16 Amazing Women Who Used Science to Change the World
Science is frequently viewed as a field where men are in the majority. There are many incredible men in science, yes, but there is an equal number of amazing women that need to be recognized. These amazing women made some huge leaps in the world of science that have had a global impact. Check out these amazing women and everything they’ve achieved. They truly inspire all of us and show that women can achieve anything they set their minds to.
Ida Noddack
This German chemist and physicist was the first one to envision ‘nuclear fission’. This is the process used in nowadays nuclear power plants and it consists of the collision of a neutron with a uranium atom causing the latter to split and releasing an incredible amount of energy.
Chien-Shiung Wu
Known as the ‘First Lady of Physics, ’ Chien-Shiung Wu worked on the Manhattan Project and conducted the famous Wu experiment, which proved that parity is not conserved. It was thanks to this discovery that her colleagues Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang won the Nobel Prize in physics, while she was awarded the Wolf Prize in 1978.
Mária Telkes
Known as the ‘Sun Queen, ’ Mária Telkes was a pioneer in solar energy technology. She devised a solar distillation device that saved the lives of several soldiers during World War II. Together with architect Eleanor Raymond, she also built one of the first solar-heated houses in the world.
Gladys West
Gladys West was an American mathematician who contributed to the Global Positioning System, today widely known as GPS. Similarly to other scientists of her time, West is considered one of history’s ‘hidden figures,’ often a Black woman whose talent went unrecognized by race and gender.
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was the first scientist to find out that stars were composed of hydrogen and helium. Initially, her idea was rejected as the scientific community firmly believed that the Sun had a similar elemental composition to the one of the Earth.
Jewel Plummer Cobb
Jewel Plummer Cobb was a cancer researcher who discovered how skin cells become cancerous. She also found out the positive effect that methotrexate can have on both skin and lung cancers. Methotrexate is still used today to treat childhood leukemia.
Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace was a successful mathematician and writer. She was born in London in 1815 and many attributes to her the creation of the first computer program. This was basically an algorithm designed to be carried out by a machine.
Marie Curie
Marie Curie is probably the most famous scientist in history. Throughout her life, she discovered radium and polonium and contributed to the advancement of cancer treatment. Thanks to this discovery, in 1911, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Katherine Johnson
Katherine Johnson was one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist. She was born in 1918 in West Virginia and died at the age of 101 years. It was thanks to her mathematical calculations of orbital mechanics that NASA managed to send its rockets into orbit.
Rosalind Franklin
Often referred to as the ‘wronged heroine,’ Rosalind Franklin’s work has been essential to our modern understanding of the molecular structures of DNA, RNA, and viruses. Despite this, her contribution to the sciences was never appreciated during her lifetime.
Vera Rubin
Vera Rubin was an American astronomer who helped prove the existence of dark matter, one of the three main components (together with dark energy and ordinary matter) of the universe. She was born in 1928 in Philadelphia and studied at Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest academic honor society in the States.
Flossie Wong-Staal
Flossie Wong-Staal was the first Chinese-American virologist to clone HIV successfully. This was a fundamental step in proving that HIV is the cause of AIDS, an illness that still to this day kills an average of 600.000 people every year.
Barbara McClintock
Barbara McClintock from the US was the first scientist to identify all ten chromosomes of maize in 1929. Roughly twenty years later, in the late 40s, she also discovered how some genes move to new locations on a chromosome. Before this important discovery, scientists used to believe that chromosomes were unable to move. In 1983, she was awarded the Novel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Mary Anning
Born in 1799, Mary Anning was an English paleontologist and avid fossil collector. She is credited with discovering the first Plesiosaurus skeleton. The specimen was so peculiar that soon, rumors spread that it was a fake. Mary searched her fossils close to the cliffs of Blue Lias and Charmouth Mudstone, especially during the winter months. During this time, the landslides exposed new fossils that had to be picked up quickly, or they would otherwise get lost at sea.
Lisa Meitner
Lisa Meitner was an Austrian-Swedish physicist who made huge contributions to the field of nuclear physics. Along with her nephew physicist Otto Frisch, she provided the theoretical explanation for the process of nuclear fission, where the nucleus of an atom splits into smaller parts. Her work set the foundation for the development of nuclear energy and atomic bombs.
Elizabeth Blackburn
Elizabeth Blackburn is an incredible scientist known for her groundbreaking research on telomeres which are the protective caps at the ends of our chromosomes. Her work helped uncover how these telomeres affect aging and the cell division process. Her discoveries and work had implications for understanding diseases like cancer. Beyond her research, she’s also an advocate for science education and has inspired countless young scientists along the way!
