11. Ruth Benedict
Dates: June 5, 1887 – September 17, 1948
Known for: Ruth Benedict was an anthropologist who taught at Columbia, following in the footsteps of her mentor, anthropology pioneer Franz Boas. She both carried on and extended his work with her own. Ruth Benedict wrote Patterns of Culture and The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. She also wrote "The Races of Mankind," a World War II pamphlet for the troops showing that racism was not grounded in scientific reality.
12. Elizabeth Blackwell
Dates: February 3, 1821 - May 31, 1910
Known for: Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to graduate from medical school (M.D.) and a pioneer in educating women in medicine
13. Elizabeth Britton
Dates: January 9, 1858 - February 25, 1934
Known for: Elizabeth Britton inspired and helped organize the creation of the New York Botanical Garden.
14. Harriet Brooks
Dates: July 2, 1876 - April 17, 1933
Known for: Harriet Brooks was Canada's first nuclear scientist who worked for a while with Marie Curie. She lost a position at Barnard College when she became engaged, by university policy; she later broke that engagement, worked in Europe for a while, and then left science to marry and raise a family.
15. Annie Jump Cannon
Dates: December 11, 1863 - April 13, 1941
Known for:The first scientific doctorate awarded by Oxford University to a woman was earned by astronomer Annie Jump Cannon. She worked on classifying and cataloging stars, discovering five novae.
16. Rachel Carson
Dates: May 27, 1907 - April 14, 1964
Known for: Rachel Carson is remembered for writing the book Silent Spring, motivating the environmentalist movement of the late 60s and early 70s.
17. Emilie du Chatelet
Émilie du Châtelet, or Gabrielle-Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil du Châtelet
Dates: December 17, 1706 - September 10, 1749
Known for: Best known as the lover of Voltaire (François Marie Arouet), who encouraged her study of mathematics. She worked to explore and explain Newtonian physics, arguing that heat and light were related and against the phlogiston theory then current. She died of puerperal fever after giving birth to her fourth child.
18. Cleopatra the Alchemist
Dates: first century C.E.?
Known for: Her writing documents chemical (alchemical) experiments, noted for the drawings of chemical apparatus used. She is reputed to have documented weights and measurements carefully, in writings that were destroyed with the persecution of the Alexandrian alchemists in the third century.
19. Anna Comnena
Dates: December 1 or 2 (sources differ), 1083 - 1148
Known for: Anna Comnena was the first woman known to write a history; she also wrote about science, mathematics and medicine.
20. Eva Crane
Dates: June 12, 1912 - September 6, 2007
Known for: Bee scientist; she founded and served as the director of the International Bee Research Association from 1949 to 1983. She originally trained in mathematics and obtained her doctorate in nuclear physics. She became interested in studying bees after someone gave her a gift of a bee swarm as a wedding present.
