See nine discoveries made by women scientists that changed the world

The medium of science was dominated for many years by white men of high social class, while women were prevented or discouraged from pursuing an academic career.

Today, discussing science includes talking about diversity, feminism and actions to promote inclusion, which has gradually changed the figure of the “man scientist in a white coat” in the collective imagination.

Despite restrictions in the past, women have and continue to contribute greatly to the advancement of science. This is especially noticeable in recent years in areas such as biomedical sciences, where the female presence is already more than 50% of trained professionals.

However, there is still considerable abandonment of scientific careers by women, either for personal and family needs, or for the difficulties of reaching prestigious positions.

Initiatives such as the creation of quotas, formulation of guidelines and diversity committees have aimed to minimize these historical differences.

On February 11th, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science is celebrated, a date created by UNESCO to give visibility to the female presence in science and to the efforts still needed for a more equal participation.

Below are nine discoveries made by women that changed the world.

Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) and the first computer program

Born in London, England, Augusta Ada Byron King, better known as Ada Lovelace, was a mathematician and writer and responsible for the first algorithm to be processed in a machine in history.

Daughter of the English poet Lord Byron, Ada began studying mathematics at age 17. In 1842, at age 27, she published her first scientific paper together with Charles Babbage, a computer pioneer.

In the paper, Ada added ideas to Babbage’s original manuscript and created algorithms that could be read by a machine, her mentor’s analytical engine, using punch cards with a graded sequence of rational numbers called Bernoulli numbers, what became known as the first computer program.

Nettie Stevens (1861–1912) and the X and Y chromosomes

Born in Vermont, United States, Nettie Stevens came from a poor family and saved the money she had for her studies. Her mother died when she was two, and her father, who was a carpenter, struggled to keep her and her sister in school.

Stevens managed to finish his studies and enter Stanford University in California. After her master’s degree, she did a doctorate in genetics and began research on sex organs and chromosomes.

In 1905, she published her two-volume findings on the sexual differentiation of animals, but the work was met with skepticism.

His advisor, Edmund Wilson, also published an article on the X and Y chromosomes at the same time, but Stevens’ research was more grounded.

With his early death, Nettie did not receive recognition during his lifetime, but today his discoveries are considered pioneers in the studies of sex determination and genetics in organisms.

Marie Curie (1867–1934) and radioactivity

Polish born in Warsaw, Maria Salomoa Sklodowska, better known as Marie Curie (surname given after her marriage to the physicist Pierre Curie) was one of the most important scientists of the 20th century, winner of two Nobel prizes, one in chemistry and the other in physics, until today the only person to be awarded in two distinct areas of science.

His research on radioactivity served as the basis for the creation of radiography and the application of X-rays. Together with her husband, Curie discovered two radioactive elements: polonium and radium.

In 1906, Pierre died in a car accident and Marie continued with her research, despite being affected by her husband’s death.

He died in 1934 with health problems resulting from heavy exposure to radioactive isotopes. His legacy, the Pierre and Marie Curie Institute, located in Paris, is one of the world’s leading radiotherapy research centers.

Lise Meitner (1878–1968) and nuclear fission

Lise Meitner was born in 1878 in Vienna, Austria, and moved to Berlin in 1907, where she collaborated with Max Planck and the chemist Otto Hahn, with whom she worked for three decades on studies of radioactivity.

In 1938, in the period leading up to World War II, Meitner had to flee Germany to avoid being captured by the Nazis for being Jewish.

From the refuge in Sweden, she continued to collaborate with Hahn by letter and advanced experiments to separate a nucleus from an atom. This is how she discovered and explained the phenomenon of nuclear fission.

Although it was her discovery of the process of splitting the atom, she was unable to return to Germany in 1944 and Hahn alone received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 1982 a new chemical element, meitnerium (109) was named in his honor.

Hedy Lamarr (1914–2000) and wireless communication

Austrian Hedy Lamarr may be better known for her performance as a Hollywood actress in the 1930s than her contribution to science. The fact is that Lamarr, born in 1914 in Vienna, dreamed of being a movie actress and had an inventor hobby at the same time.

That’s how he created and patented a device that produced a “frequency hopping” (known by the acronym FHSS), which years later was crucial during the Cold War to control torpedoes and communications.

Today, FHSS is the foundation of the technology we use every day in smartphones and GPS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi devices.

Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958) and the DNA double helix

Despite being attributed to the pair of scientists James Watson and Francis Crick, it was the chemist Rosalind Franklin who discovered the double helix structure of DNA, serving as the basis for genetic studies.

Franklin studied at King’s College in London and it was from the use of X-rays that he captured the famous photo of the genetic material that make up organisms.

Watson and Crick published the photo without permission and without giving due credit to Franklin, and received the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine without ever naming the scientist, who died in 1958 of cancer.

Katherine Johnson (1918–2020) and the Journey to the Moon

NASA physics and mathematics Katherine Johnson was responsible for the exact calculation to trace the route of the first manned mission to the Moon, the famous Apollo 11, in 1969.

The Apollo mission was a success, and it was thanks to Johnson’s precise calculations that he was awarded America’s highest medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 2015.

Johnson died in 2020 at the age of 101. His work is told in the movie “Stars Beyond Time” (2016).

Vera Rubin (1928–2016) and dark matter

Astronomer Vera Rubin was born in 1928 in Philadelphia and grew up in Washington. After his doctorate at Georgetown University, Rubin met Kent Ford, inventor of a new spectrometer, which could be used to measure the Doppler shift of stars in galaxies.

It was with this tool that physicists described the theory that galaxies rotate in the same way as solar systems.

From his observations and with the idea of ​​an “undetectable” dark matter — responsible for creating a gravitational force that affected the way objects moved in the universe — Rubin’s calculations corroborated the presence of dark matter and, today, scientists recognize that it makes up most of the universe.

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard (1942) and studies with embryos

Born in Germany in 1942, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, 79, graduated in biological sciences and followed up with a doctorate in molecular biology, especially focused on genetic research with fruit flies (genus Drosophila).

In 1955, he received a Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his study of which genes were involved in determining the segmentation of the Drosophila’s body.

From his studies, Nüsslein-Volhard created the basis for research in evolutionary developmental biology, known as evo-must.