Top Scientist of Education

							    HOME > SOCIAL SCIENCES > SCIENCE EDUCATION & POLICY > I
    CAN GET SCIENCE




    Yesterday & Today: The Top Women
    Scientists
    By Jen Palmares Meadows | October 16th 2008 02:30 AM | 45 comments | Print | E-
    mail | Track Comments


                                      I Can Get Science

    MORE ARTICLES
          Thermo-Pimp Your Home: Save On Heating & Cooling Costs With
    Thermodynamics
          Dreamachines, Hallucinations, Charles Bonnet Syndrome & The 50 Year Old
    Question Hodological Science Answered
          Hallucinations & Brion Gysin's Dreamachine

    All Articles

    ABOUT JEN

    Jen Palmares Meadows has a Masters Degree in English from California State

    University, Sacramento.

    In her free time, Jen enjoys terrorizing

    ...

    View Jen's Profile




                                        Jen Palmares Meadows
                                               Search This Blog
It's no news that women were historically excluded from the
"boys club" of science but women scientists date as far back
as Ancient Greece, and perhaps further. In more recent
years, they have become essential to the scientific
community.

Several of the women listed here are sisters or wives of
scientific men. During their times, women were forced onto
the backburner but, given equal rights and freedoms, might
have overshadowed their masculine counterparts. Some
even disguised themselves as men and most, if not all, faced
tremendous adversity. They have been chosen for this list
because their contributions to science cannot be ignored, nor
forgotten.

Every burgeoning young scientist ought to know their names
and something of their achievements, as these women have
laid fine foundation for the advancements that came later.
So let's get started.

                       Hypatia of Alexandria (AD 350
                       and 370-415) Greek scholar from
                       Alexandria, Egypt, and considered
                       the first notable woman in
                       mathematics. Around 400 AD, she
                       became head of the Platonist school
                       of Alexandria. During her life, she
                       discouraged mysticism and
                       encouraged logical and mathematical
                       studies.
Eventually, she was killed by a Coptic Christian mob who
blamed her for religious turmoil. She has been hailed as a
"valiant defender of science against religion".

(Hypatia as imagined by painter Raphael)




Emilie Du Chatelet (1706-1749) French Physicist and
Mathematician who translated Newton's Principia, into
French, which was published after her death. Du Chatelet
disguised herself as a man in order to study science, and
was supported by her father to seek an education because
he thought she was too ugly to receive a marriage proposal,
although she did marry at 19 years of age.

She later became the mistress of Voltaire, who wrote a
"Preface historique" to Principia. In a letter to his friend King
Frederick II of Prussia, Voltaire declared that du Châtelet
was "a great man whose only fault was being a woman."
                         Caroline Herschel (1750-
                         1848) Famous astronomer, who
                         acted as an assistant to her brother,
                         William Herschel. She discovered
                         eight comets between 1786 and
                         1797, and submitted an Index to
                         Flamsteed's Observations of the Fixed
                         Stars (including over five hundred
                         omitted stars) to the Royal Society in
                         1798, becoming the first woman to
present a paper there.

In 1835, she and Mary Fairfax Somerville were the first two
women to be elected to the Royal Astronomical Society. In
1935 C. Herschel crater in the Sinus Iridium on the Moon
was named in her honor. In 1846 at the age of 96, she was
awarded the Gold Medal for Science by the King of Prussia.
                               Marie-Anne Pierrette
                               Paulze aka Madame
                               Lavoisier (1758-
                               1836) Considered "the
                               mother of modern
                               chemistry," she is most
                               commonly known as the wife
                               of Antoine Lavoisier, but
                               many do not know of her
                               own accomplishments in the
                               field of chemistry.

                               Marie-Anne accompanied
                               Lavoisier in his lab, making
                               entries into his lab
                               notebooks and sketching
diagrams of his experimental designs. She was able to
accurately draw experimental apparatuses, which helped
Lavoisier’s contemporaries understand his work.

A master in English, Latin, and French languages, she
translated various works into French for her husband to
read; he relied on her to keep abreast of current
developments in chemistry.

(Left: Portrait of M. and Mme Lavoisier, by Jacques-Louis
David, 1788, Metropolitan Museum)
                           Mary Somerville (1780-
                          1872) Scottish science writer and
                          polymath, at a time when
                          women's participation in science
                          was discouraged. She studied
                          mathematics and astronomy, and
                          was the second woman scientist
                          to receive recognition in the
                          United Kingdom after Caroline
                          Herschel.

                           She carried out experiments in
                           magnetism, presenting a paper
                           entitled 'The Magnetic Properties
of the Violet Rays of the Solar Spectrum' to the Royal
Society in 1826, only the second woman to do so. She also
authored several mathematical, astronomical, physical and
geographical texts, and was a strong advocate for women's
education. Somerville College, Oxford, was named after her.

"Nothing has afforded me so convincing a proof of the unity
of the Deity as these purely mental conceptions of numerical
and mathematical science which have been by slow degrees
vouchsafed to man, and are still granted in these latter
times by the Differential Calculus, now superseded by the
Higher Algebra, all of which must have existed in that
sublimely omniscient Mind from eternity."
                            Augusta Ada King, Countess
                           of Lovelace (1815-1852) Hailed
                           as the "First Programmer." Born
                           Augusta Ada Byron, King was the
                           only legitimate child of Lord
                           Byron. She is widely known for
                           writing a description of Charles
                           Babbage's early mechanical
                           general-purpose computer, the
                           analytical engine. She wrote
                           programs, manipulating symbols
                           according to rules, for the
                           machine that Babbage had not yet
built. While some, like Babbage, focused only on the
number-crunching capabilities of computers, King foresaw
their potential to do more.

The computer language Ada, created by the U.S. Defense
Department, was named after Lovelace.
                           Maria Mitchell (1818-1889) -
                           First professional woman
                           astronomer in US, and first
                           woman to gain membership in the
                           American Academy of Arts and
                           Sciences in 1848. Mitchell is noted
                           for her discovery that sunspots
                           are whirling vertical cavities and
                           not, as previously thought,
                           clouds.

                            Mitchell was also named Director
                            of Vassar College Observatory.
                            After teaching there for some
                            time, she learned that many
                            younger male professors had
larger salaries, despite her reputation and experience.
When she insisted on a salary increase, she got it.

“We especially need imagination in science. Question
everything.”

“Study as if you were going to live forever; live as if you
were going to die tomorrow.”

“Do not look at stars as bright spots only. Try to take in the
vastness of the universe.”
                                Marie Curie (1867-
                                1934) Chemist and
                                physicist, the only person to
                                receive Nobel Prizes in two
                                different sciences: Physics
                                (1903) and Chemistry
                                (1911). She was the first
                                woman professor at the
                                University of Paris and is
                                credited with the creation of
                                the theory of radioactivity
                                and the discovery of
                                polonium and radium.
                                Although Curie was a French
citizen, she named the first new chemical element that she
discovered "polonium" for her mother country, Poland.

Some of her achievements include techniques for isolating
radioactive isotopes. It was also under her personal direction
that the world's first studies were conducted into the
treatment of neoplasms ("cancers"), using radioactive
isotopes.

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.
Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear
less. "
"Scientific work must not be considered from the point of
view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself,
for the beauty of science, and then there is always the
chance that a scientific discovery may become like the
radium a benefit for humanity." - Lecture at Vassar College

                               Karen Horney (1885-
                               1952) German psychodynamic
                               psychologist (psychoanalyst) of
                               Norwegian and Dutch descent.
                               Her theories questioned some
                               traditional Freudian views,
                               particularly his theory of
                               sexuality, as well as the instinct
                               orientation of psychoanalysis
                               and its genetic psychology. As
                               such, she is often classified as
                               Neo-Freudian.

                             She also founded a journal,
                             named the American Journal of
Psychoanalysis. She taught at the New York Medical College
and continued practicing as a psychiatrist until her death in
1952.

"Like all sciences and all valuations, the psychology of
women has hitherto been considered only from the point of
view of men."

"Concern should drive us into action, not into a depression."
                                Grace Murray Hopper
                                (1906-1992) US
                                Mathematician and
                                Computer Technologist who
                                joined the navy during World
                                War II, where she became
                                the first female Rear
                                Admiral. She was one of the
                                first programmers of the
                                Harvard Mark I calculator,
                                and she developed the first
                                compiler for a computer
                                programming language.

She is sometimes referred to as "Amazing Grace". In 1996,
the US USS Hopper was launched and nicknamed Amazing
Grace, one of the few U.S. military vessels named after a
woman.

"Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, 'We've
always done it this way.' I try to fight that. That's why I
have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise."
                           Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909-
                           ) Born in Italy to a Sephardic
                           Jewish family who, together with
                           colleague Stanley Cohen, received
                           the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology
                           or Medicine for their discovery of
                           Nerve growth factor (NGF). She
                           went to work as Giuseppi Levi's
                           assistant, but her academic career
                           was cut short by Benito
                           Mussolini's 1938 Manifesto Della
                           Razza and the subsequent
introduction of laws barring Jews from academic and
professional careers.
During World War II, she conducted experiments from a
home laboratory, studying the growth of nerve fibers in
chicken embryos which laid the groundwork for much of her
later research. Her first genetics laboratory was in her
bedroom at her home.

In 1987, she received the National Medal of Science, the
highest honor in the scientific world of America. Today she is
the oldest living Nobel laureate. She is a senator for life in
the Italian Senate.
"I returned to Turin on the verge of the invasion of Belgium
by the German army, Spring 1940, to join my family. The
two alternatives left then to us were either to emigrate to
the United States, or to pursue some activity that needed
neither support nor connection with the outside Aryan world
where we lived. My family chose this second alternative. I
then decided to build a small research unit at home and
installed it in my bedroom."
"As for the presence of large NGF [nerve growth factor]
sources in snake venom and male genital organs, they may
be conceived as instances of bizarre evolutionary gene
expression."

                     Chien Shiung-Wu (1912-
                     1997) Chinese-born American
                     physicist who radically changed
                     scientific views on the behavior of
                     nuclear particles. She worked on the
                     Manhattan Project (to enrich the
                     uranium fuel). Her nicknames included
                     the “First Lady of Physics” and
                     “Madame Curie of China."

                      In 1956, she assisted Tsung-Dao Lee in
his parity laws development (with Chen Ning Yang) by
providing a test method for beta decay that worked
successfully. While some consider her contribution
instrumental in the creation of the laws, she did not share
their Nobel Prize, possibly due to sexism by the selection
committee.
"I sincerely doubt that any open-minded person really
believes in the faulty notion that women have no intellectual
capacity for science and technology. Nor do I believe that
social and economic factors are the actual obstacles that
prevent women's participation in the scientific and technical
field. The main stumbling blocking the way of any progress
is and always has been unimpeachable tradition."

- Speaking at a 1964 conference on women and science.



                       Rosalind Franklin: (1920-
                       1958) English biophysicist and X-ray
                       crystallographer who contributed to
                       understanding the compositions of
                       DNA and viruses. Her most
                       noteworthy work is that on the X-ray
                       diffraction images of DNA which were
                       an important influence on Crick and
                       Watson's 1953 hypothesis regarding
                       the structure of DNA.

Franklin was not eligible for nomination to the Nobel Prize
subsequently awarded to Crick and Watson in 1962 as she
died at the age of 37 of complications arising from cancer of
the ovary. However, there has been much dispute amongst
the scientific community as to her conribution to the 1953
award winning hypothesis; Crick and Watson's employed her
research without her knowledge or permission. In a
biography written by Brenda Maddox, Franklin is referred to
as "The Dark Lady of DNA."
"In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that
by doing our best we shall succeed in our aims: the
improvement of mankind."

“Science and everyday life cannot and should not be
separated.”

                                 Jane Goodall (1934-
                                 ) English UN Messenger of
                                 Peace and anthropologist.
                                 Goodall was instrumental in
                                 the field of primatology and is
                                 known for her discovery of
                                 tool-making among
                                 chimpanzees. Prior to her
                                 discovery, tool-making was
                                 considered a defining
                                 difference between humans
                                 and other animals.

                               Today, Goodall travels nearly
                               300 days a year to advocate
on behalf of chimpanzees and the environment. She is also a
board member for the world's largest chimpanzee sanctuary
outside of Africa, Save the Chimps in Fort Pierce, Florida.

"The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak
for themselves."

"The greatest danger to our lives is apathy."

"Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to
play. Every individual makes a difference."
                                Shirley Ann Jackson
                                (1946-) US physicist. She
                                received her Ph.D. in physics
                                from the Massachusetts
                                Institute of Technology (MIT)
                                in 1973, only the second
                                African-American woman to
                                earn a Ph.D. in physics in
                                the US. Jackson is a trustee
                                at MIT and a former chair of
                                the US Nuclear Regulatory
                                Commission.

                                 In 1998, she was inducted
                                 into National Women's Hall
of Fame for "her significant contributions as a distinguished
scientist and advocate for education, science, and public
policy". She was also was named one of the 50 Most
Important Women in Science by Discover magazine.

"Aim for the stars so that you can reach the treetops, and at
least you'll get off the ground." -Jackson quotes her father
as saying
                             Mae Carol Jemison (1956-
                             ) American physician and
                             NASA astronaut who was the
                             first African American woman
                             to travel in space when she
                             went into orbit aboard the
                             Space Shuttle Endeavor in
                             September 1992. She entered
                             Stanford University at 16
                             years of age.

                              "When I grew up in the 1960s
the only American astronauts were men. Looking out the
window of that space shuttle, I thought if that little girl
growing up in Chicago could see her older self now, she
would have a huge grin on her face."
Many female scientists, for the sake of brevity, have
been omitted from this list. You are welcome and
encouraged to post any female scientists in historical
or contemporary times that are missing.




                  Lilavati's Daughters: The Women Scie
       CONTENTS

       BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS

       Edavaleth Kakkat Janaki Ammal
       (by C V Subramanian)

       A heroic struggle of a scientist with a cancer
       B Vijayalakshmi (by T R Govindarajan)

       Asima Chatterjee
       (by S C Prakashi)

       Anandi Gopal
       Anandibai Joshi (by Pooja Thakar)

       Not so quiet has flown the Iravati
       Iravati Karve (by Jai Nimbkar)

       An appreciation of Anna Mani
       (by Abha Sur)

       Obsessed with excellence
       Kamal Ranadive (by Rajani Bhisey)
She was a star
Darshan Ranganathan (by S Ranganathan)

The scientist lady
Kamala Sohonie (by Vasumathi Dhuru)

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS

Return to the mainstream: the tortuous track
Radha Balakrishnan

Why I became a scientist
Bindu A Bambah

Full faith in myself
Meenakshi Banerjee

How I became a biophysicist
Manju Bansal

Science is fun every single day
Sudha Bhattacharya

Geomagnetism gave me my bearings
Archana Bhattacharyya

The enthusiasm of a novice
Rajani A Bhisey

The excitement of colours and scents
Renee M Borges

A woman scientist in a field dominated by men
Bimla Buti

Science - a joyous playing field
Anju Chadha

Negotiating choices
Charusita Chakravarty
Why and how I became a scientist
Maharani Chakravorty

Waiting for sparks
Prabha Chatterji

Lucky to be where I am
Rajeshwari Chatterjee
(by K Shashikala)

Believing in myself
Shubhada Chiplunkar

From basic science to agricultural scientist
Renu Khanna-Chopra

My experience with research
Joyanti Chutia

Building a career despite family pressures
Tanusri Saha-Dasgupta

A woman ecologist in India
Priya Davidar

The pursuit of science - my hobby and profession
Deepti Deobagkar

Does it really matter that one is a woman scientist?
Aruna Dhathathreyan

My tryst with the monsoon
Sulochana Gadgil

It's been an interesting journey
Rohini Godbole

A tale of two lives
Srubabati Goswami

Dream your own dream
Rama Govindarajan

Lilavati's Daughters: today's story
Neelima Gupte

In search of equality
R J Hans-Gill

Science and the art of detection
Gaiti Hasan

The amazing world of life science
P Mohanty Hejmadi

With no regrets
H Ilah (nee' Bhatnagar)

A journey of discovery
Chanda Jog

Encouraging students to ask right questions
Sangeeta N Kale

My journey in science
V Kalpagam

Combating indoor air pollution
Priyadarshini Karve

A mathematician in every life...
S K Khanduja

The accidental astronomer
Pushpa Khare

Walking through clouds and rains
Medha Khole

Curiosity, ambition and foolhardiness
Vinod Krishan
Creating something out of nothing
Yamuna Krishnan

Woman! work like an ant, act like a man but remain a woman!
Sulabha K Kulkarni

No choice but to learn
Anuradha Lohia

A born dreamer
Chitra Mandal

Hard work and perseverance lead to success
Kusum Marathe

An unusual route to science
Minnie M Mathan

The will to excel
Asha Mathur

A blessing in disguise
Anuradha Misra

How I became what I am
Sushmita Mitra

Road to research
Anjali Mookerjee

Successfully combating prejudice
Sipra Guha-Mukherjee

The unfathomable beauty of mathematics
Indira Narayanaswamy

Guess what I am doing now!
Shobhana Narasimhan

A career in mathematics
Mangala Narlikar
Off the beaten track
Chanda Nimbkar

An oceanographer's life
Aditi Pant

The long way home...
Sulabha Pathak

The immense beauty of mathematics
R Parimala

Way to science
Qamar Rahman

Be not sad a rose bush has thorns; be glad a thorn bush has roses
Hema Ramachandran

Looking forward to new challenges
Sheela K Ramasesha

But for vagaries of Governmental regulations
Mythily Ramaswamy

Building a new discipline
Jayashree Ramadas

An austere beauty
Sujatha Ramdorai

Overcoming fear and forging ahead
Sumathi Rao

Follow your heart
Renuka Ravindran

Good mentors and role models
Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath

My career in medical research
S Sandhyamani

A complete woman
Chitra Sarkar

Dharmo rakshati rakshitaha
G V Satyavati

A dream come true
H S Savithri

New challenges ahead
Riddhi Shah

Looking for the unknown in the known
Chandrima Saha

From the abstract to the concrete
Priti Shankar

My interest in promoting more women in science
Manju Sharma

A matter of chance, environment and inclination
Shobhona Sharma

Meandering into astrophysics
Prajval Shastri

At the interface
Somdatta Sinha

Empathy, not sympathy
Sudeshna Sinha

Like mother, like daughter
Purnima Sinha and Supurna Sinha

Exploring nature's secrets
Satyavati M Sirsat
Researching malaria in the developing world
Sarala K Subbarao

Science and music: a harmonious jugalbandi!
S Annapurni

A freedom to question...
Sumati Surya

Journey to success
Qudsia Tahseen

A journey in the path of science
B K Thelma

Joining the family business
Vidita Vaidya

Being a scientist and a mother
Shikha Varma

My journey into understanding how cells and organisms are made
Usha Vijayaraghavan

The making of a woman scientist: a personal experience
Saraswathi Vishveshwara

Answers lead to more questions
Shashi Wadhwa