Amplifying Women in Science

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects in 1792. In it she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men but appear so only as a result of the education that they are denied and that they deserve the same fundamental rights as men. She also challenges the idea of women as mere ornaments in society: “taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison”. More than 200 years after her death it remains a classic of feminist thought.

Johanna ‘Hannah’ Arendt was a German- American political theorist. Often described as a philosopher she rejected the disciplines focus on the individual, and concentrated her work on issues of power, democracy, authority and totalitarianism. As a Jew who escaped Germany during the holocaust she was a passionate supporter of the equality of all humans. In one of her most influential books she defines The Human Condition as the way in which individuals find ways to live together in the world.

Bonnie Bassler is a molecular biologist, professor at Princeton University and one of the world’s most dynamic scientific speakers. Bassler’s seminal studies on the process of cell-cell signalling have shown how bacteria can communicate with one another through chemical signals, and by doing so behave as multicellular organisms. These findings have revolu­tionised the study of microbiology and are already leading to the creation of new more potent therapies against drug resistant superbugs.

In a scientific world still dominated by men, Marie Curie shone not only as an extraordinary pioneer in the field of radioactivity, but also as a trailb¬lazing female scientist. A French-Polish chemist and physicist, Curie discovered two new elements, polonium and radium, and revolutionized our understanding of radioactivity, the process by which unstable atoms decay by emitting energy in the form of radiation. Curie was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize in Physics and became the first person to receive a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry. She is  one of the most renowned scientists of a generation, whose influences can be seen throughout many areas of modern science, from particle physics to medicine.

Rosalind Franklin was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer, whose work of x-ray distraction of DNA led to the discovery of its double helix structure. Franklin captured the structure in the famous Photo 51 which proved to be the final clue that pieced together two decades of research. Soon after, Maurice Wilkins, a co-worker with whom Franklin did not have a good relationship, together with Watson and Crick, published a paper on the structure of DNA using Franklin’s work without permission or acknowledgement. Whilst Wilkins largely dismissed Franklin's role in the discovery, Crick admitted that Franklin had been "only two steps away" from the solution herself.

Renowned British biochemist Dorothy Hodgkin pioneered the application of x-ray crystallography techniques to determine the three-dimensional structure of biomolecules, helping to unravel how their atomic arrangements influence how they work in the body. Notable for her work to elucidate the structures of insulin and vitamin B12, in 1964 she became the third woman to win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. She remains the only British woman scientist to have been awarded the honour.

Augusta Ada Byron King, the Countess of Lovelace – better known as Ada Lovelace – is widely regarded as the world’s first computer programmer. She was born in London in 1815 to the poet Lord Byron and his wife Anne Milbanke. Ada’s talent for mathematics and analytics led her, as a young adult, to work with Charles Babbage on the Analytical Engine. Ada’s deep understanding of the engine led her not only to write the first computer program, but also to conceive of a future where a computing machine might create images and music if it were given the right algorithms.