Science, Art, Litt, Science based Art & Science Communication
Being a woman is no obstacle in science if you are determined and have the will to succeed
I came across this quote when I was in school. Since then I wanted to be like an eagle - reaching the heights no adversity can touch. It made me go above the clouds whenever it rained. Now I welcome the rain and more challenges in my life!
Recently I read an article in SA. You too can read it here:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/07/12/women-in-...
It says being a woman is really an obstacle in science.
"Wait a minute", I thought after reading the article, "This attitude of women should change." And I am going to help them change it.
So I gave this reply to the author:
Yes, to some extent what you said is true in some parts of India and the developing world. But I never ever faced any discrimination just because I am a girl/woman. Nor did I suffer more than any man while pursuing my career in science in India.
In fact I feel this discrimination and suffering you talk about should make us more determined and strong. Don’t complain. Smash those glass ceilings and boulders in your way and let me see who dares to stop you. If you want equality, don’t expect someone else to give it to you or help you in getting it. Grab it with both hands and move forward. Nobody and nothing can come your way if you really have a will to follow your heart.
Agreed the system has loopholes. But women have waited for centuries for the system to get corrected. It might take much more time in the future too because you cannot correct the centuries old system overnight. If we wait for the perfect conditions to launch ourselves, it would take much much longer time for women to progress. So an effort must be made now at individual levels too!
Another one here says how stereotyping makes women scientists' confidence go low:
http://www.npr.org/2012/07/12/156664337/stereotype-threat-why-women...
My reply : Interesting article. But I never ever felt low before my male colleagues. I always feel confident because I am well informed about not only my subject but also has adequate knowledge about other things ( if you don't have good knowledge in your subject nobody will respect you!). Maybe that gave me real confidence! I was never psychologically effected by stereotypical statements like "women are not as good as men in science subjects". Why should you feel you are inferior to men when you are not just because somebody says you are? Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent!
How much truth is there in the above articles and statements? Here is a confident reply from a woman scientist with whom I fully agree:
Being a woman made it even more challenging, given the social norms, but the support of my parents, close family and teachers was overwhelming. It made me what I am today. I chose Nuclear Physics against electronics and solid state physics at BHU simply due to the “outstanding” set of teachers. I always admired women who worked through adversities and did pioneering work. In addition, my mother is the epitome, of diligence! My father had an amazing confidence in my abilities;
My dreams lay more on the basis of being able to do something meaningful and impactful in life than to just earn money. http://www.thehindu.com/arts/magazine/article3639263.ece?homepage=true
Women give several excuses for not moving forward in step with their male colleagues. Let me discuss a few now.
(1) They can't find men who can date them when they go into the fields of science like Physics! ( are they complaining unintentionally that it goes against their femininity to enter the male dominated fields and exhibit their grey matter and therefore have to choose between their femininity and science research/being good at doing several things?).
My view: This is funny. Because when I was doing my PG and Ph.D. in sciences, I used to run away from men/boys who pursued me constantly because I thought dating men was a hindrance to my work! And that these things were obstacles to my science career! The more I ran away from men, the more they followed me! Who says beauty (of feminine fame) and brains can't go together? It seems if a woman thinks that a man will always look at her intelligence and her looks as mutually exclusive properties, she will feel much more pressure to pick between the two. Women, you need not feel this pressure! You can have both the things at the same time confusing and driving men mad! And enjoy it too! I don't think this is a genuine excuse!
(2) They have to look after their young children.
My view: When two people are involved in a marriage alliance even the husbands have equal responsibilities in looking after children. Several men do help their wives. I have seen many successful women who can juggle several things at a time! Women are very good at these things! I looked after my old and ailing parents too - which was equally difficult. I set up a mini lab at home to continue working whenever I have to stay at home because of my responsibilities! If women think they can't do both things of bringing children up and scientific research at the same time, they can take some time off, take part time work, work from home or go back to work again after a few years (keeping in touch with their subject constantly during this off -period is important so that they don't lose their confidence), when their children have grown up.
Try new things. Take the unbeaten path. Just because everyone else is doing something, doesn’t mean you have to as well. When I couldn't work outside of my home for some time because of my responsibilities, I started communicating science which is as important as doing research in science.
(3)Women's treatment – both subtle and sometimes blatantly non-subtle – at the hands of their male peers, parents and society at large leads to low self-esteem and lack of self confidence in their ability to succeed in science.
My view: Women, don't let the external factors dictate your life. If you think you have the ability to do a work, just do it and show the world what you are capable of. The world then will have no other go but to accept your talents and intelligence ( please read one of my poems "The power of a strong will" which says this here : http://kkartlab.in/group/theartofwritingpoems/forum/topics/the-powe...
(4) Lack of encouragement from their family members/ male colleagues:
My view: Ladies, haven't you heard about self motivation? If you have the determination, nobody or nothing can stop you!
(5) History tells how difficult it is for women (1) to win a Nobel prize or any other prestigious award. Highly accomplished women like Gertrude Elion, Emmy Noether and Gerty Cori had to play second fiddle to their less accomplished male counterparts even after publishing groundbreaking research. The example of Jocelyn Bell Burnell is well-known. Bell discovered the first pulsar while working for her advisor, Anthony Hewish. Ideally she should have shared in Hewish’s Nobel Prize but she didn’t.
My view: I feel before complaining women should think about Marie Curie, Christiane Nusslein-Volhard, Emmy Noether, Lise Meitner, Barbara McClintock, Chien-Shiung Wu, and Rosalind Franklin. These and other remarkable women struggled against gender discrimination, raised families, and became political and religious leaders. They were mountain climbers, musicians, seamstresses, and gourmet cooks. Above all, they were strong, joyful women in love with discovery. Derive inspiration from them, learn lessons from their lives and move forward. Why should we enter the field of science with thoughts that depress us instead of stories that inspire us?
(6) It seems even though women are 'gifted', because of the “slow drumbeat of being underappreciated, feeling uncomfortable and encountering roadblocks along the path to success” ( are we nervous?!) are stopping them from moving forward.
My view: But don't forget that if a woman is 'really gifted with abundant grey matter', she is also gifted with the ability to overcome these obstacles. Make this ability work at full throttle to overcome all the roadblocks, ladies!
(7) Being the only woman in the company of several males makes them uncomfortable !
My view: My dears, I myself faced this situation several times during my career! I was never nervous or felt I was a woman during these situations! I never felt I was different from men in any way! ( I will tell an interesting story here: Once we went into a forest to collect samples when I was doing my Ph.D. There were eight men and I was the only woman in the group. One of the men teased me and said: "Krishna, what will you do if we come across a Tiger now?" I casually replied, "I will do the same you guys would do". "We will climb trees. Can you climb a tree with this dress of yours? ( Yes, I was wearing a saree then), they all laughed. "Why not?" I said firmly without reacting much to their laughter. "I bet you cannot, wearing this dress", one of my male colleagues challenged me. " I can and I will", I said firmly. They all started laughing. I immediately kept my bag down, selected a nearby tall tree and to the astonishment of all my male colleagues, climbed up the tree! It wasn't easy, I was then - like I am now- a very delicate person, my hands and legs ached, blisters formed on them but still to show the men, they cannot take me lightly, I did this. The men were shocked into silence! They all started taking me seriously since then. And they took pictures of me climbing the tree and showed them to everybody in the university campus, especially my professors and although my professors smiled at them, they scolded me gently too. My colleagues tell me they still have those pictures with them! I am sure they learned the lesson of not taking my words lightly or doubting my ability to do things again! So?!)
I will again tell one of my other experiences. We had a conference on toxins in a very dangerous place of North India where we had to travel through a stretch of forest by train where you would frequently come across dangerous bandits. Our group leader was a woman. All my male colleagues refused to go with her because of the danger involved. Then one of my female colleagues and I volunteered to go with her. Our group leader spoke to my parents about the danger involved. Then my father told her he had faith in me to face the dangers and that he had no objection to send me to the conference. That gave me more confidence.
And we traveled to this place called Bhagalpur, a backward place in Bihar, we encountered the bandits on our way, faced them with tact and escaped, presented our papers and returned back safely. Then everybody started praising us - the group of women who bravely had gone to a place where men feared to go to present their science research papers!
Need I say more? This is a different situation but still I feel women have to take these chances to progress through the male dominated field of science.
{One lady said after reading this: The 'blood and sweat' people like you have had to expend to achieve in your field could have been used to even better effect to achieve even more, if we can acknowledge the obstacles that do exist.
And my reply to her: Most of these obstacles have been identified long back. Several Governments around the world took steps to tackle the problems too like giving monetary assistance to women and girls to get educated in the science subjects - sometimes even waiving fee, giving special preferences to women in jobs etc., relaxing age limits for women to enter the field of science and bringing laws to stop women being harassed in male dominated fields. I have seen all these positive steps being taken in this part of the world. Problems have been identified and corrective steps have been taken by the States. But it takes time to change the mind set of people. Laws alone cannot change them. We must do our bit too to counter backlash, resentment, and lack of respect and support from male colleagues because of affirmative actions and reservations.
The 'sweat and blood' aspect is common to both men and women in developing countries at higher levels of education and career. We struggle more here than the people in the developed countries. Are we wasting our time because of this? It isn't a waste of time as we develop new skills, learn how to do things creatively and efficiently with the limited resources we have {this came to light during studies on different systems (3)}, learn how to conserve things and how to increase our mental strength - especially our resilience and confidence. Like Shakespeare said, 'sweet are the uses of adversity' (only if you are a good learner!). And I have learned how to climb a tree, face bandits without fear and how to tackle them with tact, how to efficiently use my limited time for various things I do, above all how to progress efficiently as a woman with all the limitations around me. These lessons are as important in my life as my research in science! Like one of my female colleagues says - if a woman can work and succeed in a scientific research institute in India, she can face anything with confidence anywhere in the world! “Life without problems is like a school without classes. You don’t learn your lessons”.}
(8) They are paid less than men for doing the same work.
My view: Refuse to accept it. Challenge people to show that you are inferior to any man either in intelligence, creativity, ability to do the work, confidence, less skilled or any other thing that is responsible for such discrimination.
But then I was never discriminated. I was always asked politely to put forward my expectations of salary and was offered what I deserved and expected in all the fields I work in!
[ This in a region ( South Asia) where, according to recent UN reports (2), women to a greater extent than men – are in vulnerable employment, paid less than men, girls are more likely than boys to perform unpaid work ! According to these reports, in the less developed regions, many young girls aged 5-14 take on a large amount of household chores, including care-giving, cooking and cleaning, and older girls do so to an even greater extent. Here, girls generally work longer hours than boys. Long hours of work in developing countries to which India belongs, affect children’s ability to participate fully in education. Analysis shows that school attendance declines as the number of hours spent on household chores increases – and declines more steeply for girls than for boys. So, ladies, don't think the situation here favours women. In fact it is worse than developed countries! ]
So what is the reason for people making me one of the exceptions? It is because....
Whenever I participate in debates/conferences/seminars in any of the fields I am associated with, I try to be in the forefront, see that my voice will be heard and noticed by everybody, say things with confidence using reasoning and the right logic, make use of all my talents, and show people why they are wrong when they oppose me. This really made people respect me. So usually nobody dares to sideline me or ignore me. In fact people - including men - come to me for guidance and support! And when some men told me I was their inspiration, I was pleasantly surprised!
I am an introvert but knowledge in several fields gave me strength and the ability to move forward without any hindrance. It gave me the thrust and I am as good as any extrovert in putting my views across even in the presence of all experts. I am not worried about anything or anyone now. Knowledge has great power. So women get armed with it if you want to succeed in male dominated fields.
To show the world, especially men, my capabilities I entered all the three fields which are treated as 'reserved for intellectuals' - science, art and literature. I was trained only in science and developed skills in several other fields on my own. I became a polymath and display all my capabilities along with my name so that men can never belittle me - even if they do it they do it out of jealousy and not because of lack of abilities on my part! And you should feel proud if you can make any man jealous!
Once a person called me Lady Da Vinci. I told him not to call me a Da Vinci because although he was a legend (and I am not) - he was not known for his literary capabilities. Call me Krishna Kumari, with my own name. Let the world recognize and associate the name with female mind power!
Most of these 'obstacles' women say they face appear more daunting because of insecurity, nervousness, lack of confidence, self assurance and determination. So one must make an effort to tackle them first. Then you don't feel these road blocks at all!
To become successful in science for that matter in any field, you need perfect confidence, will to succeed, tight grip over your subject (this is a must!), awareness of the latest things happening in the field, creative capability to connect things, belief in your abilities and a little bit of support from your parents and teachers - if you don't get outside support, self -assurance works best. And, magic, magic, magic, magic, you will be on the top of the world. Gender has no other go but to become irrelevant!
- Don't speak…
- Just do it…
- Reach on the apex..
- So, revenge will have been done.
The only bird that dares to peck an eagle with its beak is the crow.
She sits down on the eagle's back and pecks him in the neck.
The eagle does not react or fight with the crow. He doesn't waste time or energy on the crow.
Instead, he simply opens his wings and begins to soar higher into the sky. The higher he flies, the harder it is for the crow to breathe and eventually the crow just falls down because it lacks oxygen.
Learn from the eagle and don't fight the crows, just keep climbing higher.
They may still be sitting on you, but they will soon fall down.
Don't get distracted.
Concentrate on the things above you and keep climbing up.
The Lesson of the Eagle and the Crow, Solara
References:
1. http://www.amazon.com/Nobel-Prize-Women-Science-Discoveries/dp/0309...
2. http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/Worldswomen/WW_full...
3. http://www.ted.com/talks/navi_radjou_creative_problem_solving_in_th...
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on
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Where do women science toppers end up?
Noted scientist and chairperson of the National Academy of Sciences, India, Manju Sharma on Tuesday said there was an urgent need for the country to nurture talented women in science. "What we see is a tragic waste of human capital. I attend convocations of universities across the country and find that 90 per cent of the toppers are women. Where do they go after winning gold medals?" she said.Manju said women seldom reach the pinnacle of the hierarchy in academics or research institutions. "Though there are some positives in the recent past, the pace is very slow. Recently, I attended a conference of agricultural universities and found there was not a single woman among the 30 vice-chancellors," she added at the three-day conference on women in science organised by IISc and the Indo-French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research (IFCPAR).
Manju, also a former secretary in the department of biotechnology in the central government, called upon young women scientists not to give up higher studies and continue research. "Whenever young women join doctoral programmes, seniors should encourage them to continue in science. The role of directors of various science institutes is important. We need to move beyond talks of gender equity, reservation, etc. and utilize the talent of women as they bring in new perspectives. There's a need for a change in mindset and attitude among policy-makers too," she added.
Manju said inclusiveness in science and technology leadership is needed the world over in addition to transparency in appointments, financial assistance, confidence building, technological empowerment at ground level and networking among women scientists to encourage them to continue in science.
Young women scientists from IISc and France will present technical papers and interact with experts on various subjects at the conference.
Scientistspeak
Prof Rohini Godbole, Centre for High Energy Physics, IISc, said there are many women role models in India who have excelled in different fields and young scientists can look up to them for inspiration. "The list begins with Anandi Gopalrao Joshee, one of the first Indian women to qualify as a doctor in the US in 1886," she added. Rohini has been working at CERN, Geneva, as a theoretical physicist and is part of the theoretical predictions of the God Particle.
IISc needs more women researchers
IISc, the country's premier science centre, has a long way in taking more women researchers onboard. Its director Anurag Kumar said IISc needs to scale up the number of women researchers and it's working on this. "We have no gender bias. The number of women PhD students is going up but in the faculty we need more," he added. Sources in IISc said of the 430 professors in the institute, only about 30 are women.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/Where-do-women-sc... -
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International Women's Day: Five female scientists you probably haven't heard of
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/international-womens-day-5...http://theconversation.com/you-probably-havent-heard-of-these-five-...
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http://retractionwatch.com/2015/04/29/its-a-mans-world-for-one-peer...
It’s a man’s world — for one peer reviewer, at leastPOLS's reply: PLOS ONE ousts reviewer, editor after sexist peer-review storm
http://news.sciencemag.org/scientific-community/2015/04/sexist-peer...
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Stereotypes associating science with men persist around the world, study shows
http://dailynorthwestern.com/2015/05/18/campus/stereotypes-associat... -
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#GirlsWithToys: How This Indian Scientist Irked Female Scientists Across the World
http://idiva.com/news-work-life/indian-scientist-shrinivas-kulkarni...
https://twitter.com/hashtag/girlswithtoys?src=hash -
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Science still seen as male profession, according to international study of gender bias
http://news.sciencemag.org/social-sciences/2015/05/science-still-se... -
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Did you know that the first six programmers on the ENIAC, the first electronic general purpose computer, were all women? They were Kathleen McNulty, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jean Jennings, and Fran Bilas. Programming languages and tools didn't exist at the time, only logical diagrams, but they wrote programs to solve differential equations.
Pickering's Lab at Harvard had four brilliant female astronomers a century before Harvard allowed women to graduate with "Harvard" on their diplomas:
Williamina Paton Fleming discovered and classified 79 stars, 10 novae, 59 gaseous nebulae, 94 Wolf-Rayet stars, and 222 long-period variables,
Antonia Maury, developed a method of spectral analysis that led to the classification of giant and dwarf stars,
Henrietta Swan Leavitt discovered luminosity-period relations for cepheids, which allowed us to calculate the distance between earth and other galaxies.
Annie Jump Cannon - came up with the first scheme to classify stars based on temperature.
I'm not sure if this counts (there are several reasons it might not), but there's also James Barry, born Margaret Ann Bulkley who was the first British surgeon to perform a Caesarian section. He was anatomically female, but went to medical school as a man and lived as a man for most of his life. Wikipedia says he did this because one had to be a man to go to medical school at the time.
Stephanie Kwolek, a chemist at Dupont, invented Kevlar. This strong and lightweight polymer is best known for its use in bullet proof vests, but also find application in tires, in airplanes, and as a supplement to steel in bridges. She died last week: The New York Times.Agnes Pockels was a German chemist who did not attend university (women didn't have access at the time), but learned science via correspondence with her brother who was an important scientist as well. She measured surface tension in her kitchen sink, and published her paper in Nature. Dr. Sarah Josephine Baker — One of the hero(ines) of medicine. Dr. Baker was not a "scientist" in the laboratory sense, but she was a medical doctor who excelled at family medicine and was one of the first epidemiologists and not "one of", but literally the world's leading expert on infectious diseases. She was a tireless worker for women & children's health. She contributed incredibly to public health in general.
She was an astute investigator and tracked the Typhoid outbreak in NYC back to the woman known today as "Typhoid Mary". So beloved was she, that the Brits and French both offered her careers in their nations. This would be an accomplishment for a connected man. What it says for Dr. Baker and the insane hills she climbed simply brings me to goosebumps. That she isn't celebrated with an annual parade in her honor every year is beyond comprehension.
Seven Wonder Women of Astronomy/Astrophysics
****************************************************************1) Henrietta Swan Leavitt
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Almost everyone knows who Edwin Powell Hubble is and what he accomplished, right? However, I bet not too many of us know that Leavitt's work on discovering the luminosity–period relationship for cepheids (Cepheid variable) opened the door for Hubble and many others to make their own groundbreaking discoveries.Notably, the then Harvard Director refused to grant her credit for her pioneering discovery in the field of Astronomy. This played a major role in her fading away and remaining relatively unknown:
Despite her pioneering discoveries, at the time, Henrietta remained unknown and hugely unappreciated. The discovery and potential implications of the period-luminosity relationship were published in the ‘Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College’ in 1908, yet any research done there had to be reported by the Director, that is, Pickering, who, it is claimed, did not explicitly give due credit to Henrietta’s ingenious and crucial part in the discovery. Her brilliance was however noted by the Swedish mathematician Mittas-Leffler, who strongly considered nominating her for the 1926 Nobel Prize in Physics, only to learn of her death some years before. On hearing this, Shapley was then awarded it after having claimed that the prize belonged rightfully to him, seeing as it was he who ‘interpreted’ her findings.
A Life in the Stars: Henrietta Swan Leavitt
Leavitt's work was crucial in furthering our understanding of the universe. As aforementioned, many others piggybacked off of her findings to formulate their own theories. Unfortunately, like many other brilliant female scientists and pioneers, her work was ignored and eventually overshadowed by her male counterparts.
For further reading:
Nobel Prize for a “Computer” named Henrietta Leavitt (1868-1921)
Henrietta Leavitt – Celebrating the Forgotten Astronomer
1912: Henrietta Leavitt Discovers the Distance Key2) Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
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She was a pioneer in the fields of Astronomy and Astrophysics. She went to Cambridge University in 1919 just because of her pure passion for learning, where she was given scholarships for Botany, Physics, and Chemistry. However, the University of Cambridge at the time didn't grant degrees to female students. So, she had to leave the university empty-handed in 1922 after completing her studies. Later, she found interest in the field of Astronomy and went to Cambridge, Massachusetts to do her PhD on the subject.Her thesis Stellar atmospheres is considered to be one of the most brilliant PhD theses in Astronomy. In her thesis, she demonstrated that stars were chiefly composed of hydrogen and not from Earth-like elements.
Discovered the chemical composition of stars and, in particular, that hydrogen and helium are the most abundant elements in star and, therefore, in the universe. From the spectra of stars, she determined stellar temperature and chemical abundances using the thermal ionization equation of Saha. Her work was of fundamental importance in the development of the field of stellar atmospheres. She discovered that all stars have very similar relative chemical abundances with hydrogen and helium comprising 99% by number.
UCLA.edu| Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Unfortunately, she didn't get the recognition or credit she thoroughly deserved for her stellar performance.
Lise Meitner- worked on radioactivity and nuclear physics.
Meitner was part of the Hahn-Meitner-Strassmann-team that worked on "transuranium-elements" since 1935, which led to the radiochemical discovery of the nuclear fission of uranium and thorium in December 1938, Her colleague Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1944 because of this discovery but not her.
Meitner is often mentioned as one of the most glaring examples of women's scientific achievement overlooked by the Nobel committee.
Element 109, Meitnerium, is named in her honor.Dorothy Hodgkin- Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964.
She advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography, a method used to determine the three-dimensional structures of biomolecules.Ada Lovelace (Not exactly a Scientist) - an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognized as the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine.
Tessy Thomas- Project Director for Agni-IV missile in DRDO. She is the first woman scientist to head a missile project in India. She is known as the 'Missile Woman' of India.
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Indian women scientists:
1. Purnima Sinha
Born in Kolkata in 1927, Purnima Sinha (née Sengupta) was arguably the first woman in India to obtain a PhD in Physics. This she did from Calcutta University in the year 1955. Her doctoral thesis was titled 'X-Ray and Differential Thermal Analysis of Indian Clays' which she wrote under the guidance of Prof. Satyendranath Bose (who lends his name to the 'boson').Her research was funded by the Assam Oil Company. It is simply mind-boggling to think of the fact that she was working with X-Ray diffraction in India of the 1950s, at a time when using X-Ray diffraction to find the structure of materials was a just-evolving field. Interestingly, at the same time, Watson and Crick were using the same techniques to resolve the structure of DNA (for which they'd be awarded the Nobel Prize). This woman in the 1950s, due to the lack of availability of an X-Ray diffraction machine (a modern one costs approximately INR 8,000,000 or about US$ 121,000) which she needed for her research, built from scratch an X-Ray diffraction apparatus using locally available material and rejected scrap from World War II. Shown below is a picture of her, with Prof. S.N. Bose to her left and one of the most famous theoretical physicists to have walked the Earth, Paul Dirac, to her right. The picture was taken when Dirac visited Calcutta in 1954.
She continued her research in Stanford University in the 1960s, where she studied structures involving clay, and bases appearing in the DNA double helix. After returning to India, she was attached with the Geological Survey of India, Bose Institute and the Central Glass and Ceramics Research Institute. Her artistic interests were no less varied. She was the author of many popular children's books on science, Indian classical music and biographies. She also took lessons in Hindusthani Classical Vocal music, painting and the tabla, an Indian percussion instrument. Having devoted her life to the structure and properties of clay, it was but expected that she would have been a very adept sculptor. Here is a picture of her sculpting at Santiniketan.
She passed away on July 11, 2015, having lived a full life. She is survived by two daughters, Sukanya and Supurna, both of whom are accomplished theoretical physicists.
2. Asima Chatterjee
Asima Chatterjee (née Mukherjee) was born in 1917 in Calcutta. Always an excellent student, Chatterjee got her Bachelor's and Master's from Scottish Church College, Calcutta University in 1936 and 1938 respectively, following which she obtained a doctoral degree from Calcutta University. The focus of her research was the chemistry of plant products and synthetic organic chemistry. The main body of her work consists of extensive research on vinca alkaloids, now widely used for cancer treatment. She developed drugs for epilepsy, malaria and is widely known for a seminal study of the medicinal plants of the Indian subcontinent, putting the study of herbal medicines on a firm scientific footing. She was involved for quite sometime with the University of Wisconsin, Madison and Caltech. She passed away on 22 November 2006, aged 89.
3. Biva Choudhuri
Pioneering physicist Biva Choudhuri is another star in the firmament of Indian women in science. She is primarily (un)known for her work in collaboration with Debendra Mohan Bose, the nephew of the great polymath Jagadish Chandra Bose.
The story goes that after the 1938 Indian Science Congress, Choudhuri and Bose had the idea of studying high-energy subatomic particles from cosmic rays, since there was no question of particle accelerators at the time. Inspired by the ideas of Nobel Laureate Walther Bothe, the duo considered using photographic emulsion as an active cloud to take note of the tracks left by particles.
At the time, World War II was in full force and Choudhuri & Bose did not get access to full-tone photographic plates. Throughout the period from 1939-1942, the duo meticulously exposed and observed half-tone photographic plates in Darjeeling, a high-altitude mountainous region in West Bengal. They published in Nature, reporting tracks created by a new subatomic particle, distinctly different from the [math]\alpha-[/math]particle or the proton, which was approximately 200 times the mass of the electron. Their research would die a premature death as Bose would leave for England in 1945 to continue research with (later Nobel Laureate) Patrick Blackett.
Using exactly similar techniques, but now with high-quality full-tone photographic plates, the English physicist Cecil Frank Powell identified this new particle as a [math]\pi-[/math]meson/pion thus confirming Hideki Yukawa's hypothesis. Powell was awarded the 1950 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method". Biva Choudhuri would be reduced to a mere footnote in Powell's papers... -
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Chien-Shiung Wu
Literally wrote the book on beta decay
Was a significant contributor to the Manhattan Project
Constructed and executed the experiment that later brought two of her Columbia University colleagues a Nobel Prize for violation of parity.
Perhaps the most accomplished Chinese physicist of the last century
Emmy Noether
Massive work on algebras, solved important problems with General Relativity, and produces Noether's Theorem which unifies the great conservation laws with the great symmetries of the universe.Chien-Shiung Wu
A great deal we now think about time comes from her, given her work on beta decay and the experiment about parity leading to the idea that CP and T symmetries don't always work separately, but CPT seems to be a complete symmetry.Donna Cox
Pioneer in computer graphics and scientific visualization, mostly trained as an artist but a massively successful crossover to mathematics.Dr. Carolina Cruz-Neira
If we ever get a Holodeck, it will be due to her pioneering work on virtual and immersive environments.Émilie du Châtelet
Established an academy of science that rivaled France's own royal academy.
Wrote the French translation of Newton's Principia that is still in use today.
Made predictions about non-visible light.
Prominent voice in the scientific community.
Key contributor to establishing understanding of kinetic energy which later contributed to Einstein's Theory of RelativityLise Meitner
Primary contributor to nuclear fission research.
Explained the works of those who had actually split the atom but did not understand what was going on.Rosalind Franklin
Key contributor to the discovery of the double helix nature of DNA
Jane Goodall
Foremost authority on primatology
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Discovered pulsars
Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze
Manager of one of the most sophisticated laboratories during the late 18th/early 19th centuries
Lab partner and wife to Antoine LavoisierSally Ride
Source of information regarding O-Rings on leading being the cause of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
Shirley Jackson and Lisa Randall are also of note as they significant figures in their respective fields who are still alive and active today.
Some prominent women in physics today ( those currently at MIT)Eva Silverstein
Nergis MavalvalaEmily du Châtelet was a French mathematician, physicist, and author during the Age of Enlightenment. Her achievement is considered to be her translation and commentary on Isaac Newton's work Principia Mathematica. The translation, published posthumously in 1759, is still considered the standard French translation.
Voltaire, one of her lovers, declared in a letter to his friend King Frederick II of Prussia that du Châtelet was "a great man whose only fault was being a woman".
Lisa meitner
Lise Meitner was an Austrian physicist who worked on radioactivity and nuclear physics and was the sole proprietor of Nuclear fission theory for that Mr otto hahn recieved Nobel prize in 1944. Mr Hahn was such a jerk in portraying gratitude that he mentioned Meitner's contribution merely 'as a co-worker '.Lise Meitner - nuclear fission
Mary Sommerfield (for whom the term "scientist" was coined - before her, the term used was "men of science")
Jane Marcet (not a scientist, but the author of the first chemistry textbook, which was a huge influence on Faraday)
Jane C. Wright - chemotherapy
Francoise Barre-Sinoussi - discovered the AIDS virus
Gertrude Belle Elion - developed many life-saving drugs, including those for malaria, childhood leukemia, and AIDS. She also developed drugs that made organ transplants possible.
Maria Goepper Mayer - nuclear shell theory
Ada Lovelace (again, not really a scientist, but she was the first computer programmer, long before there were computers)
Rita Levi-Montalcini - neurobiology
Rosalyn Yalow - radioimmunoassay
Hypathia - First woman mathemetician.Also, Ada Lovelace, first computer programmer (not first women programmer, first programmer.)
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Dorothy Hodgkin was one of the pioneer scientists in the field of X-ray protein crystallography. She confirmed the structure of penicillin and then vitamin B12, for which she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964. After many years of work Hodgkin was able to decipher the structure of insulin in 1969.
Caroline Herschel (1750 – 1848) an Anglo-German astronomer who worked with her brother Sir William Herschel. She discovered several comets and in particular a periodic comet which bears her name. She was the first woman to receive a Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910), the founder of modern nursing was also an important social reformer and statistician. Although she rose to prominence for her work managing nursing the Crimean War, her contribution to making nursing a profession and improving public health, backed with statistical analysis, was profound. In 1859, she was elected the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society.
In life sciences, primatologists Jane Goodall (chimpanzees), Diane Fossey (gorillas) and Biruté Galdikas (orangutans) are well-known for their field studies with said apes. Rosalind Franklin supplied the x-ray diffraction patterns for Watson&Crick, who published the 3-d structure of DNA. There are, of course, many many more, but these may be the most well-known names.
Today we know as a common fact that all stars are made up mostly of hydrogen and that it is the most abundant element in the Universe. The building block in short.
But the fact that this immensely important discovery was made by a woman is unfortunately not as well known.Let's talk about Cecilia Payne.
Born on May, 10th 1900 in Great Britain, Cecilia Payne's father died when she was just four years old, forcing her mother to raise the family on her own.
In 1919, she won a scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge University, where she read botany, physics, and chemistry. She completed her studies, but was not awarded a degree because of her sex; Cambridge did not grant degrees to women until 1948.
She moved to US with a fellowship that encouraged women to study at the Harvard College Observatory. Harlow Shapley, the director of the Observatory persuaded Payne to write a doctoral dissertation, and so in 1925 she became the first person to earn a Ph.D.in astronomy from Radcliffe College (now part of Harvard).Payne was able to accurately relate the spectral classes of stars to their actual temperatures by applying the ionization theory developed by Indian physicist Meghnad Saha.
She found that silicon, carbon, and other common metals seen in the Sun's spectrum were present in about the same relative amounts as on Earth but Hydrogen was vastly more abundant (by a factor of about one million). Thus, her thesis established that hydrogen was the overwhelming constituent of the stars, and accordingly the most abundant element in the Universe.The unfortunate part is that when Payne's dissertation was reviewed, astronomer Henry Russell dissuaded her from presenting her conclusion that the composition of the Sun was predominantly hydrogen and thus very different from that of the Earth, as it contradicted the accepted wisdom at the time. However, he changed his mind four years later after having derived the same result by different means and publishing it. Although he acknowledged her work briefly in his paper, Russell was still often given credit for the discovery even after Payne had been proved correct.
So here's a woman born into tough times raised by an even tougher woman, denied a degree, gets the first Doctorate in Astronomy and again denied true credit for her work.
Time and again societies may erect barriers in front of some humans because of their sex, color, caste or for any other excuse, but if the will is strong these humans not just come on top but they leave a lasting impression on the rest.
Source - Wikipedia: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin.
Another interesting fact is that the basis, the factual data for Payne's research was all collected by women. Please read below for more information.
Harvard Computers.
Margaret Hamilton : She is not completely forgotten but probably not given the credit she deserves.
Margaret Heafield Hamilton (born August 17, 1936) is a computer scientist, systems engineer, and business owner. She was Director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for the Apollo space program. Hamilton's team's work prevented an abort of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Hamilton has published over 130 papers, proceedings, and reports concerned with the 60 projects and six major programs in which she has been involved.
Hamilton's work prevented an abort of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Three minutes before the Lunar lander reached the Moon's surface, several computer alarms were triggered. The computer was overloaded with incoming data, because the rendezvous radar system (not necessary for landing) updated an involuntary counter in the computer, whichstole cycles from the computer. Due to itsrobust architecture, the computer was able to keep running; the Apollo onboard flight software was developed using an asynchronous executive so that higher priority jobs (important for landing) could interrupt lower priority jobs. The fault was attributed to a faulty checklist and the radar being erroneously activated by the crew.
Rosalind Franklin- The English X-ray crystallographer playing important role in the discovery of DNA structure.However she was left out of the team of James Watson and Francis Crick who got the Nobel prize for discovering the double helix of DNA as she died at an age of 37 , 4 years before the prize was conferred.
Brenda Milner, British neuropsychologist living in Canada, still working at 95.
She has contributed extensively to the research literature on various topics in the field of clinical neuropsychology. Among other things, she studied the effects of damage to the medial temporal lobe on memory.
Rosalind Franklin
In 1962, Crick was awarded a Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA, along with fellow scientists James Watson and Maurice Wilkins. Several people posted comments about our story that noted one name was missing from the Nobel roster:Rosalind Franklin, a British biophysicist who also studied DNA.By the time the award had been given Ros Franklin had died of cancer so she was not eligible for a Nobel award.
The established dealt with Ros in a very shabby and sexist manner. Without her expertise in interpreting x-images Crick and Watson would not have discovered DNA and the prize might have gone to Linus Pauling who was very hot on the trail and close behind.
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Janaki Ammal, a botanist from Kerala, India . She is the first women to get a Doctorate degree in India, in 1931. She was a botanist and has done major contributions with respect to genetics research in sugar canes. And I quoteShe was an expert in cytogenetics (the genetic content and expression of genes in the cell). She had known that plants display polyploidy (collection of not just two pairs of chromosomes in each cell, as our body cells do, but many multiples of 2, e.g., 2n = 48, 56, 64, 72 and even 112). Her research in this area led to our understanding of the nature of polyploidy in sugarcane, forming a firm scientific basis for crossing and hybrids, but also helped in choosing plant varieties for cross-breeding. It also helped analyse the geographical distribution of sugarcane across India, and to establish that S. Spontaneum is sugarcane that originated in India.
Ammal made several intergeneric hybrids:
Saccharum x Zea, Saccharum x Erianthus, Saccharum x
Imperata and Saccharum x Sorghum. Ammal’s pioneeringwork
at the Institute on the cytogenetics of Saccharum officinarum
(sugarcane) and interspecific and intergeneric hybrids involving
sugarcane and related grass species and genera such as Bambusa
(bamboo) is epochal. But that was just the beginning of a life in
science well lived.
During the years (1939-1950) she spent in England, she did
chromosome studies of awide range of garden plants.Her studies
on chromosome numbers and ploidy inmany cases threw light on
the evolution of species and varieties. The Chromosome Atlas of
Cultivated Plants which she wrote jointly with CDDarlington in
1945 was a compilation that incorporated much of her own work
on the many species on which she worked. The focus on polyploidy
and evolution of plants which effervesced then, continued
on her return to India and Ammal worked on some of the most
important genera : Solanum, Datura, Mentha, Cymbopogon and
Dioscorea, besides a range of medicinal and other plants too
many for mention here. Ammal was an original thinker and she
attributed the higher rate of plant speciation in the cold and humid
northeast Himalayas as compared to the cold and dry northwest
Himalayas to polyploidy.
Page on imsc.res.in--
Ada Lovelace
Was great with languages and numbers.
Commonly known among software devlopers as the first developer in the world one century before the first computer was built.
Her most famous work was a description of the Babbage machine, which was described in a memoir, not actually implemented, which she wrote a huge description about only based upon what she understood from the memoir, and added to it what we would have called "a program" who would have worked on it.
I use that lady very often when I have to explain to girls that IT isn't such a male world.Actually, IT as such is opposed to common standards...
A woman wrote the first computer program on century before the very first computer was built... And that computer was built by a gay man (still one of my favorite IT people, seriously considering sticking him on a wall as a poster... :P). Thought, his story surely didn't end well, but that's another story...
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