For British Science Week, we asked Stemette Society members who to include on a list of women in science. Here is the list they created. How many of these women in science have you heard of?
Maggie Aderin-Pocock
Maggie is a British space scientist and science educator. She is an honorary research associate in University College London’s Department of Physics and astronomy. Since February 2014, she has co-presented The Sky at Night.
Merritt Moore
Merritt is a quantum physicist and professional ballerina taking the world by storm. She graduated with Honors in Physics from Harvard and recently a PhD in Atomic and Laser Physics from the University of Oxford.
Marie Curie
Marie Skłodowska Curie was born Maria Salomea Skłodowska. She was a Polish and French physicist and chemist whose pioneering research centred on radioactivity.
Chemistry
Florence Adepoju
Florence has built up her beauty empire from scratch. Now, her lipsticks – specially formulated for black women – are loved worldwide! Flo got into the beauty industry through science, having taken A-Levels in Biology, Chemistry and Fine Art.
Dorothy Hodgkin
Dorothy Hodgkin was a British chemist who developed protein crystallography. It was this work that helped her win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964. During her career, she worked hard to advance the technique of X-ray crystallography to determine the three-dimensional structures of molecules.
Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer. Her work was central to our understanding of the structures of many different things such as DNA, RNA, viruses, coal, and graphite.
Dr Bridgette Shannon
Dr Bridgette Shannon is a chemical engineer at 3M. She develops groundbreaking products at work stemming from her love of chemistry. At school, Bridgette loved the challenges chemistry class provided. Even though she was warned not to take chemistry, she attended STEM summer camps and realised this was what she wanted to do.
Dr Normi Mohd Yahaya
Dr Normi was the first Malaysian to earn a PhD at the age of 27 from the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research. She specialized in creating evolved enzymes for biodegradable plastics production in microbes. This has led to her current research, investigating the functions, structures and potentials of hypothetical proteins in microbes.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell is an astrophysicist from Northern Ireland who, as a postgraduate student, co-discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967. She was credited with “one of the most significant scientific achievements of the 20th century”.
Mary Lowe Good
Mary Lowe Good was an American inorganic chemist who worked academically, in industrial research and in government. Good contributed to the understanding of catalysts such as ruthenium which activate or speed up chemical reactions.
Dr Jen Gupta
Jennifer Ann Gupta, known as Jen, is an astrophysicist and science communicator based at the University of Portsmouth. She has presented on Tomorrow’s World on the BBC. Read more about Dr Gupta here >>
Biology
Liz Bonnin
Elizabeth Bonnin is a French-born Irish science, wildlife and natural history presenter, who has worked on television in both Ireland and the United Kingdom. She is also a biochemist and wild animal biologist. Meet Liz here >>
Arthi Anand
Arthi joined NHS Blood & Transport (NHSBT) in 2003 as a BSHI trainee, having a background working for Cancer Research UK on treatments for cancer. Although the NHSBT role was as a trainee, Arthi really wanted to work closer to the clinical environment. When my BSHI training was complete she then completed her portfolio to become a Clinical Scientist. Read about her STEM journey here >>
