GREaTEST WOMEN IN STEM:

1. Mary the Jewess

- Alchemist (1&3rd centuries ad)
- she is referenced by Zosimos of Panopolis, who wrote the first alchemic
texts, and her work would provide the basis for alchemy.
- Discovered hydrochloric acid
- alchemical instruments the tribikos and the kerotakis, both of which
have modern day equivalents in modern chemistry. If cooking is more
your thing, you also have Mary to thank for one of your kitchen gadgets,
the Bain-marie, which was named in her honour.

2. Caroline Herschel (1750-1848)

- German astronomer
- 1st woman to discover a comet
- Was hired by king George III (1787) as his assistant.
- 1st woman to be paid for scientific work.
- In total she discovered 14 new nebulas, eight comets and added 561
new stars to Flamsteeds Atlas.
- Gold Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society in 1838 (another first
for a woman).
- has a comet, an asteroid, a crater on the Moon and a space telescope
named after her.

3. Mary anning (1799-1847)

- English fossil hunter
- At the age of 12, she found the rest of the fossilised skeleton of the skull
his brother discovered in 1811. (they thought it was a crocodile at first. It
turns out, it’s an ichthyosaurus m aking it the first dinosaur fossil discovered.
(200 m year old)).
- Discovered the bones of long-necked Plesiosaurus skeleton and the
Pterodactylus.
- Anning’s unusual and often bizarre discoveries helped move scientific
thinking away from Bible stories and opened up the field of palaeontology.
4. Mayer Summerville – 1st woman to be named the honorary member of the royal astronomical
society
- 1826, when she reported her experiments on the currently being discussed magnetic
properties of the solar system
- She published her first scientific paper, “On the Magnetizing Power of the More Refrangible
Solar Rays,” in 1826.
- Somerville’s next book, The Connection of the Physical Sciences (1834), was even more
ambitious in summarizing astronomy, physics, geography, and meteorology. She wrote nine
subsequent editions over the rest of her life to update it.
- In the third edition, published in 1836, she wrote that difficulties in calculating the position
of Uranus may point to the existence of an undiscovered planet. This hint inspired British
astronomer John Couch Adams to begin the calculations that ultimately led to the discovery
of Neptune.
- Somerville’s next book, Physical Geography (2 vol., 1848), was the first textbook on the subject
in English and her most popular work.
- In 1869 Somerville received the Patron’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society for Physical
Geography
- Her Mechanism of the Heavens (1831) ----the first work by a woman to be used in high-level
science teaching in Cambridge, or, perhaps, in any university.
- she published Physical Geography
 heat not only as a producer of volcanoes or earthquakes, but how heat – geothermic
and solar – along with gravitational action, results in oceanic and atmospheric currents,
winds, climate and meteorology.
 influence of sunlight on plant growth.
- Her final book, On Molecular and Microscopic Science (2 vol., 1869)

5. Elizabeth Garette Anderson

- First doctor in the US(1836-1917)
- Denied entry to any medical school, despite her respectable education,
she was forced to study nursing alongside male peers whose objections led to
her dismissal. After Elizabeth qualified as a doctor through the Society of
Apothecaries, they immediately implemented a ban on female entrants. The
sexism and adversity Elizabeth faced only fuelled her strength and resolve.
- Taught herself French to study in UParis med deg
- Established the New Hospital for Women, now London School of
Medicine for Women  dean
- In 1876, female entry into the profession of medicine was legalized.
- First female mayor in England.
- Gender equality
6. Lise Meitner (1878-1968)
- Austrian-Swedish Physicist (1878-1968)
- She was the foremost nuclear scientist in Germany.
She realized what her partner did not. Uranium was
undergoing nuclear fission, splitting in half and releasing its
tremendous energy.
- nuclear physics, radio activity, discovery of nuclear
fission
- Her collaborator was later awarded with nobel prize

- She never won a Nobel, although it’s widely recognised that she should have done – but she too
has her own element, meitnerium.
- 1905 became the second woman ever to receive a doctorate in physics from the city’s
university.
- 1926 she became the first woman to become a full professor of physics in Germany.
- A radioactive element first created in 1982 is named meitnerium in her honour.
- She refused an offer from the United States to work on the Manhattan Project that would
create the first atomic bomb
- She was, Albert Einstein once said, Germany’s own Marie Curie.

7. Marie Curie 1898

- Won 2 nobel prizes
- 1st woman no be a nobellaurevte
- Only person until this day to win 2 nobel prizes in science
- Discovered radium and polonium with her husband (1903 Nobel Prize in Physics)
- Marie continued her research with a professorship at the University of Paris, founding the
Radium Institute – now the Curie Institute – in 1909, and in 1910 successfully isolating pure
radium metal
- 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry,
- created mobile x-ray units for use at the front lines, and later a radiological facility for treating
injured soldiers’ wounds with radon gas.

8. Barbara McClintock (1902-1992)

- American geneticist (1902-1992)
- 1930s developed a staining technique that allowed her to identify, examine and
describe its individual chromosomes.
- she was able to determine the existence of jumping genes, which are sequences
of DNA that move between the genome.
- jumping genes were considered junk DNA by much of the scientific community
at the time, but McClintock pressed on and suggested they might in fact
determine which of the genes in cells are switch on (epigenetics)
- 1983, when she was awarded The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, that
the scientific community began to recognise not only just how important these
 jumping genes are, but how much of the genome they make up – some estimates suggest they
make up 40 per cent of the human genome.

9. Dorothy Hodgkin
- British chemist (1990-1994)
- Former teacher of Margaret Thatcher (Iron lady)
- X-ray crystallography – she was able to determine the atomic structure
of cholesterol, penicillin and vitamin B12 - won her the Nobel Prize for
Chemistry in 1964 making her the only British female to win the prize.
- Mapped the structure of insulin which improved treatment for diabetics
(1969) 30 years mehn
- She suffered rheumatoid arthritis

10. Grace Hopper

- American computer programmer (1906-1992)
- “amazing grace”
- One of the 1st women to achieve phd in mathematics
- Debugginh  removed a moth

11. Cecila payne-gaposchkin (1900-1979)

- Discovered what the sun is made of 1923
- The leading astronomer of the day discouraged her not to present her findings/hypotheis
- 4 years later (he) henry Norris russel published his own paper w the sme conclusions—for most
of history, he was given credit for this
- 1956 she was the first woman to be appointed full professor and the first to chair a
department. Harvard univ
12. Rosalind franklin (1920 – 1958)
- Her colleague wilkins shared her work w/o her permission with james Watson and frvncis crick
- With that info (photo 51) , they were able to make great discovery. Her college and the two guys
later then awarded a nobel prize for the discovery, she was excluded.
- Dna research
- Most important discovery in 20th cen
- Studied coal for her phd  better gas masks for the british during ww2
- Used x-ray techniques to study the structure of dna
- She obtained photo 51 (most famous x-ray image of dna) 1952
- Wilkins, watsons vnd crick  instead of calculating the position of atoms which usually takes 1
year and 100 days stole franklin’s gathered data and made a quick analysis and used it to make
their own hypothesis (dnv is a made w 2 helicoidal strands, one opposite the other with bases in
the center like rungs of a ladder) and published theit model 1953
- But Rosalind later arrived with the same hypothesis and submitted her own manuscript
- The 3 guys merged with rosalind’s discovery only to make it look like she supported Watson and
crick’s breakthrough
 - Her work on the structure of viruses led to a nobel prize for a colleague, aaron klug 1982

13. Jocelyn bell burnell (1943-present)

- British astronomer
- Discovered the 1st radio pulsars (the greatest astronomical discovery of the 20th century)
- Her ohd supervisor was then awarded a nobel prize, she was exclude from the prize
- “The 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Hewish and Martin Ryle for the discovery of
pulsars. Several prominent scientists protested the omission of Bell Burnell, though she
maintained that the prize was presented appropriately given her student status at the time of
the discovery.”

https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/10-amazing-women-in-science-history-you-really-should-know-
about/

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/17-top-female-scientists-who-have-changed-the-worl/

https://www.iop.org/resources/topic/archive/curie-meitner/page_65216.html

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jocelyn-Bell-Burnell

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Somerville

https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/57/1/1.22/2464670

Hypatia of Alexandria

- Greek mathematician, philosopher and astronomer

- Head of her school in Alexandria
- Non of her work survived in the modern day
- Murdered by a Christian mob