Emmy Noether
Anna Mani
Inge Lehmann
Hypatia
Mary Anning
Louise Bourgeois
Grace Hopper
Marie Tharp
Nettie Stevens
Maria Sibylla Merian
Lovelace
Margaret Hamilton
Chien-Shiung Wu
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Trota of Salerno
Valentina Tereshkova
Roxie Collie Laybourne
Rosalind Franklin
Emmy Noether
23 March 1882 – 14 April 1935) German mathematician. She encountered numer- ous obstacles to teach due to the fact that she was a women. She is one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century. Achievements: She made landmark con- tributions to abstract algebra and theo- retical physics. She showed an acute propensity for abstract thought, which allowed her to approach problems of mathematics in fresh and original ways.
Anna Mani
(23 August 1918 – 16 August 2001) Indian physicist and meteorologist, she joined the Indian meteorological department in Pune shortly after the independence. Achievements: She directs the research for the development of meteorological measurement instruments, in particular the ozone measurement probe. She con- ducted research and published numer- ous papers on solar radiation, ozone and wind energy measurements
Inge Lehmann
(13 May 1888 – 21 February 1993) Danish seismologist and physicist. She stud- ied in a pedagogically progressive high school that did not make differences between boys and girls. Achievements: 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 measure- ments of seismic waves from earth- quakes.
Hypatia
(c. 350–70; died 415) Greek mathemati- cian, astronomer and philosopher who lived in Alexandria. She was very well known at her time and is well known to- day especially for having taught philoso- phy and astronomy. Achievements: Her studies on conic sections allowed her to provide new interpretations of the ellipse. These in- terpretations were of major impact on the development of the explanations of astronomy and planetary motion.
Mary Anning
(21 May 1799 – 9 March 1847) English fossil collector and paleontologist. She 1st started collecting fossils after inherit- ing a collection from her father. Achievements: At the age of 12 she discovered the 1st complete ichthyo- saur fossil. She will later make 2 other major discoveries: a plesiosaurus and a pterodactyl. Her findings contributed to important changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth.
Louise Bourgeois
(1563–1636) French midwife called the Scholar. The Faculty of Medicine of Paris forbade her to teach there. Achievements: She published the 1st book on obstetrics with anatomic data. She contributed to the advancement of medicine by approaching it rather on the causes of illness than on its symptoms. She wrote a book on childbirth prac- tices in 1609. Her knowledge was passed down to poor women of her time.
Grace Hopper
(9 December 1906 – 1 January 1992) American Computer Scientist. She was one of the first programmers of the Har- vard Mark I computer. Achievements: She invented the first compiler for a computer programming language, and was one of those who popularized the idea of machine-inde- pendent programming languages which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first high-level programming lan- guages.
Marie Tharp
(30 July 1920 – 23 August 2006) Ameri- can geologist and oceanographer. Tharp drew maps from the data collected by Bruce Heezen for the first 18 years of their collaboration, since women at that time still were excluded from ships. Achievements: She created the 1st sci- entific map of the entire ocean floor. In 2009, Ocean in Google Earth included the Marie Tharp Historical Map layer, al- lowing people to view Tharp’s map with Google Earth interface.
Nettie Stevens
(7 July 1861 – 4 May 1912) American ge- neticist. She started her career as a high school teacher and a librarian to later turn to Biology. She started her research in her 30s and completing her PhD at 42. She is not recognized as the author of her discovery. Achievements: She identified the Y and X chromosomes & deduced that the chro- mosomal basis of sex depended on the presence or absence of the Y one. She successfully expanded the fields of ge- netics, cytology, and embryology.
Maria Sibylla Merian
(2 April 1647 – 13 January 1717) German naturalist. She was one of the 1st women to go on scientific travels on her name and not following their husbands. Achievements: She described the life cycles of 186 insect species, amassing evidence that contradicted the contem- porary notion that insects were “born of mud”. She published a major book on the butterflies metamorphosis that she illus- trated herself: Metamoorphosis insecto- rum Surinamensium.
Ada Lovelace
(10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) Ada’s mother promoted her interest in mathematics and logic in an attempt to keep her away from what she thought made Ada’s father insane: Literature. Ada was the daughter on (in)famous poet Lord Byron. Achievements: Her notes on the Ana- lytical Engine include the 1st algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine, making her the 1st computer programmer.
Margaret Hamilton
(7 August 1936) American computer scientist. She developed the concept of the paradigm of Development Before the Fact (DBTF) for systems and software design.
Achievements: She is the author, direc- tor and supervisor of software program- ming for Apollo and Skylab. She began to use the term “software engineering” during the early Apollo missions in order to give software the legitimacy of other fields such as hardware engineering.
Chien-Shiung Wu
(31 May 1912 – 16 February 1997) Chinese American experimental physicist. She made significant contributions in the field of nuclear physics. Achievements: Wu worked on the Man- hattan Project, which developed the pro- cess for separating uranium metal into uranium-235 and uranium-238 isotopes. This led to the production of the Atomic Bomb. The Wu experiment, which con- tradicted the hypothetical law of conser- vation of parity, allowed her colleagues Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang to win the 1957 Nobel Prize in physics.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
(15 July 1943) British astrophysicist. She was not permitted to study science until her parents (and others) protested against the school’s policy. Discovery: As a postgraduate student, she discovered the first radio pulsars while studying with and advised by An- tony Hewish. Hewish shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Martin Ryle, while Bell Burnell was excluded. She has cam- paigned to improve the status and num- ber of women in physics and astronomy.
Trota of Salerno
(XXII Century) Italian medical practitioner and medical writer. She taught and di- rected the School of Medicine. Her writ- ings were a great source of inspiration for the evolution of medicine. Achievements: She wrote several gy- necological works, especially De pas- sionibus mulierum curandarum (On Treatments for Women). Most of her work was forgotten until it was rediscov- ered in the late 20th century.
Valentina Tereshkova
(6 March 1937) Russian cosmonaut. The 1st woman to fly in space. Before her re- cruitment, Tereshkova was a textile-fac- tory worker, and was recruited thanks to her parachuting expertise. After return- ing to earth she became a aeronautical engineer. Discovery: She orbited the earth 48 times, spending almost 3 days in space. With a single flight, she logged more flight time than the combined times of all American astronauts before her.
Roxie Collie Laybourne
(15 September 1910 – 7 August 7 2003) American ornithologist. Her knowlede of bird led to aircraft safety improvements. Discovery: Her forensic techniques for identifying species of birds was instru- mental in aircraft safety improvements. Laybourne’s skills in forensic ornithology helped solve around 1,000 cases of bird- related airplane crashes a year.
Rosalind Franklin
(25 July 1920 – 16 April 1958) English chemist and X-ray crystallographer. Her contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA were largely recognized posthumously. Discovery: 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. Her work was a crucial part in the discovery of DNA, for which Francis Crick, James Watson & Maurice Wilkins were awarded a Nobel Prize in 62.