The most important female scientists in history

Over time, the presence of women in STEM areas (an acronym for science, technology, engineering and medicine) has been increasing. But if you ask us about notable women scientists It is common for Marie Curie’s name to come up with few accompaniments in history.

However, there have been many women who have contributed significant advances to various areas of science throughout history.

In fact, we can find examples in Greco-Roman antiquity. So much so that the oldest name on this list is shrouded in mystery. It is Mary the Jewessalso known as Mary the Hebrew or Miriam the Prophetess. Very little is known about this ancient proto-scientist. It is estimated that she lived between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD and we know of her existence because of the interest shown in her by ancient alchemists.

Her contributions to science would have been diverse, but we can highlight two. The first is of a popular nature: Mary the Jewess is the Mary we refer to when we talk about the “bain-marie”. The second is of scientific significance, since the sources we have They attribute to him the discovery of the formula for hydrochloric acid.

Hypatia of Alexandria Not only was she one of the first female scientists we know of, Hellenic mathematics She became a martyr to science when she was tortured and executed in the mid-410s AD.

Hypatia’s contributions were not limited to mathematics. In addition to contributing new algebraic symbols that facilitated the communication of knowledge in this field, the early scientist also devoted herself to astronomy, through the study of the work of Ptolemy.

The life of Hypatia was brought to the big screen in 2009, something that has not happened with the next protagonist: Lise Meitner. What’s more, despite her contributions to the events described in the recent Oppenheimer, the plot of the film tiptoes around the “mother of the atomic bomb.” Together with Otto Hahn, this German demonstrated the divisibility of uranium nuclei and the resulting release of energy. In other words, nuclear fission.

Meitner was forgotten by the cinema and by the Nobel Prize committee, which in 1944 received the award in the discipline of chemistry. But she is not the only one. Another important example is that of Jocelyn Bell Burnell. This British woman was born in 1943 It was the first in observe a pulsara type of neutron star characterized by emitting regular “pulses” of radio waves.

Bell, then a PhD student, designed with her thesis supervisor a radio antenna that would capture this type of object for the first time. The discovery was worth a Nobel Prize, but Bell was not among the winners. As a curious note, a later observation of the discovered pulsar, PSR B1919+21, ended up illustrating one of the most famous covers in music: the Unknown Pleasures de Joy Division.

The list of those “ignored” by the Swedish academy has more members. Like the one from Chien-Shiung WuThe knowledge of this Chinese-born scientist also contributed to the advent of the “nuclear age.”

The so-called “first lady of physics” made various contributions, but perhaps the most significant was the experiment that bears her name, the “Wu experiment.” The experiment demonstrated that parity conservation was not universal, since it was not observed in the strong nuclear interaction. Proof that sometimes scientific advances occur by obliterating some well-established preconceptions. The experiment was once again worth a Nobel Prize, but not for the scientist.

Women and technology

The contribution of women in the technological field is also worth mentioning. In this sense, the first name that comes to mind is probably that of Augusta Ada Byronthe Countess of Lovelace. Lord Byron’s daughter did not excel in literature but in science, and instead allied herself with Charles Babbage to create an “analytical machine.” Lovelace’s contribution to this protocomputing It was significant: we owe the algorithm to her.

Another woman who would leave her mark on the information age was Grace Hopper, “Amazing Grace”. During World War II, Hopper was part of the Harvard Mark I computer program, but her contribution to science would go further, all thanks to her work in the development of the first compiler and the COBOL programming language. A language that is 65 years old but still in use.

Austrian-born actress and engineer Hedy Lamarr also made her contribution to the war effort. Lamarr helped the Allies on various fronts, but the most significant was in communications. Lamarr’s work would help the Allies keep their telecommunications secret and, decades later, would serve as the basis for a very different application: the development of WiFi.

We can close this compilation of women who have written the history of science with perhaps the most recent entry: Katalin Karikó. Unlike her other colleagues on this list, Karikó would receive the award from the Swedish academy. Her contribution to science: the development of vaccines based on messenger RNA, a technology that would not only accelerate the end of the Covid pandemic but has opened countless new fronts in the fight against diseases as diverse as cancer.

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Image | Hypatia of Alexandria, Julius Kronberg / Lise Meitner, anonymous photo.