Maria Sibylla Merian was born in 1647 in Frankfurt. In 1665 she married Johann Andreas Graff. Maria was an artist, receiving support from her family and husband to draw, paint, and embroider. As was common for the time, her subjects were flowers and butterflies. However, she went beyond simply creating beautiful art – she used her skill to study insects in detail. Naturalism, as any science at the time, was reserved for men. However, she published the first detailed book on butterfly metamorphosis. Her marriage was an unhappy one and she eventually moved with her mother and daughters to Friesland where she continued her scientific observations studying frog development. She also studied Latin, the scientific language of the day.
At the age of 52, Maria travelled to Suriname, South America in order to study various species of insects. Her work disproved the contemporary idea of “spontaneous generation”, the idea that insects were born of mud. She raised insects such as silkworms and studied development and life cycles. Her work also covered the interactions between plants and insects and was a major contribution to burgeoning ecological studies. Maria discovered which plants play an important role in the food chain, as well as a number of new plants and animals while in South America. Maria died in 1717, aged 69.
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Gerty Cori, was born Gerty Theresa Radnitz in 1896 in Prague to Jewish parents. She was educated in Prague, eventually completing her medical studies and marrying her husband Ferdinand Cori in 1920. Two years later, the couple emigrated to the United States of America and obtained research positions in Buffalo, New York.
Working together on most projects, Gerty and Ferdinand became interested in carbohydrate metabolism, specifically the metabolism of glucose and the hormones involved in this process. Despite being encouraged not to work together, the couple continued carrying out their research as a team. Carl even refused a university position because he was told he would be not allowed to work with his wife. Together they published fifty papers, eventually winning a Nobel Prize for the discovery of the “Cori Cycle”. Gerty was the third woman to be awarded a Nobel prize in science, and the first woman to be awarded a Nobel prize in Physiology and Medicine. Gerty passed away in 1957, aged 61. Gerty is remembered as a pioneer as woman in science.
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Katherine Johnson was born in West Virginia in 1918. At age 18, Katherine graduated West Virginia State College with highest honours with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and French. Initially, she started working as a teacher, however in 1939 she was enrolled as the first African American woman in the graduate maths programme at West Virginia University. However, she left her studies after a year because she had gotten pregnant, to get married and raise a family. In 1953 Katherine accepted a position as a mathematician at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which would later become NASA. Her initial role within the organisation was to act as a “computer” along with other women. It was their job to analyse data from airplanes. Given the United States’ segregation laws at the time, Katherine and her fellow black colleagues were forced to work, eat, and use bathrooms separated from their white female colleagues. In later interviews, Katherine described how assertive and aggressive she had to be, even after desegregation.
In 1960 she became the first woman to have officially co-authored a paper on engineering; previously the women who worked on reports and papers were not awarded the recognition or respect of adding their names. In her time at NASA, her skill and knowledge of analytical geometry earned her respect from her white male colleagues and eventually lead to her working on projects such as Freedom 7, the space craft that sent the first US astronaut into space, and Apollo 11, the moon landing. She retired in 1968 but continued to work tirelessly to promote STEM subject to young students. Katherine died at the age of 101 in 2020.
]]>Ada Lovelace, born August Ada Byron, countess of Lovelace, in 1815 in London was the daughter of infamous writer and poet Lord Byron. Growing up as a member of British aristocracy, she had a comfortable life and was provided with a well-rounded education. However, in an unusual decision for a woman in the 1800s, Ada’s mother insisted on private tutors in mathematics and science for her daughter. One of her tutors was even Mary Somerville, a Scottish astronomer and mathematician and the first woman to be admitted to the Royal Astronomical Society. At the young age of 17, Ada was introduced to Charles Babbage, who in turn opened the door to allow her to study advanced mathematics and the University of London. Babbage, known as the father of computers, had invented the difference engine which would be able to execute mathematical calculations.
Ada became fascinated by this machine and was involved in Babbage’s next invention: the analytical engine, a machine that would be able to perform more complex calculations. When she was asked to translate an Italian article on Babbage’s machine, she not only completed the translation to English, but also added pages of additional notes. Her authorship was only noted by her initials A.A.B. The notes that she added would make her the first computer programmer. She hypothesised that the machine would be able to handle letters, symbols, as well as numbers. In addition, she put forward that repetitive actions could be programmed – today these are known as loops. Ada passed away at the age of 36. While she gained little support for her work during her lifetime, over the decades she has received more and more recognition for her significant contributions to computer science and the development of modern technology.
]]>Photo: By Jewish Chronicle Archive/Heritage-Imageshttp://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic-art/217394/99712/Rosalind-Franklin, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24959067
Rosalind Franklin was born in 1920 in London to Jewish parents. She attended the women’s Newnham college at the University of Cambridge, studying chemistry. After graduating, Rosalind began working at the British Coal Utilisation Research Association as a researcher, while also volunteering as Air Raid Warden to support members of the public during World War II. Her research eventually led to her PhD thesis on the porosity of coal. In 1946, Rosalind moved to Paris to work with leading crystallographer Jacques Mering. During her time there, she continued her research on coal and carbon. In 1951 Rosalind returned to London and took up a position within the biophysics department of King’s College London.
There, she began applying her knowledge of X-ray crystallography to DNA. The double-helix structure of DNA was then still unknown, and her painstaking work yielded the infamous Photo 51, suggesting the helical structure of DNA. This photograph was shared without her knowledge or permission by her colleague to competing scientist James Watson. Watson and his partner Crick used this image and Rosalind’s precise measurements as the basis for their DNA model, publishing their ground-breaking discovery, and omitting Franklin from the publication. Rosalind eventually moved on to researching RNA in viruses. She passed away from ovarian cancer in 1958 at age 37.
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Marie Curie was born in 1867 in Warsaw, Poland. Marie received much of her scientific education from her father but was unable to enrol at a formal university as woman. She and her sister attended the secret, underground “Flying University”. In 1891 Marie joined her sister in Paris, where she started her studies in physics, chemistry, and mathematics at the University of Paris (aka the Sorbonne). After graduating with a degree in physics, she worked as a researcher in an industrial laboratory, while simultaneously pursuing her second degree. She met her future husband Pierre Curie in 1894 and their love for research and science drew them together.
Marie and Pierre discovered two new elements between 1898 and 1902: polonium and radium. In 1903 the couple was awarded a Nobel Prize in physics, together with Henri Becquerel. In the same year Marie earned her doctorate in physics. Sadly, Pierre was killed in an accident in 1906. However, Marie continued working, and a few years later was awarded a second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry for her work on measuring radioactivity. During World War I, she developed mobile x-ray machines named the “petites curies” (little Curies) which could be used at battlefronts. Marie died in 1934, aged 66, due to her long-term exposure to radiation. However, her legacy lives in on the numerous research institutes, hospitals, and prizes bearing her name.
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Rita Levi Montalcini was born in Turin in 1909 to Jewish parents. She studied medicine, but her passion soon turned to research. In 1938 Mussolini’s new law, barring all Jews from university positions, drove her out of her lab. So, she built her own lab in her bedroom, and using chicken eggs and sewing needles she started dissecting and studying nerve growth. She took on an assistant, Giuseppe Levi and together they set out a new theory of embryonic nerve development. Soon, the Germans invaded Italy and started rounding up Jews. No longer safe, she and Giuseppe fled to America.
She observed and recorded a factor derived from a tumour that would increase nerve growth in her chick embryos, naming it Nerve Growth Factor. Nerve Growth Factor is still studied today and provides the foundation on which neuroembryology has been built. Aside from making her ground-breaking scientific discoveries, Rita also founded the first Cell Biology department in her hometown of Turin, established the Rita Levi Montalcini Foundation to help African women achieve their full potential, and she became a senator for life in Italy. She was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1986 for her scientific discoveries. Rita passed away in 2012, aged 103.
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Mary Anning was born in 1799 in Lyme Regis, England, to a very large, very poor family. Her family was ostracised as Protestants who had separated from the Church of England. Mary’s father was an amateur fossil collector and by her sixth birthday Mary has become his assistant. This was very unusual for a girl in King George III’s England. While Mary received very little formal education, she did know how to read and write. She also taught herself geology and anatomy. In following years, Mary became a dedicated and meticulous palaeontologist – bringing to light missing pieces of anatomy to help solve controversial puzzles of the day.
In 1810 she discovered the first Ichthyosaur, followed by several other finds such a complete Plesiosaurus and Pterodactyl. Many of her male peers would approach her for help identifying specimens, but she was never credited for her work. Mary died in 1847 at the age of 47. Before her death her work was appreciated but rarely credited.
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Hedy Lamarr, born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna in 1914 to Jewish parents. Despite her first marriage keeping her safe from immediate persecution from the Nazis, she was deeply unhappy and escaped to England one night. Once there, she was scooped up by MGM’s Louis B. Mayer and began her long career with MGM. Hedy was considered the most beautiful woman in Hollywood and even Disney’s Snow White was inspired by her iconic looks. While dazzling audiences on the screen, Hedy was reserved and quiet at home. She kept tinkering: working on traffic lights, or carbonated drink tablets. When she heard about a ship of refugee children being torpedoed by Germans, she was driven to make a change.
Working with musician George Antheil, Hedy developed a frequency-hopping signal that prevented Ally communication radios from being blocked. She submitted a patent, but it was filed away and ignored until years later. Hedy had created one of the most important pieces of technology in our modern life. Her work was used to create Bluetooth, GPS, and Wi-Fi. Hedy died in 2000 in Florida aged 85 and her remains were returned to Vienna.
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