Items19The creator’s order
  1. 1Eunice Newton FooteEunice Newton FooteBorn 17 Jul 1819Eunice Newton Foote showed in 1856, using glass cylinders in sunlight, that air containing carbon dioxide heats up more than ordinary air, and suggested this could affect the planet's temperature. Her paper was read at a scientific meeting by Joseph Henry, not by her. John Tyndall's more detailed…0i
  2. 2Nettie StevensNettie StevensBorn 7 Jul 1861Nettie Stevens, working at Bryn Mawr, showed in 1905 from studies of mealworms that sex is determined by particular chromosomes, the X and Y system. Edmund Beecher Wilson reached a similar conclusion independently, and textbooks long credited him or Thomas Hunt Morgan. She died in 1912, before her…0i
  3. 3Henrietta Swan LeavittHenrietta Swan LeavittBorn 4 Jul 1868Henrietta Swan Leavitt, one of the women employed as computers at Harvard College Observatory, published in 1912 the relationship between the brightness and pulsation period of Cepheid variable stars. It became the yardstick Edwin Hubble used to measure distances to other galaxies. She was paid…0i
  4. 4Alice BallAlice BallBorn 24 Jul 1892Alice Ball, a young Black chemist at the University of Hawaii, developed around 1915 a method to make chaulmoogra oil injectable, the most effective treatment for leprosy until antibiotics. She died in 1916 at 24, and the university's president published the work without crediting her. The…0i
  5. 5Emmy NoetherEmmy NoetherBorn 23 Mar 1882Emmy Noether proved in 1915, published in 1918, the theorem linking symmetries in physics to conservation laws, now fundamental to modern physics, and went on to transform abstract algebra. For years she lectured at Göttingen without pay or a formal post because she was a woman, and in 1933 she was…0i
  6. 6Cecilia Payne-GaposchkinCecilia Payne-GaposchkinBorn 10 May 1900Cecilia Payne showed in her 1925 doctoral thesis that stars are made overwhelmingly of hydrogen and helium. The leading astronomer Henry Norris Russell persuaded her to call the result probably not real; he reached the same conclusion by other means in 1929 and was often credited. She stayed at…0i
  7. 7Ida NoddackIda NoddackIda Noddack, a chemist who co-discovered the element rhenium in 1925, suggested in 1934 that bombarding uranium with neutrons might break the nucleus into large fragments. Physicists, including Enrico Fermi, largely ignored the idea. Nuclear fission was confirmed four years later, and her early…0i
  8. 8Lise MeitnerLise MeitnerBorn 7 Nov 1878Lise Meitner worked with Otto Hahn for three decades, and after fleeing Nazi Germany she and her nephew Otto Frisch provided the physical explanation of nuclear fission in early 1939, based on Hahn's experimental results. Hahn alone received the 1944 Nobel prize in chemistry. Recognition followed…0i
  9. 9Ruby Payne-ScottRuby Payne-ScottBorn 28 May 1912Ruby Payne-Scott was among the first radio astronomers, making pioneering observations of solar radio bursts and early interferometry in Sydney in the late 1940s. Australian public service rules barred married women from permanent posts; having hidden her marriage, she left in 1951. Her role in…0i
  10. 10Esther LederbergEsther LederbergBorn 18 Dec 1922Esther Lederberg discovered the lambda bacteriophage in 1951 and helped develop replica plating, a technique central to bacterial genetics. Her husband Joshua Lederberg shared the 1958 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine partly for work they had done together, and she was not included. Wider…0i