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Zoe Surles
Welcome back to the Super Saucy STEM Section of The Chronicle! I hope you’re ready to get lost in the science sauce. Also, happy Women’s History Month to all my girlies out there! To so smartly combine Women’s History Month with the Science Corner, I’ve decided to tell you about some super cool women that have contributed to the scientific community in the past. How unexpected. Hopefully, at the end of this edition of The Corner™, you will have some newfound respect and admiration for all the women who are, were, or plan to be involved in the STEM field.
Early Women in Science
Women have been involved in science since the beginning of the word itself. However, records of said women, their accomplishments, and their work have been lost to time as well as simply never being created in the first place. Here are some of the earliest women I found that made significant contributions to the scientific community, keeping in mind that there were likely women that preceded these or should have been included, but whose records were lost or never taken.
Tapputi-Belatekallim: The world’s first recorded chemist from Mesopotamia
Aglaonice of Thessaly: Said to be the first female Greek astronomer
Theano: Considered by some to be the first woman mathematician
Fang: A Chinese alchemist who reportedly discovered how to separate metals
Mary the Jewess: “The first true alchemist” who is credited with inventing several alchemy instruments
Most Impactful Women in Science
There have been many women who have made important contributions to science, but some stand out for just how extraordinary they were. Here are some of the ladies that I think have been the most influential and impactful on the scientific community.
Katherine Johnson: One of the first African-American women to work at NASA, she made incredible contributions to orbital mechanics and help with calculations for the first manned spacecraft from NASA. For more information on Johnson and a good time, you can watch the movie Hidden Figures, which is all about Johnson and her coworkers.
Mae C. Jemison: Jemison was the first African-American astronaut, as well as the first Black woman to go into space. Jemison was involved in one of the Endeavor trips, which was a series of trips that space shuttle Endeavor took into orbit. Some of these trips took people and supplies for service missions of the Hubble Space Telescope, but the trip that Jemison was on had a mission of going into orbit around the earth to conduct scientific experiments in low-gravity environments. Jemison, using her medical doctor experience, worked on bone cell research experiments while orbiting Earth a total of 126 times.
Jane Goodal: Goodal is arguably the most famous primate scientist to have lived. Her work with primates involved mimicking the behavior of monkeys to develop relationships and trust with them and prefers to study these animals in their natural habitat rather than in labs.
Ada Lovelace: Lovelace is credited for working with inventor Charles Babbage to create the first Analytical Machine, which was essentially the Adam and Eve of computers. Lovelace helped develop methods to feed data into the machine and started the idea of computer programming.
Most Overlooked Women in Science
As you can see, women have been involved in the science scene since basically forever. However, many of their contributions have been written off as those of a man. Here are some women who made contributions, but who haven’t gotten the credit and recognition they deserve.
Rosalind Franklin: One of the most well-known examples of women not getting credit where credit was clearly due, Franklin discovered the double helix but had her work taken by James D. Watson and Francis H.C. Crick after Franklin’s work was shown to the men without permission.
Lise Meitner: Meitner was one of two who were involved in a project on nuclear fission. When the project was finished, the result was that of the atomic bomb. Meitner’s partner, however, decided to take her name off of the paper that detailed this, and so Meitner was robbed of the prizes that her partner Otto Hahn received for the paper.
Jean Purdy: Jean Purdy was involved in the birth of the first IVF (In vitro fertilization) baby, but had her name removed from the plaque at the hospital by the hospital as well as local health authorities.
Alice Ball: Ball had many accomplishments in her lifetime, including being not only the first woman but also the first African American to receive a master’s at The University of Hawaii, as well as the University’s first female chemistry professor. While this is all very impressive, one of her most notable works was that of her leprosy treatments. However, she died at an early age and her work was taken and credited under her colleague Arthur Dean’s name.
These are but just a few of the many women that have come, and will continue to come, into important roles in the scientific community. Women in science are just as important as anyone else in any other role, and hopefully, this edition of the Science Corner has given you a newfound appreciation for these ladies in STEM.
Thanks for reading and happy sciencing :)
Rosalind Franklin
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