All through historical past there have been many ladies who’ve tremendously contributed to science, expertise, engineering, and arithmetic (STEM). Whereas names like Marie Curie and Florence Nightingale are acquainted to most, there are so many ingenious others who might not be as acquainted; ladies who have been leaders of their fields, who made main discoveries, and whose work led to essential social and political change. Under is an inventory of simply among the ladies who’ve made important contributions to the fields of STEM. You may uncover their tales by means of historic newspapers.
Dorothea Dix (1802-1887) was an American educator, social reformer, and humanitarian whose devotion to the welfare of the mentally sick led to widespread reforms within the U.S. and overseas. She lobbied state legislatures and the U.S. Congress to create the primary era of American mental asylums. Through the Civil Battle, she served as Superintendent of Army Nurses.
Maria Mitchell (1818-1889) was the primary acknowledged, skilled girl astronomer in america. In 1847, she found a brand new comet, which bears her title, calculated its orbit, and added a number of new nebulae to sky maps. In 1865, she was one of many first professors employed on the newly founded Vassar College, the place she turned a robust advocate for women’s rights and was later elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Women.
Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) was an Anglo-American doctor who is taken into account the first woman doctor of medicine in modern times. She was the primary girl in America to obtain a medical diploma. All through her profession, she championed the participation of ladies within the medical occupation and finally opened her personal medical college for women.
Mary Edwards Walker (1832-1919) was an American surgeon, ladies’s rights advocate, abolitionist, and suspected Union spy. Through the Civil Battle, she turned the primary feminine surgeon in United States Military and she or he is the one girl in U.S. historical past to obtain the Presidential Medal of Honor (1865) for her service.
Mary Eliza Mahoney (1845-1926) was an American nurse and the primary African American girl to finish the course {of professional} examine in nursing. In 1936, the Nationwide Affiliation of Coloured Graduate Nurses, which later merged with the American Nurses Affiliation, established the Mary Mahoney Medal in her honor, given to a member of the group who has made an impressive contribution to nursing.
Jane Arminda Delano (1862-1919) was an American nurse and educator who founded the American Red Cross Nursing Service and made potential the enlistment of greater than 20,000 U.S. nurses for abroad obligation throughout WWI.
Annie Soar Cannon (1863-1941) was an American astronomer who specialised within the classification of stellar spectra. Amongst her many accolades: she was the primary girl to be awarded an honorary doctorate from the College of Oxford (1925) and the Henry Draper Medal of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences (1931). She was additionally the first woman to become an officer within the American Astronomical Society.
Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte (1865-1915) was the primary American Indian girl to obtain a medical diploma. As a baby, she had watched a sick Indian girl die as a result of the native white physician refused the lady care. She later credited this tragedy as her inspiration to coach as a doctor so she may provide care for the people on the Omaha Reservation. In her outstanding profession she served greater than 1,300 individuals over 450 sq. miles.
Lise Meitner (1878-1968) was an Austrian-born physicist who was a pioneer of atomic research. She collaborated carefully with chemist Otto Hahn, finding out radioactivity for over 30 years. Their joint research led to the discovery of uranium fission in 1938, which might revolutionize nuclear physics and result in the atomic bomb. Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1944 for the joint discovery, however Meitner was not acknowledged for her function within the discovering.
Edith Clarke (1883-1959) was an American electrical engineer with expertise in power systems and was influential within the design of dams throughout the American West, together with Hoover Dam. She was a number one determine in her area and a girl of many firsts: the primary girl elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) in 1948 and the primary girl to current a (prize-winning) paper at an AIEE assembly; the primary girl to earn {an electrical} engineering graduate diploma from the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise (MIT) and the primary girl to show within the engineering division on the College of Texas-Austin.
Frances P. Bolton (1885-1977) was born right into a rich household and pursued a lifetime of philanthropy, politics, and social reform. She was a lifelong advocate of training, healthcare, and civil rights for African Individuals. She is most famous for her contributions to the sphere of nursing and her work in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1943 she sponsored the Bolton Act, which arrange the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps to coach nurses for army and civilian roles in wartime. In whole, the Act supplied $5 million of federal funding to allow ladies to turn out to be nurses and was open to all certified college students whatever the shade of their pores and skin. Consequently, the variety of certified nurses elevated extra shortly, which enabled the U.S. to maintain the struggle effort at residence and overseas.
Katharine Burr Blodgett (1889-1979) was an American physicist and chemist. She was the primary girl to be awarded a Ph.D. in physics from the College of Cambridge in 1926. After receiving her grasp’s diploma, she was employed by Basic Electrical, the place she invented low-reflectance “invisible” glass. Her invention helped to enhance eyeglasses, digital camera lenses, de-icing for aircrafts, poison fuel absorbents, and extra.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas (1890-1998) was a journalist and environmentalist who helped defend the Florida Everglades. As a younger girl, she was a author and editor on the Miami Herald, the newspaper that her father had helped establish in 1910. She turned recognized for her work in nature conservation after her guide Everglades: River of Grass was printed in 1947. Years later, on the age of 79, she based the Associates of the Everglades. She not solely advocated for the atmosphere, but additionally for ladies’s rights and racial equality. She obtained the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993 from President Invoice Clinton.
Dr. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee (1896-1966) was a Chinese language-born American ladies’s rights activist and minister. On the age of sixteen, she turned a acknowledged suffragist and activist when she, on horseback, helped to guide almost 10,000 individuals within the New York suffrage parade (1912). She went on to turn out to be the primary Chinese language girl to earn a Ph.D. in economics at Columbia College. She printed her guide, The Financial Historical past of China, in 1921.
Florence Seibert (1897-1991) was an American biochemist who developed a groundbreaking process that led to a reliable tuberculosis test (TB check), used to detect the possibly lethal virus in infants, kids and adults worldwide. She additionally contributed to the event of security measures for intravenous drug remedy.
Dorothy Boulding Ferebee (1898-1980) was an American obstetrician and civil rights activist. She based the Mississippi Health Project and the Southeast Neighborhood House, which supplied healthcare to probably the most susceptible members of the African American neighborhood. She was a devoted advocate for public well being, civil rights, and girls’s rights, notably in her roles as president of the Nationwide Council of Negro Girls and as a global delegate for the U.S. authorities.
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (1900-1979) was a British-born American astronomer and astrophysicist who proposed in her 1925 doctoral thesis that stars have been composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, which was a groundbreaking discovery on the time. She turned the primary individual–male or feminine–to earn a doctorate in astronomy from Harvard College and would later turn out to be the primary girl to head a department at Harvard because the Chair of the Division of Astronomy.
Grace Hopper (1906-1992) was an American mathematician and rear admiral within the U.S. Navy. She was a pioneer in developing computer technology, serving to to plot the primary business digital pc, and designed a standardized system of pc languages for the U.S. Navy.
Rachel Carson (1907-1964) was an American biologist effectively known for her writings on environmental air pollution and the pure historical past of the ocean. Her prophetic guide Silent Spring (1962) was first serialized in The New Yorker after which turned a bestseller, creating worldwide consciousness of the hazards of environmental air pollution.
Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu (1912-1997) was a Chinese language-born American physicist who supplied the primary experimental proof that the precept of parity conservation doesn’t maintain in weak subtonic interactions. After receiving her Ph.D. in 1940, and all through her profession, she labored as a professor at Smith Faculty, Princeton College, and Columbia University. Wu obtained the Nationwide Medal of Science in 1975, served as president of the American Bodily Society that 12 months, and is taken into account one of many premier experimental physicists in historical past.
Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000) was an Austrian-born American movie star who was typically typecast as a provocative femme fatale. Years after her display profession ended, she achieved recognition as a famous inventor of a radio communications gadget. Throughout WWII, in collaboration with avant-garde composer George Antheil, she invented an digital gadget that minimized the jamming of radio alerts. Although it was by no means used throughout wartime, the gadget is a element of present-day satellite tv for pc and mobile phone expertise.
Katherine Goble Johnson (1918-2020) was an African American mathematician who calculated and analyzed the flight paths of spacecraft throughout her greater than three a long time with the U.S. house program. Her work helped ship astronauts on the Apollo 11 flight to the Moon in 1969. In 2015, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.
Leona Woods Marshall Libby (1919-1986) was an American physicist and one of many ladies who helped to create the atomic weapon. She worked on the team that constructed the primary nuclear chain response resulting in the event of the bomb as a part of a nationwide atomic analysis program often called the Manhattan Venture.
June Almeida (1930-2007) was a Scottish-born, internationally famend virologist who pioneered new strategies for viral imaging and analysis. She was the one who recognized the primary human coronavirus.
Antonia Novello (1944- ) is a Puerto Rican-born doctor and public official, the primary girl and the primary Hispanic to function surgeon normal of america (1990-93).
Mae Jemison (1956- ) is an American doctor and the primary African American girl to turn out to be an astronaut. In 1992, she spent greater than per week orbiting Earth within the house shuttle Endeavour.
Ellen Ochoa (1958- ) is an American astronaut and administrator who was the primary Hispanic girl to journey into house (1993). She later served as director of NASA’s Johnson Area Middle (2013-18).
There are such a lot of ladies in historical past who’ve tremendously contributed to the fields of STEM, a quantity effectively past this listing. Please share within the feedback among the names and tales of different ladies in STEM that we missed.
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*The Chronicling America historic newspapers on-line assortment is a product of the National Digital Newspaper Program and collectively sponsored by the Library and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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