10 Women Scientists Who Changed the World Photo

10 Women Scientists Who Changed the World

Women scientists at the head of institutions or large scientific groups are now found all over the world - hardly a surprise, even if the gender imbalance in the field still persists. More surprisingly, even at a time when women could not vote and study with men on an equal footing (or when sexism made women "second-class scientists" - if we are talking about the first half of the 20th century), research talent still found a way through. Women inventors, women engineers and women discoverers have been changing our lives for at least a century and a half - and we are entitled to think that women's earlier contributions to science and technology are simply not documented.

Marie Curie

Treating Tumors with Radiation

The joint research of Pierre and Marie Curie is perhaps the most famous example of a family collaboration in the history of science. However, the theory that Marie used her husband's position in society (and his gender) as a springboard, while in fact her genius did not require a collaborator, also has a certain popularity. It is clear where this theory comes from: most of Skłodowska-Curie's discoveries, as well as the awarding of her second Nobel Prize, happened in her life already after Pierre's death (this also applies to pioneering research on the effects of radiation on cancer cells). Interestingly, the daughter of French scientists, Irène Joliot-Curie, followed in her parents' footsteps not only in the field of scientific interests: like her mother, Irène shared her Nobel Prize, also related to the study of radioactivity, with her husband.

Rosalind Franklin

An X-ray of the structure of a DNA molecule

Rosalind Franklin's role in the discovery of what many consider to be the key scientific achievement of the 20th century was downplayed for decades (due in no small part to Franklin's early death from cancer) - fortunately, this is not the case now. Although the decision of the Nobel Committee, which deprived Rosalind of her share of the prize and honored only James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, cannot be reversed, it is true: Franklin's X-ray analysis of DNA was the missing step that allowed to finally visualize the double helix - which Crick himself, for example, willingly admits.

Lisa Meitner

The physical theory of nuclear fission

If in several other cases where the Nobel Committee ignored the women co-authors of major discoveries, we can partly blame the men working next to those women, then in the case of the working couple Lisa Meitner - Otto Hahn is difficult to suspect any hostility: most likely, all the blame lies with the committee itself. Considered the progenitor of nuclear weapons, Meitner was a pacifist all her conscious life - this conviction must have played a role in the fact that one of the new chemical elements, meitnerium, was named after Meitner not so long ago.

Hedy Lamarr

The algorithm for the modern format of wireless communications

This is the kind of story that would invite accusations of implausibility if it were made into a feature film: a mysterious Hollywood star hailing from Europe and an avant-garde composer with a passion for automating instruments (we're talking about George Entyle) together devise a new way to encode signals that prevents them from being jammed. Lamarr, whose film career continued after World War II, not only saved many U.S. Navy ships from enemy torpedoes (her technology was rediscovered and became widely used already in the 1960s, starting with the Caribbean crisis), but also became the progenitor of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth standards.

Christiane Nüslein-Follhard

The Mechanism of Embryogenesis

Continuing in the tradition of the great Barbara McClintock (aka "Mad Barbara") with her ideas about the mobile elements found in any genome, Nusslein-Follhard combined genetics with embryology. Using the example of fruit flies, Christiana proved that a careful study of how an entire organism develops from a single-celled embryo can allow us to learn a great deal about gene specialization.

Ada Lovelace

Computer algorithm.

The first "program" for a computer is much older than most people think: Charles Babbage, inventor of the mechanical computer, consulted Lovelace (née Byron, daughter of that same Byron) in his work. Whether in 1842 or 1843, Ada wrote the first ever algorithm for Babbage's device (actually the first "program"), but that was not her only contribution to the history of information technology: having inherited from her father a penchant for romance, Lovelace, unlike the practical contemporaries, imagined how machines would not only help people in mathematics, but would change all our lives.

Gertrude Elion

Drugs for leukemia, herpes, and malaria

Although most of the drugs and active ingredients on which the great biochemist Gertrude Elion was involved were discovered and tested in collaboration with various male scientists, her unique research approach, not at all based on the poke method but focused on differences in healthy and pathogenic cells, is primarily to her credit.

Mary Anning

The plesiosaur skeleton.

To say that Anning, who grew up in a carpenter's family, was unlike the British ladies of her time is not to say much: Anning laid the foundations of field paleontology, regularly risking her life and health to discover more and more dinosaur remains in the Dorset coastal cliffs (and this at a time when the importance of such discoveries did not yet seem so obvious). Of course, a woman of ungenerous descent could gain little or no official recognition in mid-nineteenth-century England - but by the end of the century, Anning was canonized as a crucial researcher.

Grace Hopper

Compiler

It is no exaggeration to say that without Grace Hopper's involvement, programming would have looked very different: not only did she write the first compiler program (that is, she proposed the concept of a computer "translator"), but she personally promoted the idea of programming languages not tied to a specific device, which, of course, has long been a standard concept. Her achievements were so significant that she was not finally retired from military service until she was 80 years old at the rank of Rear Admiral.

Dorothy Hodgkin

X-ray structural analysis of biomolecules

Since for many biomolecules their shape is inextricably linked to their function (especially proteins), determining the three-dimensional structure of biopolymers is one of the key tasks of biochemistry. Before the discoveries of Dr. Hodgkin, who modified the well-known technique of X-ray analysis since the beginning of the 20th century, there was simply no simple and convincing way to do this: now 3D structures of proteins are established experimentally all over the world.