The Women In Science Archive
@wisarchive
Celebrating Eleven Years of bringing stories of scientific women to light! Our newest book, A History of Women in Psychology and Neuroscience, is now available! www.wisarchive.com
Wishing a happy 80th birthday to physicist Shirley Ann Jackson, who after becoming the second Black woman to earn a PhD in Physics (1973), went on to a long research career at Bell Labs in the 1970s and 80s, and ultimately to the presidency of Rensselaer from 1999 to 2022. #BlackWomenInSTEM ⚛️
Wishing a happy 82nd birthday to immunogeneticist Georgia M. Dunston! Growing up in segregated Norfolk, Virginia, she earned her PhD in 1972, and by 1985 she was director of the Human Immunogenetics Lab, focusing on issues affecting organ transplant success in the Black community. #WomenInSTEM 🧬⚕️
Mary Poonen Lukose, the first woman to become a surgeon general in India, was born 140 years ago today. She was also the first woman to hold a legislative position in the state of Travancore, and founded one of the earliest TB sanatoriums in India. #WomenInSTEM #WomensHistory #MedSky ⚕️
Wishing a happy 85th birthday to Dr. Charlene Drew Jarvis! The daughter of blood bank pioneer Charles Drew, she had her own medical research career from 1965 to 1978, when she began a political career, serving on the city council of DC for 21 years, helping expand access to med care. #WomenInSTEM
Astronomer Louise Elizabeth du Pierry was born 280 years ago today! She published works on the impact of refraction on celestial observation, tables of day and night length for the general public, eclipse computations, as well as works on chemistry. #AstroSky #WomenInSTEM #WomensHistory
Wishing a happy 90th birthday today to mathematician Geraldine Darden. In 1967, she became just the 14th Black woman to earn a PhD in mathematics, inspired by the new opportunities in STEM created by the Space Race, and was mentored by Marjorie Lee Browne at NCCU! #BlackWomenInSTEM #MathSky 🧮
Astronomer Julie Hansen was born 136 years ago today. The first Danish woman astronomer, she went on to become editor of the Nordic Astronomy Review, and First Astronomer at the University of Copenhagen's observatory, where she worked until her death in 1960. #WomenInSTEM #AstroSky 🔭
Indian physician and politician Kadambini Ganguly was born 165 years ago today. In 1886, she became the first woman awarded a medical degree in India, and in 1889 was part of the first group of women elected to the Congress in Bombay, speaking on behalf of women's rights in India. #WomenInSTEM ⚕️
Neuropathologist Louise Eisenhardt was born 135 years ago today. Together with Harvey Cushing, she developed an archive of some 2000 different brain tumor specimens and was consulted the world over by neurosurgeons for her unique knowledge of tumor variants. #WomenInSTEM #NeuroSky #MedSky
Psychologist June Downey was born 151 years ago today. In an age when psychology was primarily interested in ways of measuring intelligence, she was the first to develop diagnostics for non-intelligence character traits, creating the Individual Will Temperament Test in 1919. #WomenInSTEM #Psych
Neuroscientist Angelique Arvanitaki was born 125 years ago today! Born in Cairo to Greek parents, she spent most of her career in France, where she made foundational discoveries about nerve function, including the phenomenon of ephaptic coupling, while working on large mollusc neurons. #WomenInSTEM
No birthdays to celebrate today on our lists, so we'll just take the time to remind you that the way we keep the Archive totally free for educators, students, and the larger public is through the income we get via Dale's book sales, so check these out! #WomenInSTEM #BookSky #WomensHistory #MathSky
Today is ALSO the 175th birthday of psychologist Lillien Jane Martin, a member of the first generation of professional women psychologists, who was a key figure in seeing the need for, and establishing, specialized psychological resources for the elderly. #WomenInSTEM #PsychSky
Ichthyologist Louelle E. Cable was born 126 years ago today. The first woman biologist to be employed at the US Bureau of Fisheries, she spearheaded efforts to understand the decline of Great Lakes species and was the first to culture larval stages in labs for study. #WomenInSTEM #Fish #BioSky
Brazilian anthropologist Eunice Durham was born 94 years ago today. She was twice president of the Brazilian Anthropology Association, and spent her long career studying the social impact of rural-urban and international migration. #WomenInSTEM #AnthroSky
Psychologist Tomi Kora was born 130 years ago today. She travelled to the United States to earn her Master's and PhD in the ealry 1920s studying the impact of hunger on activity, then returned to Japan where she was a professor, politician, and peace activist. #WomenInSTEM #PsychSky
Marine biologist Joan Murrell Owens was born 93 years ago today. She began her career as a reading specialist working with underprivileged youths, but in 1970, at age 37, she went back to college to pursue her dreams of marine science, becoming a professor at Howard U by 1976. #WomenInSTEM
Australian neuropathologist Dorothy Russell was born 131 years ago today. In 1946, she was appointed Professor of Morbid Pathology at the London Hospital Medical College after treating brain injuries in World War II. There she did research on hydrocephalus and brain tumors. #WomenInSTEM #MedSky 🧠
Astronomer Susan Raymond King was born 134 years ago today. She worked at the Harvard Observatory with Henrietta Swan Leavitt, and later at Yale Observatory and Smith College, restarting her career when her husband moved to new jobs. Sadly, her grave is the only picture we have of her. #WomenInSTEM
Today we celebrate the 125th anniversary of experimental psychologist Magdalen Vernon's birth. Over her 44 year career she was recognized as an expert on the psychology of reading, and became the first woman to head the Psych Dep at the University of Reading. #WomenInSTEM #PsychSky 🧠
Astronomer Caroline Furness was born 157 years ago today. In 1910, she took charge of Vassar's astronomy department, turning it into a hub of variable star research, where in 1915 she published the text Introduction to the Study of Variable Stars, long a standard text on the subject. #WomenInSTEM 🔭
Today we wish a happy 96th birthday to Sneh Bhargava, who in 1984 became the first woman to direct Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences, appointed by Indira Gandhi. She pushed hard for investment in CT scanner and ultrasound technology, and to combat financial abuses in patient referrals
Welsh mathematician Mary Wynne Warner was born 94 years ago today. Beginning in the late 1960s, she worked on the emerging field of fuzzy mathematics (in which objects can "partially" belong to a set), becoming one of its most distinguished pioneering figures. #WomenInSTEM #MathSky #BookSky 🧮
Indian cardiology legend Sivaramakrishna Iyer Padmavati was born 109 years ago today. She was the 1st woman cardiologist in India, starting her practice in 1953, and founding the All India Heart Foundation, specializing in preventative cardiology training, in 1962. #WomenInSTEM #MedSky ⚕️
Argentine biochemist Rebeca Gerschman was born 123 years ago today. Her 1954 paper proposed oxygen free radicals as an important mechanism of cell aging and death, a result that was generally not believed until its confirmation in 1969. #WomenInSTEM #BioSky #ChemSky 🧪
It is the birthday of both Barbara McClintock and Andrea Ghez today, but since those are likely to be well celebrated elsewhere, we're going to focus on botanist Ellen Schulz Quillin, who was born 134 years ago today. She co-founded the Witte Museum, which she then directed for 34 years! 🌱
Botanist Inez Clare Verdoorn was born 130 years ago today. Through her over 200 publications and 4000 collected specimens, she played a major role in revising the genera of South Africa, continuing to work unpaid at the herbarium after her retirement. #WomenInSTEM #PlantSky #Botany 🌱
Wishing a happy 72nd birthday to neuroscientist Adele Diamond, whose work has been foundational in establishing the prefrontal cortex's role in the development of executive functioning in children. #WomenInSTEM #NeuroSky #PsychSky 🧠
Indian virologist Asha Mathur was born 88 years ago today. She authored over 170 papers in her lifetime, shedding particular light on how Japanese Encephalitis Virus (JEV) infects hosts, how the body responds to it, and how it engages with the placental barrier. #WomenInSTEM #BioSky 🦠
There are no pictures of plant pathologist Margaret Keay, who was born 115 years ago today, but she lives on in memory. Born in South Africa, educated in England, she spent her career in Uganda and Nigeria, researching plant diseases and starting programs to fund the education of African girls.