Because they’ve advanced the success and growth of those fields for just as long as men, even when they weren’t afforded the opportunity, the recognition, or the grants. Onward:
Rosalind Franklin (July 25, 1920—April 16, 1958)
Rosalind Franklin was a chemist and, get this, X-ray crystallographer. As far as titles go, you can’t do much better than crystallographer. Her work in understanding the molecular structure of DNA laid the foundation for the discovery of the double helix. She also made significant contributions to understanding the structures of RNAs. And viruses. And coal. And graphite. Her work was not fully appreciated until after she passed away. Two teams of all-male scientists who used her work to discover great things later went on to win Nobel Prizes.
Rebecca Lee Crumpler (February 8, 1831—March 9, 1895)
Rebecca Lee Crumpler spent most of her professional life being the first at things. She was the very first Black woman to become a physician in the United States. The first (and only) Black woman to graduate from New England Female Medical College. She authored Book of Medical Discourses, one of the very first medical books written by a Black person. Every obstacle she powered through was done in an effort to provide care for other people. Hero.
Mary Anning (May 21, 1799—March 9, 1847)
Mary Anning discovered the first full Ichthyosaur skeleton at 11, the very first Plesiosaur at 22, and then opened up her own fossil store front a few years later. We repeat: She opened up her own fossil store. We could go on and on, but Rejected Princesses (@rejectedprincesses) already did it best in this biographical comic. While you’re over there, check out their whole archive and the dozens and dozens of women’s life stories within.
Follow these too:
She Thought It: Crossing Bodies in Sciences and Arts (@shethoughtit) is a database dedicated to shedding light on women making strides in both science and the arts. A whole bunch of great things.
Lady Scientists of Tumblr (@scientific-women) promises everything you could ever want from a feminist science round-up blog: intersectionality and equal representation of all scientists who identify as female. Hell yeah.
Math Brain (@ihaveamathbrain) backs the novel idea that women are indeed capable of understanding math. Shocking. With the perfect amount of sarcasm, they tackle the idea some bozos have that women just don’t have the mind for mathematics.
The shoulders of the women that we stand on are three American heroes; Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, Mary Jackson. Without them, we would not know how to reach the stars.
Toy manufacturer Lego Group has
announced it will be creating a set of Legos based around the women of
NASA, Community Specialist Hasan Jensen wrote in a blog post for the company on Tuesday.
The idea for the project was originally pitched by Maia Weinstock, who submitted it to Lego through the company’s Lego Ideas program.
The set will include five women who contributed to NASA’s
mission, including computer scientist Margaret Hamilton, mathematician
Katherine Johnson, astronaut Sally Ride, astronomer Nancy Grace Roman
and astronaut Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to enter
space in 1992. Read more (2/28/17 5:53 PM)
Representation is so important. I am so happy Hidden Figures celebrates the story of brave, brilliant African-American women in STEM.
And a soapbox side note: If any of you are still trying to figure out what you want to do with your life and like science and tech, give computer science a try! It’s a myth that you have to be a genius to do it- anyone can code. I will be more than happy to talk to you about it or give you advice (I’ve worked at Google and start-ups).
Vera Rubin, the astrophysicist responsible for confirming the first existence of dark matter, died on Sunday night at the age of 88.
Carnegie Institution president Matthew Scott called Rubin “a national treasure as an accomplished astronomer and a wonderful role model for young scientist.”
Rubin and her colleagues observed galaxies in the 1970s, they learned the motion of stars is a result of a “material that does not emit light and extends beyond the optical galaxy” — also known as dark matter.
Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky proposed the idea of dark matter in 1933, but Rubin’s groundbreaking work subsequently led to the confirmation of the material.
This finding is what led to the discovery that 90% of the universe is made up of dark matter, a finding some colleagues felt was overlooked and deserving of a Nobel Prize. Read more
The science community pushed for Rubin to get a Nobel Prize, hoping she’d break a more than 50-year streak without a female winner, according to The Washington Post. One supporter of this movement, University of Washington astronomer Emily Levesque, told Astronomy.com that “the existence of dark matter has utterly revolutionized our concept of the universe and our entire field; the ongoing effort to understand the role of dark matter has basically spawned entire subfields within astrophysics and particle physics at this point.”
Steel Phoenix Studios 