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...

Mary Anita Snook was born in Mount Carroll, Illinois. From an early age, she showed interest in machinery, making automobile and sailboats toys. When she was 16, her family moved to Ames, Iowa, where she attended Iowa State College (today Iowa State University), studying mechanical drawing, combustion engines, and maintenance of farm tractors. She spent her free time in the library, reading everything she found about aviation and government aircraft divisions. She decided to become a pilot, and in her second year in college, she applied to the Curtiss-Wright Aviation School but got rejected because of her gender. In 1917, at the age of 21, Snook was accepted to the new flying school in Davenport, Iowa, and became its first female student. The school closed soon after she began her training, and Snook applied and accepted to the Curtiss-Wright Aviation School. She put as many hours on air as she could but was not able to complete the course before civilian flights were canceled due to WW1. Until the war ended, Snook contributed her knowledge to the war effort, working as an expeditor for the British Air Ministry in Elmira, testing engines and aircraft parts before been sent to Europe. When the war ended, Snook purchased a wrecked Canuck, a Canadian training plane, and shipped it to her home in Iowa. She spent the next two years rebuilding it in her parents’ backyard. In 1920, her plane was ready, and at 24, Snook finished her solo flying training, becoming the first woman to graduate from the Curtiss-Wright Aviation School. Soon after, she was admitted into the Aero Club of America and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI). With her new pilot’s license, she took passengers on flights over the town, charging them 15$ for a 15-minute ride, did aerial advertising and air-stunts. When winter arrived, Snook realized that Iowa weather wouldn’t enable her from flying year-round, so she dismantled the plane and shipped it to Los Angeles, California. On her arrival, she went to Bert Kinner and offered him to work as an instructor and a plane tester in his new airport, Kinner Field in LA, in return for full commercial use of the airfield. After a short trial period, she became the first woman to run a commercial airfield and the first to run her own aviation business. In her business, Snook offered aerial advertising, passenger-carrying, and flight instruction. In January 1921, a new student came to Snook, asking her to learn to fly. The student’s name was Amelia Earhart, and they flew together for more than a year. At 25, Snook married Bill Southern and gave up flying when she became pregnant, selling her business and dedicating herself to her family. In 1937, after Earhart disappeared, Snook began lecturing about her life, career, and relationship with Earhart. She died in California at age 95. Read more...

Susan La Flesche Picotte was born on the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska, the youngest of four sisters. Her father was the last recognized chief of the Omaha people; he believed the tribe should adopt whites’ traditions. Under his assumption, Picotte learned her tribe’s traditions but did not receive an Omaha name and studied at the Presbyterian mission boarding school at the reservation. When Picotte was 8, she witnessed a sick Indian woman prevented medical care from a local white doctor, who let her die because of her origin. She decided to become a physician so she could provide treatment for all the people in need. At 14, Picotte went to study at the Elizabeth Institute for Young Ladies in New Jersey. After graduation, she returned to the reservation and taught at the Quaker Mission School for two years before continuing her education at the Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia. In 1886, at the age of 21, she began her medical education at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. On March 14, 1889, when she graduated valedictorian, Picotte became the first Native American in the US to earn a medical degree. Picotte returned to her home at the Omaha Reservation and appointed the physician of the government boarding school, taking care of the student’s health and teaching them about hygiene. The school was closer than any medical facility for the reservation residences, so it became the community clinic, and Picotte provided health care for more than 1,200 people over 450 square miles. For 25 years, Picotte held a fundraising campaign for building a hospital. When it opened in 1913, it was the first hospital privately founded on a reservation. In 1893, at the age of 28, Picotte took some time off to care for her sick mother. In the following year, she married Henry Picotte. After having two sons, she returned to work while her husband took care of the children and the household, an unusual practice at the time. As the reservation’s physician, she took actions to promote health issues to prevent the spread of tuberculosis, a disease that killed hundreds in her community, including her husband. She also served on the health board of Walthill, Nebraska, chaired the state health committee of the Nebraska Federation of Women’s Clubs, and co-founded the Thurston County Medical Society. During this period, Picotte began to advocate for prohibition, speaking against white whiskey peddlers who wanted to sell alcohol to the tribe members and supported her father, the chief of the tribe, in his actions against alcohol consumption within the community. When her husband died in 1905, he left her land in South Dacota that was held in trust by the government. All the heirs, including her minor sons, had to prove competency to sell the land and receive the money. At the age of 40, Picotte found herself in a two years inheritance battle against the government. Following her success, in her free time, she helped other people fight against the system to gain control of their own land and money. After dedicating her life to the welfare of her community, Picotte was diagnosed with bone cancer. She died at the age of 50. 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...

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...

Mary Anning was born in Lyme Regis, in Dorset, England, which is now part of what is called the Jurassic Coast. Her only education in reading and writing came from attending Sunday school. In her childhood, she and her brother helped her father on his fossil-hunting expeditions and sold their finding to supplement their family income. In 1810, when she was 11 years old, her father died, and she and her brother continued collecting and selling fossils from a stand they set up by a local inn. Most of their collection included invertebrate fossils such as ammonite and belemnite shells. In 1811, Anning’s brother found a 4-foot skull, and within a few months, she found the rest of the 17-feet-long skeleton of what will be later named an Ichthyosaurus, or fish lizard, that lived in the area 201-194 million years ago. The selling of the fossils was the family’s only income, and she devoted herself to this challenging task. It included a daily search on the beach, especially after tides, walking miles under the cliffs, and searching for objects that could lead to a hidden fossil, under the risk of being crushed by fallen masses. She furthered her research beyond the seashore, read any scientific literature she could find, and dissected modern animals to understand better the anatomy of the fossils she had collected. She also wrote her notes and observations on the fossils and made accurate drawings of each and every one of them. Despite Anning’s hard and life-threatening work, the fossils she found and sold were not enough to make ends meet, so in 1820, one of her major clients, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas James Birch, purchased several specimens to support her financially and even auctioned off his collection and donated the proceeds to Anning and her family. In 1823, at 24, she uncovered the first complete Plesiosaurus skeleton. After it got authenticated by various scholars, Anning began to receive recognition from the scientific community. Within three years, she saved enough money to open Anning’s Fossil Depot shop. Many geologists and fossil collectors from the UK and abroad came to her shop to view and purchase her findings; some of them accompanied her on her fossil-hunting tours, and many of them did not credit her for her work after they published their conclusions on the specimens she excavated. Over the next decade, Anning uncovered numerous science-changing discoveries, including a flying reptile called a Dimorphodon, which was the first pterosaur specimen found outside German, a long-necked marine reptile called a plesiosaur, and a fish called Squaloraja, which was a member of a transition group between sharks and rays. She was also one of the first to search for coprolites, fossilized poo, which helped analyze dinosaurs’ nutrition. Although she was not admitted into the Geological Society (which did not include women until 1904), many scholars recognized her contribution to the field and came to her help. In 1835, after losing her life savings in a bad investment, her friend and client, the geologist and paleontologist William Buckland, urged the British government and the British Association for the Advancement of Science to give her a civil list pension as a recognition of her contributions to the science of geology. The yearly £25 she received was her only financial security. In 1846, after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, the Geological Society raised money to help her with the medical expenses. She died at the age of 47 after dedicating her life to the science of paleontology. Her discoveries provided evidence for species’ extinction and helped develop the theory of evolution. Read more...

Rachel Carson was born on her family farm near Springdale, Pennsylvania. Since childhood, she was an enthusiastic reader and writer, and by the age of 10, she published her stories in Children’s magazines. She went to the Pennsylvania College for Women, majoring in English before switching to Biology, graduating magna cum laude. She continued her education at Johns Hopkins University, studying zoology and genetics while financing her tuition as a laboratory assistant. After receiving her Master’s degree, she joined the University’s faculty and taught for several years. In 1936, at the age of 29, Carson was the second woman to be hired in the US Bureau of Fisheries. She began her 15 years career in the bureau, writing radio scripts, brochures, and informational materials for the public. Over time, she was appointed editor and then Editor-in-Chief of all the bureau’s publications. In addition, she published articles on natural history in various magazines. In 1937, she published the article Undersea, which was the foundation of her first book, Under the Sea-Wind, published in 1941, in which she took the readers on a journey along the ocean floor. In her next book, The Sea Around Us, published in 1951, Carson provided a history of the ocean’s life. The book became a best-seller for 86 weeks, was translated into 30 languages and awarded Carson numerous accolades, including the National Book Award. Following her successes, Carson resigned from the bureau, and at the age of 46, she moved to Southport Island, Maine, to devote herself to writing. In her following book and articles, such as Help Your Child to Wonder and Our Ever-Changing Shore, Carson aimed to teach the public about the wonders of the living world. Her writing style combined scientific accuracy and lyrical prose, making research accessible to the average reader and the professional scientist. In the content, she emphasized that human beings are part of nature and the power they have on it, for better or worse. In 1962, the 55 years old Carson published her last and most known book – Silent Spring. In the book, she describes the harmful effects of pesticides on the environment, and claims that the planetary ecosystem is reaching the limits of it sustain. She used the platform to warn the public about the dangers of environmental pollution and encourage scientists and governments to take action. Carson’s book had a huge impact. It led to a nationwide ban on pesticides and sparked the environmental movement in the US and abroad, including the establishment of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In the following year, Carson was called to testify before Congress, where she suggested different policies to protect both humans and the environment. She had died at the age of 57 after a long battle against breast cancer. 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...

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...

Susan Diane Wojcicki was born in Palo Alto, California, and grew up on the Stanford campus, where her father taught physics. After graduating from Gunn High School, she attended Harvard University, studying history and literature to earn a Ph.D. in economics and pursue an academic career. In 1993, at 25, Wojcicki completed her master’s degree in economics at the University of California, followed by a Master of Business Administration from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. During her studies, she worked as a management consultant in R.B. Webber & Company and Bain & Company and at Intel’s marketing division. In 1998, at 30, Wojcicki married Dennis Troper, and the couple settled in Menlo Park, California. In that same year, she rented her garage space to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, who turned it into its headquarters. In the following year, Wojcicki joined Google as its first marketing manager and 16th employee. In the beginning, she worked on viral marketing programs, heading products such as AdSense, AdWords, and Google Analytics, before developing new services, such as Google Images and Google Books. Under her direction, Google became the leading company for online display advertising. In 2006, she initiated and handled the acquisition of YouTube for 1.65 billion dollars, and within two years, she oversaw two of Google’s biggest acquisitions – DoubleClick and AdMob. In 2010, she became senior vice president of AdWords and AdSense. In 2014, at the age of 46, Wojcicki was named CEO of YouTube. In this position, she is responsible for all the developments of the service, from channel memberships and merchandise to YouTube Premium and YouTube TV, and oversees the website’s localization all over the world. She tightened YouTube’s policy on videos that contain violent and hateful speeches. As a loud advocate against gender discrimination at technology companies, she increased the number of YouTube’s female employees from 24% to 30%. Along with her role at YouTube, Wojcicki serves on the boards of several organizations, including Salesforce, UCLA Anderson School of Management, and Room to Read, an organization that promotes gender equality in education. Wojcicki is also an activist and involved in numerous social causes, such as the expansion of paid family leave, girls in STEM, and support of Syrian refugees. Read more...