Christiane
Nusslein-Volhard
Born: October 20, 1942 in Frankfurt, Germany
Christiane
Nusslein-Volhard was a German biologist who shared a 1995
Nobel Prize in medicine for her work with fruit flies,
which identified the genes that are important for the
embryonic development of body segments. She was the 10th
woman to receive a Nobel Prize, as well as the most recent
woman to do it.
As she grew
up, Christiane became very interested in plants and animals.
Later, she found university studies boring but rediscovered
her passion for biology and joined a biochemistry course
at Tubingen. She became bored with her doctorate research
of gene sequencing, but wanted to look into how genes
affect the development of organisms. She decided on the
fruit fly, Drosophilia, as her research subject. She moved
to Switzerland to work for a fruit fly expert, where she
met Eric Wieschaus. They shared a laboratory together
in Heidelberg. Together that worked to find out which
genes controlled the early development of the fruit fly
embryo at the stage when it started to show some structure.
They isolated fifteen genes that controlled how the embryo
divided into segments. The results were announced in 1980.
Christiane
moved back to Tubingen in 1981 and in 1986 became the
director of a division of the Max Planck Institute. Her
research continues today, and has even expanded to fish
embryos.
http://www.bartleby.com/61/71/N0197150.html
http://www.longman.co.uk/tt_secsci/resources/scimon/aug01/nuss.htm
Emily
Warren Roebling
Born: 1843
Died: 1903
Emily W. Roebling
could be considered one of the first women field engineers.
After the death of her father-in-law and her husband's
debilitating illness, Emily, already highly educated for
the time, was taught the fundamentals of civil engineering.
She took over the supervision and completion of the Brooklyn
Bridge project, and was considered by many as the Chief
Engineer, rather than her husband.
One of her
greatest accomplishments was being the first woman to
address the ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers)
in support of her husband retaining his title of Chief
Engineer on the project. After the completion of the Brooklyn
Bridge, Emily continued to keep a high profile. She was
active in several organizations, was the vice-president
of the Daughters of the American Revolution and very active
in the Hugenot Society.
http://www.scc.rutgers.edu/njwomenshistory/period_3/emilyroebling.htm
http://www.engr.psu.edu/wep/EngCompSp98/Sdixon/body.html
http://www.engr.psu.edu/wep/EngCompSp98/sdent/ENGR297.html
Mary
Fairfax Somerville
Born: December 26, 1780 in Jedburgh, Roxburghshire, Scotland
Died: November 29, 1872 in Naples, Italy
Mary Fairfax
Somerville was born into well-known naval family. Although
her brothers were encouraged to pursue academic endeavors,
Mary's family discouraged and criticized her academic
interests. With the help of an uncle she secretly taught
herself to read Latin and persuaded one of her brother's
tutors to get her a book on algebra.
In 1804 Mary
married one of her cousins, who did not encourage her
studies. Upon his death in 1807, she inherited a substantial
amount of money that allowed her the flexibility to pursue
her academic interests. Four years later she was recognized
for solving a prize problem in The Mathematical Repository.
She remarried the following year to a man more supportive
of her academic pursuits. He took her with him to lectures
at the Royal Institution.
Mary became
a renowned scientific writer and received many honors.
Her works include a paper on "The Magnetic Properties
of The Violet Rays of the Solar System," a Cambridge
higher mathematics textbook "The Mechanism of the
Heavens," her most popular work "Physical Geography"
and her last work, "Molecular and Microscopic Science."
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Somerville.html
http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/somer.htm
http://www.mathnews.uwaterloo.ca/BestOf/WomenInMath7105.html
Nettie
Maria Stevens
Born: 1861
Died: 1912
Nettie Maria
Stevens studied cytology at Bryn Mawr, where she was influenced
by the work of E.B. Wilson, the previous head of the Biology
Department. She contributed work on the chromosomal determination
of sex, which she reported in "Studies in Spermatogenesis,
with Especial Reference to the Accessory Chromosome,"
her 1905 paper. At the same time as Wilson, she concluded
that sex was determined by a single difference between
two classes of sperm, which were either the presence or
absence of an X chromosome.
http://search.eb.com/women/articles/Stevens_Nettie_Maria.html
http://hermes.mbl.edu/women_of_science/stevens.html
Theano
Theano lived during the 5th century BC and was married
to Pythagoras. She is most often recognized for writing
and her mathematical contributions to the Pythagorean
books on the Golden Mean and the Golden Rectangle. However,
she also worked in physics, medicine, and child psychology
and was a successful businesswoman; after the death of
Pythagoras, Theano and her two daughters successfully
ran the Pythagorean School.
http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/theano.htm
http://www.astr.ua.edu/4000WS/THEANO.html
http://web.uvic.ca/educ/lfrancis/web/Theano.html
