2018 Calendar Women in Science Ilustrated by Jess Chambers Nergis Mavalvala Nergis Mavalvala was born in 1968 in Pakistan. She is an astrophysicist known for her role in the first observation of gravitational waves, ripples in the curvature of spacetime. She has also performed pioneering experiments on laser cooling of macroscopic objects and in the generation of squeezed quantum states of light. She is a professor and Associate Head of the Department of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. In 2010 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, a very prestigious American prize known as the "Genius Grant". january 2018 M T W T F S S Marie-Louise von Franz, German-Swiss psychologist 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Elizabeth Gertrude Britton, American botanist, bryologist, and 8 educator 9 10 11 12 13 14 Sofia Dian Fossey, Joy Adamson, Sophia Jex-Blake, Kovalevskaya, American Austrian English physician Russian primatologist and naturalist mathematician conservationist and novelist 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Gertrude B. Elion, Bessie Coleman, Dame Kathleen American American aviator Lonsdale, British biochemist and crystallographer pharmacologist 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Helen Dickens Helen Dickens was born on 21 February 1909, in the United States. The daughter of a former slave, she was the first African American woman admitted to the American College of Surgeons in 1950. By 1969 she was the associate dean in the Office for Minority Affairs at the University of Pennsylvania, and within five years had increased minority enrolment from three students to sixty-four. In addition to her general practice, Dr. Dickens provided obstetric and gynecologic care helping patients living in extreme poverty. She received numerous honors for her work on sexual health for young and adult women, including awards from the Girl Scouts of Greater Philadelphia and the American Cancer Society. February 2018 M T W T F S S Elizabeth Blackwell, British physician 1 2 3 4 Mary Douglas Ruth Sager, Leakey, American cellular English archaeol- geneticist ogist and paleo- anthropologist 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Caroline Lucretia Herschel was Caroline Lucretia the first woman to receive full recognition in the field of Herschel astronomy. Born on 16 March 1750, she was the only girl among five children. She served as assistant to her brother Friedrich, the royal astronomer to the court at Windsor. Her own research led her to discover 8 comets in 9 years. She wrote treatises for Philosophical Transactions, discovered 14 nebulae, calculated hundreds more, and began a catalogue for star clusters and nebular patches. She was awarded numerous honours, including the gold medal of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. March 2018 M T W T F S S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Anna Atkins, Kalpana Chawla, English botanist American and photographer astronaut 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Elsie MacGill, Canadian Aeronautical engineer and human rights 26 activist 27 28 29 30 31 Rita Levi-Montalcini Rita Levi-Montalcini was born on 22 April 1909 in Italy. In 1956 she shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Stanley Cohen for their discoveries on nerve growth factors. By transferring pieces of tumours to chick embryos, Levi- Montalcini established a mass of cells that was full of nerve fibres. 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, she identified the endogenous compound palmitoylethanolamide as an important modulator of this cell. She also served in the Italian Senate as a Senator for Life. April 2018 M T W T F S S Marie-Sophie Germain, French mathema- tician, physicist, and philosopher 1 Jane Goodall, British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Marie Maynard Daly, American bio- chemist 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Hertha Ayrton, British engineer, mathematician, physicist, and inventor 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Chien-Shiung Wu Chien-Shiung Wu was a Chinese American experimental physicist born on 31 May 1912. Wu worked on the Manhattan Project, which developed the process for separating uranium metal into uranium-235 and uranium-238 isotopes. The Wu experiment, which contradicted the hypothetical law of conservation of parity, allowed her colleagues Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang to win the 1957 Nobel Prize in physics. 21 years later, Wo was awarded the inaugural Wolf Prize, considered the most prestigious award in Physics after the Nobel Prize. May 2018 M T W T F S S Maryam Mirzakhani, Iranian math- ematician and professor 1 2 3 4 5 6 Cecilia Payne- Gaposchkin, British–American astronomer and astrophys- 7 8 9 icist 10 11 12 13 Maria Agnesi, Italian mathema- tician 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Mary Anning, Sally Ride, Maria Clara English fossil col- American physi- Eimmart lector, dealer, and cist and astronaut German paleontologist astronomer 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Hypatia Hypatia was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, philosopher and the last great thinker of ancient Alexandria. She was certainly not the first female astronomer and mathematician, but she was the leading one of her time – a scarce achievement to today. In the mist of violence and power disputes, Hypatia was attacked for her religion, her position and her defense of scientific knowledge. It is clear that Hypatia’s femaleness made her a special target, and she was violently murdered by Christians zealots. Hypatia’s work and life can be understood as herculean efforts to preserve the Greek knowledge heritage, to speak against dogmatism and superstition, to defend science in an era of religious and sectarian conflict. Hypatia is an inspiration for our project not only as the first famous female mathematician but most importantly as a symbol of learning and science. june 2018 M T W T F S S 1 2 3 Lin Huiyin, Chinese architect and writer 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Barbara McClintock, American scien- tist and cytoge- neticist 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Maria Goeppert- Mayer, German-born theoretical physicist 25 26 27 28 29 30 Jocelyn Bell Burnell Jocelyn Bell Burnell is a Northern Irish astrophysicist. Born on 15 July 1943, she was not permitted to study science until her parents (and others) protested against the school’s policy. As a postgraduate student, she discovered the first radio pulsars while studying with and advised by Antony Hewish. Hewish shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Martin Ryle, while Bell Burnell was excluded. Bell Burnell was President of the Royal Astronomical Society, president of the Institute of Physics, and was interim president following the death of her successor. In 2014, she was made President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the first woman to hold that office. She has campaigned to improve the status and number of women in physics and astronomy. july 2018 M T W T F S S 1 Henrietta Swan Leavitt, American astronomer 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Rosalyn Sussman Yalow, American medical physicist 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Rosalind Franklin, English chemist and X-ray crystal- lographer 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Francoise Barre- Stephanie Louise Sinnousi, Kwolek, French biologist American chemist and inventor 30 31 Margaret Hamilton Margaret Hamilton is an American computer scientist systems engineer, and business owner. Born on 7 August 1936, she developed the concept of the paradigm of Development Before the Fact (DBTF) for systems and software design. She is the author, director and supervisor of software programming 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. On 22 November 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. august 2018 M T W T F S S Maria Mitchell, Shirley Ann American Jackson, astronomer American physicist 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Gerty Theresa Caroline Harriet Cori, Haslett, Jewish Czech- English electrical American engineer biochemist 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Anna Mani, Indian physicist and meteorologist 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Asima Chatterjee Asima Chatterjee was an Indian organic chemist born on 23 September 1917. She is noted for her work in the fields of organic chemistry and phytomedicine, or chemicals derived from plants. Her most notable work includes research on vinca alkaloids (derived from vinca plants), the development of anti-epileptic drugs, and development of anti-malarial drugs. She also authored a considerable volume of work on medicinal plants of the Indian subcontinent. She was the first woman to receive a Doctorate of Science from an Indian university. september 2018 M T W T F S S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Irène Joliot-Curie, French chemist and physicist 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Sophia Brahe, Danish horticulturalist 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Mae Jemison Mae Jemison is the first African American woman to travel in space. Born on 17 October 1956, Jamison is an American engineer, physician and NASA astronaut.