Can you name any female equivalent (or superior) to the achievements of an Einstein, a Shakespeare, or a Michelangelo?
Just a few here:
Hypatia:
Hypatia was known more for the work she did in mathematics than in astronomy, primarily for her work on the ideas of conic sections introduced by Apollonius. She edited the work On the Conics of Apollonius, which divided cones into different parts by a plane. This concept developed the ideas of hyperbolas, parabolas, and ellipses. With Hypatia's work on this important book, she made the concepts easier to understand, thus making the work survive through many centuries. Hypatia was the first woman to have such a profound impact on the survival of early thought in mathematics. Later, Descartes, Newton, and Leibniz expanded on her work.
She paved the way for Einstien and others!
Ada Byron, the Lady Lovelace:
At the age of 17 Ada was introduced to Mary Somerville, a remarkable woman who translated LaPlace's works into English, and whose texts were used at Cambridge. Though Mrs. Somerville encouraged Ada in her mathematical studies, she also attempted to put mathematics and technology into an appropriate human context. It was at a dinner party at Mrs. Somerville's that Ada heard in November, 1834, Babbage's ideas for a new calculating engine, the Analytical Engine. He conjectured: what if a calculating engine could not only foresee but could act on that foresight. Ada was touched by the "universality of his ideas". Hardly anyone else was.
Babbage worked on plans for this new engine and reported on the developments at a seminar in Turin, Italy in the autumn of 1841. An Italian, Menabrea, wrote a summary of what Babbage described and published an article in French about the development. Ada, in 1843, married to the Earl of Lovelace and the mother of three children under the age of eight, translated Menabrea's article. When she showed Babbage her translation he suggested that she add her own notes, which turned out to be three times the length of the original article. Letters between Babbage and Ada flew back and forth filled with fact and fantasy. In her article, published in 1843, Lady Lovelace's prescient comments included her predictions that such a machine might be used to compose complex music, to produce graphics, and would be used for both practical and scientific use. She was correct.
When inspired Ada could be very focused and a mathematical taskmaster. Ada suggested to Babbage writing a plan for how the engine might calculate Bernoulli numbers. This plan, is now regarded as the first "computer program." A software language developed by the U.S. Department of Defense was named "Ada" in her honor in 1979.
She paved the way for computer programming!
Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards:
In 1868, she was accepted to Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York and graduated with a B.S. degree in 1870. She was then accepted at the MIT as a special student in chemistry (i.e. she was not charged tuition, but MIT was not obligated to her either) and graduated in 1873 with her second B.S. degree. That same year, she received an M.S. degree in chemistry from Vassar. She continued her studies at MIT for two more years, but was not awarded the Ph.D. degree, as was later claimed by her husband, because her professors did not want the first Ph.D. degree in chemistry from MIT to be awarded to a woman.
In 1875 she married Professor Robert H. Richards, head of the department of mining engineering at MIT. She started working with her husband on the chemistry of ore analysis and this work led to her being elected in 1879 the first woman member of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers.
In 1876 she successfully petitioned the Woman?s Education Association of Boston to contribute funds to open the Woman?s Laboratory at MIT. She worked there as an assistant director under Professor John Ordway. She encouraged other women to enter the scientific field and provided opportunities for their training. Women were taught basic and industrial chemistry, biology and mineralogy. With Ordway's help, some were then able to obtain industrial and government consulting jobs.
Beginning in 1876, she was head of the science section of the Society to Encourage Studies at Home. In 1882, she co-founded the Association of Collegiate Alumnae (later known as the American Association of University Women). In 1884, she started working at MIT's new laboratory of sanitation chemistry as an assistant to Professor William Nichols. This was a salaried faculty appointment. Prior to this, she taught classes without pay. She introduced biology to MIT's curriculum and founded the oceanographic institute, known as Woods Hole. In addition, she tested home furnishings and foods for toxic contaminants, investigated water pollution and designed safe sewage systems.
I could go on, but this would be a lenghty post indeed!
