Margaret Rose Preston
Margaret Preston was a leading painter, printmaker and designer.
Category Archives: Science
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Ada Mary a’Beckett
Alongside her employment, a’Beckett played an active role in the life of her community, fitting her ‘philanthropic activities … [into] the leisure moments of a busy professional life (Argus, 12 February 1927), fulfilling the adage that it was ‘the busiest women who can always find time to do a little more’ (Argus, 18 February 1927). To Melbourne journalist, ‘Vesta’ she was an example of the contribution which educated women could make to philanthropic work (Argus, 23 January 1935). She was a founder of the Victorian Women Graduates Association, took leadership roles in both the Janet Clarke Hall Committee and the Lyceum Club, and was also a member of the National Council of Women and the Victoria League. However, her most important contribution was through the Free Kindergarten Union, of which she was the foundation vice-president, president from 1919-39 and life president from then until her death. She was one of the founders, and later a lecturer at the Kindergarten Teaching College and founder of the Australian Association for Pre-School Child Development which was responsible for the establishment of the Lady Gowrie model centres across Australia. Kindergartens, she believed, had the potential to ‘eradicate the weaknesses of human nature and strengthen the good points’ and might in time ‘do away altogether with gaols and asylums’ (Argus, 19 August 1944).
Agnodice
Agnodice is believed to be the first female midwife or physician in ancient Athens.
Anna Amelia Obermeyer
South African botanist Anna Amelia Obermeyer Mauve catalogued more than 4,000 plant specimens from the Kalahari and Soutpansberg regions. She made major contributions to botany journals Flowering Plants of Africa and Bothalia.
Cecilia Grierson
Physician, reformer and activist Cecilia Grierson was the first woman to receive a medical degree in Argentina.
Dr Hawa Abdi
Dr. Hawa Abdi Dhiblawe was a Somali human rights activist and Somalia’s first female obstetrician and gynecologist. She was the founder and chairperson of the non-profit Dr. Hawa Abdi Foundation (DHAF), which provides healthcare, education, shelter and access to sanitation to displaced families.
Dr Daisy Elizabeth Platts-Mills
Doctor, community leader
Greta Stevenson
Botanist, mycologist, mountaineer, teacher
Florence Nightingale
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.