There have always been courageous women who accomplished extraordinary feats in order to advance our understanding of the universe.
The Royal Astronomical Society will be highlighting one woman in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) every day until the end of Women's History Month 2019. The tweets will be in rough chronological order, tracking the history of women in STEM for thousands of years.
Follow us on @RAS_Diversity.
Mar 2018, Apr 2018, May 2018, Jun 2018, Jul 2018, Aug 2018,
Sep 2018, Oct 2018, Nov 2018, Dec 2018, Jan 2019, Feb 2019, Mar 2019.
Hertha Sponer was a German physicist who co-developed a way to measure the strength of a chemical bond using spectroscopy. She lost her job at @uniGoettingen when Hitler came to power because she was a woman. She later became a Professor at @DukeU. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/N5GS6iplqU
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 31, 2018
Edna Wadsworth was a British mathematics teacher and Classics graduate from @OfficialUoM, who joined @RoyalAstroSoc in 1923. She worked as an editor, administrator, and librarian and regularly attended @RoyalAstroSoc meetings before retiring in 1954. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/8hZVz12BQ9
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 30, 2018
Kamala Sohonie was an Indian biochemist. She became the first woman to join @iiscbangalore in 1933 and the first Indian woman to gain a PhD in a science discipline in 1939. She later worked @Cambridge_Uni and The Institute of Science, Mumbai. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/qAftEXxFp4
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 29, 2018
Marietta Blau was an Austrian physicist. She developed the plates used to photograph high-energy particles and showed how you could determine their energy from the tracks on the plate. These were used in cloud chambers and bubble chambers like those found at @CERN. #STEMlegends pic.twitter.com/Yj9KmR2fpE
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 28, 2018
Blau and Hertha Wambacher found evidence of cosmic rays using photographic plates in 1937. Wambacher was later found to be a Nazi. Blau was Jewish. She left Austria in 1938 and got a job teaching physics in Mexico with the help of Albert Einstein. She moved to the USA in 1944.
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 28, 2018
Schrödinger nominated Blau for the 1950 Nobel Prize in Physics for her pioneering work on photographic plates, but she lost to Cecil Powell, who had been inspired by her work. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 28, 2018
Blau returned to Austria in 1960, and worked for the Institute for Radium Research, without pay, until 1964, when she was appointed head of a group analysing the tracks of particles created in experiments at @CERN. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 28, 2018
Mary Winston Jackson was an American mathematician and NASA's first black female engineer. She began working at NACA in 1951, which became @NASA in 1958. She started at @NASA_Langley working under Dorothy Vaughan, when NASA was still segregated. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/TAOByYnQZE
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 27, 2018
Jackson studied for her degree at night at the all-white Hampton High School after petitioning the City of Hampton. She was promoted to aerospace engineer in 1958. Throughout the next few decades, she managed the Federal Women’s Program and the Affirmative Action Program.
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 27, 2018
Dorothy Maud Wrinch was a British-American mathematician and chemist. She earned her degree at @Cambridge_Uni in 1916 and then studied logic with Bertrand Russell before discovering the 'cyclol' structure, a precursor to the DNA double helix. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/nC6t8dvB8l
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 26, 2018
Ethel Bellamy was a British astronomer and seismologist. She worked for Radcliffe Observatory and helped catalogue the position of over a million stars at @VaticanObserv, although her work was unpaid. She was elected a Fellow of @RoyalAstroSoc in 1926. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/G0KWmZv9Qn
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 25, 2018
Edith Quimby was an American physicist who pioneered nuclear medicine while working at @sloan_kettering in 1919. She later became a Professor of Radiology at @Cornell University Medical College and was elected president of @RadiumSociety in 1954. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/Pk6Ys2Gimu
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 24, 2018
Chien-Shiung Wu was a Chinese-American physicist. She earned her PhD at @UCBerkeley in 1940, under Ernest Lawrence, who invented the cyclotron. She then joined @smithcollege and @Princeton, followed by @Columbia in 1944, where she worked for 36 years. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/ImtRUrFQ5a
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 23, 2018
In 1944, Wu worked on the Manhattan Project, helping to develop a process for separating uranium into isotopes. In 1950, Wu confirmed the calculations of physicists Maurice Pryce and John Ward, which are relevant to the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox.
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 23, 2018
In 1956, physicists Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang showed that interactions involving the weak nuclear force do not follow the same symmetry as the other elementary forces. This symmetry is known as parity. Lee and Yang designed several experiments for testing this theory.
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 23, 2018
Wu improved upon this design and carried out the experiment, proving Lee and Yang correct. These results were soon verified, and Lee and Yang were awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 23, 2018
Wu later conducted research into the cause of sickle-cell anaemia. She published a reference book, Beta Decay, in 1965. She became the first female President of @APSphysics in 1975, and received the first Wolf Prize in Physics in 1978. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 23, 2018
Marie Maynard Daly was an American chemist. She became the first black woman to gain a PhD in chemistry in the US when she earned her PhD in chemistry at @Columbia in 1947. In 1955, Daly and Quentin Deming showed that high cholesterol blocks arteries. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/nIVX71ABMB
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 22, 2018
Lucy Wilson was an American physicist who specialised in optics and X-ray spectroscopy. She earned her bachelors from @Wellesley in 1909, and her PhD from @JohnsHopkins. She was an instructor in physics at @mtholyoke, and a professor at @Wellesley. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/psxsLrQXtu
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 21, 2018
Anne Sewell Young was an American astronomer. She was a professor at @mtholyoke and director of the John Payson Williston Observatory, where she observed solar physics. She helped found @AAVSO in 1911 and became a Fellow @RoyalAstroSoc in 1922. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/7mQpPhpbdG
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 20, 2018
Ida Barney was an American astronomer. She measured the positions of about 150,000 stars while working @Yale Observatory. These were published over 22 volumes in Yale Observatory Zone Catalog from 1939 to 1983. She was succeeded by Ellen Dorrit Hoffleit. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/yYS33AwtvO
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 19, 2018
Emmy Noether was a German mathematician who studied at @UniFAU in 1900. Women were not allowed to study at German Universities at the time, and she had to ask each Professor for permission to take his course. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/Ni3ONl8B7a
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 18, 2018
Noether transferred to the @uniGoettingen in 1903, where she attended lectures by mathematicians David Hilbert, Felix Klein, and Hermann Minkowski. Noether graduated in 1904, the same year that @UniFAU allowed women to enrol, and she completed her PhD there in 1907.
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 18, 2018
Noether stayed on at @UniFAU, unofficially and without pay, since the University did not yet employ women faculty members. In 1915, Hilbert and Klein persuaded Noether to return to @uniGoettingen, working freely while they tried to secure her an official post.
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 18, 2018
This was not granted until 1919. Until then, Noether's lectures were officially recorded as Hilbert's where Noether was recorded as the assistant.
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 18, 2018
Noether developed 'Noether's Theorem' in 1915. Noether's Theorem proves the relationship between symmetries and conservation laws in physics. This led to the formulations of several concepts in Einstein's theory of general relativity.
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 18, 2018
Noether began working on abstract algebra in 1920. @uniGoettingen began paying her a small salary in 1923. Noether was dismissed from the University when Hitler came to power in 1933 because she was Jewish, although she continued teaching for free from her own home.
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 18, 2018
Katherine Johnson is an American mathematician and one of many black women employed as a ‘computer’ at NASA. She calculated the trajectories and launch windows for the Project Mercury, the missions of Alan Shepard and John Glenn, and Apollo 11. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/z4ERwLZuqk
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 17, 2018
Caroline Ellen Furness was an American astronomer who worked as an assistant to Mary Watson Whitney at @Vassar. She became the first woman to earn a PhD in astronomy from @Columbia in 1900 and became a Fellow of @RoyalAstroSoc in 1922. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/ZVo5iMD30I
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 16, 2018
Alice Evelyn Wilson was a Canadian geologist. She worked for the Mineralogy Division of the University of Toronto Museum and at the Geological Survey of Canada from 1909, where she was not allowed to participate in fieldwork with men. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/jojfJQoPGW
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 15, 2018
Maria Victoria Vicenta de Rivas was a British astronomer. She was also involved with Britain's trade union for engineers, elected as an honorary member of the @ASLEFJubilee. She became a Fellow of @RoyalAstroSoc in 1922 and regularly attended meetings. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/uGqIg6Ttlv
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 14, 2018
Elizabeth Laird was a Canadian physicist. She earned a PhD from @BrynMawrCollege in 1901 specialising in spectroscopy and was the first woman allowed to conduct research at @DeptofPhysics under J. J. Thomson. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/j1HzpYmCU4
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 13, 2018
Dorothy Johnson Vaughan was an American mathematician and programmer from Missouri. She was one of many black women who worked as a ‘computer’ for NACA, although she was segregated from her white colleagues until 1958, when NACA became NASA.#STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM #BlackAndSTEM pic.twitter.com/mCCEuIVZ18
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 12, 2018
Elizabeth Florette Fisher was an American geologist and conservationist born in Boston in 1873. She taught at @MIT and @Wellesley. She was a fellow of @aaas and @AmericanGeo, and a member of @AppMtnClub, as well as the Boston Society of Natural History. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/bPCvoD7z4Z
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 11, 2018
Dorothea Klumpke Roberts was an American astronomer. She was Director of the Bureau of Measurements at @Obs_Paris 1891 to 1901, and became a fellow of @RoyalAstroSoc in 1926. She was also the first woman to make astronomical observations from a balloon. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/53wGOG1oJN
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 10, 2018
Toshiko Yuasa was a Japanese nuclear physicist. She moved to Paris in 1940, inspired by the work of Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie and studied under Frédéric Joliot-Curie at the @cdf1530, graduating in 1943. She was forced to leave Paris in 1944. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/2sQCE1h7rX
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 9, 2018
Yuasa then worked at @FU_Berlin until Soviet officials ordered her to return to Japan, where the United States Occupation Forces prohibited nuclear research. She worked at Ochanomizu University as a professor and returned to France in 1949, working as a researcher for @CNRS.
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 9, 2018
Fanny Cook Gates was an American nuclear physicist. She was a Fellow of @APSphysics and a member of @amermathsoc. She worked with Ernest Rutherford and Harriet Brooks in 1902 and gained her PhD from @Penn in 1909. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/Yq8ibQMeOA
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 8, 2018
Louisa Petitot Freeman was a British astronomer from Oxford. She was elected to @RoyalAstroSoc in February 1917, having been nominated by Irish astronomer Arthur Alcock Rambaut. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/F8u7KpdHqp
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 7, 2018
Margarete Kahn was a German mathematician. She attended @uniGoettingen with Klara Löbenstein, studying under David Hilbert and graduating in 1909, when women were not allowed to teach at universities. She was a schoolteacher and a Holocaust victim. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/httNTGb0SL
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 6, 2018
Hester Periam Hawkins was a British author of astronomy books and vice-present of the Bedford Women's Liberal Association. She was elected a Fellow of @RoyalAstroSoc in 1921. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/qfiS7s8n5x
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 5, 2018
Marie Paris Pişmiş was an Armenian-Mexican astronomer. She became the first woman to gain a PhD from the Science Faculty of @istanbuledu in 1937. She later worked at @Harvard before moving to Mexico. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/G3g95ei1Mv
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 4, 2018
Pişmiş became known as the first professional astronomer in Mexico and was influential in establishing astronomy education and research. She studied the kinematics of galaxies and nebula, and compiled catalogues of open and globular clusters, identifying HII regions.
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 4, 2018
Ellen Gleditsch was a Norwegian radiochemist and a pioneer of radiochemistry. Gleditsch was the first person to successfully establish the half-life of radium, and helped prove the existence of isotopes. She became a Professor at @UniOslo in 1929. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/3sWb4tatxX
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 3, 2018
Lise Meitner was an Austrian-Swedish physicist. She became the second woman to gain a PhD in physics at @univienna in 1905. In 1917, Meitner and Otto Hahn discovered the first long-lived isotope of protactinium while at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut (KWI). #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/pResQNMz3D
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 2, 2018
In 1922, Meitner discovered the Auger emission process. This describes how a photon or electron is emitted from an atom when the inner-shell is filled by an electron. This effect is named after Pierre Auger who made the same discovery as Meitner independently, the following year.
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 2, 2018
After the discovery of the neutron in 1932, physicists realised it might be possible to create new elements by adding neutrons to uranium. A race to create the first new element ensued between Meitner and Hahn, and Ernest Rutherford, Irène Joliot-Curie, and Enrico Fermi.
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 2, 2018
Hitler came to power in 1933, and almost all Jewish scientists who were not Austrian citizens, or had not fought on the side of Germany during World War I, were removed from their posts. Meitner was Jewish but was also Austrian and so chose to stay, a decision she regretted.
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 2, 2018
Meitner escaped Nazi Germany for the Netherlands in 1938 - with the help of Dutch physicists Dirk Coster and Adriaan Fokker - leaving all of her possessions behind. Meitner reunited with Hahn in Copenhagen, where they discussed experiments he could perform with Fritz Strassmann.
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 2, 2018
Strassmann conducted the first experiment that provided evidence for nuclear fission. This was proven by Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch, who explained how the nucleus of an atom could be split into smaller parts, and why there are no stable elements beyond uranium.
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 2, 2018
By the end of 1938, Meitner was the first to realise that Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity explained why a tremendous amount of energy was released during fission. Hahn and Strassman published their results in 1939.
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 2, 2018
The realisation that this knowledge was in German hands led to the formation of the Manhattan Project. Frisch and Hahn were both involved in the Manhattan Project. Meitner refused an offer to work on the project and stayed in Sweden.
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 2, 2018
After the WWII, Meitner criticised Hahn, Heisenberg, and others for staying in Nazi Germany for as long as they did, offering only passive resistance. In 1945, it was announced that Hahn had been awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission.
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 2, 2018
Mary Acworth Evershed was a British astronomer and writer. She joined @BritAstro in 1895 and directed the Historical Section from 1930 to 1944. She became as Fellow of @RoyalAstroSoc 1924. She travelled to numerous solar eclipses around the world. #STEMlegends #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/2QOHWwuBLp
— RAS Women in STEM (@RAS_Women) August 1, 2018