Do You Know These Important Women in Science?

Actress Hedy Lamarr is known for her roles on the silver screen, but her scientific achievements are no less impressive. During World War II, Lamarr invented a new way for transmitters and receivers to “hop” radio frequencies to prevent interception by enemy forces. Though the U.S. Navy never implemented the system, the technology laid the groundwork for the rise of wireless communications. Today, Lamarr is regarded as “the mother of Wi-Fi.”

In May 1952, Rosalind Franklin took “Photo 51,” a famous x-ray image of DNA’s double helix structure. Without her knowledge, the photo was shared with scientists Francis Crick and James Watson, who, four years after Franklin’s death, received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their discovery — with no mention of Franklin at all. Today, biographies of Franklin have documented her important contributions and the European Space Agency even named their new Mars rover the “Rosalind Franklin.”

These three women all made amazing contributions to astronomy. Caroline Herschel (1750-1848) was the first woman to discover a comet, in 1786. Jill Tarter, now age 78, is dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life (and inspired the 1997 film “Contact”). Lastly, Vera Rubin (1928-2016) was pivotal in understanding the importance of dark matter — so much so that a Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in Chile is named after her.

Marine biologist Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring” changed our perception of pesticides and agriculture. It sparked conversations among scientists, politicians, and the general public about humans’ deleterious effects on the natural world. The book was an important voice in the push for stronger environmental protections, and no single work has so profoundly impacted environmental conservation for the better.

In the 120-year history of the Nobel Prize, four women have won it in physics, seven in chemistry, and 12 in medicine. (There is no Nobel Prize for astronomy.) However, many more women were deserving of the prize and were victims of sexism. Even in the category of medicine, women make up only 13% of recipients.

The English poet Lord Byron (1788-1824) once wrote in a letter about his daughter that he hoped “the gods have made her anything save poetical — it is enough to have one such fool in the family.” Fortunately for him, his daughter, Ada, pursued the sciences. She befriended computer pioneer Charles Babbage, learned about his mechanical computers, and wrote the world’s first computer program — a mechanical method for calculating Bernoulli numbers.

Marie Curie is one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. She was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize in the sciences, and the first and only person — man or woman — to receive the prize in two separate scientific fields. Today, she’s most famous for her discovery of the elements radium and polonium, the latter of which she named after her home country of Poland.

The Apollo 11 mission was much, much more than just three astronauts who landed on the moon. One of the most important jobs fell to mathematician Katherine Johnson, who calculated when and where to launch the program’s Saturn V rocket. In 2015, Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 2017, the film “Hidden Figures” told the story of Johnson and the other women “computers” at NASA.

Not many scientists get to add “redefined what it means to be human” to their resume, but Jane Goodall is one of the lucky few. Her work in the field of primatology — specifically her 60-year study of chimpanzees at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania — changed scientists’ perception of the social dynamics and mental complexity of humans’ closest living relatives.

On June 18, 1983, with many onlookers dressed in “Ride, Sally, Ride” T-shirts, the space shuttle Challenger roared to life and carried the first American woman into space. Sally Ride’s historic accomplishment broke barriers for female astronauts in the U.S.; when NASA announced its newest class of astronaut graduates in 2020, half of them were women.