was not interested in establishing a medical practice and returned to the University of Michigan in February 1895 to study bacteriology as a resident graduate and lab assistant of Frederick George Novy. She also began to develop an interest in public health. In the fall of 1895, Alice and her older sister, Edith, traveled to Germany. Alice planned to study bacteriology and pathology at the advice of her professors at Michigan, while Edith intended to study the classics and attend lectures. The Hamilton sisters faced some opposition to their efforts to study abroad. Although Alice was welcomed in Frankfurt, her requests to study in Berlin were rejected and she experienced some prejudice against women when the two sisters studied at universities in Munich and Leipzig. When Alice returned to the United States in September 1896, she continued postgraduate studies for a year at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School. There she worked with Simon Flexner on pathological anatomy. She also had the opportunity to learn from William H. Welch and William Osler. In 1897 Hamilton accepted an offer to become a professor of pathology at the Woman's Medical School of Northwestern University. Soon after her move to Chicago, Illinois, Hamilton fulfilled a longtime ambition to become a member and resident of Hull House, the settlement house founded by social reformer Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. While Hamilton taught and did research at the medical school during the day, she maintained an active life at Hull House, her full-time residence from 1897 to 1919. Hamilton became Jane Addams' personal physician and volunteered her time at Hull House to teach English and art. She also directed the men's fencing and athletic clubs, operated a well-baby clinic, and visited the sick in their homes. Other inhabitants of Hull House included Alice's sister Norah, and her friends Rachelle and Victor Yarros. Although Hamilton moved away from Chicago in 1919 when she accepted a position as an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, she returned to Hull House and stayed for several months each spring until Jane Addams's death in 1935. Through her association and work at Hull House and living side by side with the poor residents of the community, Hamilton witnessed the effects that the dangerous trades had on workers' health through exposure to carbon monoxide and lead poisoning. As a result, she became increasingly interested in the problems the workers faced, especially occupational injuries and illnesses. The experience also caused Hamilton to begin considering how to merge her interests in medical science and social reform to improve the health of American workers. When the Woman's Medical School closed in 1902, Hamilton took a position as bacteriologist with the Memorial Institute for Infectious Diseases, working with Ludvig Hektoen. During this time, she also formed a friendship with bacteriologist Ruth Tunnicliffe. Hamilton investigated a typhoid epidemic in Chicago before focusing her research on the investigation of industrial diseases. Some of Hamilton's early research in this area included attempts to identify causes of typhoid and tuberculosis in the community surrounding Hull House. Her work on typhoid in 1902 led to the replacement of the chief sanitary inspector of the area by the Chicago Board of Health. The study of industrial medicine (work-related illnesses) had become increasingly important because the Industrial Revolution of the late nineteenth century had led to new dangers in the workplace. In 1907 Hamilton began exploring existing literature from abroad and noticed that industrial medicine was not being studied as much in America. She set out to change the situation and published her first article on the topic in 1908. Hamilton began her long career in public health and workplace safety in 1910, when Illinois governor Charles S. Deneen appointed her as a medical investigator to the newly formed Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases. Hamilton led the commission's investigations, which focused on industrial poisons such as lead and other toxins. She also authored the "Illinois Survey," the commission's report that documented its findings of industrial processes that exposed workers to lead poisoning and other illnesses. The commission's efforts resulted in the passage of the first workers' compensation laws in Illinois in 1911, in Indiana in 1915, and occupational disease laws in other states. The new laws required employers to take safety precautions to protect workers. By 1916 Hamilton had become America's leading authority on lead poisoning. For the next decade she investigated a range of issues for a variety of state and federal health committees. Hamilton focused her explorations on occupational toxic disorders, examining the effects of substances such as aniline dyes, carbon monoxide, mercury, tetraethyl lead, radium, benzene, carbon disulfide and hydrogen sulfide gases. In 1925, at a Public Health Service conference on the use of lead in gasoline, she testified against the use of lead and warned of the danger it posed to people and the environment. Nevertheless, leaded gasoline was allowed. The EPA in 1988 estimated that over the previous 60 years that 68 million children suffered high toxic exposure to lead from leaded fuels. Her work on the manufacture of white lead and lead oxide, as a special investigator for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, is considered a "landmark study". Relying primarily on "shoe leather epidemiology" (her process of making personal visits to factories, conducting interviews with workers, and compiling details of diagnosed poisoning cases) and the emerging laboratory science of toxicology, Hamilton pioneered occupational epidemiology and industrial hygiene. She also created the specialized field of industrial medicine in the United States. Her findings were scientifically persuasive and influenced sweeping health reforms that changed laws and general practice to improve the health of workers. During World War I, the US Army tasked her with solving a mysterious ailment striking workers at a munitions plant in New Jersey. She led a team that included George Minot, a professor at Harvard Medical School. She deduced that the workers were being sickened through contact with the explosive trinitrotoluene (TNT). She recommended that workers wear protective clothing to be removed and washed at the end of each shift, solving the problem. Hamilton's best-known research included her studies on carbon monoxide poisoning among American steelworkers, mercury poisoning of hatters, and "a debilitating hand condition developed by workers using jackhammers." At the request of the U.S. Department of Labor, she also investigated industries involved in developing high explosives, "spastic anemia known as 'dead fingers'" among Bedford, Indiana, limestone cutters, and the "unusually high incidence of pulmonary tuberculosis" among tombstone carvers working in the granite mills of Quincy, Massachusetts, and Barre, Vermont. Hamilton was also a member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of the Mortality from Tuberculosis in Dusty Trades, whose efforts "laid the groundwork for further studies and eventual widespread reform in the industry." In January 1919, Hamilton accepted a position as assistant professor in a newly formed Department of Industrial Medicine (and after 1925 the School of Public Health) at Harvard Medical School, making her the first woman appointed to the Harvard University faculty in any field. Her appointment was hailed by the New York Tribune with the headline: "A Woman on Harvard Faculty—The Last Citadel Has Fallen—The Sex Has Come Into Its Own". Her own comment was "Yes, I am the first woman on the Harvard faculty—but not the first one who should have been appointed!" During her years at Harvard, from 1919 to her retirement in 1935, Hamilton never received a faculty promotion and held only a series of three-year appointments. At her request, the half-time appointments for which she taught one semester per year allowed her to continue her research and spend several months of each year at Hull House. Hamilton also faced discrimination as a woman. She was excluded from social activities, could not enter the Harvard Union, attend the Faculty Club, or receive a quota of football tickets. In addition, Hamilton was not allowed to march in the university's commencement ceremonies as the male faculty members did. Hamilton became a successful fundraiser for Harvard as she continued to write and conduct research on the dangerous trades. In addition to publishing "landmark reports for the U.S. Department of Labor" on research related to workers in Arizona copper mines and stonecutters at Indiana's limestone quarries, Hamilton also wrote Industrial Poisons in the United States (1925), the first American textbook on the subject, and another related textbook, Industrial Toxicology (1934). At tetraethyl lead conference in Washington, D.C. in 1925, Hamilton was a prominent critic of adding tetraethyl lead to gasoline. Hamilton also remained an activist in social reform efforts. Her specific interests in civil liberties, peace, birth control, and protective labor legislation for women caused some of her critics to consider her a "radical" and a "subversive." From 1924 to 1930, she served as the only woman member of the League of Nations Health Committee. She also visited the Soviet Union in 1924 and Nazi Germany in April 1933. Hamilton wrote "The Youth Who Are Hitler's Strength," which was published in The New York Times. The article described Nazi exploitation of youth in the years between the two world wars. She also criticized the Nazi education, especially its domestic training for girls. Source:

Bertha LUTZBertha Maria Júlia Lutz was a Brazilian zoologist, politician, and diplomat. Lutz became a leading figure in both the Pan American feminist movement and human rights movement. She was instrumental in gaining women's suffrage in Brazil and represented her country at the United Nations Conference on International Organization, signing her name to the United Nations Charter. In addition to her political work, she was a naturalist at the National Museum of Brazil, specializing in poison dart frogs. She has three frog species and two lizard species named after her. Bertha Lutz was born in São Paulo. Her father, Adolfo Lutz (1855–1940), was a pioneering physician and epidemiologist of Swiss origin, and her mother, Amy Marie Gertrude Fowler, was a British nurse. Bertha Lutz studied natural sciences, biology and zoology at the University of Paris - Sorbonne, graduating in 1918. Soon after obtaining her degree, she returned to Brazil. After returning to Brazil in 1918, Lutz dedicated herself to the study of amphibians, especially poison dart frogs and frogs of the family Hylidae. In 1919, she was hired by the Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro. She later became a naturalist at the Section of Botany. Throughout her lifetime, Lutz would publish numerous scientific studies and publications, most notably “Observations on the life history of the Brazilian Frog” (1943), “A notable frog chorus in Brazil” (1946), and “New frogs from Itatiaia mountain” (1952). In 1958, she described what is now known as Lutz's rapids frog (Paratelmatobius lutzii Lutz and Carvalho, 1958), which is named in honor of her father. Lutz is honored in the names of two species of Brazilian lizards, Liolaemus lutzae and Phyllopezus lutzae, as well as three species of frogs, Dendropsophus berthalutzae, Megaelosia lutzae, and Scinax berthae. Bertha Lutz's collections held at the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro were destroyed in the fire that devastated most of the Museum's collections in September 2018. Selected works : - “Observations on the life history of the Brazilian Frog” (1943) - “A notable frog chorus in Brazil” (1946) - “New frogs from Itatiaia mountain” (1952) Source:

Gladys WESTGladys Mae West is an American mathematician known for her contributions to the mathematical modeling of the shape of the Earth, and her work on the development of the satellite geodesy models that were eventually incorporated into the (GPS). West was inducted into the United States Air Force Hall of Fame in 2018. West was born as Gladys Mae Brown in Sutherland, Virginia, in Dinwiddie County, a rural county south of Richmond. Her family was an African-American farming family in a community of sharecroppers, and she spent much of her childhood working on her family's small farm. Her mother worked at a tobacco factory, and her father was a farmer who also worked for the railroad. West's parents were both huge inspirations for her and led her to the strong and driven woman that West is seen to be in history today. West realized early on that she did not want to work in the tobacco fields or factories like the rest of her family, and decided that education would be her way out. When West was on her way to graduate high school, the only obstacle keeping her from higher education was a financial one. Her parents tried their best to save but supporting an entire family on a sharecropper's wage didn't leave much left for West's education. West began babysitting to help save but ultimately, her superior academic performance made the difference. At West's high school, the top two students of each graduating class received full-ride scholarships to Virginia State College (now formally University), a historically black public university. West, with her determination and discipline, graduated valedictorian in 1948 and received the much needed scholarship. She was initially unsure what college major to pursue at VSU, as she had excelled in all her subjects in high school. She was encouraged to major in science or math because of their difficulty, and West ultimately chose to study mathematics, a subject mostly studied at her college by men. She also became a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. West graduated in 1952 with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics. After graduating, she taught math and science for two years in Waverly, Virginia. West then returned to VSU to complete her Master of Mathematics degree, graduating in 1955. Afterward, she briefly took another teaching position in Martinsville, Virginia. In 1956, West was hired to work at the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia, (now called the Naval Surface Warfare Center), where she was the second black woman ever hired and one of only four black employees. West was a programmer in the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division for large-scale computers and a project manager for data-processing systems used in the analysis of satellite data. Concurrently, West earned a second master's degree in public administration from the University of Oklahoma. In the early 1960s, she participated in an award-winning astronomical study that proved the regularity of Pluto’s motion relative to Neptune. Subsequently, West began to analyze data from satellites, putting together altimeter models of the Earth's shape. She became project manager for the Seasat radar altimetry project, the first satellite that could remotely sense oceans. West consistently put in extra hours, cutting her team's processing time in half. She was recommended for a commendation in 1979. Gladys West and Sam Smith look over data from the Global Positioning System at Dahlgren in 1985 From the mid-1970s through the 1980s, West programmed an IBM 7030 Stretch computer to deliver increasingly precise calculations to model the shape of the Earth – an ellipsoid with irregularities, known as the geoid. Generating an extremely accurate model required her to employ complex algorithms to account for variations in gravitational, tidal, and other forces that distort Earth's shape. West's team once discovered an error during the study and out of all of the brilliant minds, she was the only one that was able to solve it. West's data ultimately became the basis for the Global Positioning System (GPS). In 1986, West published Data Processing System Specifications for the Geosat Satellite Radar Altimeter, a 51-page technical report from The Naval Surface Weapons Center (NSWC). The guide was published to explain how to increase the accuracy of the estimation of geoid heights and vertical deflection, important components of satellite geodesy. This was achieved by processing the data created from the radio altimeter on the Geosat satellite, which went into orbit on March 12, 1984. West worked at Dahlgren for 42 years, retiring in 1998. After retiring, she completed a PhD in Public Administration from Virginia Tech. West's vital contributions to GPS technology were rediscovered when a member of West's sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha read a short biography Gladys had submitted for an alumni function. West was inducted into the United States Air Force Hall of Fame in 2018, one of the highest honors bestowed by Air Force Space Command (AFSPC). The AFSPC press release at the time called her one of "the so-called 'Hidden Figures' part of the team who did computing for the US military in the era before electronic systems" – a reference to the 2016 book by Margot Lee Shetterly, which was adapted into the film Hidden Figures. Capt. Godfrey Weekes, commanding officer at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division in 2018, described the role played by West in the development of Global Positioning System: "She rose through the ranks, worked on the satellite geodesy, and contributed to the accuracy of GPS and the measurement of satellite data. As Gladys West started her career as a mathematician at Dahlgren in 1956, she likely had no idea that her work would impact the world for decades to come." West agreed, saying that she had no idea at the time that her work would affect so many: “When you’re working every day, you’re not thinking, 'What impact is this going to have on the world?' You're thinking, 'I've got to get this right.'" West was selected by the BBC as part of their 100 Women of 2018. As an alumna of Virginia State University Dr. Gladys West was nominated and won the award for "Female Alumna of the Year" at the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Awards sponsored by HBCU Digest in 2018. Source:

Dorothy Hansine ANDERSONDorothy Hansine Andersen was an American pathologist and pediatrician who was the first person to identify cystic fibrosis and the first American physician to describe the disease. In 2001 she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Dorothy Hansine Andersen was born in Asheville, North Carolina on May 15, 1901. In 1914 her father, Hans Peter Andersen, died and she took the full responsibility for caring for her invalid mother. Andersen's mother died in 1920 and after they had moved to St. Johnsbury, Vermont. In 1922 Andersen graduated with a Bachelors of Arts in zoology and chemistry from Mount Holyoke College. Later, she went on to attend Johns Hopkins School of Medicine which is where she first began to perform research under Florence Rena Sabin. Andersen's first two research papers were on the lymphatic and blood vessels in the reproductive organs of female pigs. Both of these papers were published in Contributions to Embryology. Once she graduated from Johns Hopkins, Andersen served as a teaching assistant in anatomy at the Rochester School of Medicine. A year later she became an intern for surgery at the Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York. After completing her internship year, Andersen was denied a residency in general surgery at the hospital because she was a woman. This drove Andersen to focus on her research instead and in 1929, she began working at Columbia University's College of Physician and Surgeons as an assistant in pathology. Later, she was asked to join the faculty as an instructor at Columbia Medical School. In order to further her research career, Andersen began to work on her doctorate degree in medical science by studying endocrinology at Columbia University. Specifically, she studied the influences of the endocrine glands on the onset and rate of sexual maturation in rats. By 1935, she received her doctorate from Columbia University and worked as a pathologist at Babies Hospital at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. This is where Andersen remained for the rest of her medical career. In 1945, Andersen was given the title of an assistant pediatrician at Babies Hospital. Because of her knowledge of anatomy, she was called to become a consultant to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology during World War II. In 1952, she became the chief of pathology at Babies Hospital. Later that year, Dorothy Hansine Andersen was awarded the Elizabeth Blackwell Award. During her research career, Dorothy Hansine Andersen studied many children who had digestive or breathing problems and also performed autopsies on those who died from these problems. While performing autopsies she noticed many of the patients who had died from celiac disease had fluid-filled cysts that were surrounded by scars on the pancreas. She also found similar scars and tissue damage in the lungs and came to the conclusion that the lung and pancreas damage came from the same disease which she called "cystic fibrosis of the pancreas." The name cystic describes to the cysts found the fibrosis describes the scar tissue in the lungs and pancreas. This was published in the American Journal of Diseases of Children in 1938. She was awarded the E. Mead Johnson Award for her recognition on this disease. In 1942, Andersen developed the first efficient diagnostic test for cystic fibrosis with Paul di Sant'Agnese (who also worked at Columbia University) at Babies Hospital. In 1948, The American Academy of Pediatrics awarded Andersen the Borden Bronze Plaque for her successful research in nutrition, "Determining the effectiveness of different antibiotics in relieving the respiratory-tract infections that were the main cause of death from cystic fibrosis." By 1958, Anderson was a full-time professor at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. During this time in her career, Andersen wrote in the Journal of Chronic Diseases that her research findings corresponded to cystic fibrosis is a recessively inherited disease that was once thought to be fatal in early infancy, however, now many patients were surviving until early adulthood. Andersen published her final paper in 1959 on the reoccurrence of cystic fibrosis in young adults. It was not until the early 1980s, where researchers could determine the actual cause of cystic fibrosis, being - a single mutation causing incomplete synthesis of a transmembrane protein, resulting in thick, clogging secretions mainly in the pancreas and respiratory tract. In addition to her research on cystic fibrosis, Dorothy Hansine Andersen also initially investigated and described a rare glycogen storage disease, glycogen storage disease type IV (GSD IV) also known as Andersen's disease. It is caused by a lack of activity in glycogen-branching enzyme resulting in accumulation of glycogen in the liver. This disease is inherited in an autosomal recessive manner and the first symptoms beginning appearing during a child's first few months of life. This disease is usually fatal within the first few years of life. Towards the end of her career, Andersen had developed lung cancer from smoking and underwent surgery in 1962. Dorothy Hansine Andersen died at the age of sixty-one on March 3, 1963, in New York, New York. After her death in 1963, she was honored with the Distinguished Service Medal at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. In remembrance to her work on cystic fibrosis, Dorothy Hansine Andersen was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2002. Source: