Happy Ada Lovelace Day!
Over 200 years since the birth of the 19th century female mathematician hailed as the first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace Day celebrates the achievements of women in science, technology and maths (STEM).
While the world has come a long way since then, the contribution of women across all areas of science is still largely overlooked. From advances in nuclear physics to the world’s first taste of electronic music, here’s a list of unsung female scientists whose achievements have changed the world as we know it.
1. Dr. Mae Jemison
When she embarked on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992, Mae Jemison was the first African-American woman to travel to space. Growing up fascinated by the universe, she says, "I remember being really irritated by the fact there were no women astronauts." Breaking through two glass ceilings as well as the earth’s atmosphere to achieve her childhood dreams, her biggest discovery in space is inspiration to us all: "The perspective that stuck with me is that I am as much a part of this universe as any speck of stardust."
2. Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered the first radio pulsars, a highly magnetised, rotating neutron star, whilst studying for a PhD at Cambridge in 1967 under her supervisor Antony Hewish. The discovery won Hewish the Nobel Prize for Physics with fellow scientist Martin Ryle, but Bell Burnell was excluded. This decision outraged other prominent astronomers at the time, but Bell Burnell later went onto achieve many prestigious positions for her work, including becoming the President of the Royal Astronomical Society.
3. Daphne Oram
Daft Punk, Kraftwerk… when you think of the hidden faces behind electronic music, men in masks normally come to mind. However, the birth of the genre owes much to another invisible face, Daphne Oram. Born in 1925, she studied music and electronics before joining the BBC at 18 as a sound engineer. Whilst there, she began to experiment with ‘synthetic sounds’ and tape recorders, eventually managing to convince the BBC to set up the now renowned BBC Radiophonic workshop, which went on to become one of the most famous music studios in the world. However, Oram’s interests quickly diverged from the broadcasting network, who were more interested in using electronics to create special effects and jingles rather than music. She decided to branch out on her own and invented the ‘Oramics’ machine, a contraption that produced pure electronic sound - a huge leap into the future that paved the way for a dynamic new genre.
4. Lise Meitner
Germany’s first woman physics professor, Lise Meitner was forced to flee Nazi Germany whilst researching nuclear physics with her colleague Otto Hahn. Whilst in exile, she received a letter from Hahn revealing that an unexpected element had been released during their experiment. As Hahn took his time trying to work out what this result meant, Meitner identified that nuclear fission between had taken place. In 1944, Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this discovery (you know where this is going) and Meitner received nothing. With the benefit of hindsight, the scientific world has sought to restore her place in history and in 1997, element 109 in the Periodic Table was named after Meitner. For a self-confessed geek this is like being told you have a superpower. As if to prove the point, ‘Meitnerium’ is now the only element named specifically after a non-mythological woman.
5. Tu Youyou
The latest joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine is an example of how far the world has come. This year, the 84-year old became the first Chinese woman to win a Nobel prize for her role in creating an anti-malarial medicine based on research into ancient Chinese medicine. Her path to success has broken many boundaries - Ms. Tu has never received a medical degree or a PhD. After studying pharmacology, she began her research into traditional Chinese medicine and was recruited to join a top secret unit to find a cure for malaria. Discovering a reference to ‘sweet wormwood’ in an ancient text, she realised it contained a compound that could be used to fight malaria parasites. As a result of this incredible breakthrough, millions of lives across Africa and Asia have been saved.
All these examples show that women are good at science. Really good. But despite all these incredible achievements, the potential of women and girls has not been fully realised in this area. According to this brilliant interactive report from UNESCO, women remain underrepresented in scientific research and development in every region of the world. Now this may not be the most scientific of hypotheses, but if we allow half of the world’s population to thrive instead of pushing them to the margins, could we achieve progress on the world’s most pressing issues twice as fast? Like all scientific experiments, we won’t know until we try.