385: Edith Clarke The First Female Electrical Engineer Born: 10 February 1883, Ellicott City, Maryland, United States of America Died: 29 October 1959, Olney, Maryland, United States of America Edith was also the first female professor of electrical engineering at the University of Texas Austin (she was also the first female professor of electrical engineering…
383: Lillian Gilbreth Psychologist and Industrial Engineer Born: 24 May 1878, Oakland, California, United States of America Died: 2 January 1972, Phoenix, Arizona, United States of America Lillian was also a mother of twelve. She is credited with helping design kitchen appliances (like the butter and egg shelves inside refrigerator doors and the foot pedal…
“Gender Does Not Matter. You work as a scientist, not as a woman.” 379: Tessy Thomas Missile Engineer Born: April 1963, Alappuzha, India Tessy is the Director General of Aeronautical Systems and the former Project Director for Agni-IV and Agni-V in Missile Defense Research and Development Organization (India). She is the first female scientist to…
378: Françoise Barré-Sinoussi Virologist Born: 30 July 1947, Paris, France Françoise won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2008 (she shared it with three others). The citation for the award reads, “For their discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus,” otherwise known as HIV. That’s right, Françoise and her co-worker discovered HIV (in 1983). They…
376: Shirley Ann Jackson Pioneering Physicist Born: 5 August 1946, Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America Shirley was the first African-American woman to receive a PhD from MIT (in Physics). She was also the second African American woman overall to receive a Physics PhD in the United States. Her research laid the groundwork…
375: Ada Yonath Biologist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009 Born: 22 June 1939, Geula, Jerusalem, Britain Mandate of Palestine (Present-day Israel) Ada received her PhD in 1968. Her work has largely been with ribosomes; beginning in the 1970’s, her hard work became a reality in 2000 with the successful mapping of…
374: Edith M. Flanigen Chemist Who Invented Molecular Sieve Zeolites Born: 28 January 1929, Buffalo, New York, United States of America Zeolites are used in everything from converting crude oil into gasoline and producing oxygen for portable medical oxygen units to cleaning up nuclear waste and even in laundry detergents. Edith started her chemistry career…
372: Anna J Harrison Chemist and the First Woman Elected President of the American Chemical Society Born: 23 December 1912, Benton City, Missouri, United States of America Died: 8 August 1998, Holyoke, Massachusetts, United States of America Anna was a professor of chemistry at Mount Holyoke College for over thirty years. As a child, she…
371: Janaki Ammal Botanist Born: 4 November 1897, Tellichery (Present-day Thalassery), India Died: 7 February 1984, Maduravoyal, Chennai, India Born Name: Edavaleth Kakkat Janaki Ammal Janaki earned her Doctor of Science degree in botany in 1931, becoming the first Indian woman to earn a PhD in botany. She was the first “oriental” (the University News’s…
369: Sofia Kovalevskaya Mathematician and Education Rights Advocate Born: 15 January 1850, Moscow, Russia Died: 10 February 1891, Stockholm, Sweden Original/Alternate Spellings: Sofya, Sophie, or Sonya Sofia stated her exposure to math began at a young age when her room was repapered with her father’s old calculus notes rather than wallpaper (this despite the fact…