5 Great Scientists and Engineers

(who happen to be women)

#5GreatSciEng

And here's to many more to come in 2014!

Ada Lovelace (1815-1852)

As mentioned in a previous post, Ada is credited as the 'World's First Computer Programmer'. At just 18 years old Ada was invited by Charles Babbage to see the prototype for his Analytical Engine. Becoming fascinated with the machine it was she who was to write and explanation for how it was to work, a concept few other scientists of the time could understand. She also wrote the first 'program' for this or any other computing machine, a method for it to perform a series of calculations. Acknowledged as a true pioneer in the computing world, (a high level computing language, Ada,  has been named after her) it's time that her achievements were more widely appreciated.

Emily Warren Roebling (1843-1903)

The Brooklyn bridge is one of the largest engineering projects in North American history. Designed by her father-in-law and originally managed by her husband, Emily Roebling took up civil engineering studies in order to help with the project. It's lucky for North American engineering history (and the millions of people that use the bridge) that she did, for when her father-in-law died and her husband was struck with an illness that left him bed-ridden and partially paralised, it was Emily who took the role (though not the title) of Master Bridge Builder or Chief Engineer and saw the project through to completion.

Valentina Tereshkova (1937-present) and The Mercury 13 (1959)

In 1959 NASA 'auditioned' test pilots for the Mercury program - the first manned space flight mission. 'Manned' is right term here for only male pilots were invited to undergo the rigorous testing program. 500 applied, 110 were made it to the first round of tests and 7 were finally accepted for the program (2 of which were later grounded) - the Mercury 7. 

However, as one of the independent researchers who helped developed the tests noticed, women (on average) weight 15 % less than men and require less oxygen - significant advantages in the confines of space travel. What's more, there was no shortage of female test pilots in the USA at that time. And so 13 out of the 19 women selected underwent an passed the same tests as the Mercury 7. Originally called the FLATs (Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainees) and later dubbed the Mercury 13, they were sadly ahead of their time (gender discrimination in the workplace would still be legal in the USA until the Civil Rights Act of 1964) and never made it into space. As said in the introduction, where would society be now without such pointless self-inflicted barriers to development? 

The names of these amazing women:

Geraldyn "Jerrie" Cobb 

Bernice "Bea" Steadman

Janey Hart 

Geraldine "Jerri" Sloan Truhill 

Rhea Allison Woltman 

Sarah Lee Gorelick Ratley 

Jan & Marion Dietrich 

Myrtle Cagle 

Irene Leverton 

Gene Nora Jessen 

Jean Hixson 

Wally Funk 

Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union...

Despite such ridiculous hurdles, women have never been completely eclipsed from scientific history. In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova, Russian cosmonaut, became the first woman in space. More than that, she was a particularly gifted astronaut and soon clocked up more hours in space than all of her male peers - Russian and American - put together. And at the age of 76 she's still going strong, reported here to be the first to sign up for a one-way trip to Mars in the name of scientific discovery.

Find out more about Valentina, the FLATs and other great women of space exploration here.

The Mars Curiosity Rover Engineers and Scientists (2013)

40 years after the Mercury 13 were grounded and Valentina made here space flight debut, things are looking up. One of the most exciting and well-followed missions in NASA's, recent history, Curiosity has been fueling the imaginations of artists and scientists alike with its ground-breaking images and samples from the surface of the planet Mars. And, as posted here, it owes its launch into space to a number of fantastic female engineers and scientists. 

Lene Hau (1959-present)

Quantum computing is predicted to the be the way forward in modern technology and the next significant step after the internet. In the early noughties, Danish physicist Lene Hau led her team at Havard University in making several scientific breakthroughs that were as remarkable in their own right as they are important in pioneering this revolutionary field. As skilled in experimental work as in theoretical, with a stint at CERN on her CV and publications in many a prestigious journals including a cover article in the much coveted Nature, her scientific career is already pretty stunning. May 2014 and the future hold many new adventures for her! And perhaps a Nobel?