Maria Salomea Sklodowska (Marie Curie) , widely considered the most influential female contributer to the scientific field, was actually the first woman to receive a nobel prize! Not only that, but she was also the first person to receive two nobel prizes in two different fields! Fascinating, right? 

At just 16 years old, she was able to earn a gold metal upon completion of her secondary education at a Russian-controlled school. She was not able to attend university (women were not allowed to attend universities at that time),  but she did attend a "floating university", which was a network of underground classes that Polish students took without the Russian government knowing. After getting married, she turned her focus towards minerals. She was able to discover two new elements: polodium and radium. Maria was also able to develop methods to isolate radioactive isotopes, her research revolutionized physics and chemistry, and laid the foundation for nuclear physics. Her findings also led to radiation therapy. Her findings led to radiation therapy, still used today to treat cancer!

Although James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded a Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for discovering the structure of the DNA molecule, many scientists agree that Rosalind Franklin should be credited for this discovery, too. Upon graduating from Newnham College (to which she won a scholarship to attend), she focused on studying the physical structure of coals and carbonized coals. She gained skill in utilizing x-ray diffraction as an analytical technique. 

She later on X-ray diffraction analysis on the molecular structure of DNA, which she at first concluded that DNA's structure was helical. However, upon further discoveries, she changed her mind. It was then left in the hands of Watson and Crick to develop the double-helix model of the molecule of DNA. Nevertheless, without Franklin's discoveries and contributions to science, we would possibly not know the molecular structure of DNA today, which is an incredibly important branch of biology.

Known for her research in RNA, especially in developing mRNA vaccines, Karikó contributions to science cannot be overstated. Recently there was the covid-19 outbreak, and without her research in mRNA vaccines, we might not have had found a vaccine to that deadly disease! 

The messenger RNA (mRNA) is a molecule essential in the synthesis of proteins, and Karikó had long believed that it could be used for medicine. She and her colleague, Drew Weissman, discovered how to modify mRNA to make it safe and non-inflammatory to be used as a vaccine. This discovery allowed scientists to create the first ever approved mRNA vaccines, which were used to fight covid-19. just imagine where the world might be without her persistence and vision - her work helped save millions of lives. 

Suzana has a bachelor's degree in biology (genetics), a master's in neuroscience, and a PhD in neuroscience. She has fundamentally advanced our understanding of brain evolution, neuron count, and cortical architecture!

She pioneered the isotropic fractionator method, affectionately called "brain soup", which allows for accurate counting of neurons across species. Utilizing this, she was abole to determine that the human brain contains approximately 86 billion neurons, which reshaped our understanding of brain evolution! She and her team applied these neuron-counting techniques to over 100 species, from birds and elephants to primates and rodents. She has also pubicly shared that she was diagnosed with autism as an adult, advocating for neurodiversity and acceptance in the science and society.