American nurse midwife and the founder of the Frontier Nursing Service Mary Carson Breckinridge died #OTD in 1965.
In 1925, she founded the FNS, which aimed to improve maternal and infant health by providing midwifery and nursing care to families in the Appalachian mountains. Her efforts also helped to elevate the role of nurse-midwives in the United States and contributed to advancements in rural healthcare delivery.
Scottish astronomer Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming was born #OTD in 1857.
Fleming's most significant contributions came in the field of stellar classification. She developed a system for classifying stars based on their spectra, which became known as the Harvard Classification Scheme. In 1890, she published the first catalog of stellar spectra, which contained over 10,000 stars classified according to her system.
English chemist Dorothy Hodgkin was born #OTD in 1910.
Among her most influential discoveries are the confirmation of the structure of penicillin as previously surmised by Edward Abraham and Ernst Boris Chain; and mapping the structure of vitamin B12, for which in 1964 she became the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Hodgkin also elucidated the structure of insulin in 1969 after 35 years of work.
American mathematician Anna Johnson Pell Wheeler was born #OTD in 1883.
She received her Ph.D. in 1909 with a dissertation on "Biorthogonal Systems of Functions with Applications to the Theory of Integral Equations," a topic in functional analysis that was innovative at the time. Wheeler was instrumental in bringing German mathematician Emmy Noether to Bryn Mawr in 1933, after the latter's expulsion from the University of Göttingen by the Nazi government.
English archaeologist Dorothy Garrod was born #OTD in 1892.
One of her most significant excavations was at the Mount Carmel caves in Palestine (now Israel) during the 1920s and 1930s. She was one of the early adopters of a more systematic and scientific method in archaeology, emphasizing the importance of stratigraphic excavation to understand the sequence and timing of human occupation sites.
British Physicist & Mathematician Hertha Marks Ayrton was born #OTD in 1854.
She became a recognized expert on the electric arc, a type of electrical discharge that was little understood at the time. Her research clarified the causes of hissing & flickering in arc lamps and contributed to improving the design and consistency of the lamps. She developed the "Ayrton fan" or "flapper," a device intended to clear poisonous gases from the trenches in World War I.
American marine biologist, conservationist, and writer Rachel Carson died #OTD in 1964.
She is best known for her groundbreaking book "Silent Spring," published in 1962, which brought attention to the environmental impact of pesticides, particularly DDT, and sparked a global environmental movement. The book is often credited with inspiring the modern environmental movement and the establishment of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
"The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible."
American astronomer Annie Jump Cannon died #OTD in 1941.
Cannon developed a system of stellar classification based on spectral characteristics, which became known as the Harvard Classification Scheme (she was one of the "Harvard Computers"). She classified hundreds of thousands of stars, organizing them by temperature and spectral characteristics. Her work laid the foundation for our understanding of stellar evolution and the composition of stars.
One of Cannon's most significant contributions was the creation of the Henry Draper Catalogue, which listed the spectral classifications of nearly 400,000 stars. She also developed the mnemonic device "Oh, Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me" to help remember the spectral classes: O, B, A, F, G, K, M.
In 1925, she became the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from Oxford University.
During meeting no.9, we'll learn how to streamline your analysis using {targets} package, based on chapter 13 of “Building reproducible analytical pipelines with R” by Bruno Rodrigues (https://raps-with-r.dev/targets.html).
Dr. Kimberley Warren-Rhodes is a fearless and natural-born explorer. Kimberley led the first astrobiology surveys of the Taklimakan high-altitude deserts and salt lakes in western China and field-tested Mars rovers in the Atacama Desert. Her current work seeks to apply AI/ML to predict biogeochemical patterns/spatial and functional ecology of microbial communities in extreme environments to hone the search for biosignatures on other worlds.
Text: Field astrobiology, whether on our own world or faraway planets, is not for the faint-hearted, and Kimberley Warren-Rhodes is a fearless and natural-born explorer. Kimberley led the first astrobiology surveys of the Taklimakan high-altitude deserts and salt lakes in western China and field-tested Mars rovers in the Atacama Desert. Her current work seeks to apply AI/ML to predict biogeochemical patterns/spatial and functional ecology of microbial communities in extreme environments to hone the search for biosignatures on other worlds, especially Mars. #notjustaliens
Happy 90th birthday to the amazing Dr. Jane Goodall, born #OTD (3 Apr 1934). Here’s a display about her childhood nature club with a cool drawing, from the 2020 Becoming Jane exhbition at the National Geographic Museum:
Sie ist neben Dian Fossey & Birute Galdikas eine der drei renommiertesten Primatenforscher*innen und heute vor allem Umweltaktivistin: Jane Goodall, geboren am 3. April 1934, wird heute 90 Jahre alt.
American physician and endocrinologist Rebecca Lee Dorsey died #OTD in 1954. She is known as the world's first female endocrinologist and the first woman physician to practice in Los Angeles.
Dorsey was said to have been the attending physician at over 4,000 births during her lifetime, to have founded a nursing school and organized the city's first maternity ward, and to have administered the first diphtheria inoculation in Los Angeles in about 1893.
Today we received a list of all deans, heads of institutes and centres at our university. Out of 54 position only 10 are occupied by women. Among the deputies there are more women, but nonetheless, this is pathetic.
German mathematician Emmy Noether was born #OTD in 1882.
One of her most significant contributions is Noether's Theorem, which establishes a fundamental connection between symmetries & conservation laws in physics. This theorem has had profound implications in fields such as quantum mechanics, particle physics & field theory. Despite facing discrimination as a woman in academia during her time, Noether persevered & made enduring contributions to mathematics and physics.
"In the judgment of the most competent living mathematicians, Fräulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began."
April 4th we'll learn about how to package your code, based on chapter 11 of “Building reproducible analytical pipelines with R” by Bruno Rodrigues (https://raps-with-r.dev/packages.html)
American astronomer Antonia Maury was born #OTD in 1866.
She is known for her work in stellar classification. Maury made significant contributions to the understanding of stellar spectra, particularly in developing a refined classification system for stars. Building upon the work of her colleague, Annie Jump Cannon, Maury introduced a system that distinguished between the different types of stars based on the widths of spectral lines.