Nuclear Chemistry
Marie Curie (1867-1934)
Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, in Physics, and with her later win, in Chemistry, she became the first person to claim Nobel honors twice.
Following Marie’s discovery of radioactivity, she continued her research with her husband. Working with the mineral pitchblende, the pair discovered a new radioactive element in 1898. They named the element polonium, after Marie's native country of Poland. They also detected the presence of another radioactive material in the pitchblende, and called that radium. In 1902, the Curies announced that they had produced a decigram of pure radium, demonstrating its existence as a unique chemical element.
Source: https://www.biography.com/people/marie-curie-9263538
Lise Meitner (1878-1968)
In December 1938, over Christmas vacation, physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch made a startling discovery that would immediately revolutionize nuclear physics and lead to the atomic bomb. Trying to explain a puzzling finding made by nuclear chemist Otto Hahn in Berlin, Meitner and Frisch realized that something previously thought impossible was actually happening: that a uranium nucleus had split in two.
Meitner suggested they view the nucleus like a liquid drop, following a model that had been proposed earlier by the Russian physicist George Gamow and then further promoted by Bohr. Frisch, who was better at visualizing things, drew diagrams showing how after being hit with a neutron, the uranium nucleus might, like a water drop, become elongated, then start to pinch in the middle, and finally split into two drops.
Hahn won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1944, but Meitner was never recognized for her important role in the discovery of fission.
Source: https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200712/physicshistory.cfm
Ellen Gleditsch (1879-1968)
After starting her career in pharmacy, she went on to study radioactivity at the Sorbonne and work in Marie Curie's laboratory from 1907 to 1912. At Curie's lab, Gleditsch performed a technique called fractional crystallisations, which purified radium. The work, which was highly specialized and few could complete, allowed her laboratory fees to be waived. She spent five years of analysis with Curie and returned even after leaving the lab to supervise experiments. In 1911, she received a "Licenciée en sciences degree" from the Sorbonne and was awarded a teaching post at University of Oslo. After working one year, she won the first scholarship ever given to a woman from the American-Scandinavian Association to study in the United States, but was turned down by both of the schools at which she applied.
She went anyway and despite having been rejected was able to work at the laboratory of Bertram Boltwood at Yale University, where she measured the half-life of radium, creating a standard measurement that was used for many years.
Elizabeth Rona (1890-1981)
Elizabeth Rona was a Hungarian nuclear chemist, known for her work with radioactive isotopes. After developing an enhanced method of preparing polonium samples, she was internationally recognized as the leading expert in isotope separation and polonium preparation. Between 1914 and 1918, during her postdoctoral study with George de Hevesy, she developed a theory that the velocity of diffusion depended on the mass of the nuclides. As only a few atomic elements had been identified, her confirmation of the existence of Uranium-Y was a major contribution to nuclear chemistry. She was awarded the Haitinger Prize by the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1933.
After emigrating to the United States in 1941, she was granted a Carnegie Fellowship to continue her research and provided technical information on her polonium extraction methods to the Manhattan Project. Later in her career, she became a nuclear chemistry professor at the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies and after 15 years there transferred to the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Miami. At both Oak Ridge and Miami, she continued her work on the geochronology of seabed elements and radiometric dating. She was posthumously inducted into the Tennessee Women's Hall of Fame in 2015.
Harriet Brooks (1882-1919)
Harriet Brooks was the first Canadian female nuclear physicist. She is most famous for her research in radioactivity. She discovered atomic recoil, and transmutation of elements in radioactive decay. Ernest Rutherford, who guided her graduate work, regarded her as comparable to Marie Curie in the caliber of her aptitude. She was among the first persons to discover radon and to try to determine its atomic mass.
In the 1980s, the importance of Harriet Brooks' contributions to physics became recognized as foundational work in the field of nuclear science. She was the first person to show that the radioactive substance emitted from thorium was a gas with molecular weight of 40–100, a discovery crucial to the determination of transmutation of elements in radioactive decay.
In 2002, 69 years after her death she was inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame. Canadian Nuclear Laboratories considered her research of radon and actinium pioneering, and her brief research career exceedingly accomplished. In 2016, 110 years after she finished her career, the Harriet Brooks Building, a nuclear research laboratory at Chalk River Laboratories was named after her.
Source: https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/forgotten-women-in-chemistry/4015930.article?adredir=1; https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7zqmq; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Brooks
Ida Noddack (1896-1978)
Noddack correctly criticized Enrico Fermi's chemical proofs in his 1934 neutron bombardment experiments, from which he postulated that transuranic elements might have been produced, and which was widely accepted for a few years. Her paper, "On Element 93" suggested a number of possibilities, centering on Fermi's failure to chemically eliminate all lighter than uranium elements in his proofs, rather than only down to lead. The paper is considered historically significant today not simply because she correctly pointed out the flaw in Fermi's chemical proof but because she suggested the possibility that "it is conceivable that the nucleus breaks up into several large fragments, which would of course be isotopes of known elements but would not be neighbors of the irradiated element." In so doing she presaged what would become known a few years later as nuclear fission.
Ida and her husband-to-be looked for the then still unknown elements 43 and 75 at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt. In 1925, they published a paper (Zwei neue Elemente der Mangangruppe, Chemischer Teil) claiming to have done so, and called the new elements rhenium (75) and masurium (43). Only the discovery of rhenium was confirmed. They were unable to isolate element 43 and their results were not reproducible. Their choice of the term masurium was also considered unacceptably nationalistic and may have contributed to a poor reputation among scientists.
Irène Joliot-Curie (1897-1956)
After having started her studies at the Faculty of Science in Paris, Irène served as a nurse radiographer during the First World War. She became Doctor of Science in 1925, having prepared a thesis on the alpha rays of polonium. Either alone or in collaboration with her husband, she did important work on natural and artificial radioactivity, transmutation of elements, and nuclear physics; she shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1935 with him, in recognition of their synthesis of new radioactive elements, which work has been summarized in their joint paper Production artificielle d'éléments radioactifs. Preuve chimique de la transmutation des éléments (1934).
Source: https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1935/joliot-curie-bio.html
William Jacob Knox Jr. (1904-1955)
William Jacob Knox Jr. was an American chemist at Columbia University in New York City and one of the African American scientists and technicians on the Manhattan Project. Knox held an unprecedented position, serving as the only African American supervisor for the Manhattan Project. Knox is credited for nuclear research of gaseous diffusion techniques used for the separation of uranium isotopes. Knox's efforts in the development of uranium contributed to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945.
Knox was highly educated and received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University. Knox then continued his postgraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in New Bedford, Massachusetts. By 1935, the Knox family alone made up 7% of total African Americans to hold a Ph.D.
After the war, Knox became a research assistant at Eastman Kodak Company. Knox is credited as being "the man to consult about coating problems". As Knox ended his career in science, he became involved in activism and additional professional pursuits.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jacob_Knox_Jr.; https://www.chemistryworld.com/culture/william-knox-the-only-black-supervisor-in-the-manhattan-project/4015512.article
Joan Curran (1916-1999)
Joan Elizabeth Curran was a Welsh physicist who played important roles in the development of radar and the atomic bomb during the Second World War. She invented chaff, a radar countermeasure technique credited with reducing losses among Allied bomber crews. She also worked on the development of the proximity fuse and the electromagnetic isotope separation process for the atomic bomb.
In later life she became a founding member of the Scottish Society for the Parents of Mentally Handicapped Children.
Lloyd Quaterman (1918-1983)
After receiving his bachelor's degree from St. Augustine’s in 1943, he was quickly recruited by the War Department to work on the Manhattan Project. Though he was only a junior chemist on the project, Quarterman had the opportunity to work closely with Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago and with Albert Einstein at Columbia University. Quarterman was a member of the team of scientists who isolated the isotope of uranium (U 238) necessary for the fission process, which was essential to the creation of the atom bomb.
Dr. Quarterman worked at two of the major laboratories concerned with nuclear research, located at Columbia University in New York City and at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, Illinois. When the Manhattan project was officially closed, Quarterman received a certificate of recognition for "work essential to the production of the Atomic Bomb, thereby contributing to the successful conclusion of World War II."
Source: https://aaregistry.org/story/lloyd-quarterman-chemist-born/
Margaret Melhase Fuchs (1919-2006)
In 1940, Melhase was an undergraduate in the college of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. She spoke to Seaborg in his lab, and he proposed they work together to search for a Group 1 element among the fission products of uranium. In March 1941, Melhase worked with Art Wahl. He handed her 100 grams of a uranium compound (uranyl nitrate) that had been neutron-irradiated by a cyclotron. Using a Lauritzen quartz fiber electroscope, she discovered the Cs-137 several months later. Despite establishing herself as a promising young experimental scientist, nuclear research during World War II was treated with strict secrecy and it was not publicized.
Melhase received a bachelor's degree in nuclear chemistry and planned to apply for graduate studies at UC Berkeley. However, the head of the chemistry department, Gilbert N. Lewis, was refusing entry to women; the last woman the department admitted had gotten married shortly after her graduation and he considered her education a "waste". She rejoined the Manhattan Project from 1944 to 1946. Without an advanced degree, she did not continue her career in science.
Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Melhase; https://twitter.com/ChemistryKit/status/1392076489760419849
Darleane Hoffman (b. 1926)
Darleane Hoffman gained international recognition for capturing and analyzing elusive transuranic elements (elements heavier than uranium) that typically exist for only short periods, making important discoveries about the nature of fission—the atomic process at the heart of nuclear power.
In 1953, the couple took positions at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where she worked on nuclear chemistry and would establish herself as the world authority on spontaneous fission, the sudden decay of heavy nuclei into two "daughter" nuclei.
Source: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/women-scientists/darleane-hoffman.html
Joanna S. Fowler (b. 1942)
Fowler's research has led to new fundamental knowledge, development of important scientific tools, and has broad impacts in the application of nuclear medicine to diagnostics and health. She has worked for much of her career developing radiotracers for brain imaging to understand the mechanisms underlying drug addiction. Most recently, she has been engaged in developing methods to understand the relationship between genes, brain chemistry, and behavior.
In 1976, Fowler and her colleagues designed and synthesized a radioactively "tagged" form of sugar that is now used widely to study brain function and also to diagnose and plan treatment for cancer. Another of her major accomplishments was the development of the first radiotracers to map monoamine oxidase (MAO), a brain enzyme that regulates the levels of other nerve-cell communication chemicals and one of the two major enzymes involved in neurotransmitter regulation in the brain and peripheral organs. Using these radiotracers, she discovered that smokers have reduced levels of MAO in their brains and lungs.
Source: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/women-scientists/darleane-hoffman.html ; https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=110291
Robert M. Mokaya
Robert Minge Mokaya OBE is a Kenyan-British chemist who is Professor of Materials Chemistry and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement at the University of Nottingham. Mokaya holds a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award.
In 1996 Mokaya was named an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Advanced Fellow, and by 2000 he had been made a lecturer at the University of Nottingham. In 2008 he was appointed Professor of Materials Chemistry. In 2017 Mokaya was awarded a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.
He investigates novel materials for carbon sequestration, focussing primarily on hydrogen fuel cells. Mokaya considers porous materials and their structure-property relationships. Nanostructured porous materials contain significant internal volume, which can be used for enhanced gas storage. Amongst these, Mokaya has studied mesoporous molecular sieves, porous carbons and zeolite templated carbons. He forms the nanoporous carbons by filling organic materials into porous inorganic structures, then heating them to the temperature at which they turn into pure carbon.
Source: https://www.chemistryworld.com/culture/robert-mokaya-i-have-been-lucky-to-open-a-lot-of-doors/4015901.article; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mokaya
Maria Augusta Arruda
Dr. Arruda is a Professor at the University of Nottingham and serves as the Diplomat and Scientific Communicator. Her research is focused on understanding signaling pathways that govern inflammatory responses. She coordinates the Capes-Nottingham Program in New Drug Discovery. She was also awarded the L'Oréal-ABC-UNESCO Award for Women in Science in 2008.
Source: https://www.bwisnetwork.co.uk/post/bhmwithbwis19_04, https://twitter.com/LatinXChem/status/1281284774095540226
Polly Arnold (b. 1972)
Polly Louise Arnold is director of the chemical sciences division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. She previously held the Crum Brown chair in the School of Chemistry, University of Edinburgh from 2007 to 2019 and an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) career fellowship. Arnold's research focuses on exploratory synthetic chemistry, particularly in making complexes that exhibit unusual structure-bonding in early transition metal, and lanthanide and actinide chemistry. Such knowledge underpins the discovery of catalysts and our understanding of the behaviour of nuclear waste.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polly_Arnold; https://cen.acs.org/articles/100/i12/Polly-Arnold-explores-the-chemistry-of-rare-earths-and-radioactive-elements.html