Science Archives - Page 84 of 91

Dr Daisy Elizabeth Platts-Mills

Doctor, community leader

Greta Stevenson

Botanist, mycologist, mountaineer, teacher

Often called “the Lady with the Lamp,” Florence Nightingale was a caring nurse and a leader. In addition to writing over 150 books, pamphlets and reports on health-related issues, she is also credited with creating one of the first versions of the pie chart. However, she is mostly known for making hospitals a cleaner and safer place to be.

Elisabeth Hevelius

Elisabeth Catherina Koopmann-Hevelius was an early female astronomer in the 1600s and worked wwith her husband and fellow astronomer Johannes Hevelius.
Elisabeth Koopmann was born a member of a wealthy merchant family in Danzig (Gdańsk). Fascinated with astronomy from childhood, she approached Hevelius because he was an internationally renowned astronomer whose complex of three houses in Danzig contained the best observatory in the world. When they married in 1663, Elisabeth was 16 and Hevelius was 52. She was able to to pursue her own interest in astronomy by helping him manage his observatory. Following Hevelius’s death in 1687, she completed and published Prodromus astronomiae in 1690, their jointly compiled catalogue of 1,564 stars and their positions. Published with support from King Sobieski, the work consisted of three parts: a preface (labeled Prodromus), a star catalog (named Catalogus Stellarum), and an atlas of constellations (named Firmamentum Sobiescianum, sive Uranographia), with an outline of the methodology and technology used to create the star catalogue. Each star had specific information recorded in columns: the reference number and magnitude found by astronomer Tycho Brahe, Johannes’ own magnitude calculation, the star’s longitude and latitude by both ecliptic coordinates measured by angular distances and meridian altitudes, and the star’s equatorial coordinates calculated using spherical trigonometry.
Although the observations in the catalogue used only the astronomer’s naked eye, the measurements were so precise, they were used in the making of celestial globes into the early 1700s.

Tu Youyou

In 2015, Tu Youyou became the first first Chinese Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine and the first woman from the People’s Republic of China to receive a Nobel Prize in any category. The pharmaceutical chemist and malariologist discovered artemisinin (also known as qīnghāosù 青蒿素) and dihydroartemisinin, a breakthrough in twentieth-century tropical medicine. The resulting malaria treatment saved millions of lives in South China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America. While studying traditional Chinese and herbal medicines, she found a reference in ancient medical texts to using sweet wormwood to treat intermittent fevers, a symptom of malaria. Tu and her research team were able to extract artemisinin (qinghaosu) from wormwood in the 1970s. She even volunteered to be the first human subject to test the substance. Tu later became chief scientist at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, earning her position without a medical degree, a PhD, or research training abroad. In 2011, she became the first Chinese person to receive the Lasker Award for her discovery, which was called “arguably the most important pharmaceutical intervention in the last half-century” by the Lasker Foundation. Tu’s work in the 1960s and 70s coincided with China’s Cultural Revolution, when scientists were denigrated as one of the nine black categories (or “Stinking Old Ninth”) in society according to Maoist theory (or possibly that of the Gang of Four).

June Almeida

June Almeida serves as a role model for determination and innovation. As the person to identify the first human coronavirus, scientists, and people all over the world, are indebted to her work.

Dr Rebecca Lee Crumpler

As the first African American woman to receive a Medical Degree (MD) in the United States, Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler challenged the prejudice that prevented African Americans and women from pursuing medical careers. Despite her achievements, very little is known about Dr. Crumpler and her life story is still being written.

Dr Dorothy Celeste Boulding Ferebee

The founder of the Mississippi Health Project and the Southeast Neighborhood House, Dr. Dorothy Ferebee provided healthcare to the most vulnerable members of the African American community. She advocated for public health, civil rights, and women’s rights in her roles as president of the National Council of Negro Women, an international delegate for the U.S. government, and a pioneering obstetrician.

Clara Barton

An educator and humanitarian, Clarissa “Clara” Harlowe Barton helped distribute needed supplies to the Union Army during the Civil War and later founded the disaster relief organization, the American Red Cross.

Martha Hughes Cannon

Mattie was considered an important witness in prosecuting polygamy. Not only was she in a polygamist marriage herself, but as a doctor, she often delivered the babies of polygamist wives. To the federal government, a baby delivered to a polygamist wife was proof a polygamist marriage. The prosecutors had a warrant out for Mattie to testify. She did not want to be responsible for a man getting arrested, leaving so many children without support. She decided to leave so that she would not have to testify. For the next two years, she and her young daughter Elizabeth moved around in England and the eastern U.S., until the warrant for her had expired.