Born and raised in Atchison, Kansas, in 1897. From a young age she broke gender conventions: climbing trees which was seen as boyish behavior and collecting articles about female pioneers in male-dominated fields. She left college to work as a nurse in a military hospital during World War I and later worked as a social worker. After a $10 ride in an airplane at the age of 23, she found her calling within aviation. Earhart took classes with a female instructor, and six months later bought her first plane, painted yellow and nicknamed “The Canary.” She was active in the movement for equal rights for women and was determined to use aviation to make a point that women can do anything they want. Her breakthrough was initiated by publicist George Putnam, whom she later married. He presented her with the opportunity to be the first female to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, which won her worldwide recognition, a New York parade, and a reception at the White House. Fond of “first” achievements and aware of their publicity value, Earhart set and broke several records of destination, speed, and altitude. She wanted to be the first woman to fly around the world, and in her attempt, she vanished with her navigator in 1937. Despite a $4 Million search, the most extensive one in naval history, no clear trace of her was ever found. Amelia Earhart was around the age of 40 at the time of the accident, and in 1939, the pioneering pilot declared dead. This turned her into a mystery that occupies generations, with a wide range of theories and speculations as to her fate. Read more...

Born as Marguerite Ray in Tacoma, Washington, and when turning 16, changed her name to “Dixy Lee” in homage to Robert E. Lee. Ray was always fascinated by nature and eventually followed her passion and studied Biology and Zoology. She was the valedictorian of her class and continued to study for her Master’s Degree and afterward for a Doctorate. After graduation, Ray taught science in public schools and at 31, started teaching at the Zoology Department of the University of Washington. Dixy Lee Ray had a colorful personality, unconventional lifestyle and she was known as a person who could “make science interesting,” so she was offered to host a weekly television program on marine biology. Her popularity led her to become the manager of the Pacific Science Center, where she used a police whistle to run off hippies. She saved the center from bankruptcy since under her guidance, it became an interactive learning museum. Ray supported nuclear power, and at age 59, she was appointed to chair the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. In 1977, when she was 63 years old, Ray entered politics as a Democrat and became the first woman to be elected Governor of Washington State. She served as the 17th Governor, and during her tenure, she balanced the State budget and oversaw its first full funding program for basic education. Nevertheless, she alienated fellow Democrats due to her support in atomic power as well as controversial political decisions such as allowing supertankers to dock in Puget Sound. Ray lost the following elections and retired from political life, but she continued to give lectures, publish articles, and she co-authored two books about the Environmentalist Movement. Read more...

Rose Eudora Collom was born in Georgia in 1870. She attended Lindenwood College and trained as a teacher, and a few years after she got married and the couple moved to Gila County in Arizona, where her husband worked in a mine. Collom, then 44 years old, found herself in an isolated area, spending her days cooking and mending clothes. She said that there was nothing for her to do except sit and gaze out the window. To relieve her boredom, she began taking long walks around the area and study the local plants, started collecting seeds, cuttings and specimens, and wrote her observations. To deepen her knowledge, Collom ordered botany books and wrote to notable botanists. She became an expert on Arizona flora and was acknowledged by renowned botanists. She also discovered several unknown plants and had new observations on the environmental conditions and their effects on the native Arizona plants. Collom had a belief that some high altitude plants can adapt themselves to lower altitudes, and by proving this theory, she encouraged the use of native species in landscaping private gardens and beside highways. At 68, she started a correspondence with the co-founder of the Grand Canyon National History Association, who offered her a research grant to collect specimens in the Grand Canyon area. By accepting the grant, she became the first paid botanist of the Grand Canyon National Park, as well as serving as the Horticultural Chairman of the Arizona Federation of Garden Clubs, and a member of the Arizona Cactus and Native Flora Society. Due to her contribution in this field, several plant species are named after her. Read more...

Born as Katherine Coleman in West Virginia. From an early age, Johnson demonstrated high mathematical abilities, and by the age of 18, she earned Bachelor’s Degrees in Mathematics and French. Before she got pregnant and left school, Johnson was the first African-American woman to enroll in a graduate math program at West Virginia University. At age 35, she began to work as a human-computer at NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), with a unit of African-American women who manually performed mathematical calculations for the program’s engineers, a work that was essential to the success of the early US Space Program. At that time NACA was segregated, and Johnson and her colleagues had to work, eat, and use the restrooms that were separated by race. The segregation was banned After the organization was incorporated into NASA. Katherine Johnson was a member of the Space Task Group and was the first woman to get credit for a paper that she co-authored with a group of engineers. Until her retirement in 1986 at the age of 70, Johnson worked as an aerospace technologist at NASA, helping to send John Glenn into orbit and the first men to the moon. She died on February 24th, 2020, at the age of 101.   Read more...

Mary Baker Eddy was 44 years old when she made the discovery that changed her life from a farm girl to one of the most powerful women of her day. It was 1866, and she fell on ice in Lynn and knocked unconscious. While her doctors assumed that she was going to die, she was healed after a few days of reading her Bible. Motivated to share her revelation and heal others, she started with her niece as her first patient. She named her innovative ideas “Christian Science” and fast became a popular but controversial speaker about the link between spirituality and health. At the age of 54, Baker Eddy published “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures”. It was an immediate best-seller, with sales of over 10 million copies, but she rewrote it 432 times, compulsively revisiting the book until her last month. Disappointed that existing Christian churches would not embrace her discovery, she started her own “Church of Christ, Scientist,” which today has branches around the world. In 1902 she hosted an international conference of over 15,000 participants in Boston. Despite her tremendous success, she was paranoid and distrusted her own followers. Read more...

Born as Mary Winston in Hampton, Virginia, graduated high school with high honors and earned bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and physical science from Hampton University. After college, Jackson taught mathematics, worked as a bookkeeper and a clerk, until at the age of 30, she began working at NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) as a research mathematician, also known as a ‘human computer.’ Before incorporating into NASA, the organization had a segregation policy, and Jackson and her colleagues had to use separate bathrooms and dining facilities. Three years later, she accepted an offer to work in the Supersonic Pressure Tunnel and took graduate-level courses to become an engineer. Jackson worked as an engineer in several divisions, and after 34 years at NASA, she achieved the most senior title within the engineering department. Then, she took a demotion so she could serve as the Federal Women’s Program Manager and as the Affirmative Action Program Manager in NASA’s Equal Opportunity Specialist field, where she worked to promote women and other minorities and advance their careers at NASA. Read more...

Kalpana Chawla was born in Karnal, India. When she was only 20 years old, after getting a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Aeronautical Engineering, she moved to the US. There she earned a double master’s degree and a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering. At 26, she started working at NSA as a researcher of computational fluid dynamics, and then as a vice president and research scientist specializing in simulation of moving multiple body problems. Two years later, Chawla joined the NASA Astronaut Corps, and at age 36, she made her first air mission, making history as the first Indian origin woman and the second Indian person to fly in space. In her second mission to space, in 2003, Chawla died along with six other crew members when the space shuttle, Columbia, broke apart while reentering the atmosphere of earth, an event known as the ‘Columbia Disaster.’ She was 41 years old. Read more...

Charlotte Amanda Blake, nicknamed Lotte, was born in Philadelphia. In her childhood the family moved often following missionary work, living in Maine, California, and Chile. At age 20, she graduated from Elmira College in New York. The following year she married and worked as a nurse. After giving birth to her third child, she left to attend the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. When she graduated, Blake Brown returned to her family in the Bay Area. In 1875, at the age of 30, she co-founded together with Dr. Sara E. Brown and Dr. Martha E. Bucknell, the Pacific Dispensary for Women and Children in San Francisco. It was a unique institution – employing strictly all-female staff and serving only women and children patients. Five years after its incorporation, the dispensary opened West Coast’s first Training School for Nurses. It later became San Francisco’s Children’s Hospital. In addition to serving as a physician and surgeon, she wrote eighteen articles for scientific journals. Her famous paper “The Health of Our Girls” (1896) proved the link between lifestyle and poor health with teenage girls. Blake Brown was also an innovator – inventing a milk sterilizing device and establishing a registry bank of data on cancer patients. Read more...

Born in Decatur, Alabama, and moved to Chicago at the age of 3. From a young age, she had an interest both in science and in dancing, but at college, she had to decide which goal to pursue, and after her mother told her “You can always dance if you’re a doctor, but you can’t doctor if you’re a dancer,” Jemison chose science. At 21, she graduated from Stanford University and got her M.D degree from Cornell Medical College when she turned 25. Afterward, she joined the Peace Corps and served for two years as a Medical Officer. When she was 31 years old, Jemison got accepted into NASA’s Astronaut Program, becoming the first African-American woman to be admitted into the program. In her only space mission, she conducted experiments on weightlessness and motion sickness on herself and her fellow crew members. At 37, she resigned from NASA and founded her own company for research, develop, and market science and technology for daily life. Jemison published six books and is using her public platforms to advocate for the quality of healthcare in the USA and the Third World. Read more...

Sally Ride was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. She was an athletic child who also loved science, but her passion for tennis began when she was nine, while on a year-long family trip in Europe. In addition to practicing tennis professionally, she also focused on her studies, graduating high school with the aspiration to become an astrophysicist. Ride got accepted to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania on a full scholarship, winning the Eastern Intercollegiate Women’s Singles championship in 1968 and 1969. After three semesters, she transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles, aiming to become a professional tennis player. Soon, she realized she didn’t have what it took to be the best and decided to focus on her studies. Ride moved to Stanford University and graduated in 1978 with a Ph.D. in physics and astrophysics. In 1977, Ride came across an advertisement in the students’ newspaper that NASA was recruiting scientists for the Space Shuttle program. She applied and got accepted into NASA Astronaut Group 8, one of 35 out of 8000 applicants. While in training, she started a relationship with Steven Hawley, also a member of Group 8. They got married in 1982 (divorced five years later). On June 18th, 1983, Ride took off on the Space Shuttle Challenger and became the first American woman in space and the third woman in history. She returned to space for her second and last mission in 1984. Ride left NASA in 1987 to pursue an academic career. Two years later, she was appointed a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and director of the California Space Institute, retiring from Cal Space in 1996 and UCSD in 2007. Her passion for space and longtime desire to encourage youngsters, especially girls, to study science and technology led her to participate in several educational programs, including the EarthKam and GRAIL MoonKAM projects in collaboration with NASA. These projects have enabled people to view, request and use pictures of the Earth and moon from space. She also co-established “Sally Ride Science” (2001), which promotes and educates teachers and students in STEM. She died from cancer in 2012. Read more...