Science Ladies from History!

http://www.readwomeninscience.com/

Gertrude Elion. Wellcome Foundation Archives, CC BY

Gertrude Elion (1918-1999) graduated from Hunter College in New York in 1937 with a degree in chemistry. Unable to complete a postgraduate degree due to the Great Depression, undeterred she spent time working as a lab assistant (for US$20 a week) and as a teacher until she obtained an assistant position at the Burroughs-Wellcome company.

Born in 1925, Mary Lyon is an English geneticist who is best known for her discovery of X-chromosome inactivation (also known as lyonization), which is the process by which one of the two copies of the X chromosome present in female mammals is randomly inactivated.

During WWII, Mary pursued her studies at Girton College at the University of Cambridge, where she studied zoology, physiology, organic chemistry and biochemistry, with zoology as her main subject. During that time she became interested in embryology. She went on to do her PhD with R A Fisher, who was Professor of Genetics in Cambridge, where she characterized a mutant mice strain.

After her PhD, Mary joined the group of Conrad Hal Waddington, funded by the Medical Research Council to investigate mutagenesis and the genetic risks of radiation. She has published many papers on radiation and chemical mutagenesis and on studies of mutant genes. She was head of the Genetics Section of the MRC Radiology Unit at Harwell from 1962 to 1987. She retired from active research in 1990.

The scientists are back in the lab! LEGO Research Institute is available while supplies last! http://t.co/xUlcEtNjN5 pic.twitter.com/uMv3Cd4MpE

— LEGO (@LEGO_Group)

Marie Tharp (1920-2006) was an American geologist and oceanographic cartographer who, with Bruce Heezen, created the first scientific map of the entire ocean floor. Tharp's work revealed the presence of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and revolutionized scientific understanding of continental drift.

Heezen collected data for research purposes and Tharp used his information to compile their physiographic diagrams. During this process, she confirmed previous predictions when she made an important discovery: a rift on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Tharp’s visual interpretations of the sea-floor data contributed to the reintroduction of continental drift theory and the 1960s geological revolution. At a time when most women were excluded from scientific careers, Tharp, initially a research assistant, succeeded in this competitive arena.

Today's Google doodle celebrates the 215th birthday of Mary Anning!

Mary Anning (1799-1847) was a British fossil collector, dealer, and palaeontologist who became known around the world for important finds she made in the Jurassic marine fossil beds at Lyme Regis in Dorset, a county in Southwest England on the coast of the English Channel, where she lived. Her work contributed to fundamental changes that occurred during her lifetime in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth.

Her discoveries included the first ichthyosaur skeleton correctly identified, which she and her brother Joseph found when she was just twelve years old; the first two plesiosaur skeletons found; the first pterosaur skeleton located outside Germany; and important fish fossils. Her observations played a key role in the discovery that coprolites, known as bezoar stones at the time, were fossilized feces. She also discovered that belemnite fossils contained fossilized ink sacs like those of modern cephalopods. When geologist Henry De la Beche painted Duria Antiquior, the first widely circulated pictorial representation of a scene from prehistoric life derived from fossil reconstructions, he based it largely on fossils Anning had found, and sold prints of it for her benefit.

Anning's gender and social class prevented her from fully participating in the scientific community of 19th-century Britain, dominated as it was by wealthy Anglican gentlemen. She struggled financially for much of her life. Her family was poor, and as religious dissenters, were subject to legal discrimination. The only scientific writing of hers published in her lifetime appeared in the Magazine of Natural History in 1839, an extract from a letter that Anning had written to the magazine's editor questioning one of its claims.

Gerty Theresa Cori (1896 – 1957) was an American biochemist who became the third woman—and first American woman—to win a Nobel Prize in science, and the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Cori was born in Prague. She was admitted to medical school there, where she met her future husband Carl Ferdinand Cori. After graduation, they married and emigrated to America in 1922. Gerty  continued her early interest in medical research, collaborating in the laboratory with Carl. She published research findings coauthored with her husband, as well as publishing singly. Unlike her husband, she had difficulty securing research positions, and the ones she obtained provided meager pay. Her husband insisted on continuing their collaboration, though he was discouraged from doing so by institutions that employed him.

Gerty and her husband jointly received the Nobel Prize in 1947 for the discovery of the mechanism by which glycogen—a derivative of glucose—is broken down in muscle tissue into lactic acid and then resynthesized in the body and stored as a source of energy (known as the Cori cycle).