02/11/2024
Happy International Day of Women and Girls in Science! In honor of that here are 10 women I found to be incredibly influential. They each accomplished amazing things. They helped pave the way for women in the science world. If you have a women you see as a path maker drop their names below!
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Katherine Johnson was a Black
mathematician and one of the first African American woman to work as a NASA scientist. As a mathematician, she calculated and analyzed the flight paths of NASA spacecraft. She is best known for making the calculations that allowed the first Americans to enter Earth's orbit and set foot on the moon. The 2016 movie "Hidden Figures" chronicles Johnson's life and work at NASA
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Marie Curie was a physicist and chemist who conducted critical research on radioactivity. She discovered two new chemical elements: radium and polonium
Curie led the first research project on the impact of radiation treatment on tumors. She also headed the Curie Institute which is a leading medical research center in Paris on cancer research and radiation therapy. She was the first person and the only woman to win a Nobel Prize twice.
Curie is also the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two scientific fields: physics and chemistry.
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Valentina Tereshkova is an engineer, a
member of the Russian State Duma, and a former Soviet cosmonaut. On June 13, 1963, she became the first woman to travel into space. She orbited the Earth 48 times in just three days. Tereshkova remains the only woman to have been on a solo space mission
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Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was the first female doctor in England and overcame significant barriers to achieve professional success at a time when
women were not allowed to practice
medicine. She opened up a school of medicine for women and appointed primarily women to leadership positions on staff. She eventually became the first women dean of a medical school and the first female mayor in England
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Chien-Shiung_Wu was a leading figure and pioneer in the field of physics. Wu was the first women faculty member hired in the physics department at Princeton University, She later took a job at Columbia University and joined the Matthan Project, which resulted in the creation of nuclear weapons. She is best known for conducting the Wu experiment, which proved that identical particles do not always behave in the same manner.
She was awarded the inaugural Wolf Prize in Physics in 1978 and was nicknamed the "First Lady of Physics.
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Rosalind Franklin was a British chemist. She is best known for discovering the molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal, and graphite. Using a technique called X-ray crystallography, she revealed the helical shape of DNA. While Rosalind made a critical impact on science, her work and contributions to the field are still rarely acknowledged.
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Mae Jemison is a doctor, engineer, and former NASA astronaut. In 1992,she became the first Black woman to travel into space. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame and the International Space Hall of Fame. Currently, she leads the 100 Year Starship Project through the U.S.Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency. This project is dedicated to ensuring that human travel to another star is possible in the next 100 years.
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Austrian and American film actress
Hedwig Keisler, or Hedy Lamarr, was
known in her heyday as "the most
beautiful woman in the world", but
she was also the inventor of the
precursor to the type of wireless
communications used today in
mobile phones, GPS and wi-fi.
Working with composer George
Antheil, Lamarr developed a radio
guidance system for torpedoes that
used "frequency hopping" to stop
transmissions being jammed or
intercepted. The pair patented a frequency-hopping device that worked like the roll from a self-playing piano, and donated their invention to the US Navy.
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May Edward Chinn was a trailblazer
for women and minorities in
medicine and is best known for
providing treatment for black
patients. During this time, no
hospital would treat people of
color. She campaigned for cancer
screening among women of
color throughout her career as
a physician.
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Mae C. Jemison is a retired NASA astronaut. She is best known as
the first black female scientist to go to space. Jemison was selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate and became the first African-American woman to go into space when she orbited planet Earth in September 1992. After the STS-47 mission, Dr. Jemison left NASA. She
published her first book in 2001.
