women scientists - article

8/13/2019 Women Scientists - Article

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Feature Story 1108

Women Scientists WhoChanged The World

The history of women in science is often a tale of unrecognisedtalent, overwhelming male prejudice and tragic circumstances. Inmany cases, pioneering work was not taken seriously, or had to beattributed to male partners or colleagues in order to be accepted. Inseveral cases, the recognition they deserved arrived only many yearslater. Despite this, there are a handful of brilliant women scientistswho have changed our lives and the way we see the world.

Take theexampleof Hypatia (c370 415). Atthe height ofher fame, thistalented Greekmathematician,astronomer

and philosopher was head of theNeoplatonic school in Alexandria

and a highly respected teacher. Butthis was a time of a religious powerstruggle between pagans and Chris-tians. Being a pagan, Hypatia wastargeted by a mob of angry Chris-tians, dragged through the streets,killed then finally burned. Today,Hypatias legacy remains as the first

recorded female scientist in history.

Barbara McClintock (1902 - 1992)was a genetics researcher decadesahead of her time. Working withmaize plants, she proposed the con-cept of the jumping gene.Certain sequences of DNA , shesaid, can move around to differ-ent positions within the genomeof a single cell, a process known as

transposition. The jumping aroundof genes affects the DNA contentof the cell and causes visible muta-tions such as different leaf colour orplant height. Her ideas were receivedwith intense skepticism by her peers.Only through tireless and dedicatedresearch was her work finally recog-


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nised with the Nobel Prize in 1983, anastonishing 30 years after her initialdiscovery. Thanks to McClintockswork, the concept of genetic transposi-tion, found not only in maize but also

in nature everywhere from bacteria tohumans, is now recognised as a majorbreakthrough in genetics. Researcherstoday utilise transposition to createand study novel mutants such as anti-biotic resistant bacteria.

Marie Curie (1867 1934)Born MariaSklodowska,Marie Curiesachievements

make her oneof the greatscientists ofall time. Win-ner of twoNobel Prizes(the firstperson to do

so), she was the first woman to teachat the Sorbonne in Paris. Together,with her husband Pierre Curie, theydiscovered two new chemical ele-

ments: polonium and radium. She wasalso a model scientist, preferring notto patent her radium isolation processso that other scientists could researchunhindered. Sadly, her lifetime ofdedicated research in radioactivityalmost certainly contributed to herdeath from leukaemia in 1934. TheCuries opened the door to modern

uses ofradiation,includingmedicaltreat-

ments forcancer.Element96, Cu-rium, wasnamed in

Pierre and Maries honour.

Irene Joliot-Curie (1897-1956)In many ways,Irene Joliot-Cu-ries life echoed

that of herfamous mother,Marie Curie.Along withher husbandFrederic, theystudied radio-

activity, and were the first to create anartificially radioactive element, win-ning them the Nobel Prize in Chem-istry in 1935. Irenes work on heavyelements was a major contributor to

thediscov-ery ofnuclearfission thefunda-mentalproc-

ess behind nuclear energy and atomicweapons. She also taught at theSorbonne and received many honours,just like her mother, but tragically,also like her mother, she contracted

leukaemia through her work and diedin 1956.

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910 -1994)

British scientistCrowfoot used thenew technique ofx-ray crystallographyand the first power-ful computers todiscover the mo-

lecular structures ofpenicillin, vitamin B12 and insulin. Atthe time, even simple structures werevery difficult to photograph, and herwork on mapping complex proteins ishailed asa greatachieve-ment.With thediscoveryof the

structureof these molecules, scientists werethen able to modify and synthesisenew varieties of penicillin, insulinand B12 - helping to save countlesslives. Despite her talents and tenureat Oxford University, male-dominatedtraditions meant Crowfoot was barredfrom faculty club meetings. As well

as being a leading scientist, winningthe Nobel Prize in 1964, DorothyCrowfoot Hodgkin was an active hu-manitarian who campaigned for worldpeace and disarmament

Caroline Lucretia Herschel (1750-1848)

Herschel was a tal-ented singer, receiv-ing many plauditsfor her vocal ability.But she turned downa lucrative career inmusic for an entirelydifferent discipline

astronomy. When her famous brother

William, discoverer of the planetUranus, was appointed the Astrono-mer Royal by King George III, Carolinejoined him as his full time assistant,building telescopes, making notes andworking lengthy calculations whilehe scoured the night sky. In her sparetime, Caroline also swept the skiesfor new objects and discovered 3 newnebulaeand 8comets.

Hereffortswerefullyrecog-nisedby theKingand the


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Royal Society, as she received manyhonours for her achievements. Caro-line Herschel will be remembered asthe first woman officially recognisedfor a scientific position and the firstprofessional female astronomer. Theasteroid Lucretia, was named in her

honour.

Rosalind Franklin (1920 1958)The race to map the structure ofDNA was won in 1953 when JamesWatson and Francis Crick publishedtheir famous paper in Nature. But itwas a British scientist called RosalindFranklin who arguably contributed

the final piece of the DNAjigsaw with her high qual-ity x-ray crystallographicimages. The unpublished

data was crucial to Watsonand Crick who were finallyable to deduce the helicalnature of the molecule.

Tragically, at the age of37, Franklin contractedovarian cancer and diedin 1958. Although hersupervisor Maurice Wilkinsshared the Nobel Prize in1962 with Watson andCrick, her contributionto the DNA race was left

unrecognised for years.Rosalind Franklin is nowremembered for her vitalcontribution to the dis-covery of the structure ofDNA.

Lise Meitner (1878 1968)The early20th Cen-tury phys-ics com-

munity wasa male-dominatedprofession.Femalescientistswereconsideredat best

curiosities, at worst, positively discour-aged from taking up research. Afterfinishing her PhD, Lise Meitner movedto Berlin to study under Max Planck.

There she met chemist Otto Hahn,who was to be her collaborator inthe new field of radioactivity. Faculty

gender rules forbade Meitner to work

in the laboratories, so they set up theirown lab in a carpenters workshop.Meitners work was crucial to thediscovery that an atom of uraniumcould be split using neutrons to yieldhuge amounts of energy. She was firstto coin the term nuclear fission - theprocess behind modern nuclear powerstations and atomic weapons. Howev-er, it was her collaborator, Otto Hahn,who was awarded the Nobel Prize in1944, while Meitner was ignored. Be-

cause she was of Jewish descent andlived in Nazi Germany, she was forcedto flee for Sweden in 1938 after Hit-lers annexation of Austria. Althoughcontinuing to work on nuclear fission,she refused to collaborate on theManhattan Project the secret mis-sion to produce the first atomic bomb.Her legacy today is her reputation as

a pioneer in nuclear physics, a bril-liant female scientist who succeededagainst the bastion of male prejudice.In honour of her contribution to phys-ics, element 109, Meitnerium wasnamed after her.

Ada Lovelace (1815-1852)Ada, Countess of Lovelace, was thedaughter of romantic poet Lord Bryon.

She never met herfather and wasraised by her domi-neering mother,who encouragedAda Lovelace topursue an interest

in mathematics,music and elitesocial circles. Atthe age of 17, she

met Charles Babbage, Lucasian Profes-sor of Mathematics at CambridgeUniversity and inventor of the dif-ference engine, an early mechanicalcalculator. Babbage was to becomeher lifelong friend and Ada was asked


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to translate and articulate his ideas foran analytical engine what we wouldcall today an all-purpose computer.

The analytical engine was never con-

structed, but historians agree that AdaLovelaces visualization of the machinewas a remarkable foresight of things tocome almost a century later. Sadly, thefinal years of her life were consumedwith deteriorating health, drink, opiumaddiction and gambling debts. Shedied at the age of 36 of cancer but herreputation remains - the US Depart-ment of Defense named a computerlanguage, ADA, after her, and herimage is on Microsofts authenticationhologram sticker.

Jocelyn Bell (1943 -)Bell is widelyknown as the dis-coverer of pulsars rapidly spinningcollapsed stars thatemit strong radiosignals. But shealmost missed aneducation when,

at 11 years old, she failed her school

exams the only route to highereducation in 1950s Northern Ireland.Her parents, however, supported herthrough boarding school in Englandwhere her passion for astronomybegan. It was whilst working on herPhD at Cambridge University that shenoticed unusual data in the kilometresof radio telescope readouts she was

examining. Along with her supervisor,Anthony Hewish, she eliminated theidea that these came from interferenceor even alien signals, dubbed littlegreen men, and deduced they mustoriginate from pulsars. It was a land-mark achievement in the astronomi-cal community and she went on todiscover many more pulsars. However,there was controversy when the 1974Nobel Prize for physics went to her su-pervisors Anthony Hewish and MartinRyle for the discovery of pulsars. Manyargued that she should

have received or at least shared theprize, but Jocelyn Bell went on to re-ceive many honours and is now one o fthe very few female physics professorsin the UK.

Mary Leakey (1913 1996)Mary Leakeys early education was

not promising. She was expelled ona number of occasions from conventschool, and it wasnt until she wenton a family holiday to the Dordogne

and visited the prehistoric caves thatMary resolved to dedicate her life tostudying prehistory. In 1933 she metand later married anthropologist LouisLeakey.

Together,they dis-coveredthe veryfirst fossilape skullin 1947.

They con-

tinued to unearth important hominidfossils including a 2 million year old

hu-manskullandmanyolderHomospe-cies.After

thedeathofLouis,Marycontin-ued to

work and in 1978 her team made theirmost impressive discovery - the Laetoli

footprints in Tanzania. These footprintswere made in wet volcanic ash some3.75 million years ago by some of thefirst upright walking hominids. Togeth-

er with her husband, Mary Leakeysdedicated search for early man hashelped shape our current understand-ing of human evolution.

Unrecognised massesDistinguished women scientists havebeen few and far between. Yet thereare also the legion of wives, sistersand mothers who patiently supported,nurtured and became the backboneto many of the great male scientistsin history. The women who did rise to

prominence have deepened our under-standing of the world despite manyobstacles. Today, the gender bias andsocial barriers from the past are nolonger so heavily weighted againstwomen, but the numbers enteringscience today are still much lower thanmen. Government and institutions arehoping to change that, and perhapsthe remarkable story of these womenpioneers will help inspire the nextgeneration to extend the frontiers of

science.

ENDS 1820 WORDSWritten by Seymour Yang 2004 SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

2013 Science Photo Library


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For further information, please contact: [email protected] All images are copyright, please credit images as stated on the captions

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