Jennifer Mondfrans

Elizabeth Blackwell

Medical Doctor 1821-1910

She was the first woman awarded a medical degree in the United States. No hospital would employ her, so in 1853 she opened a dispensary in a tenement district of NYC, which later became the New York Infirmary of Women and Children. she was a visionary doctor who worked for those in the poorest conditions.
Elizabeth sports a 19th century travel stethoscope.

Agnes Pockels

Physicist, Fluid Dynamics 1862-1935

With no more than a public high school education for girls, she pioneered the study of surface film physics. Remarkably, she did this out of her own home, studying with her brother's physics books, while taking care care of her sick parents. The surface balance technique Pockels developed is still used today.
Agnes relaxes with her surface tension blouse.

Beatrix Potter

Mycologist, writer 1866-1943

Before becoming a storybook writer, she studied fungi, creating over 270 detailed watercolors now on display in the Armitt Library in Ambleside, England. She kept a private journal written in code, which wasn't published until 1966 because no one could break it. Once broken, it took the decoder seven years to decipher.
Beatrix can't wait to play with her dog Spot.

Marie Curie

Physicist and Chemist 1867-1934

She was a pioneering scientist who won the Nobel Prize twice. She was awarded in 1903, sharing the Nobel Prize in physics with her husband, Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel for the discovery of radium and polonium. In 1911, she was the first woman to win the Noble Prize in chemistry, by herself, for the isolation of pure radium.
Marie radiates in the green glow of radium.

Henrietta Swan Leavitt

Astrononomer 1868-1961

In her career at Harvard College Observatory, she discovered more than 2,400 variable stars. She saw a direct correlation between the time it took a star to go from bright to dim and the star's actual brightness. Knowing this relationship helped other astronomers, such as Edwin Hubble, make their own groundbreaking discoveries.
Henrietta models a distant galaxy.

Lise Meitner

Physicist 1878-1968

She gave the first theoretical explanation of the fission process. While exiled in Stockholm during the second world war, she kept in constant collaboration with her partner in chemistry, Otto Hahn. Although the Nobel Committee overlooked her vital contribution, the element Meitnerium, a transuranian element, is named after her.
Lise basks in the sparks of fission.

Emmy Noether

Mathematician 1882-1936

Emmy Noether made fundamental contributions in abstract algebra, developing ideal theory, the basis of modern ring theory; and in theoretical physics, establishing relationships between symmetries of a system and conservation laws. At her death, Einstein wrote in her obituary: Fraulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began.

Emmy works her First Theorem as a bow tie.

Barbara McClintock

Geneticist 1902-1992

She received the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1983 for showing that genes could transpose (move around) within chromosomes. This so-called "jumping gene" taught her that stress and the genome's reaction to it underlie our evolution. Her revolutionary understanding came from studying simple grains of maize.
Barbara poses with her maize.

Kathleen Yardley Lonsdale

Chemist 1903-1971

She solved a 64-year contention in chemistry by confirming experimentally the ring structure of benzene, the aromatic compound responsible for scent. She also gave the structure's precise molecular dimensions. In 1945, she was the first woman to be elected to fellowship in the Royal Society, which had excluded women for 285 years.
Kathleen looking clever in her benzene ring glasses.

Marie Geoppert-Mayer

Physicist 1906-1972

She won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1963 for her discoveries concerning the meaning of the magic numbers (nuclei with a special number of protons). She established mathematically that these numbers are the nuclear counterpart to the closed shells of electrons at the atomic level.
Marie on the move in her magic numbers hat.

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin

Chemist 1910-1994

In 1964, she was the third woman to win a Nobel Prize in chemistry. Her three greatest chemical achievements were her determination of the structures of penicillin, vitamin B12, the vitamin that prevents pernicious anemia and insulin, the hormone essential for carbohydrate metabolism.
Dorothy dazzles in her formula for Vitamin B-12.

Chien Shing Wu

Physicist 1912-1997

In 1957, she devised the experiment which disproved the law of conservation of parity-an amazing feat in physics. She was the first woman to receive the Comstock Award from the National Academy of Sciences in 1964. After all this success, she moved into medical research to study sickle cell anemia.
Chien dresses up a sickle cell slide.