Women in Science

[vagina]

How many of you like science? I know for sure I do, otherwise I probably wouldn't have a career as a Science Professor.

During my PhD days, I noticed the difference between the old school and new school education. The new school education encourages women to be scientists and in fact more than half of my graduate school cohort was women. Because let's face it, women are brilliant.

As a female scientist I have been discriminated against on many occasions. On several occasions being told by the male advisor to clean up messes made by a male student in my lab. On another occasion having a male professor disrupt my class to flirt with me and embarrass me. These kinds of behaviors are overlooked in science because it is still a man's sport. However women scientists have existed prior and continue to grow in numbers.

So, here's a thread dedicated to all the women that struggle in the fields of Math and Science and yet continue to bring us the beautiful gift of knowledge.


The first entry is dedicated to Maryam Mirzakhani of Stanford University, California, the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Mathematics. And speaking of new scientists, this article is from newscientist.com



http://www.newscientist.com/article/...l#.U_44dygRjao

Iranian woman wins maths' top prize, the Fields medal

20:32 12 August 2014 by Dana Mackenzie
A woman has won the maths world's "Nobel prize" for the first time. Maryam Mirzakhani of Stanford University, California, will receive the Fields medal tomorrow at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Seoul, South Korea.

The medal is awarded once every four years to at most four recipients, who must be aged under 40 at the start of that year. All the previous 52 Fields medallists, dating back to 1936, have been male.

Mirzakhani, who is Iranian, studies the geometry of moduli space, a complex geometric and algebraic entity that might be described as a universe in which every point is itself a universe. Mirzakhani described the number of ways a beam of light can travel a closed loop in a two-dimensional universe. To answer the question, it turns out, you cannot just stay in your "home" universe – you have to understand how to navigate the entire multiverse. Mirzakhani has shown mathematicians new ways to navigate these spaces.

Mirzakhani first attracted international attention as a high-school student in 1995, when she was the first Iranian student to achieve a perfect score in the International Mathematics Olympiad.

"She is very, very well known in Iran, where she is held out as an example for younger students," says Ingrid Daubechies, the president of the International Mathematical Union, which selects the Fields medallists.


"Speaking as a woman myself, it is a wonderful thing to see her win," Daubechies adds. "It will lay to rest the often-quoted fact that a woman has never won." In future, she says, the idea of a woman winning the top maths award will no longer seem exceptional.

The three other winners are Brazilian-born Artur Avila of Denis Diderot University in Paris, France, who studies how chaotic systems evolve when constrained by certain rules; Manjul Bhargava, a number theorist at Princeton University; and Martin Hairer, an expert in partial differential equations at the University of Warwick, UK.

[Katniss]

Rosalind Franklin---

Who do you think of when you think of DNA? Watson? Crick? How about Franklin?

Rosalind Franklin was, for too long, the overshadowed party in Watson and Crick's story of how they unraveled the structure of DNA. Franklin took the X-ray diffraction images of DNA that indicated its twisted, double-helical structure; without her precise lab work, attention to detail and thoughtful analysis, those X-ray images wouldn't have been worth a penny.

What's more, without those images Watson and Crick would not have been able to publish their notable 1953 paper on the structure of DNA. Those images, leaked to Watson and Crick by Franklin's lab partner, made the difference in the discovery...but not in the recognition.

In 1962, Watson and Crick won the Nobel Prize for their work on the structure of DNA; by then, Franklin had been dead for four years, a victim of ovarian cancer.

[Kobi]

[vagina]

This woman amazes and surprises me. She sacrificed her life (unknowingly?) to study radioactivity.



Synopsis

Born Maria Sklodowska on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw, Poland, Marie Curie became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win the award in two different fields (physics and chemistry). Curie's efforts, led to the discovery of polonium and radium and the development of X-rays. She died on July 4, 1934.

Early Life

Maria Sklodowska, better known as Marie Curie, was born in Warsaw in modern-day Poland on November 7, 1867. Her parents were both teachers, and she was the youngest of five children. As a child Curie took after her father, Ladislas, a math and physics instructor. She had a bright and curious mind and excelled at school. But tragedy struck early, and when she was only 11, Curie lost her mother, Bronsitwa, to tuberculosis.

A top student in her secondary school, Curie could not attend the men-only University of Warsaw. She instead continued her education in Warsaw's "floating university," a set of underground, informal classes held in secret. Both Curie and her sister Bronya dreamed of going abroad to earn an official degree, but they lacked the financial resources to pay for more schooling. Undeterred, Curie worked out a deal with her sister. She would work to support Bronya while she was in school and Bronya would return the favor after she completed her studies.

For roughly five years, Curie worked as a tutor and a governess. She used her spare time to study, reading about physics, chemistry and math. In 1891, Curie finally made her way to Paris where she enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris. She threw herself into her studies, but this dedication had a personal cost. With little money, Curie survived on buttered bread and tea, and her health sometimes suffered because of her poor diet.

Curie completed her master's degree in physics in 1893 and earned another degree in mathematics the following year.

Discoveries

She was fascinated with the work of Henri Becquerel, a French physicist who discovered that uranium casts off rays, weaker rays than the X-rays found by Wilhelm Roentgen.

Curie took Becquerel's work a few steps further, conducting her own experiments on uranium rays. She discovered that the rays remained constant, no matter the condition or form of the uranium. The rays, she theorized, came from the element's atomic structure. This revolutionary idea created the field of atomic physics and Curie herself coined the word radioactivity to describe the phenomena.

Working with the mineral pitchblende, she discovered a new radioactive element in 1898. She named the element polonium, after Marie's native country of Poland. She also detected the presence of another radioactive material in the pitchblende, and called that radium. In 1902, the she announced that she had produced a decigram of pure radium, demonstrating its existence as a unique chemical element.

Science Celebrity

Marie Curie made history in 1903 when she became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in physics. She won the prestigious honor along with her husband and Henri Becquerel, for their work on radioactivity. With their Nobel Prize win, the Curies developed an international reputation for their scientific efforts, and they used their prize money to continue their research. They welcomed a second child, daughter Eve, the following year.

In 1906, Marie suffered a tremendous loss. Her husband Pierre was killed in Paris after he accidentally stepped in front of a horse-drawn wagon. Despite her tremendous grief, she took over his teaching post at the Sorbonne, becoming the institution's first female professor.

Curie received another great honor in 1911, winning her second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry. She was selected for her discovery of radium and polonium, and became the first scientist to win two Nobel Prizes. While she received the prize alone, she shared the honor jointly with her late husband in her acceptance lecture.

Around this time, Curie joined with other famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Max Planck, to attend the first Solvay Congress in Physics. They gathered to discuss the many groundbreaking discoveries in their field. Curie experienced the downside of fame in 1911, when her relationship with her husband's former student, Paul Langevin, became public. Curie was derided in the press for breaking up Langevin's marriage. The press' negativity towards Curie stemmed at least in part from rising xenophobia in France.

When World War I broke out in 1914, Curie devoted her time and resources to helping the cause. She championed the use of portable X-ray machines in the field, and these medical vehicles earned the nickname "Little Curies." After the war, Curie used her celebrity to advance her research. She traveled to the United States twice— in 1921 and in 1929— to raise funds to buy radium and to establish a radium research institute in Warsaw.

Final Days and Legacy

All of her years of working with radioactive materials took a toll on Curie's health. She was known to carry test tubes of radium around in the pocket of her lab coat. In 1934, Curie went to the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Passy, France, to try to rest and regain her strength. She died there on July 4, 1934, of aplastic anemia, which can be caused by prolonged exposure to radiation.

Marie Curie made many breakthroughs in her lifetime. She is the most famous female scientist of all time, and has received numerous posthumous honors. In 1995, her and her husband's remains were interred in the Panthéon in Paris, the final resting place of France's greatest minds. Curie became the first and only woman to be laid to rest there.

Curie also passed down her love of science to the next generation. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie followed in her mother's footsteps, winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935. Joliot-Curie shared the honor with her husband Frédéric Joliot for their work on their synthesis of new radioactive elements.

Today several educational and research institutions and medical centers bear the Curie name, including the Institute Curie and the Pierre and Marie Curie University, both in Paris.

[Katniss]

Not trying to derail the thread but since the above post was about Marie Curie I thought no-one would object if I slid in a poem by Adrienne Rich referencing Ms. Curie......



Power, by Adrienne Rich

Living in the earth-depositis of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power

[vagina]

Dr. Walker was a feminist, abolitionist, war hero and a hundred or so years ahead of her time on not only what women could do, but what she DID do as a woman and how she dared to look doing it.

She was born in Oswego NY in November 26, 1832 to progressive parents. She worked on her family's farm from a young age where during working hours she refused to wear women's clothing due to their restrictiveness, her mother had the intelligence to support her in this and preach against the unhealthy dangers of corsets and tight laced clothing.

Dr. Walker's mother was a teacher and Mary followed in her footsteps, later using the money she made from teaching to put herself through medical school where she graduated in 1855 as the ONLY female in her class.

Dr. Walker volunteered for the Union side during the Civil War, where she served as a nurse because sexist insecure army officials wouldnt allow her the status of her full medical degree. She frequently crossed battle lines to treat injured civilians and was even captured for several months by the Confederates. She was later recommended for the Medal of Honor and was granted it on November 11th 1865 by President Johnson. In 1917 due to idiot red tape, Dr. Walker was stripped of her Medal, but continued to wear it right up to her death. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter posthumously reinstated Mary's Medal and due right to female/feminist history.

After the war Mary lectured, wrote and joined the ranks of suffragists such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Mary fought for women's healthcare, women's rights and dress reform for women, sporting masculine attire while doing so.

Dr Walker died February 21, 1919 at the age of 86. Mary Walker carried female differently in how she dressed, the education she demanded for herself as a female, her right to risk her life for her country, her bravery for imparting all this to other women where ever she lectured, in short Dr Mary Walker did woman different in every breath she took.

[Kobi]

Elizabeth Blackwell born on 3rd February 1821, was the first female doctor in the United States. She was the first openly identified woman to graduate from medical school, a pioneer in educating women in medicine in the United States, and was prominent in the emerging women’s rights movement.

Talking about Elizabeth’s educational life, she was rejected by all the leading schools to which she applied and almost all the other schools as well. When her application arrived at Geneva Medical College at Geneva, New York, the administration asked the students to decide whether to admit her or not. The students, reportedly believing it to be only a practical joke, approved her admission.

At first, she was even kept from classroom medical demonstrations, as unsuitable for a woman but very soon the students started getting impressed by her ability and persistence. Finally she graduated first in her class in 1849, becoming the first woman doctor of medicine in the modern era. She worked in clinics in London and Paris for two years, and studied midwifery at La Maternité where she contracted “purulent opthalmia” from a young patient. When Blackwell lost sight in one eye, she returned to New York City in 1851, giving up her dream of becoming a surgeon.

After returning to New York City, she applied for several positions as a physician, but was rejected because she was a woman. Blackwell then established a private practice in a rented room, where her sister Emily, who had also pursued a medical career, soon joined her.

Their modest dispensary later became the New York Infirmary and College for Women, operated by and for women. Dr. Blackwell also continued to fight for the admission of women to medical schools. In the 1860s she organized a unit of female field doctors during the Civil War where Northern forces fought against those of the South over, among other things, slavery and secession. Many women were interested and received training at this time. Her articles and her autobiography also attracted widespread attention and inspired many women.

She also began to see women and children in her home. As she developed her practice, she also wrote lectures on health, which she published in 1852 as The Laws of Life, with Special Reference to the Physical Education of Girls.

Blackwell was an early outspoken opponent of circumcision and in said that “Parents should be warned that this ugly mutilation of their children involves serious danger, both to their physical and moral health. She was a proponent of women’s rights and pro-life. Her female education guide was published in Spain, as was her autobiography. Blackwell also had ties to the women’s rights movement from its earliest days. She was proudly proclaimed as a pioneer for women in medicine as early as the Adjourned Convention in Rochester, New York in, two weeks after the First Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls.

http://www.famousscientists.org/elizabeth-blackwell/

[vagina]

Originally Posted by vagina

Dr. Walker was a feminist, abolitionist, war hero and a hundred or so years ahead of her time on not only what women could do, but what she DID do as a woman and how she dared to look doing it.

She was born in Oswego NY in November 26, 1832 to progressive parents. She worked on her family's farm from a young age where during working hours she refused to wear women's clothing due to their restrictiveness, her mother had the intelligence to support her in this and preach against the unhealthy dangers of corsets and tight laced clothing.

Dr. Walker's mother was a teacher and Mary followed in her footsteps, later using the money she made from teaching to put herself through medical school where she graduated in 1855 as the ONLY female in her class.

Dr. Walker volunteered for the Union side during the Civil War, where she served as a nurse because sexist insecure army officials wouldnt allow her the status of her full medical degree. She frequently crossed battle lines to treat injured civilians and was even captured for several months by the Confederates. She was later recommended for the Medal of Honor and was granted it on November 11th 1865 by President Johnson. In 1917 due to idiot red tape, Dr. Walker was stripped of her Medal, but continued to wear it right up to her death. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter posthumously reinstated Mary's Medal and due right to female/feminist history.

After the war Mary lectured, wrote and joined the ranks of suffragists such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Mary fought for women's healthcare, women's rights and dress reform for women, sporting masculine attire while doing so.

Dr Walker died February 21, 1919 at the age of 86. Mary Walker carried female differently in how she dressed, the education she demanded for herself as a female, her right to risk her life for her country, her bravery for imparting all this to other women where ever she lectured, in short Dr Mary Walker did woman different in every breath she took.

I didn't credit the author of the post. Right now it's plagiarized.

[Toska]

Great post!

Marianne North


From Listverse:

We’re all familiar with the prim-and-proper ideal of Victorian womanhood, but Marianne North loved kicking down cliches. In a world where snagging a husband was considered a woman’s greatest achievement, North declared marriage was a “terrible experiment.” In her nearly 60 years on Earth, she never married nor had any kids. Instead, North dedicated her life to painting plants.North’s life as an artist began in 1867, when she took her first painting class. She was immediately addicted, comparing painting to “dram drinking.” North also loved botany and wanted to travel the planet, capturing wild flora on her canvas. At 39, she took her inheritance from her father and set off to explore the world.While most Victorian ladies were suffocating in England, North was putting 19th-century adventurers to shame. In 13 years, she visited America, Brazil, Japan, India, and many other countries. For the most part, she traveled alone. If someone insisted on going along to keep her safe, she found a way to escape her escort and sneak off alone into the wilderness.North wandered until a plant caught her eye. Whipping out her canvas and oils, she set to work. Unlike other botanical artists of her day, North didn’t paint a single flower on a white backdrop. Instead, she recorded everything in the environment. With her subject in the foreground, North filled the canvas with additional flowers, rocks, and bugs. Her style was highly controversial, but it gave her paintings a feel of realism, and that was especially appreciated in the days before color photography.Despite the haters, North’s work was wildly popular with the public, even drawing the attention of Charles Darwin, who asked North paint the plants of Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania. In addition to its beauty, North’s artwork is so special because she painted many specimens now extinct. And during her career, she captured quite a few plants. She created over 1,000 paintings, 833 of which were placed in the Marianne North Gallery, an amazing exhibit you can visit in the Kew Gardens today.

[vagina]

Originally Posted by vagina

Dr. Walker was a feminist, abolitionist, war hero and a hundred or so years ahead of her time on not only what women could do, but what she DID do as a woman and how she dared to look doing it.

She was born in Oswego NY in November 26, 1832 to progressive parents. She worked on her family's farm from a young age where during working hours she refused to wear women's clothing due to their restrictiveness, her mother had the intelligence to support her in this and preach against the unhealthy dangers of corsets and tight laced clothing.

Dr. Walker's mother was a teacher and Mary followed in her footsteps, later using the money she made from teaching to put herself through medical school where she graduated in 1855 as the ONLY female in her class.

Dr. Walker volunteered for the Union side during the Civil War, where she served as a nurse because sexist insecure army officials wouldnt allow her the status of her full medical degree. She frequently crossed battle lines to treat injured civilians and was even captured for several months by the Confederates. She was later recommended for the Medal of Honor and was granted it on November 11th 1865 by President Johnson. In 1917 due to idiot red tape, Dr. Walker was stripped of her Medal, but continued to wear it right up to her death. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter posthumously reinstated Mary's Medal and due right to female/feminist history.

After the war Mary lectured, wrote and joined the ranks of suffragists such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Mary fought for women's healthcare, women's rights and dress reform for women, sporting masculine attire while doing so.

Dr Walker died February 21, 1919 at the age of 86. Mary Walker carried female differently in how she dressed, the education she demanded for herself as a female, her right to risk her life for her country, her bravery for imparting all this to other women where ever she lectured, in short Dr Mary Walker did woman different in every breath she took.

http://NO. en-doing-woman-different.html?m=1

[Medusa]

Originally Posted by vagina

http://NO. woman-different.html?m=1

Vagina -

Given your recent history of posting really Transphobic shit on this site and now re-linking (even after I deleted your first link) to one of the biggest known trolls to Transpeople (and to several Butches and Femmes on this site who have been personally targeted), my patience with this bullshit is gone.

It is only because a couple of long-time members here have actually met you in person that I haven't assumed you are here for the sole purpose of fucking with people and posting hateful, harmful shit merely to troll the community.

Let me be super clear. There will be no more warnings. You are welcome to remain a member here under the following guidelines:

You will not link to, discuss, copy, paste, or otherwise reference the person who's blog you have been linking to anywhere on this site at any time.

You will continue to refrain from posting in any Trans-related thread or forum.


If it feels like I am taking a hardline with you, I am.

Thanks for your cooperation,
Mme

[vagina]

Originally Posted by Medusa

Vagina -

Given your recent history of posting really Transphobic shit on this site and now re-linking (even after I deleted your first link) to one of the biggest known trolls to Transpeople (and to several Butches and Femmes on this site who have been personally targeted), my patience with this bullshit is gone.

It is only because a couple of long-time members here have actually met you in person that I haven't assumed you are here for the sole purpose of fucking with people and posting hateful, harmful shit merely to troll the community.

Let me be super clear. There will be no more warnings. You are welcome to remain a member here under the following guidelines:

You will not link to, discuss, copy, paste, or otherwise reference the person who's blog you have been linking to anywhere on this site at any time.

You will continue to refrain from posting in any Trans-related thread or forum.


If it feels like I am taking a hardline with you, I am.

Thanks for your cooperation,
Mme

As I stated above, currently my post is plagiarized. So it needs to either be deleted or linked, otherwise it is considered academic dishonesty (since we are in a women in science post).

And speaking of academic dishonesty, there's a word to be said about censorship of ideas and information.

[Medusa]

Originally Posted by vagina

As I stated above, currently my post is plagiarized. So it needs to either be deleted or linked, otherwise it is considered academic dishonesty (since we are in a women in science post).

And speaking of academic dishonesty, there's a word to be said about censorship of ideas and information.

vagina-

You clearly do not get it. And I don't think you want to.

People like to cry "censorship" when they aren't allowed to just spout hurtful or hateful sentiments...or link to hate-filled, Transphobic blogs on a website where a vast majority of the membership is either partnered to, family of, loving, identifying as, or living as a Trans person. That is *NOT* acceptable.

It is a strong statement of exactly where you are coming from when you care more about "plagiarism" than making the Trans people on this site feel unwelcome and unsafe.

I do not feel confidant that you aren't going to make more posts or links that will require me to waste my precious time moderating you. As a matter of fact, it doesn't appear to me that you have put one second of thought into the multiple moderations you have received or the time-out you have already received.

As such, I am putting you on an extended time-out of 6 months. During that time, don't contact any of the Admins or Mods or make any new screen names here. When you return, you are to follow the same guidelines I have set forth.

Thanks,
Mme

[Kobi]

For 17-year-old Sara Volz, the space under her bed is home to her groundbreaking algae biofuel lab. Yup, that's right: Volz grows algae under her bed, allowing her to spearhead cutting-edge research -- and win a $100,000 scholarship in the process.

Volz, the 2013 Intel Science Talent Search winner who beat out 1,700 other nationwide whiz kids, is taking algae to a new level. She explained to ABC News that the natural oils produced by algae can be converted into biofuels, which can be used in diesel engines.

"It's great because it means you're not relying on petroleum-based fuels. You're not relying on fossil fuels," Volz said.

The problem is that this isn't necessarily economically feasible, but Volz may have found a way to work around this hurdle. Using the resources of her lab-based bedroom -- decorated with green algae-filled beakers and microscopes -- Volz is working to make biofuels ultimately more cost efficient by increasing the natural oil production of the algae through "artificial selection." The teen even admitted to adjusting her sleep schedule to accommodate her work.

Moving forward, the science star (and captain of her school's Science Bowl team) will be taking her talents to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_2979408.html

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

Bumping this noble thread.

[Femmadian]

via Amazing Women in History

United States Navy Admiral Grace Hopper (1906–1992) was one of the first programmers in the history of computers. Her belief that programming languages should be as easily understood as English was highly influential on the development of one of the first programming languages called COBOL. It is largely due to Grace Hopper’s influence that programmers use “if/thens” instead of 1s and 0s today.

From a young age, Grace had a curious and analytical mind. When she was seven, she decided she wanted to figure out how clocks worked. To find the answer, she took apart every single alarm clock in the house! When her mother found out, instead of scolding Grace, she limited her to taking apart only one alarm clock at a time.

Grace’s parents encouraged her curiosity in other ways, too. Her mother, Mary Campbell Van Horne Murray, had been very interested in math as a young woman, but hadn’t been able to study anything beyond geometry because it wasn’t considered proper for a lady at the time. She made sure to encourage Grace in her interests and not to limit her based on her gender.

Grace’s father, Walter Fletcher Murray, wanted all of his children to be self-sufficient and made sure his two daughters had the same education and opportunities as his son, which was unusual for the early 20th century. With this encouragement, she went on to study math and physics at Vassar and then Yale, earning her PhD in mathematics in 1931. After graduating, Grace stayed at Vassar to teach math for the next ten years before turning to the US Navy.

While women had been allowed to serve in the navy since the 1800s, they were limited to nursing and, starting with the turn of the century, some administrative duties. With the start of World War II the military became a little less particular about gender. In 1942, the Navy put together an all-female division called Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES), giving women the opportunity to do more for their country during a time of great need.

Grace Hopper took a leave of absence from teaching at Vassar to enlist in the US Navy Reserve in 1943, becoming a part of WAVES. She had to obtain an exemption in order to enlist since she weighed in at 15 lbs (about 7 kg or 1 stone) below the required weight of 120 lbs (about 54 kg or 8.5 stone). Despite what could have been a disadvantage, she graduated first in her class and was assigned the rank of lieutenant, junior grade. She was immediately assigned to the programming staff for the new Mark I computer (an electro-mechanical computer weighing over 10,000 lbs/4500 kg) at Harvard University.

After World War II ended in 1945, Grace requested a transfer to the regular Navy, but her request was denied due to her age — she was 38 at the time. She was now completely hooked on computer programming, turning down a full professorship offer from Vassar to continue to work at Harvard as a research fellow under a Navy contract.

It was in the 1940s that Grace Hopper’s most famous anecdote occurred: Grace and her team of associates were having a hard time figuring out what was causing a glitch in the Mark II computer they were working with. Finally, they discovered the source of the issue: a live moth was stuck in one of the electrical switches controlling a circuit. Grace loved to tell the story about how they “debugged” the early computer by removing the moth, bringing the obscure engineering term into popular use in computer science.

In the 1950s, Grace started working for a company called Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation as the senior mathematician on the team developing a new computer called UNIVAC I (UNIVersal Automatic Computer I), which became the second commercial computer produced in the United States. It was at this position that she created what is called the “A compiler.” In computer programming, a compiler is a program that transforms source code written from one computer language into another, usually less complex, language.

While compilers are indispensable to programmers today, they were revolutionary at a time when computers were mainly used, as their name implies, for performing computations: “Nobody believed that,” she said. “I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic.”

Eventually her work there was recognized and she was named the company’s first director of automatic programming two years later.

Grace Murray Hopper at the UNIVAC keyboard around 1960

In 1959 a consortium was formed called Conference on Data Systems Languages, or CODASYL, with the purpose of developing a standard programming language that could be used universally on any computer. Grace Hopper was asked to serve as the technical consultant on the committee, which later developed the programming language COBOL. She also developed validation software for COBOL to make sure the language could perform its function. COBOL, which stands for “COmmon Business-Oriented Language”, is still used in order-processing business software today.

Grace continued to work on COBOL as the director of the Navy Programming Languages Group, and was promoted to captain in 1973. Throughout the seventies, she pioneered work in designing and implementing technology standards for the US Navy. The tests and standards she developed were later adopted by the National Bureau of Standards (today called the National Institute of Standards and Technology), and helped to shape the future of programming.

Grace tried to retire twice, in 1966 and 1971, but both times she was recalled to active duty indefinitely. She was promoted to commodore in 1983, a title that was later renamed to “rear admiral, lower half,” and finally retired for the last time in 1986 at the age of 80. At the time, she was the oldest active-duty commissioned officer in the US Navy. At her retirement she was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the highest non-combat award possible by the Department of Defense. She then worked as a consultant to Digital Equipment Corporation until her death in 1992.

In the course of her lifetime, Grace Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities around the world, along with numerous awards and honors including:

• First winner of “Computer Science Man of the Year” award from the Data Processing Management Association in 1969 [and yet they stilled called it Computer Science Man until 10 years later when another woman won]
• First person from the United States and the first woman from any country to be made Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society in 1973
• First woman to receive the National Medal of Technology as an individual in 1991

Nicknamed “Amazing Grace,” she serves as a role model and inspiration to women working in a variety of STEM fields today. Without Grace Hopper’s work and the influence of her ideas on the development of computer programming, the field of computer science would look very different today.

The most important thing I’ve accomplished, other than building the compiler, is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, ‘Do you think we can do this?’ I say, ‘Try it.’ And I back ‘em up. They need that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir ‘em up at intervals so they don’t forget to take chances.

--Grace Hopper

------

Significant Honors/Awards (via Naval History and Heritage Command)
(This is not a complete list. It merely highlights Rear Admiral Hopper's many accomplishments.)

1928 - Phi Beta Kappa [honor society for undergraduate liberal arts and sciences majors]
1934 - Sigma Xi [scientific research society]
1946 - Naval Ordnance Development Award
1962 - Fellow, IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers]
1963 - Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
1964 - SWE (Society of Women Engineers) Achievement Award, Society of Women Engineers
1968 - IEEE Philadelphia Section Achievement Award
1968 - Connelly Memorial Award, Miami Valley Computer Association
1969 - Computer Sciences "Man of the Year", Data Processing Management Association
1970 - Upsilon Pi Epsilon [international honor society for the computing sciences], Honorary Member, Texas A&M [University], Alpha Chapter
1970 - Science Achievement Award, American Mothers Committee
1970 - Harry Goode Memorial Award, American Federation of Information Processing Societies
1972 - Honorary Doctor of Engineering, Newark College of Engineering
1972 - Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal, Yale University
1973 - Epsilon Delta Pi [honor society for computer information systems], Honorary Member, SUNY [State University of New York] Potsdam Chapter
1973 - Honorary Doctor of Science, C.W. Post College, Long Island University
1973 - Elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering.
1973 - Legion of Merit
1973 - Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society
1974 - Honorary Doctor of Laws, University of Pennsylvania
1976 - Distinguished Member Award, Washington D.C. Chapter, ACM [Association for Computing Machinery]
1976 - Honorary Doctor of Science, Pratt Institute
1976 - W. Wallace McDowell Award, IEEE Computer Society
1980 - three honorary doctorates
1980 - Meritorious Service Medal
1981 - three honorary doctorates
1982 - two honorary doctorates
1983 - five honorary doctorates
1983 - Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Computer Pioneer Medal
1983 - Golden Plate Award, American Academy of Achievement, California
1983 - American Association of University Women Achievement Award
1983 - Federally Employed Women Achievement Award
1983 - Association for Computing Machinery Distinguished Service Award
1984 - eight honorary doctorates
1984 - Living Legacy Award, Women's International Center, California
1984 - Woman of the Year Award, Young Women's Christian Association of the National Capitol Area
1985 - seven honorary doctorates
1985 - The Grace Murray Hopper Service Center built at NARDAC [Navy Regional Data Automation Center] San Diego.
1986 - four honorary doctorates
1986 - Defense Distinguished Service Medal
1986 - Meritorious Citation, Navy Relief Society
1987 - one honorary doctorate
1988 - The Charles Holmes Pette Medal, University of New Hampshire
1988 - The Emanuel R. Piore Award, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
1991 - National Medal of Technology
[Source: Dickason, Elizabeth. " Looking Back: Grace Murray Hopper's Younger Years." Chips 12, no.2 (April 1992): 6.]

------

Grace Brewster Murray was born in New York in 1906. Rear Admiral Grace Hopper would die Jan. 1, 1992, and be buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Five years later, the guided missile destroyer Hopper was commissioned in San Francisco; Hopper’s name also graces the Anita Borg Institute’s Celebration of Women in Computing conference
(of which Google is a sponsor).



(Google Doodle from 12/09/2013 pictured via The Washington Post)

[Bold emphasis mine.]

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

16-Year-Old Irish Girls Win Google Science Fair 2014 With World-Changing Crop Yield Breakthrough

by Beverley Mitchell, 09/25/14

filed under: global development, News, Sustainable Food






google science fair winners 2014

Irish teenagers Ciara Judge, Émer Hickey and Sophie Healy-Thow, all 16, have won the Google Science Fair 2014. Their project, Combating the Global Food Crisis, aims to provide a solution to low crop yields by pairing a nitrogen-fixing bacteria that naturally occurs in the soil with cereal crops it does not normally associate with, such as barley and oats. The results were incredible: the girls found their test crops germinated in half the time and had a drymass yield up to 74 percent greater than usual.













All three girls love gardening. In 2011, at school, they were also studying the food crisis in the Horn of Africa and were thinking about ways they could help. One day Hickey pulled up some pea plants from her garden and brought them in to discuss strange nodules on the roots with the girls’ science teacher. Peas, like other leguminous plants, have a symbiotic relationship with diazatrophic rhizobia bacteria found in soil. This relationship leads to nitrogen fixing in the soil, which can reduce the need for added chemical fertilizers.

Related: 15-Year-Old Develops Flashlight Powered by Body Heat, Wins Top Prize in Google Science Fair

The girls decided to experiment with the effects of rhizobia on non-leguminous plants. After trialing over 10,000 barley and oat seeds, the results were astonishing. Two types of rhizobia in particular showed great potential for agricultural use. In their submission to the Fair the girls stated: “These results have significant potential for increasing yields of food crops and reducing losses due to adverse weather conditions. They also offer opportunities for reducing the environmental footprint of agriculture by reducing fertilizer usage. As demand for cereals increases with population growth, this discovery could act as a partial solution to the impending food poverty crisis. There is potential for future work in this area and we plan to investigate the biochemical mechanism involved and carry out more extensive field trials.”

The trio are not newcomers to scientific achievement. In 2013, they were awarded first place in a national science competition from a field of 2,000 entries. They then represented Ireland in the European Contest for Young Scientists in September 2013, where they also won first place. As the Grand Prize winners of the Google Science Fair....

http://inhabitat.com/16-year-old-iri...-breakthrough/

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

Jane Goodall - Animal Rights Activist





Synopsis

Born on April 3, 1934, in London, England, Jane Goodall set out to Tanzania to study wild chimpanzees by sitting amongst them, bypassing more rigid procedures and uncovering discoveries about primate behavior that have continued to shape scientific discourse. She is a highly respected member of the world scientific community and is a staunch advocate of ecological preservation.

Early Life

Jane Goodall was born on April 3, 1934, in London, England, to Mortimer Herbert Goodall, a businessperson and motor-racing enthusiast, and the former Margaret Myfanwe Joseph, who wrote novels under the name Vanne Morris Goodall. Along with her sister, Judy, Goodall was reared in London and Bournemouth, England. Her fascination with animal behavior began in early childhood. In her leisure time, she observed native birds and animals, making extensive notes and sketches, and read widely in the literature of zoology and ethology. From an early age, she dreamed of traveling to Africa to observe exotic animals in their natural habitats.

Early Interest in Primates

Goodall attended the Uplands private school, receiving her school certificate in 1950 and a higher certificate in 1952. At age 18 she left school and found employment as a secretary at Oxford University. In her spare time, she worked at a London-based documentary film company to finance a long-anticipated trip to Africa. At the invitation of a childhood friend, she visited South Kinangop, Kenya. Through other friends, she soon met the famed anthropologist Louis Leakey, then curator of the Coryndon Museum in Nairobi. Leakey hired her as a secretary and invited her to participate in an anthropological dig at the now famous Olduvai Gorge, a site rich in fossilized prehistoric remains of early ancestors of humans. In addition, Goodall was sent to study the vervet monkey, which lives on an island in Lake Victoria.

Leakey believed that a long-term study of the behavior of higher primates would yield important evolutionary information. He had a particular interest in the chimpanzee, the second most intelligent primate. Few studies of chimpanzees had been successful; either the size of the safari frightened the chimps, producing unnatural behaviors, or the observers spent too little time in the field to gain comprehensive knowledge. Leakey believed that Goodall had the proper temperament to endure long-term isolation in the wild. At his prompting, she agreed to attempt such a study. Many experts objected to Leakey's selection of Goodall because she had no formal scientific education and lacked even a general college degree.

http://www.biography.com/people/jane-goodall-9542363

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

Meet Doctor Joanne Liu




The amazingly courageous woman who leads Doctors Without Borders





A Canadian physician who risks her life to save the world.

"A rare visible minority in a city that was and is overwhelmingly white, Dr. Liu, 48, was bullied mercilessly in grade school, from minor teasing to racist taunts and pushes and punches. “It shapes your mind, consciously or unconsciously. When I was young, I would tell myself it’s not because I’m different I won’t be as good. I always made a huge deal of being good at everything. That’s how I coped with it. You react by overperforming, or underperforming.”

Inspired by reading Camus’s The Plague and Jean-Pierre Willem’s memoir of working in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Dr. Liu decided in her early teens she would become a physician who treats the world’s poorest patients. She trained at McGill University and obtained specialties in pediatrics and emergency medicine with those goals in mind.

In 1993, when she was doing an internship in intensive care at Sainte-Justine, her supervising physician, Dr. Joaquim Miro, invited her to her first MSF meeting. Three years later, she would complete her first mission to a refugee camp in Mauritania...

She went on to serve in war zones such as Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo and other disaster zones, such as Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. She’s frequently been under fire over the years, has slept with boots on for a quick escape, and worked undercover in Syria in the past year to avoid being kidnapped."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/...ticle21183104/

[dark_crystal]

From yesterday's Chronicle of Higher Education:



Meet the Math Professor Who’s Fighting Gerrymandering With Geometry

A Tufts University professor has a proposal to combat gerrymandering: give more geometry experts a day in court.
Moon Duchin is an associate professor of math and director of the Science, Technology and Society program at Tufts. She realized last year that some of her research about metric geometry could be applied to gerrymandering — the practice of manipulating the shape of electoral districts to benefit a specific party, which is widely seen as a major contributor to government dysfunction.

[snip]

"Changes to voting rules that used to be considered by courts before they could be implemented," Ms. Duchin says, "are now implemented first and the courts consider them after the fact." Because of the increase in cases challenging new electoral maps, she says, there’s a need for expert witnesses who understand the mathematical concepts applicable to gerrymandering.

To meet that need, she’s spearheaded the creation of a five-day summer program at Tufts that aims to train mathematicians to do just that. The first three days of the program will be open to the public and available online, with lessons that put redistricting in legal, historical, civil-rights, and mathematical contexts. Attendees of the program’s final two days will participate in one of three specialized tracks on giving expert testimony, teaching, and working with geographic-information systems.

The summer program, created in partnership with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, was announced late in January. Already, Ms. Duchin says, over 900 people have indicated their interest by signing up for a mailing list.

From Ms. Duchin's wikipedia page:

Duchin went to Harvard University as an undergraduate, where she was active in queer organizing and finished a double major in mathematics and women's studies in 1998. As a graduate student in mathematics at the University of Chicago, she continued her feminist activism by teaching gender studies and pushing the university to add gender-neutral bathrooms, and was mentioned mockingly by name on the Rush Limbaugh show. She completed her doctorate in 2005, under the supervision of Alex Eskin. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis and the University of Michigan before joining the Tufts faculty in 2011.

If you know this sister, shake her hand for me!