women-in-science

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin proved stars are made of hydrogen in 1925 — then was told to suppress it. She became Harvard's first female full professor. Here is her story.

Henrietta Leavitt's 1912 discovery of the Cepheid period-luminosity relation gave astronomy its first reliable cosmic distance scale. Her story and legacy.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars in 1967 as a PhD student. Her Nobel Prize snub became science's most debated injustice. Here is the full story.

Maria Goeppert Mayer built the nuclear shell model that explains why certain atoms are extraordinarily stable, then waited decades for a paid academic position.

Mary Anning discovered the first ichthyosaur, plesiosaur, and British pterosaur from the cliffs of Lyme Regis. Barred from science's institutions, she built the field anyway.

Mary Cartwright discovered chaotic behavior in differential equations in the 1940s, decades before chaos theory existed, while doing classified wartime radar work.

Donna Strickland's chirped pulse amplification technique is the laser physics behind LASIK eye surgery. Wikipedia rejected her as 'not notable' five months before her 2018 Nobel Prize.

Marie Tharp mapped the entire ocean floor from shore, banned from research ships. Her discovery of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge rift valley confirmed plate tectonics — called 'girl talk' by her own colleague.

Chien-Shiung Wu proved parity violation in 1956, overturning a 30-year assumption in physics. Lee and Yang got the Nobel. She didn't. She worked on the Manhattan Project and always wore a qipao.

Emmy Noether proved that every symmetry in nature corresponds to a conservation law. Einstein called her the most significant creative mathematical genius ever produced.

Vera Rubin confirmed dark matter by measuring galaxy rotation curves that defied Newtonian gravity. Turned away from Princeton. Made her own restroom sign at Palomar. Never got the Nobel.