407: Wang Zhenyi Astronomer and Author Born: 1768, Anhui Province, China Died: 1797, China Zhenyi was famous in her own time, during the Qing Dynasty, which broke feudal customs, especially the sources that state she taught male students. She contributed to the fields of astronomy, medicine, and poetry, all taught to her by her father…
“Indians, who are not well treated in their servitude by the Dutch, use [the peacock’s flower seeds] to abort their children so that they will not become slaves like them.” 406: Maria Sibylla Merian Entomologist, Naturalist, and Scientific Illustrator Born: 2 April 1647, Holy Roman Empire (Present-day Frankfurt am Main, Germany) Died: 13 January 1717,…
398: Gertrude Elion Pharmacologist Born: 23 January 1918, New York City, New York, United States of America Died: 21 February 1999, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America Gertrude helped create prescriptions to help treat leukemia, gout, malaria, herpes, and other diseases. Deciding to enter the field of pharmacology occurred to Gertrude after watching…
“…It soon became apparent to me that a black female with a Ph.D. in psychology was an unwanted anomaly in New Your City in the early 1940’s” 397: Mamie Phipps Clark Psychologist Born: 18 April 1917, Hot Springs, Arkansas, United States of America Died: 11 August 1983, New York City, New York, United States of…
396: Chien-Shiung Wu Experimental Physicist Born: 31 May 1912 Liuhe, Taicang, Suzhou, China Died: 16 February 1997, New York City, New York, United States of America Wu helped work with the Manhattan Project to develop the first Atomic Bombs. She also helped create a better version of the Geiger Counter. While not known for certain,…
395: Dorothy Hodgkin Biochemist and Crystallographer Born: 12 May 1910, Cairo, Egypt Died: 29 July 1994, Ilmington, United Kingdom Dorothy was the first person to create an x-ray diffraction photograph of a protein. She helped discover the structure of penicillin, Vitamin B12, and Insulin. In 1964, she was solely awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry….
394: Rita Levi-Montalcini Neurologist and Physician Born: 22 April 1909, Turin, Italy Died: 30 December 2012, Rome, Italy Rita volunteered with the Allied Health Service during World War II in her native Italy, and continued to work as a doctor in a refugee camp for a year afterward. She studied the growth of nerve fibers…
393: Rachel Carson Marine Biologist, Author, and Conservationist Born: 27 May 1907, Springdale, Pennsylvania, United States of America Died: 14 April 1964, Silver Spring, Maryland, United States of America Rachel’s book Silent Spring launched the movement to eliminate harmful pesticides (like DDT) from being used through crop dusting and other widespread uses. Her work would…
392: Maria Goeppert Mayer Theoretical Physicist Born: 28 June 1906, Kattowitz, Upper Silesia, German Empire (Present-day Katowice, Poland) Died: 20 February 1972, San Diego, California, United States of America Through her father’s side Maria was the 7th straight generational university professor. She earned her PhD in theoretical physics in 1930 but would also work in…
391: Barbara McClintock Cytogeneticist Born: 16 June 1902, Hartford, Connecticut, United States of America Died: 2 September 1992, Huntington, New York, United States of America Barbara’s early work was pioneering in the field of DNA replication (her work specifically was in maize), otherwise known as Jumping Genes. She received a PhD from Cornell University in…