[Music - credit: Hannah Slavin]
Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake was a physician and
campaigner who fought for women's rights
to study medicine. She founded the
Edinburgh Seven, a group of aspiring
female doctors at Edinburgh University.
Although they were allowed to attend
university, the Seven were charged higher
fees and was segregated from their male
colleagues. Their presence eventually led
to riots. A riot broke out when the Seven
tried to sit the anatomy exam but were
pelted with mud by a large hostile crowd
of male counterparts, who threw a live
sheep into the exam hall. However, despite
the adversity Sophia did finally qualify
as a doctor and co-founded two medical
schools for women. Born in Hannover
Germany, Caroline was only permitted a
rudimentary education prepared for a
life in service. However, after her
father's death she moved to Bath in
England to be with her brother William.
Both of them initially pursued careers
in music but astronomy became a
night-time hobby and after a series of
unsuccessful musical performances they
took up astronomy full-time. Working
closely to support her brother, including
developing better astronomical
instruments, she became a successful
astronomer in her own right. She
discovered eight new comets and
contributed about 500 deep sky objects
to what became the New General Catalogue,
a classification system that is still
used today. Caroline was the first woman
in England to be appointed to an
official government position and the
first woman to receive a salary for her
scientific work. She was also the first
woman to be awarded the gold medal of
the Royal Astronomical Society.
Since first being awarded in 1936,
Maryam made mathematics history in 2014
when she became both the first woman and
the first Iranian honoured with the
Fields Medal, the most prestigious award
in mathematics. Her work focused on
understanding the symmetry of curved
surfaces and it has a potential to
influence many areas of study such as
material science, engineering, quantum
field theory and even cosmology. She
loved to read books and enjoyed writing
stories and had considered that she
would be an author.
As an artist, conservationist and
children's author, Beatrix Potter's
contributions to science are frequently
forgotten alongside her literary
achievements. She was accomplished in
many aspects of natural history
including botany, archaeology and
taxonomy. Her greatest scientific
achievements were in the field of
mycology, where her detailed technical
illustrations of the fungi of the Lake
District are still used for species
classification. She also wrote
scientific papers based on years of
careful research. Unfortunately she faced
widespread rejection from the scientific
establishment due to her gender and her
self-taught status. Caroline was the
founder of the journal: 'The Woman
Engineer', the first secretary of the
Women's Engineering Society (WES) as well as
co-founder and later the director of the
Electrical Association for Women. Her
main goal was to empower women with the
use of electrical engineering, there
by releasing them from household
chores so they could pursue their own
ambitions. The WES built on the gains
made by women during the war attempted
to break down the prejudices of
employers towards women in the workplace
and perhaps most important of all to
ensure that women gained access to
universities and engineering
institutions that had previously only
been open to men. Caroline has helped
inspire at least two generations of
young women to pursue their career as
engineers. Maggie was born in London to
Nigerian parents and is an English space
scientist and science educator. She has
worked on many projects in private
industry, academia, in government and she
has co-presented the long-running
astronomy TV programme 'The Sky At Night'
since 2014.
She moved between 13 schools during her
childhood and struggled with dyslexia.
Once when she told the teacher she
wanted to be an astronaut it was
suggested she try nursing instead.
Maggie is committed to inspiring new
generations of astronauts, engineers and
scientists and she has spoken to about
25,000 children, many of them in
inner-city schools telling them how and
why she is a scientist, busting myths
about careers class and gender. In 2009
she was appointed an MBE for her
services to science and education. In the
late 19th century at Harvard Observatory,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, the work of a
group women made fundamental contributions 
to the birth of modern astronomy.
Charles Pickering, director of the
Observatory, thought that women were more
patient than men and he hired Williamina
Fleming, a Scottish teacher, who had
immigrated to the United States, who at
that time was working in Pickering's home as a
maid. She became the first star specta
cataloger at Harvard. Fleming hired dozens of
women who analysed large sets of data
but earned less than a secretary. Many of the
women working there became very important
astronomers, such as Annie Jump Cannon,
Henrietta Leavitt and Antonia Maury who
developed a new method, improving
Williamina's one. Pickering disagreed
with her system and with her explanations
of the differences in the line width between
the stars, so she decided to leave the
Observatory. However, this new method was
later used by Hertzsprung in his system of
identifying giant
and dwarf stars.
Maria was a german-born American
theoretical physicist. She was the second
woman to win the physics Nobel Prize for
the nuclear shell model. She wanted to
study maths at university but there were
no public institutions that would accept
women so she had to continue her
education in the private school,
Frauenstudium run by suffragettes. She was an
expert in quantum mechanics and applied
her knowledge to other disciplines, such
as chemical physics and nuclear physics.
Even though she worked for the Manhattan
Project,
she was also active in the campaigns
against military control of nuclear
energy. She had a great interest in
Native American pottery and archaeology.
Alice Roberts studied medicine before
pursuing a PhD in paleopathology, the
study of disease in ancient human
remains. She lectures in anatomy,
embryology and physical anthropology.
Alice was promoted in 2012 to Professor
of Public Engagement in Science at the
University of Birmingham, the first
professorship of its kind. She has
written seven popular science books and
presents a number of television programmes,
including 'The Incredible Human Journey',
'Origins Of Us', and 'Digging For Britain'.
She enjoys watercolour painting, surfing,
cycling, gardening, and pub quizzes. Delia
Derbyshire was an English musician and
composer of electronic music. She worked
for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and
she had a fundamental influence in the
course of electronic music in the UK. She
is best known for her electronic
arrangement of the theme music to the
series Doctor Who, but she also created
music and sound for almost 200 radio and
television programmes. Delia would
literally cut tape
and stick it back together in a new
order to make the sound she desired.
Electronic music as it is today would
not exist without her influence on the
industry.
Rosalyn was a stubborn and
single-minded child. Her parents came
from humble backgrounds, but that did not
stop Roslin and her brother from
striving for something greater. Rosalyn
began to read before she began
preschool. Her seventh grade chemistry
teacher aroused her interest in science
and when at university, she took a liking
to nuclear physics. Her parents wanted
her to become a school mistress but
instead she became a nuclear physicist
who was awarded the Nobel Prize in
physiology or medicine. Together with
Solomon Berson, she developed a
radioimmunoassay (RIA), which is used to measure
small concentrations of substances in
the body such as hormones in the blood.
Because the method is so precise they
were able to prove that Type 2 Diabetes
is caused by the body's inefficient use
of insulin. Emmy Noether was a German
mathematician and theoretical physicist
considered the mother of modern abstract
algebra. Her father was a mathematics
professor at the University of
Erlangen and Emmy had to attend his
classes as a listener, because women
were only accepted to universities
unofficially. She worked in the Göttingen
Institute of Mathematics on the
equations of Einstein's Theory of
General Relativity, but for many years
she wasn't recognised as a full
investigator and professor because of
her gender and furthermore because she
was Jewish, a social democrat and
a pacifist. Her most famous theorem, the
Noether Theorem, explains the
connection between symmetry in physics
and the fundamental conservation laws.
Annie Jump Cannon was an astronomer best
known for determining the current
system of a stellar classification, which
classifies a star according to its
temperature.
She manually classified hundreds of
thousands of stars, more in a lifetime
than anyone else and discovered several
hundred variable stars, novas and one
spectroscopic binary system. Annie was a
suffragist and a member of the National
Woman's Party. She was encouraged by her
mother to pursue her ambitions, who also
taught Annie the constellations and
household economics when she was young.
Grace Hopper was a leading computer
scientist who worked on machine
independent programming language, that is
programming languages that could run on
any machine. In the early 1960s the
development of COBOL, an acronym for
'Common Business-Oriented Language'
resulted from Grace's previous work. COBOL
was a programming language designed for
business use. For example, in finance
administration and insurance companies
still used today. Her work was so central
to the US Navy's computer systems that
she was recalled out of retirement twice
finally retiring at the age of 80. Grace
was posthumously awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom by
President Barack Obama and is one of the
few women to have a US Navy ship named
after her. A Chinese American scientist,
recognised as one of the greatest
experimental physicists of her time,
Chien-Shiung Wu was born in a little
town near Shanghai. Her father, who funded
the first school for girls in China,
believed in gender equality. He also
supported her when she decided to study
physics. Wu was a revolutionary student
leader during her time at the University
of Nanjing, where she later became the
ambassador to the nationalist cause in
Taiwan. Previous to 1956 it was thought
that a property in particle physics
called parity was conserved in the weak
interaction between subatomic particles.
However, Wu presented the first
experimental proof that parity was not
conserved in weak interactions, in
nuclear beta decay. Wu was not recognised
until 1978 for this discovery with an
award of the Wolf Prize,
even though male colleagues Li and Yang
won the Nobel Prize for the theoretical
proof in 1957. Her book 'Beta Decay' is
still an essential read for nuclear
physics.
Patricia was a pioneer in many areas as
a woman and as an african-american. She
was the first african-american female to
receive a patent for medical purposes.
She was the inventor of the 'Laserphaco
Probe', which is used in the treatment of
cataracts.
Patricia founded the American Institute
for the Prevention of Blindness in
Washington DC in 1976 and established
that eyesight is a basic human right.
During her youth she battled with sexism,
racism and poverty, and as an adult she
pioneered volunteer based outreach to
bring eye care to impoverished people.
One of the last women to arrive to the
Harvard College Observatory was an
English-American astronomer Cecilia
Payne-Gaposchkin. She proved in her 1925
doctoral thesis that hydrogen is the
principal component of stars using data
collected by Annie Jump Cannon. This work was
considered at the time to be the most
brilliant thesis ever written in astronomy.
However, despite the evidence she had
found, her work was reviewed by Henry
Russell and he dissuaded her from her
original conclusion as it went against
the ideas of the time. He is often credited
with the discovery when he came to the
same conclusion after getting repeated
results by a different method, which he
published four years later. Cecilia was
an inspired seamstress, an inventive knitter
and a voracious reader as well as the
first woman to be promoted to professor
at Harvard University, and, later the
first female chair of the Department of
Astronomy. English mathematician and
writer Ada is recognised as the first
computer programmer in history. She wrote
an algorithm for Charles Babbage's
concept of a digital programmable
analytical engine, which is known today
as the first algorithm actionable by a
computer.
She also predicted the capacities of
computing devices beyond numerical
calculation. At the age of 12, having
studied the anatomy of birds and the
suitability of various materials she
illustrated plans to construct a
winged flying apparatus before moving on
to think about powered flight. In the
1840s Lovelace began a gambling habit
that contributed to her dwindling finances
and had to secretly pawn 
the Lovelace family diamonds.
Lise Meitner was an Austrian-Swedish
physicist who worked on radioactivity
and nuclear physics.
She co-led the team of scientists that
discovered nuclear fission but was
inexplicably excluded from the Nobel
Prize awarded to Otto Hahn for that work.
Lise escaped Sweden in 1939 due to her
Jewish origin. She declined to
collaborate in the Manhattan Project
declaring: 'I will have nothing to do with
the bomb!'. She played the piano, was a
music aficionado and was an avid walker,
enjoying hiking trips in the mountains.
Hertha had a rebellious personality,
which was noticed by her teachers and
classmates. Her cousins introduced her
to science and maths, and when she was 16
years old she was working as a governess.
She studied at Cambridge, where she was
successful in getting a patent for a
sphygmomanometer, a blood-pressure
meter.
She led the choral society, founded the
all-women Girton College Fire Brigade
and co-founded a mathematical club. During her
life she registered 26 patents, she also
worked in embroidery and teaching. Hertha
won the Hughes medal by the Royal
Society for her work on electric arcs.
She also conducted research about the
formation of ripples in sand and water.
Furthermore, she helped found the
International Federation of University
Women and the National Union of Scientific
Workers.
Beatrice 'Tilly' Shilling was an acclaimed
World War Two British aeronautical
engineer. The Merlin engines in RAF
Hurricane and Spitfire aircraft would cut
out when subjected to negative g-force
manoeuvers during dogfights with the
enemy. After other attempts to find a
solution had failed, in 1941 it was Tilly's
simple solution of a thimble-shaped fuel
flow restrictor allowing a short-term
quick fix that kept the RAF competitive
during the darkest days of war.
Tilly personally visited RAF bases
helping to install the restrictor in
hundreds of aircraft. After the war she
went on to work on the British Blue
Streak rocket and was a trailblazer for
women's rights. In the 1930s she raced
motorcycles and after the war raced,
modified and tuned cars, even helping on
engineering issues in Formula One race
cars into the late 1960s. 
Hedy Lamarr invented the communication system known
as the spread spectrum transmission
technique used in many communication
technologies to the present day,
including Wi-Fi. She started to study
engineering, but was also an actor. One of
her films, 'Ecstasy', which included the
first nude scene and it was the first
non-pornographic movie to show an
actress having an orgasm, though showing
no more than her face. The film was
accused of sexual scandal and was banned
in cinemas. She was forced by her family
to marry Fritz Mandl,
a Nazi and extremely jealous man, from
whom she later escaped. During World War
Two she offered to help the USA and
during this time she developed her
communication system. Her birthday, the
ninth of November, is celebrated in her
honour in Austria as 'Inventor's Day'.
A Polish-French physicist and chemist,
Marie Curie won two Nobel prizes in
different disciplines for her work in
radioactivity and for the discoveries of
the elements polonium and radium. Marie
moved to France in 1891, living with her
sister, she was able to attend university
in Paris. She was also a war hero. During
World War One she invented the 'Petit
Curie', a mobile x-ray unit able to take
radiographies in the war front. She was
even one of the drivers on the
battlefield.
Her eldest daughter, Irene Curie, also won
a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the
discovery of artificial radioactivity.
Her youngest daughter,
Eve Curie, was a famous writer,
journalist and pianist.
Professor Elizabeth 'Liz' Morris OBE
is a British glaciologist
and polar scientist. She is a senior
associate at the Scott Polar Research
Institute in Cambridge. She has served as
Arctic science advisor to the Natural
Environment Research Council and has led
the ice and climate division of the
British Antarctic Survey. She was
formerly the principal scientific
officer at the Institute of Hydrology
and President of the International
Glaciology Society.
Professor Morris is one of only eight
women to have been awarded the Polar
Medal in its 160 year history.
Henrietta was an American astrophysicist and began
her career in astronomy analysing
photographic plates of stars with
varying brightness.
She discovered the relationship between
the luminosity and the period of
variability of Cepheid stars, a remarkable
discovery which led to being able to
determine accurate distances to other
galaxies. This work allowed Edwin Hubble to
show that the Universe is expanding in
his 1929 paper. Due to an illness, during
the later years of her work she became
increasingly deaf. The Leavitt crater on
the Moon is named after her to
honour the contributions to science by
people who are deaf. Her colleagues noted
in Henrietta's obituary that: 'she had the happy
faculty of appreciating all that was
worthy and lovable in others, and was
possessed of a nature so full of
sunshine that, to her, all of life became
beautiful and full of meaning'.
