Women in science - we can do it!

On Tuesday, last week, the entire world celebrated the International Women’s Day. Have you ever stopped to think about women in science? If not, here is a list of 5 important females that made the difference in an area dominated by men.

1. Marie Curie ( 1867-1934)

Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and the only one ever to win two: one in Physics, for her work in the discovery of spontaneous radioactivity and another in Chemistry, for her research about radioactivity. She discovered elements such as polonium and uranium, which would further assist the creation of what we know as “X-rays”.

2. Lise Meitner (1878-1968)

 Lisa Meitner was an Austrian nuclear physicist. She was a key member of a group that discovered nuclear fission in uranium, when it gained an extra neutron. The results were published in 1939, and, in 1944, one of her colleagues, Otto Hahn, won the Nobel Prize for the discovery, excluding Meitner’s contributions to the research. This is considered of the biggest mistakes ever made by the Nobel Prize Committee.

3. Maria Mitchell (1818-1889)

Maria Mitchell was the first American female to become a professional astronomer. In 1847, when she was still a 28 year old amateur astronomer, she discovered a comet before unknown to scientist. The object is called “Ms. Mitchell’s Comet”, formally recognized as C/1847 T1. She received a medal from Frederick IV, king of Denmark, and was the first woman to chosen a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science.

4. Melissa Franklin (1957)

Melissa Franklin is an experimental particle physicist at

Harvard University, where she is Department Chair.  She leaded a team at the Fermi National Acceleration Lab, where they managed to detect the first signs of exotic particles such as quarks and the Higgs Boson.

Franklin was the first woman to be receive tenure at the Harvard Physics Department.

( Note: She never finished high school.)

5. Irène Joliot-Curie (1897-1956)

Daughter of Marie Curie, Irène Joliot-Curie followed her mother’s steps and also pursued a career in Science, more specifically Chemistry. In 1935, she received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of what is called “artificial radioactivity”. Together with her husband, she was also able to turn boron into radioactive nitrogen, aluminum into phosphorus and magnesium into silicon.

Credits:


http://famousfemalescientists.com/