Celebrating admirable women and girls (historical & contemporary). Their courage, resilience, perseverance, triumphs. Highlighting "firsts." Raising awareness of injustices and our struggles, obstacles, erasure, and more. #WomenInSTEM & in everything else!
Admirable Women
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Susan La Flesche Picotte: the first #NativeAmerican woman to earn a medical degree in the US.
Living in an era when Native Americans were denied citizenship & women couldn't vote, she became an indispensable physician & fierce defender of her people's sovereignty. Born #OTD in 1865. #WomenInSTEM
When Statutory Rape Laws Led to Forced Marriages
In early 20th-century New York, men accused of “ruining” women under eighteen could avoid prosecution by marrying them.
Imagine the psychological resilience required. Tereshkova was completely isolated in the dead silence of space, entirely reliant on mid-1960s vacuum-tube tech & cognizant if anything went wrong with her automated systems, she was completely on her own. A testament to the raw courage of a pioneer.
Inspired at age 8 to be a doctor when she watched an Native American woman die bc a white govt doctor refused to treat her.
+Valedictorian, Woman's Medical College of PA 1889
+Sole doctor for the Omaha Reservation, serving >1200 people across 1350 sq miles
+Made house calls on horseback & by buggy
Who invented Kevlar?
Chemist Stephanie Kwolek in 1965.
In a 40+ year career, her work in polymer chemistry ultimately revolutionized personal body armor, industrial engineering & space exploration. Fourth woman inducted, National Inventors Hall of Fame, 1994.
She died #OTD in 2014. #WomenInSTEM
#OTD in 1983, physicist & NASA astronaut Dr. Sally Ride became the first American woman to go to #space. 🚀
She launched into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger as a mission specialist on STS-7. At 32, she was also the youngest American to travel into space (at the time). #WomenInSTEM
Cytogeneticist Dr. Barbara McClintock won the 1983 #Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her study of corn chromosomes--revolutionizing the field of cytogenetics.
She is the only woman to be awarded an unshared Nobel Prize in this category. She was born #OTD in 1902. #WomenInSTEM
#OTD in 1873, Susan B. Anthony went on trial for illegally voting in Rochester, NY, on November 5, 1872.
Ultimately, she was ordered by the court to pay $100 + court fees. She said she would never pay a penny of the "unjust penalty."
And she never did.
#suffrage #USHistory
Astrophysicist Andrea Ghez won the 2020 #Nobel Prize in #Physics for the discovery of a supermassive compact object (now generally recognized to be a black hole) in the Milky Way's galactic center.
She was the 4th woman to win the physics Nobel. She was born #OTD in 1965 #WomenInSTEM #astrophysics
#OTD in 1963, engineer & cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to fly in space in Vostok 6. She was just 26.
The only woman to ever fly a solo space mission. She spent 3 days alone in space & orbited the Earth 48 times...inside the little pod in the pic. Extraordinary. #WomenInSTEM
