Women in Science

[vagina]

How many of you like science? I know for sure I do, otherwise I probably wouldn't have a career as a Science Professor.

During my PhD days, I noticed the difference between the old school and new school education. The new school education encourages women to be scientists and in fact more than half of my graduate school cohort was women. Because let's face it, women are brilliant.

As a female scientist I have been discriminated against on many occasions. On several occasions being told by the male advisor to clean up messes made by a male student in my lab. On another occasion having a male professor disrupt my class to flirt with me and embarrass me. These kinds of behaviors are overlooked in science because it is still a man's sport. However women scientists have existed prior and continue to grow in numbers.

So, here's a thread dedicated to all the women that struggle in the fields of Math and Science and yet continue to bring us the beautiful gift of knowledge.


The first entry is dedicated to Maryam Mirzakhani of Stanford University, California, the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Mathematics. And speaking of new scientists, this article is from newscientist.com



http://www.newscientist.com/article/...l#.U_44dygRjao

Iranian woman wins maths' top prize, the Fields medal

20:32 12 August 2014 by Dana Mackenzie
A woman has won the maths world's "Nobel prize" for the first time. Maryam Mirzakhani of Stanford University, California, will receive the Fields medal tomorrow at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Seoul, South Korea.

The medal is awarded once every four years to at most four recipients, who must be aged under 40 at the start of that year. All the previous 52 Fields medallists, dating back to 1936, have been male.

Mirzakhani, who is Iranian, studies the geometry of moduli space, a complex geometric and algebraic entity that might be described as a universe in which every point is itself a universe. Mirzakhani described the number of ways a beam of light can travel a closed loop in a two-dimensional universe. To answer the question, it turns out, you cannot just stay in your "home" universe – you have to understand how to navigate the entire multiverse. Mirzakhani has shown mathematicians new ways to navigate these spaces.

Mirzakhani first attracted international attention as a high-school student in 1995, when she was the first Iranian student to achieve a perfect score in the International Mathematics Olympiad.

"She is very, very well known in Iran, where she is held out as an example for younger students," says Ingrid Daubechies, the president of the International Mathematical Union, which selects the Fields medallists.


"Speaking as a woman myself, it is a wonderful thing to see her win," Daubechies adds. "It will lay to rest the often-quoted fact that a woman has never won." In future, she says, the idea of a woman winning the top maths award will no longer seem exceptional.

The three other winners are Brazilian-born Artur Avila of Denis Diderot University in Paris, France, who studies how chaotic systems evolve when constrained by certain rules; Manjul Bhargava, a number theorist at Princeton University; and Martin Hairer, an expert in partial differential equations at the University of Warwick, UK.

[Katniss]

Rosalind Franklin---

Who do you think of when you think of DNA? Watson? Crick? How about Franklin?

Rosalind Franklin was, for too long, the overshadowed party in Watson and Crick's story of how they unraveled the structure of DNA. Franklin took the X-ray diffraction images of DNA that indicated its twisted, double-helical structure; without her precise lab work, attention to detail and thoughtful analysis, those X-ray images wouldn't have been worth a penny.

What's more, without those images Watson and Crick would not have been able to publish their notable 1953 paper on the structure of DNA. Those images, leaked to Watson and Crick by Franklin's lab partner, made the difference in the discovery...but not in the recognition.

In 1962, Watson and Crick won the Nobel Prize for their work on the structure of DNA; by then, Franklin had been dead for four years, a victim of ovarian cancer.

[Kobi]

[vagina]

This woman amazes and surprises me. She sacrificed her life (unknowingly?) to study radioactivity.



Synopsis

Born Maria Sklodowska on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw, Poland, Marie Curie became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win the award in two different fields (physics and chemistry). Curie's efforts, led to the discovery of polonium and radium and the development of X-rays. She died on July 4, 1934.

Early Life

Maria Sklodowska, better known as Marie Curie, was born in Warsaw in modern-day Poland on November 7, 1867. Her parents were both teachers, and she was the youngest of five children. As a child Curie took after her father, Ladislas, a math and physics instructor. She had a bright and curious mind and excelled at school. But tragedy struck early, and when she was only 11, Curie lost her mother, Bronsitwa, to tuberculosis.

A top student in her secondary school, Curie could not attend the men-only University of Warsaw. She instead continued her education in Warsaw's "floating university," a set of underground, informal classes held in secret. Both Curie and her sister Bronya dreamed of going abroad to earn an official degree, but they lacked the financial resources to pay for more schooling. Undeterred, Curie worked out a deal with her sister. She would work to support Bronya while she was in school and Bronya would return the favor after she completed her studies.

For roughly five years, Curie worked as a tutor and a governess. She used her spare time to study, reading about physics, chemistry and math. In 1891, Curie finally made her way to Paris where she enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris. She threw herself into her studies, but this dedication had a personal cost. With little money, Curie survived on buttered bread and tea, and her health sometimes suffered because of her poor diet.

Curie completed her master's degree in physics in 1893 and earned another degree in mathematics the following year.

Discoveries

She was fascinated with the work of Henri Becquerel, a French physicist who discovered that uranium casts off rays, weaker rays than the X-rays found by Wilhelm Roentgen.

Curie took Becquerel's work a few steps further, conducting her own experiments on uranium rays. She discovered that the rays remained constant, no matter the condition or form of the uranium. The rays, she theorized, came from the element's atomic structure. This revolutionary idea created the field of atomic physics and Curie herself coined the word radioactivity to describe the phenomena.

Working with the mineral pitchblende, she discovered a new radioactive element in 1898. She named the element polonium, after Marie's native country of Poland. She also detected the presence of another radioactive material in the pitchblende, and called that radium. In 1902, the she announced that she had produced a decigram of pure radium, demonstrating its existence as a unique chemical element.

Science Celebrity

Marie Curie made history in 1903 when she became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in physics. She won the prestigious honor along with her husband and Henri Becquerel, for their work on radioactivity. With their Nobel Prize win, the Curies developed an international reputation for their scientific efforts, and they used their prize money to continue their research. They welcomed a second child, daughter Eve, the following year.

In 1906, Marie suffered a tremendous loss. Her husband Pierre was killed in Paris after he accidentally stepped in front of a horse-drawn wagon. Despite her tremendous grief, she took over his teaching post at the Sorbonne, becoming the institution's first female professor.

Curie received another great honor in 1911, winning her second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry. She was selected for her discovery of radium and polonium, and became the first scientist to win two Nobel Prizes. While she received the prize alone, she shared the honor jointly with her late husband in her acceptance lecture.

Around this time, Curie joined with other famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Max Planck, to attend the first Solvay Congress in Physics. They gathered to discuss the many groundbreaking discoveries in their field. Curie experienced the downside of fame in 1911, when her relationship with her husband's former student, Paul Langevin, became public. Curie was derided in the press for breaking up Langevin's marriage. The press' negativity towards Curie stemmed at least in part from rising xenophobia in France.

When World War I broke out in 1914, Curie devoted her time and resources to helping the cause. She championed the use of portable X-ray machines in the field, and these medical vehicles earned the nickname "Little Curies." After the war, Curie used her celebrity to advance her research. She traveled to the United States twice— in 1921 and in 1929— to raise funds to buy radium and to establish a radium research institute in Warsaw.

Final Days and Legacy

All of her years of working with radioactive materials took a toll on Curie's health. She was known to carry test tubes of radium around in the pocket of her lab coat. In 1934, Curie went to the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Passy, France, to try to rest and regain her strength. She died there on July 4, 1934, of aplastic anemia, which can be caused by prolonged exposure to radiation.

Marie Curie made many breakthroughs in her lifetime. She is the most famous female scientist of all time, and has received numerous posthumous honors. In 1995, her and her husband's remains were interred in the Panthéon in Paris, the final resting place of France's greatest minds. Curie became the first and only woman to be laid to rest there.

Curie also passed down her love of science to the next generation. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie followed in her mother's footsteps, winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935. Joliot-Curie shared the honor with her husband Frédéric Joliot for their work on their synthesis of new radioactive elements.

Today several educational and research institutions and medical centers bear the Curie name, including the Institute Curie and the Pierre and Marie Curie University, both in Paris.

[Katniss]

Not trying to derail the thread but since the above post was about Marie Curie I thought no-one would object if I slid in a poem by Adrienne Rich referencing Ms. Curie......



Power, by Adrienne Rich

Living in the earth-depositis of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power

[vagina]

Dr. Walker was a feminist, abolitionist, war hero and a hundred or so years ahead of her time on not only what women could do, but what she DID do as a woman and how she dared to look doing it.

She was born in Oswego NY in November 26, 1832 to progressive parents. She worked on her family's farm from a young age where during working hours she refused to wear women's clothing due to their restrictiveness, her mother had the intelligence to support her in this and preach against the unhealthy dangers of corsets and tight laced clothing.

Dr. Walker's mother was a teacher and Mary followed in her footsteps, later using the money she made from teaching to put herself through medical school where she graduated in 1855 as the ONLY female in her class.

Dr. Walker volunteered for the Union side during the Civil War, where she served as a nurse because sexist insecure army officials wouldnt allow her the status of her full medical degree. She frequently crossed battle lines to treat injured civilians and was even captured for several months by the Confederates. She was later recommended for the Medal of Honor and was granted it on November 11th 1865 by President Johnson. In 1917 due to idiot red tape, Dr. Walker was stripped of her Medal, but continued to wear it right up to her death. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter posthumously reinstated Mary's Medal and due right to female/feminist history.

After the war Mary lectured, wrote and joined the ranks of suffragists such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Mary fought for women's healthcare, women's rights and dress reform for women, sporting masculine attire while doing so.

Dr Walker died February 21, 1919 at the age of 86. Mary Walker carried female differently in how she dressed, the education she demanded for herself as a female, her right to risk her life for her country, her bravery for imparting all this to other women where ever she lectured, in short Dr Mary Walker did woman different in every breath she took.