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Inspiration July 2, 2018
Let these women inspire your inner science nerd.
It has been a long road to normalizing women in male-dominated careers and fields like science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). However, women continue to break barriers in these fields. These pioneers are empowering other smart and skilled women to follow their STEM passions. These women are making groundbreaking discoveries and changing the way society views women in STEM fields. They are showing the world that boys are not better at math!
From women who paved the way to women in STEM today, here is a list of five renowned female scientists, techies, engineers and mathematicians.
Barbara Askins went back to school after working as a teacher and raising a family.
She received her Bachelor’s Degree and Master of Science from the University of Alabama. She worked as a physical chemist for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
Askins is best known for inventing the autoradiograph. Her method greatly enhances the density and contrast of photographic images by exposing the silver in the emulsion of a photographic negative to radiation. She then created a second image by exposing a second emulsion to the radiation from the first one.
Askins’s process was initially applied to astronomy. However, her bright idea found its way to images taken through light telescopes. Medical technology uses the process to enhance X-ray images. In 1978, Askins was named “Inventor of the Year” by the Association for the Advancement of Inventions and Innovations. She was the first woman to ever receive the honor.
Radia Perlman does not claim the title “The Mother of the Internet” but we still consider her “The Woman of the Internet.”
Perlman attended MIT in the late 1960s and 1970s. She was one of just a few dozen women in a class of 1,000 students. Women today often flock towards classes filled with other girls to feel less uncomfortable. This can perpetuate the barriers against women entering STEM subjects. In an interview with The Atlantic, Perlman said,“I didn’t really see other women in the dorm. And I majored in math, so I didn’t see them in my classes either. It became so normal to me not to see women around that I didn’t notice the gender imbalance. ”
Perlman then went on to become a leader in the field of computer science, developing the algorithm behind the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), an innovation that made today’s Internet possible. Dr. Perlman’s creative yet serious mind also developed a child-friendly programming language used by children as young as three.
Dr. Jedidah Isler is the first African American woman to earn a PhD in Astrophysics from Yale. She is an award-winning researcher and advocates for women of color in science. She also delivered an amazing TED Talk.
She studies blazars, which are particle jets from the center of super-massive, hyperactive black holes. Blazars consume light thousands of times faster than an average black hole.
She continues to study the origins of energy from these powerful black holes. She has definitely earned her spot on this list by speaking about the importance of inclusiveness and diversity in STEM. The National Society of Black Physicists honored Isler and invited her to Astronomy Night at the White House in 2017.
Simone Giertz was always told failure was not an option, so she made it one. She is a Swedish inventor that marches to the beat of her own drum. She studied engineering in college and then dropped out after a year to teach herself how to create ‘shitty robots.’ When life hands you lemons, make robots? Giertz’s mantra is to not be afraid of failure. Thus, her tenacity has led to a successful career in creating crafty inventions. Her engineering skills allow her to showcase her humor and her brains.
Sadly, Giertz announced on her YouTube channel that she was going into brain surgery. She broke her brain tumor news to her audience in a previous video. However, her humor still remained intact and so did her smarts.
Some people go stargazing and simply admire their beauty from afar but why stop at just the ones we see in our galaxy? Emily Levesque is discovering the hidden mechanisms driving the formation and collapse of massive stars and galaxies.
As a Hubble Fellow, Levesque works to improve our understanding of massive stars by building models of galaxies and analyzing wavelength data. Her breakthroughs in understanding these immense stellar bodies allow researchers to take advantage of advancements in space technology. According to Emily’s Levesque’s site,”Using a combination of observational and modeling resources, my research is aimed at improving our overall understanding of massive stars, both locally and in the early universe, so that we can effectively use them as cosmological tools.”
In the past few years, Levesque and her team updated models of star-forming galaxies, focusing on how they are affected by rotation. Next time you look up at all the stars, thank Emily Levesque and her team for thinking about the big picture.
These women in STEM are helping fill the gender gap. Their work and knowledge are changing the world!
