By: Crystal Cockman
As March is celebrated as Women’s History Month, this is as great a time as any to reflect for a few minutes on the contributions women have made to science. From biology to astronomy, mathematics to chemistry, computer science to medicine, and beyond, women have played a significant role in increasing our understanding of the natural world.
Names such as Marie Curie, who was a pioneer in the study of radioactivity leading to the development of the x-ray, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize and the only woman to win it twice, and Rachel Carson, who wrote Silent Spring which inspired a generation to care about the environment and led to the banning of DDT and ultimately the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency, are easily brought to mind when you think of female scientists, but there are numerous others that are much less well known.
In many cases, the contributions of female scientists historically went largely unnoticed or unacknowledged. Before the women’s rights movement, many female scientists were faced with difficulty obtaining access to higher education, and those who did often had trouble getting their ideas and theories heard, and in some cases credit was even taken from them for their work.
Rosalind Franklin was an English chemist, biophysicist, and X-ray crystallographer whose work was critical in leading to the discovery of the DNA double helix structure. Franklin obtained the first photos of DNA fibers, which supported the theory of a helical structure. She presented this information at a lecture that was attended by James Watson. Watson was simultaneously working on discovering DNA structure with Francis Crick. Maurice Wilkins who knew both Watson and Crick and worked in the same lab as Franklin showed her images to them without her permission, which confirmed the structure they had theorized.
Franklin’s work was published after theirs, all in 1953. She died from cancer in 1958 before the theory of DNA structure was considered fully proven. In 1962 the Nobel Prize was awarded to Wilkins, Watson and Crick for their work studying nucleic acids and DNA structure. Nobel prizes cannot be awarded posthumously, but had she lived it is still uncertain whether Franklin would have been included in the award. Franklin also pioneered research in the molecular structure of a number of viruses, and her colleague and collaborator Aaron Klug continued the work she had started, which led to his being awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1982, as well.
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was a British-American astronomer and astrophysicist who discovered the chemical composition of stars, and first theorized that hydrogen and helium are the most abundant elements in the Universe. She attended Cambridge University and completed her studies, but was not awarded a degree because Cambridge did not grant degrees to women until 1948. She moved to the United States as the second woman to obtain a fellowship to study at the Harvard College Observatory’s new graduate program in astronomy. She wrote a doctoral dissertation in 1925 theorizing that helium and hydrogen were more abundant than other elements in stars, and that hydrogen was the most abundant element in the Universe.
She too is often not credited with this discovery, because a fellow astronomer, Henry Norris Russell, convinced her not to present a conclusion that the Sun was mostly hydrogen as it contradicted the common beliefs at that time. He changed his mind four years later and published it himself, giving her only a minor acknowledgment.
Another notable female scientist was Gertrude Elion, an American biochemist and pharmacologist, who working both by herself and with George H. Hitchings developed a variety of important drugs, among which included drugs that treat leukemia and prevent the rejection of kidney transplants. Her work also led to the development of the first drugs used in the treatment of AIDS. She also is quoted as acknowledging that she did not feel encouraged as a woman to pursue a career in chemistry, but she did not let that stop her. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1988.
Though it seems more commonplace now for women to be in leadership roles in the scientific field, it was not very long ago this was not the case. These and many other women leave a legacy of inspiration, as they broke through barriers and made important discoveries that have had a lasting impact on society. These are just a few such women, and even a quick online search results in a large number of other fascinating and intelligent women who are pioneers in a wide variety of scientific fields. We owe a debt of gratitude to these women who not only pioneered these sciences, but overcame a myriad of obstacles to be able to do so, and made it possible for women everywhere to have the ability to study and learn and share and grow, and advance the understanding of conservation and chemistry and medicine and more, for the betterment of all