Andrea Ghez

Andrea Ghez (1965 -     )

American astrophysicist, professor, researcher, and author.

Co-recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics

"for the discovery of a supermassive compact object

at the centre of our galaxy" (otherwise known as a black hole).

Only the fourth woman to be so recognized since

Marie Curie's Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903.

Member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American

Philosophical Society, and the American Physical Society.

Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter (1866 - 1943)

English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist.

She is best known for her charmingly illustrated children's books

featuring animals, such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902).

Before her literary success, however, Beatrix Potter was keenly interested

in mycology, the scientific study of fungi, producing brilliantly observed

illustrations of many types. She wrote a learned paper on mycology that

was dismissed and ignored because of her gender. It was only on her death,

when she left hundreds of her mycological artworks to a museum, 

that her scientific talents were recognized.

Today, Potter’s precise and beautiful

paintings and drawings of fungi are helping

modern mycologists in their efforts to identify species.

Her best-selling books enabled Beatrix Potter to become

a prosperous farmer and a prize-winning sheep breeder.

She bought several farms in the Lake District to preserve

its unique hill country landscape. Much of that land

now constitutes the Lake District National Park.

Margaret W. Rossiter

Margaret W. Rossiter (1944 - 2025)

American historian of science at Cornell University.

In 1993, she coined the term The Matilda Effect to describe

the systematic erasure of women's achievements in science

over the centuries and the theft and attribution of

their work and discoveries to male colleagues.

She named it in honour of suffragist and abolitionist

Matilda Joslyn Gage who had sounded the alarm 

about this practice more than a century earlier.

Following decades of research, her 3-volume work,

Women Scientists in America, restored women to

their rightful place in the history of science.

Her books inspired programs and policies which ensure 

that today’s women in STEM are properly

credited, published, and remembered.

Katherine Johnson

Katherine Johnson (1918 - 2020)

American mathematician;

her complex manual calculations of orbital mechanics

as a NASA employee were critical to the success

of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights;

with little recognition at the time, she was known as

a "human computer" for her tremendous mathematical capability;

after the book and movie Hidden Figures made her

accomplishments known, she received many long-overdue

honours, including a Presidential Medal of Freedom (2015),

Congressional Gold Medal (2019) and posthumous

induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame (2021).

Marie Tharp

Marie Tharp (1920 - 2006)

American geologist and oceanographic cartographer;

her 1952 discovery and mapping of the 10,000-mile-long

Mid-Atlantic Ridge proved that the sea floor was spreading and

caused a paradigm shift in earth science, vindicating

the then-controversial theories of plate tectonics and continental drift;

many scientists infamously dismissed her explanation as "girl talk."

Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace (1815 - 1852)

English mathematician and writer;

daughter of the poet Lord Byron and

reformer Anne Isabella Milbanke;

chiefly known for her work with Charles Babbage and his

proposed mechanical general-purpose computer which

anticipated the essential features of modern electronic computers;

she was the first to point out the possibility of encoding information

besides mere arithmetical figures for pure calculation.

Mary Anning

Mary Anning (1799 - 1847)

English fossil collector, dealer, and palaeontologist;

she made many groundbreaking fossil discoveries in

the Jurassic marine fossil beds near her coastal home;

her findings helped change scientific thinking about

prehistoric life and the history of the Earth.

From a poor family and with only a basic education,

she struggled financially all her life;

although women were not allowed to join

the Geological Society of London, some male geologists

strove to arrange an income, a pension later in life,

and recognition for her important achievements.

Flossie Wong-Staal

Flossie Wong-Staal (1946 - 2020)

Chinese-American virologist and molecular biologist;

first scientist to clone HIV and determine the function of its genes,

which was a major step in proving that HIV is the cause of AIDS;

her genetic mapping of the virus made it possible to develop HIV tests.

Kalpana Chawla

Kalpana Chawla (1962 - 2003)

American astronaut and aerospace engineer;

first woman of South Asian origin to fly to space;

one of the seven crew members who died in the

Space Shuttle Columbia disaster;

posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor,

the NASA Space Flight Medal, and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal.

Alice Ball

Alice Ball (1892 - 1916)

African American chemist who developed

an effective treatment for leprosy;

the University of Hawaii's first female and first African American

recipient of a Master's degree, and chemistry professor;

following her untimely death at 24, her original work and

discoveries regarding leprosy treatment were appropriated by

a high-ranking male colleague and passed off as his own accomplishments;

the truth was not discovered by historians until the 1990s,

following which many honours were belatedly extended to her.

Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr (1914 - 2000)

Austrian-born American actor and avid inventor;

1940s Hollywood bombshell beauty and movie star at MGM Studio;

in World War II, a pioneer of frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology,

(a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes designed

to defeat the threat of radio jamming by the Axis);

posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.

Lise Meitner

Lise Meitner (1878 - 1968)

Austrian-Swedish physicist;

one of the scientists instrumental in the discovery of nuclear fission;

driven from her university positions in Germany

by Nazi Germany's Nuremberg Laws against Jews;

nominated 49 times for a Nobel Prize but was excluded

from the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for nuclear fission.

Grace Hopper

Grace Hopper (1906 - 1992)

American computer scientist, mathematician, and

United States Navy Rear Admiral;

a pioneer of computer programming, she devised the theory of

machine-independent programming languages, and created

FLOW-MATIC and COBOL;

writer of the world's first computer manual.

Shirley Ann Jackson

Shirley Ann Jackson (1946 -     )

American physicist.

First African American woman to earn a doctorate

at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, 1973).

Inductee of the National Women's Hall of Fame (1998) for

"her significant contributions as a distinguished scientist and

advocate for education, science, and public policy".

Marie Curie

Marie Curie (1867 - 1934)

Polish-French physicist and chemist

Discoverer of polonium and radium

Pioneer researcher of radioactivity

Nobel Laureate in Physics (1903)

Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (1911)

First person to win the Nobel Prize two times.

Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson (1907 - 1964)

American marine biologist, writer, and conservationist;

her seminal book Silent Spring (1962) about

the harm caused by synthetic pesticides

is credited with helping to launch the 

global environmental movement.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (1900-1979)

British-American astronomer and astrophysicist;

Discoverer of the elemental chemical makeup

(hydrogen and helium) of stars and the sun;

Harvard’s first female Professor and female Department Chair.

Dian Fossey

Dian Fossey (1932 - 1985)

American primatologist, conservationist,

and animal rights activist;

extensively studied mountain gorilla groups

in Rwanda from 1966 until her murder in 1985;

author of Gorillas in the Mist (1983).

Chien-Shiung Wu

Chien-Shiung Wu (1912 - 1997)

Chinese-American nuclear physicist;

Part of the Manhattan Project;

Discoveries made from her "Wu Experiment" won

her two male colleagues the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics,

while she was overlooked;

She did receive several physics awards in the 1960s and 1970s,

including the inaugural Wolf Prize in Physics in 1978.

Maryam Mirzakhani

Maryam Mirzakhani (1977 - 2017)

Iranian mathematician and

professor of mathematics,

winner of Fields Medal, 2014,

the most prestigious award in mathematics.