Sylvia Alice Earle was born in Gibbstown, New Jersey. Her parents were nature lovers and encouraged her interest in the natural world and exploring the nearby woods. At 12, the family moved to Dunedin, Florida, by the waterfront, and she became fascinated by the seagrass beds and salt marshes. In 1952, at 17, after receiving an associate degree from St. Petersburg Jr. College, she went to study Botany at Florida State University and learned to dive with SCUBA gear. She continued her education at Duke University, writing her thesis on algae in the Gulf of Mexico, and received her Doctorate of Phycology (the scientific study of algae) in 1966. In 1965, at 30, Earle began her lifelong research career when accepting a position as Cape Haze Marine Laboratories resident director in Sarasota, Florida. Two years later, she became a research fellow at the Farlow Herbarium of Harvard University and joined the Radcliffe Institute as a research scholar. In one of her research dives in 1968, Earle discovered undersea dunes off the Bahamas coast. In 1970, 35 years old Earle led the first all-female team of aquanauts as part of the Tektite II experiment – an underwater housing and laboratory about 50 feet (15 meters) below the surface of Great Lameshur Bay off the island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Throughout the two-week experiment, she documented the impacts of pollution on coral reefs. It was the first of many undersea researches Earle led over her career, which included expeditions to China, the Bahamas, and the Galapagos Islands. She began to work with the National Geographic Society, producing films and books on life in Earth’s oceans, and in 1979, was appointed curator of phycology at the California Academy of Sciences. That year, at 44, Earle set a new world record for untethered diving by descending 1,250 feet (381 meters) into the depths of the Pacific Ocean, wearing a JIM diving suit – a specialized apparatus designed to maintain internal pressure equivalent to 1 standard atmosphere. In 1982, Earle and engineer Graham Hawkes, who later became her third husband, founded Deep Ocean Engineering and Deep Ocean Technology, a company that designs, supports, and operates piloted and robotic subsea systems. Within three years, they built the Deep Rover research submarine that can reach 3000 feet (914 meters) beneath the ocean’s surface. In 1990, Earle left the company to serve as Chief Scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the first woman to serve in this position. During her post, she led numerous expeditions to research the environmental damage caused by Iraq’s demolition of Kuwaiti oil wells during the Persian Gulf War. In 1992, she founded another marine technology company called Deep Ocean Exploration and Research. Over the following decades, Earle continued leading expeditions and setting more records as the first woman chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the first woman explorer in residence of the National Geographic Society. In 2009, Earle received a million-dollar prize from TED. It enabled her to found Mission Blue, a non-profit organization advocating for exploring and protecting the ocean and working to establish Hope Spots (marine protected areas) worldwide. The organization’s goal is to achieve 30% ocean protection by 2030, and as of 2020, its created more than 120 Hope Spots. Throughout her 60-year career, Earle has logged over 7,000 hours underwater, published over 150 scientific papers, and led over a hundred expeditions. Read more...

Ynés Enriquetta Julietta Mexía was born in Washington, DC, where her father worked as a Mexican diplomat. When she was 3, her parents separated, her father returned to Mexico, and she, her mother, and six half-siblings moved around until settling down in Maryland. At 17, after completing her studies, she intended to join a convent but eventually moved to Mexico to supervise her father’s ranch, which she took over after he died. In 1897, at 27, Mexía married her first husband. After he died in 1904, she operated a pet and poultry stock-raising business and remarried. After her second husband bankrupted her company, she divorced him in 1906. Following a mental and physical breakdown, 39 years old Mexía left Mexico to receive medical treatment in San Francisco. There, she became active in the early environmental movement in California and joined the Sierra Club and Save the Redwoods League. She began hiking, went camping, and became interested in nature, specifically plants. In 1921, at 51, Mexía enrolled at UC Berkeley to study botany and began to collect and categorize plants. Four years later, she went on her first plant-collecting expedition to Mexico. Soon, she realized she preferred to work alone and broke off from her group, collecting 500 specimens in two months. During the next 13 years, Mexía traveled the Americas, collecting plants from Tierra del Fuego on the border of Chile and Argentina to the northern regions of Alaska. Mexía stood out not only by the number of expeditions she had or the mileage she covered but also by being an older woman who traveled alone on horseback, wearing trousers, and camping outdoors. Mexía regularly published the documentation of her adventures in the Audubon Society of the Pacific’s newsletter. While not on one of her expeditions, she lectured about them at various scientific organizations. In 1938, Mexía got sick during her expedition in Mexico. She had to cut the trip short and go back to the US. She died from lung cancer the following month at 68. In only 13 years of her career, Mexía collected over 145,000 plant specimens, discovering 500 new species. Read more...

Maria Gaetana Agnesi was born in Milan, Italy, to a wealthy family. Recognized as a child prodigy, she spoke Italian and French by age five and Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, and German by eleven. From an early age, she showed interest in mathematics and philosophy, and with her father’s encouragement, Agnesi learned with the best available tutors. At 15, her father started hosting regular gatherings of the most educated men in Bologna, and Agnesi presented and defended a series of theses on profoundly complex philosophical questions. A compilation of 191 essays based on her discussions was published in 1738. By then, 20 years old Agnesi, who became strongly religious, intended to join a convent, but her father refused since she was the oldest child and he wanted her to teach her siblings. Instead, he agreed that she could live in a semi-retirement form, with no social interactions, so that she could devote her time to learning mathematics. Her father hired the monk and professor of mathematics, Ramiro Rampinelli, to tutor her; Rampinelli introduced her to the new fields of differential and integral calculus. Around that time, Agnesi wrote a commentary on the work of the Marquis de l’Hôpital, Traité antique des sections coniques, but it was never published. In 1748, at 30, Agnesi published a two-volume book titled The Instituzioni Analitiche ad uso della gioventù italiana (Analytical Institutions for the Use of Italian Youth). In this work, she discussed integral and differential calculus and defined the cubic curve, today known as the ‘witch of Agnesi.’ Her work got recognized as the finest existing introduction to the works of the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler, translated into French and English, and received praise even from Pope Benedict XIV, who appointed her professor of mathematics at the University of Bologna. Even though she never served in the position, she is considered the second woman ever to be granted a professorship at a university, Following her father’s death in 1752, Agnesi became free to devote her time to charitable work and theological studies. She worked with sick and poor people and founded several hospices. In 1783, at 65, she established a home for Milan’s elderly and moved to live there. She died at 81 and was buried in a mass grave for the poor. Read more...

Born Gerty Theresa Radnitz into a Jewish family in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She received her primary education at home and later attended an academy for girls, graduating at 16. Inspiring to become a doctor, she completed a year of the necessary studies required for the medical school’s application, including Latin, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. In 1914, at 18, she began her studies at the medical school of the Karl-Ferdinands-Universität in Prague. During school, she met fellow medical student Carl Cori, and they married right after receiving their degree in 1920. Afterward, they moved to Vienna, where she worked at the Carolinen Children’s Hospital, conducting experiments in temperature regulation and publishing papers on blood disorders. Health problems caused by malnutrition during WW1 and the increasing anti-Semitism drove the Coris to leave Europe, and in 1922, they immigrated to the US. They worked together at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, focusing on carbohydrate metabolism, researching the glucose metabolizing in the body and how hormones regulate the process. The couple published fifty papers on the subject, eleven with Cori as the sole author. In 1929, the Coris introduced the Cori cycle, which describes the cellular process in which the body stores sugar in muscles as glycogen, converts it to glucose in the liver, and sends it back to the muscles for energy. Although the Coris were equal in their work, they were not treated as such, and she experienced much chauvinism and prejudice. When the couple looked for an institute that would enable them to work together, they were refused because of Cori’s gender or because, as one university stated, it is “un-American for a married couple to work together.” Eventually, in 1931, the Coris received an offer from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Although they could collaborate, she was offered a research associate position at one-tenth of her husband’s salary. It took 13 years before she was appointed associate professor of Research Biological Chemistry and Pharmacology and four more years to be promoted to full professor, serving in this position until she died. While at Washington University, the Coris continued to research the action mechanism of hormones and discovered what would be known as the Cori ester – a compound in frog muscles that helps to break down glycogen. They also found the enzyme that created the compound and identified that it’s the first step in turning stored energy (glycogen) into glucose. In addition, Cori researched glycogen storage disease by herself and identified several forms related to enzymatic defects. She was the first to present how these defects can cause human genetic disorders. In 1947, for their discovery of the Cori cycle, the Coris won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; she became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the first American woman, and the third in the world to win a Nobel Prize in Science. Months before winning the Nobel prize, Cori was diagnosed with myelosclerosis, a bone marrow disease. With declining health, she continued researching and discovering new enzymes and their relations to various health problems. She was also a member of several societies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Society of Biological Chemists. She died at 61. Read more...

Jeanne Baret was born in La Comelle, France. Little is known about her early life, though she claimed that her mother had died soon after she was born and her father when she was 15. In her early 20s, Baret worked as a housekeeper to the naturalist Philibert Commerson, and the two developed an intimate relationship. In 1764, the two moved to Paris, where she gave birth and placed her child with a foster mother. In 1765, Commerson got invited to join as a botanist to the first French circumnavigation of the globe, led by the admiral and explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville. Wanting her by his side, Commerson enlisted Baret to the voyage as his valet and assistant. However, women were prohibited on French navy ships, so she disguised herself as a man. In December 1766, the ship Étoile left the port of Rochefort toward South America with Baret on board. Since Commerson had a lot of equipment to collect specimens, the ship’s captain gave up his big cabin to Commerson and his assistant, allowing Baret more privacy. Early in the voyage, Commerson suffered from seasickness, and an ulcer on his leg, so Baret spent much of the time attending him. While on shore, she did the heavy labor of carrying the equipment and collecting specimens. Along the journey, the ship stopped in Montevideo, Uruguay, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where Baret collected plants, shells, and stones; while sailing, she helped Commerson to catalog their findings. For two years, Baret managed to keep her true identity a secret, though there were rumors that she was, in fact, a woman. There are different versions of how her gender got revealed. One story claims that when reaching Tahiti in April 1768, the islanders immediately recognized that she was a woman, and they surrounded and threatened her until she had to be rescued back to the ship. Another record claims that in July 1768, while stopping in New Ireland (today part of Papua New Guinea), Baret was discovered by crew members who confronted and sexually assaulted her. Either way, when anchoring in Mauritius for supplies, Baret and Commerson decided to leave the ship and stay on the island as the governor’s guests. There, she continued to assist Commerson and went with him on collecting expeditions to Madagascar and Bourbon Island. By 1770, Baret gained independence and was granted property in Port Louis, where she ran a tavern. Commerson died in 1773, and in the following year, at 33, Baret married Jean Dubernat, a non-commissioned officer in the French Army. Soon after, they returned to France and settled in Saint-Aulaye. In 1785, the Ministry of Marine granted Baret a pension of 200 livres a year. The pension document acknowledges her achievement of circumnavigating the globe and her devotion and assistance to Commerson while recognizing she was a woman disguised as a man. She died at the age of 67. Read more...

Chien-Shiung Wu was born in Liuhe, China. Her parents supported her curiosity and interests and believed in equal education for all their children, regardless of gender. She first studied at Ming De School, a girls’ school her father had founded, and at 10, she went to a women’s boarding school that included a teacher training program. This school’s curriculum allowed her to cultivate her growing passion for science. At the time, government regulations ruled that teacher-training college students must serve as schoolteachers for one year before continuing to academic studies. So, she taught at a public school in Shanghai, administrated by the famous philosopher Hu Shih, who became her mentor and father figure. During her free time, she taught herself mathematics, and in 1930, she enrolled at the National Central University in Nanjing, studying mathematics and later switching to physics. After graduating, she worked as an assistant at Zhejiang University and as a researcher at the Institute of Physics of the Academia Sinica. In 1936, at 24, she was accepted to the University of Michigan and moved to the US. Upon her arrival, she discovered that the institute was highly discriminating against women, denying them access via the front entrance. Wu decided to study at a more liberal university and enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley. An exceptional student, she was chosen by the famous Italian physicist Emilio Segrè to work with him in his beta decay studies that later significantly contributed to the development of nuclear bombs. In 1940, Wu completed her Ph.D. and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa but didn’t get a faculty position. She remained at Berkeley as a post-doctoral fellow at the Radiation Laboratory for two years. In 1942, at 30, she married fellow physicist Luke Chia-Liu Yuan. The couple moved to the East Coast, where she worked as an assistant professor and later associate professor at Smith College. In 1944, she accepted a position at Princeton University, becoming the first female faculty member of its Physics Department. That same year, she joined the research team of the Manhattan Project, which worked on the atomic bomb development. Based on her Ph.D. dissertation, Wu helped to determine the separation process of uranium into U-235 and U-238 isotopes by gaseous diffusion and by that to improve the Geiger counters for the detection of radiation and the enrichment of uranium in large quantities. After WW2, Wu remained at Columbia University, becoming the first woman to serve as a tenured physics professor at Columbia. In 1956, physicists Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang asked her to conduct an experiment proving that the conservation of parity did not apply during beta decay. Though referred to as the “Wu experiment,” she didn’t receive any recognition when Chen and Yang received a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957 for this theory. In the next three decades until her retirement in 1981, she worked on many theories that often crossed over to other scientific fields, including research on the molecular changes in red blood cells that cause sickle-cell anemia, research on magnetism, and Bell’s theorem, in which she confirmed the interpretation of quantum mechanics. In 1975, at 63, she became the first woman to serve as president of the American Physical Society and the first woman to be awarded the National Medal of Science in Physics. In her later years, Wu renewed her activism and became an advocate for various fights and causes. She protested against the imprisonment of the in-laws of physicist Kerson Huang and the journalist Lei Chen in Taiwan, which with her help, was eventually released. She spoke against gender discrimination, especially in the academic world, and promoted teaching STEM subjects to all students, regardless of gender, race, or background. She died following a stroke at the age of 85. Per her wish, her ashes were buried in the courtyard of the Ming De School. Read more...

Maryam Mirzakhani was born in Tehran, Iran. She aspired to become a writer while attending the girls-only Tehran Farzanegan School, but her fascination with mathematics eventually led her to become a mathematician. In her junior and senior years of high school, she was awarded the gold medal for mathematics in the Iranian National Olympiad. At 17, she scored 41 out of 42 points at the International Mathematical Olympiad and became the first Iranian woman to win first place. The following year, Mirzakhani and Roya Beheshti Zavareh became the first women to participate in the Iranian National Mathematical Olympiad, where she won the gold medal (and Zavareh the silver medal). That same year, she won two gold medals in the International Mathematical Olympiad and made history as the first Iranian to achieve a perfect score. After high school, she studied mathematics at the Sharif University of Technology and then moved to the US to continue her studies. In 2004, after receiving her Ph.D. from Harvard University, she served as a research fellow at the Clay Mathematics Institute and a professor at Princeton University. In 2009, she became a professor at Stanford University. Mirzakhani specialized in theoretical mathematics, focusing her research on moduli spaces, hyperbolic geometry, Teichmüller theory, symplectic geometry, and Ergodic theory, and identifying the geometric dynamic and complexities of curved surfaces like spheres, amoebas, and doughnut shapes. Her original work has contributed to other science fields, including theoretical physics, engineering, and material science. In 2014, she proved that the moduli space (a geometric space whose points represent algebro-geometric objects) is regular and not irregular or fractal. Later that year, she was awarded the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics, for her “outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces.” She was the first woman and Iranian to receive the award. In 2017, at 40, she died after a long battle with breast cancer. Read more...

Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born in London into an influential Jewish family. She was a bright child, and from a young age, she attended elite schools, including the Norland Place School, the Lindores School for Young Ladies in Sussex, and St Paul’s Girls’ School, where she was among the few girls to be accepted. There, she demonstrated talent for math, science, and languages. At 18, after graduating with six distinctions, she was granted a scholarship to Newnham College, one of two women’s colleges at Cambridge University, where she majored in physical chemistry. After receiving her BA in 1941, she received a grant to conduct research in physical chemistry at Cambridge. The following year, she gave up her fellowship to contribute to the war effort, joining the British Coal Utilisation Research Association, where she researched the physical chemistry of coal and carbon. Her findings were the basis for her doctoral thesis, and in 1945 she received a doctorate from Cambridge. When WW2 ended, Franklin moved to Paris to work at Jacques Mering’s lab at the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimique de l’Etat, studying X-ray diffraction technology and using it for her carbon research. Her discovery of the structural changes of atoms caused by the formation of graphite in heated carbons earned her an international reputation, and her work became part of the mainstream chemistry and physics of carbon and coal.   In 1951, at 31, Franklin was awarded a fellowship at the Biophysical Laboratory at King’s College, London. She used X-ray diffraction methods to study the new research field of DNA. Not only she discovered the density of DNA but established its double helix structure. Her groundbreaking work laid the foundations for James Watson and Francis Crick’s research, which defined the spiral consisting of two DNA strands; Along with Maurice Wilkins, Watson and Crick were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962 without giving Franklin any credit for her contributions. In 1953, she began to work at the Crystallography Laboratory at Birkbeck College, London, where she applied her DNA findings to researching the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus. In 1956, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer but continued to work between surgeries and treatments. She died in 1958 at the age of 38. Read more...

Laura Maria Caterina Bassi was born in Bologna, Italy, into a wealthy family. She began her education at the age of five, first by her cousin, who taught her mathematics, Latin, and French, and later by Gaetano Tacconi, a professor of medicine at the University of Bologna, who taught her logic, metaphysics, and natural philosophy. In 1731, Tacconi invited various scholars from the University of Bologna to examine the intellect of 20 years old Bassi. One of them was Prospero Lorenzini Lambertini (who later became Pope Benedict XIV), who was so impressed that he became her official patron. The following year, she was elected as an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna, becoming the first woman to join the academy. A month later, she defended her thesis in front of four university professors and received a doctorate in anatomy, which made her, at the age of 21, the first woman to receive a doctorate in science and the second woman to receive a doctorate in philosophy. A few months later, she defended 12 more theses in front of the Senate of the university as a petition to receive a teaching position. Though rejected at first, she eventually was nominated as a professor of natural philosophy, making another history as the first woman in the world to receive a salary as a lecturer. Bassi was not permitted to deliver public speeches but only private lessons. She received funds for the experiments she held at home; she constantly fought for equal teaching rights but to no avail. She explored many fields, including mathematics, mechanics, and chemistry, but her main interest was Newtonian physics. In her research, she became one of the leading figures in Italy to introduce Newton’s physics and natural philosophy. Over the years, she served as a member of numerous literary societies, including the Accademia degli Arcadi di Roma, Universitá degli Apastiti, Firenze, and the Accademia dei Placidi di Recanati. In 1776, at 65, she was appointed Chair of Experimental Physics at the Bologna Institute of Sciences. She died two years later. Read more...

Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier was born in Montbrison, France to a noble family. She was sent to a convent at the age of 3 after her mother died. At 12, she returned home and served as her father’s hostess. In the following year, to prevent her from marrying a 50 years old man, her father arranged for her to marry his 28 years old colleague, the French nobleman and scientist Antoine Lavoisier. In 1775, when she was 17, the couple moved to Paris, where her husband dedicated his time to chemistry and built a laboratory in their house. Paulze-Lavoisier became interested in her husband’s activities and started helping him with his work. At first, she made notes, documented research records, and sketched diagrams of the experimental designs. To widen her knowledge, she took chemistry lessons with her husband’s colleagues, and to draw the instruments more accurately, she took art lessons with the painter Jacques-Louis David. Her illustrations were an essential element that helped his peers to understand the experiment’s methods and results. Paulze-Lavoisier mastered French, English, and Latin, and she translated works of foreign chemists and added commentaries for her husband’s use. It was crucial for his need to be updated on current developments and imply the discoveries in his experiments. Paulze-Lavoisier was a vital part of her husband’s experiments, and although she received only formal credit for her drawings, she played a significant role in conducting the experiments and editing the published reports. With their joined forces, the Lavoisiers redefined the field of chemistry. In 1789, they published the Traité Élémentaire de chimie, which contains 13 of Paulze-Lavoisier’s original sketches. Today it’s recognized as the first modern chemistry textbook. In that same year, the French Revolution erupted, and the Lavoisiers, who were nobility, were marked as traitors. In 1794, her husband was imprisoned. She fought to release him. Presenting his accomplishments and contributions as a scientist, but despite her efforts, he was convicted of treason and executed. After her husband’s death, the new government confiscated all her money and property, including the laboratory equipment and notebooks. Despite the difficulties, 36 years old Paulze-Lavoisier began to gather enough materials and compile them into an eight-volume collection of her husband’s experiments and conclusions titled Mémoires de Chimie. The book was published in 1805 and has secured her husband’s legacy of defining the principles of the new chemistry. Afterward, Paulze-Lavoisier’s scientific activities came to an end, and she spent the rest of her life as a socialite, trying to maintain the salon-style way of living as it was before the revolution. She died at the age of 78. Read more...