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UnrepentantLiberal

(11,700 posts)
Mon Jul 2, 2012, 12:24 AM Jul 2012

Ten Historic Female Scientists You Should Know

Before Marie Curie, these women dedicated their lives to science and made significant advances



When it comes to the topic of women in science, Marie Curie usually dominates the conversation. After all, she discovered two elements, was the first women to win a Nobel Prize, in 1903, and was the first person to win a second Nobel, in 1911. But Curie was not the first female scientist. Many other brilliant, dedicated and determined women have pursued science over the years.

Emilie du Chatelet (1706 –1749)

Gabrielle-Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, the daughter of the French court’s chief of protocol, married the marquis du Chatelet in 1725. She lived the life of a courtier and bore three children. But at age 27, she began studying mathematics seriously and then branched into physics. This interest intensified as she began an affair with the philosopher Voltaire, who also had a love of science. Their scientific collaborations—they outfitted a laboratory at du Chatelet’s home, Chateau de Cirey, and, in a bit of a competition, each entered an essay into a contest on the nature of fire (neither won)—outlasted their romance. Du Chatelet’s most lasting contribution to science was her French translation of Isaac Newton’s Principia, which is still in use today. At age 43, she fell in love with a young military officer and became pregnant; she died following complications during the birth of their child.

Caroline Herschel (1750 –1848)

Herschel was little more than the household drudge for her parents in Hanover, Germany (she would later describe herself as the “Cinderella of the family”), when her older brother, William, brought her to England in 1772 to run his household in Bath. After she mastered the art of singing—to accompany William, who was the organist for the Octagon Chapel—her brother switched careers and went into astronomy. Caroline followed. In addition to assisting her brother in his observations and in the building of telescopes, Caroline became a brilliant astronomer in her own right, discovering new nebulae and star clusters. She was the first woman to discover a comet (she discovered eight in total) and the first to have her work published by the Royal Society. She was also the first British woman to get paid for her scientific work, when William, who had been named the king’s personal astronomer after his discovery of Uranus in 1781, persuaded his patron to reward his assistant with an annual salary. After William’s death in 1822, Caroline retired to Hanover. There she continued her astronomical work, compiling a catalogue of nebulae—the Herschels’ work had increased the number of known star clusters from 100 to 2,500. She died in 1848 at age 97 after receiving many honors in her field, including a gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society.

Mary Anning (1799 –1847)

In 1811, Mary Anning’s brother spotted what he thought was a crocodile skeleton in a seaside cliff near the family’s Lyme Regis,England, home. He charged his 11-year-old sister with its recovery, and she eventually dug out a skull and 60 vertebrae, selling them to a private collector for £23. This find was no croc, though, and was eventually named Ichthyosaurus,the “fish-lizard.” Thus began Anning’s long career as a fossil hunter. In addition to ichthyosaurs, she found long-necked plesiosaurs, a pterodactyl and hundreds, possibly thousands, of other fossils that helped scientists to draw a picture of the marine world 200 million to 140 million years ago during the Jurassic. She had little formal education and so taught herself anatomy, geology, paleontology and scientific illustration. Scientists of the time traveled from as far away as New York City to Lyme Regis to consult and hunt for fossils with Anning.

More: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Ten-Historic-Female-Scientists-You-Should-Know.html
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Ten Historic Female Scientists You Should Know (Original Post) UnrepentantLiberal Jul 2012 OP
List needs Grace Murray Hopper... PoliticAverse Jul 2012 #1
Does it ever. UnrepentantLiberal Jul 2012 #6
That's *Rear Admiral* Grace Hopper, btw. nt eppur_se_muova Jul 2012 #9
That's who I was thinking of, too!!! nt valerief Jul 2012 #11
I knew them all!!! Yay!!! DeSwiss Jul 2012 #2
I remember reading every biography I could find about Maria xmas74 Jul 2012 #3
Pfft. Any list that doesn't include Hedy Lamarr is incomplete at best. TheWraith Jul 2012 #4
I always liked Stephanie Kwolek jmowreader Jul 2012 #5
Another one: Henrietta Leavitt longship Jul 2012 #7
Not a mathematician in the bunch ? Let's fix that ... eppur_se_muova Jul 2012 #8
And Hedy Lemarr obamanut2012 Jul 2012 #10
I've never ever heard that story. Starry Messenger Jul 2012 #13
It really is! obamanut2012 Jul 2012 #14
My favorite podcast did an episode on her. LeftyMom Sep 2014 #20
This is a great thread. UnrepentantLiberal Jul 2012 #12
Do we have Ada Lovelace yet? Starry Messenger Jul 2012 #15
wonderful article shireen Jul 2012 #16
K&R SunSeeker Jul 2012 #17
This message was self-deleted by its author La Lioness Priyanka Jul 2012 #18
cool. respect to these (sadly) unheralded women pioneers. dionysus Sep 2014 #19
 

UnrepentantLiberal

(11,700 posts)
6. Does it ever.
Mon Jul 2, 2012, 05:27 AM
Jul 2012

I've read a lot of articles about the history of computers and don't remember reading about her. That is just wrong.

 

DeSwiss

(27,137 posts)
2. I knew them all!!! Yay!!!
Mon Jul 2, 2012, 12:44 AM
Jul 2012
- What I loved about these women's stories was the fact that they remained undaunted and achieved so much in the face of direct and often hostile opposition. Which is something that I can appreciate.

Okay, here are three more. No one that I've shown the first one listed here had ever heard of her:

Who Is Patricia Bath?

Who Is Ida Noddack?

Who was Madame C.J. Walker?


K&R

xmas74

(29,761 posts)
3. I remember reading every biography I could find about Maria
Mon Jul 2, 2012, 01:14 AM
Jul 2012

Mitchell when I was a child. Of course, there weren't that many available to me. I believe I found three in my school library-all very short bios in a collection. I found two more that were similar in the public library and they were in books that hadn't been checked out in years. They smelled musty from the lack of use.

She was one of my favorite women to read about. I still smile to this day just thinking about what I'd read about her and how much I wanted to be like her at the time.

TheWraith

(24,331 posts)
4. Pfft. Any list that doesn't include Hedy Lamarr is incomplete at best.
Mon Jul 2, 2012, 01:33 AM
Jul 2012

Three words: "spread spectrum communication."

longship

(40,416 posts)
7. Another one: Henrietta Leavitt
Mon Jul 2, 2012, 07:35 AM
Jul 2012
Henrietta Swan Leavitt

Astronomer who discovered the Cepheid variable star relationship which directly gave rise to Hubble discovery of the expanding universe, and then, Big Bang Cosmology.

So, hers was a crucial discovery.

obamanut2012

(27,802 posts)
10. And Hedy Lemarr
Mon Jul 2, 2012, 11:14 AM
Jul 2012

Yes, the actress, who formulated frequency hopping and spread spectrum communications, which means she invented wireless communication, used from precomputer days by the military until now. Basically, we have cell phones, guided torpedoes, wifi, bluetooth, and many other things because of her.

The US Government never gave her proper credit. Of course.

She was also born in Austria-Hungary, but was a huge Allied patriot during WW II, and was a tireless war bonds fundraiser.

 

UnrepentantLiberal

(11,700 posts)
12. This is a great thread.
Mon Jul 2, 2012, 03:07 PM
Jul 2012

I read every link. I love history and nonfiction. These were very inspiring, brilliant women. I'm glad I came across that article.

Starry Messenger

(32,375 posts)
15. Do we have Ada Lovelace yet?
Mon Jul 2, 2012, 06:23 PM
Jul 2012
http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/lovelace.html

Daughter of Lord Byron and mathematician.

"One of the gentlemanly scientists of the era was to become Ada's lifelong friend. Charles Babbage, Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, was known as the inventor of the Difference Engine, an elaborate calculating machine that operated by the method of finite differences. Ada met Babbage in 1833, when she was just 17, and they began a voluminous correspondence on the topics of mathematics, logic, and ultimately all subjects.

In 1835, Ada married William King, ten years her senior, and when King inherited a noble title in 1838, they became the Earl and Countess of Lovelace. Ada had three children. The family and its fortunes were very much directed by Lady Byron, whose domineering was rarely opposed by King.

Babbage had made plans in 1834 for a new kind of calculating machine (although the Difference Engine was not finished), an Analytical Engine. His Parliamentary sponsors refused to support a second machine with the first unfinished, but Babbage found sympathy for his new project abroad. In 1842, an Italian mathematician, Louis Menebrea, published a memoir in French on the subject of the Analytical Engine. Babbage enlisted Ada as translator for the memoir, and during a nine-month period in 1842-43, she worked feverishly on the article and a set of Notes she appended to it. These are the source of her enduring fame.

Ada called herself "an Analyst (& Metaphysician)," and the combination was put to use in the Notes. She understood the plans for the device as well as Babbage but was better at articulating its promise. She rightly saw it as what we would call a general-purpose computer. It was suited for "developping [sic] and tabulating any function whatever. . . the engine [is] the material expression of any indefinite function of any degree of generality and complexity." Her Notes anticipate future developments, including computer-generated music. "

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