STEM field contributions celebrated during Women’s History Month
Each year, March is designated as National Women’s History Month to honor the contributions of both notable and ordinary women and ensure their efforts are recognized and celebrated throughout the country.
The 2013 National Women's History Month theme is Women Inspiring Innovation through Imagination. The theme recognizes American women's work in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics – commonly referred to as STEM.
Honorees chosen for 2013 National Women’s History Month The 2013 Honorees for National Women’s History Month include: Hattie Elizabeth Alexander (1901-1968) Marlyn Barrett (1954) Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992) Olga Frances Linares (1936) Julia Morgan (1872-1957) Katharine Burr Blodgett (1898-1979) Edith Clarke (1883-1959) Rita R. Colwell (1934) Susan Solomon (1956) Flossie Wong-Staal (1946) |
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“Women with STEM backgrounds are important to addressing ITD's future workforce challenges,” explained Michelle George, senior human resource specialist. The department's education outreach efforts encourage study in STEM-related fields.
Recently, middle-school girls from across Idaho attended ITD's Engineering Girls Day at Headquarters in Boise where many of the department's female transportation professionals encouraged the students and serve as role models.
March also provides an opportunity to remember some of the women whose contributions to society rested squarely on their intellectual achievements. Jill Rooney, Ph.D., is an education writer for OnlineColleges.net and author of an article titled “10 Important Women in STEM History.” Her picks and some shortened descriptions are:
Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673) was the Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. She pursued scientific knowledge despite popular arguments of the era that claimed women were inferior and despite the criticism heaped upon her.
Following the invention of Calculus by Sir Isaac Newton, Maria Agensi (1718-1799) wrote a 1,000-page, two-volume mathematics tome that included the first reliable book for teaching differential and integral calculus.
Marie Curie (1867-1934) won Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics. She discovered the elements polonium and radium, coined the term radioactivity, and developed techniques that separated radium from its radioactive properties so that the element could be studied on its own.
Marjorie Stewart Joyner (1896-1994) is believed to be the first female African American to receive a patent. She invented a permanent-wave and hair-straightening machine. Her prototype was made of pot roast rods, which she attached to a hair-drying hood joined by an electrical cord, which heated the rods to seal the curl.
Katharine Blodgett (1898-1979) created the first 100 percent transparent, non-reflective glass, which she discovered during research into monomolecular coatings at General Electric. Her new method of reducing glare on glass revolutionized photography, scientific equipment including microscopes and telescopes, and eyeglasses. She is perhaps most famous, however, for inventing a color gauge to measure the molecular coatings on glass. Among her other inventions were a method for de-icing plane wings, and poison gas absorbents.
Grace Hopper (1906-1992) was the first woman to graduate from Yale with a doctorate in mathematics, the first woman to become an admiral in the U.S. Navy, and a pioneer in computer programming. Most of her work consisted of creating early computer codes that used English, including helping develop the COBOL computer language, the most widely used computer business language in the world.
Virginia Apgar (1909-1974) is known today for inventing neonatology, including the method of measuring the health of newborn babies that bears her name. The Apgar Test has significantly reduced infant mortality. She was the first woman to become a full professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and later went on to head the March of Dimes to raise money for research into the causes and treatment of birth defects.
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkins (1910-1994) helped develop protein crystallography and discovered three-dimensional biomolecular structures, including Vitamin B-12, for which she won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. She also determined the structure of insulin, cholesterol, lactoglobulin, ferritin, tobacco mosaic virus, and penicillin.
Hedy Lamar (1913-2000) was a Viennese-born, Hollywood glamour girl in the 1930s and 40s. She also was an inventor who came up with the concept of “frequency hopping” as a way of preventing signal jamming. Lamar’s work has become the basis of part of today’s military communication satellite system and is part of cell phone technology.
Patricia Bath (1942- ) was the first African American to complete a residency in ophthalmology at New York University and in 1976 she co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness when she discovered that blacks were twice as likely as whites to suffer from blindness caused by glaucoma. As a result of her interest, she invented the “Laserphaco Probe” as a method of treating cataracts.
Published 3-1-13