13 questions · Society & Everyday
The history of women in science follows a pattern that repeats with uncomfortable regularity: they do the work, and the credit goes elsewhere. Lise Meitner explained nuclear fission from exile, and the Nobel Prize went to her colleague Otto Hahn alone. Rosalind Franklin produced the decisive X-ray image of DNA, and her name became a footnote. How much Mileva Marić, Einstein’s first wife and a physicist herself, contributed to his early work is still debated today. For decades hardly anyone knew that the trajectories of the first American spaceflights were calculated by Katherine Johnson, or that the Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr co-invented the frequency-hopping technique on which Wi-Fi and Bluetooth build today. And yet there they are. Marie Curie is still the only person with Nobel Prizes in two different natural sciences. Ada Lovelace described the first computer program for a machine that was never built. Grace Hopper convinced the world that computers could be programmed in something close to English. Florence Nightingale proved with statistics that hygiene saved more lives than the scalpel. Others changed our picture of ourselves: Jane Goodall saw a chimpanzee make a tool and forced science to redefine what it means to be human; Dian Fossey, author of “Gorillas in the Mist”, was murdered while protecting the mountain gorillas. And some left the planet altogether: Valentina Tereshkova orbited the Earth alone in 1963 as the first woman in space, and Christina Koch spent 328 days in space, longer than any woman before her.
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Foto: Fotograv. - Generalstabens Litografiska Anstalt Stockholm · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Marie Curie
Nobel Prize in Physics 1903 and Chemistry 1911; she discovered polonium and radium.
💡 Did you know? She remains the only person with Nobel Prizes in two different sciences.
Valentina Tereshkova
The Soviet cosmonaut orbited the Earth solo.
💡 Did you know? She stayed in space for almost three days.
Dian Fossey
Her book 'Gorillas in the Mist' became famous; she fought poaching.
💡 Did you know? She was murdered at her research station in 1985.
Foto: Unbekannt · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Mileva Marić
She studied physics with Einstein in Zurich.
💡 Did you know? Her possible contribution to his early work is still debated today.
Christina Koch
The NASA astronaut also took part in the first all-female spacewalk.
💡 Did you know? She is slated to fly to the Moon on the Artemis programme.
Foto: Margaret Sarah Carpenter · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Ada Lovelace
She wrote algorithms for Charles Babbage's planned calculating machine.
💡 Did you know? She was the daughter of the poet Lord Byron.
Jane Goodall
The British primatologist is also known as an environmental activist.
💡 Did you know? She observed that chimpanzees use tools.
Foto: H. Lenthall, London · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Florence Nightingale
In the Crimean War she became famous as 'the Lady with the Lamp'.
💡 Did you know? She used statistics and charts to save lives.
Katherine Johnson
Her calculations were crucial for the first US spaceflights.
💡 Did you know? Astronaut John Glenn had her personally check the numbers before his flight.
Foto: MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Rosalind Franklin
Her famous 'Photo 51' was central to discovering the structure of DNA.
💡 Did you know? She died before the Nobel Prize for the discovery was awarded.
Foto: Harris & Ewing · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Lise Meitner
Her collaborator Otto Hahn received the Nobel Prize; she was overlooked.
💡 Did you know? Element 109, meitnerium, is named after her.
Grace Hopper
She helped drive the development of compilers and the language COBOL.
💡 Did you know? She helped popularise the term 'bug' for a computer fault.
Hedy Lamarr
Her 'frequency hopping' is seen as a forerunner of modern wireless tech.
💡 Did you know? For a long time her role as an inventor was entirely unknown.
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