There’s a current push to encourage girls to become better represented in the STEM studies; Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. While I’m more than happy to see this encouragement I do hope it’s what the girls want to do and not herding them into areas they don’t prefer because of some political vision held by non-STEM types. That having been said I do think that there are plenty of unsung women scientists of the past who deserve the recognition they were denied my a misogynist culture that happily used their work while ignoring their contribution. I have chosen to introduce you to two of them who you may or may not have heard of.
Amalie Emmy Noether, was born on March 23, 1882, Erlangen, Germany and died on April 14, 1935, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, U.S. She is the first woman scientist I want to introduce you to. She is also the poster child for misogynist intellectual oppression. Her specialty was abstract algebra where she made some of the most creative and fundamental contributions of the 20th century. Einstein said of her after she died, “Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began.” Noether’s Theorem which connects conservation laws in physics to the symmetry of the system. This law remains at the cornerstone of modern physics of elementary particles and forces.
When she first went to the university of Erlangen in 1900 to study mathematics, women were not allowed to matriculate as students so she had to audit her classes with the permission of the professor. In 1903 she studied for a year at Gottingen under Hilbert, Klein, Minkowski and Schwarzchild, four pillars of mathematics and theoretical physics at that time. In 1904 Erlangen admitted women as students and she returned there to complete he studies before obtaining a PhD there in 1907.
She stayed at Erlangen working on her own research and to work with her father Max Noether without pay until 1915 when she moved back to Gottingen to work under David Hilbert, much against the objections of the rest of the male faculty. While working on the mathematics of Einstein’s recently published theory of General Relativity, Noether discovered the relationship between the laws of conservation in a system and its symmetry. Thus she explained the foundational mathematics of the conservation laws we learn in high school physics class; conservation of energy, conservation of momentum and conservation of angular momentum.
In 1919 she received an appointment as a lecturer (professor in American) at the university of Gottingen. She continued her work in abstract algebra that includes the mathematics of sets, groups, rings and fields. She made major contributions to mathematics in the field of non-commutative algebras. However dark clouds were on the horizon and after the Nazis came to power many of the academic staff at Gottingen were dismissed because they were Jews.
Emmy Noether found her way to Bryn Mawr College in the USA where she continued her research both there and at Princeton. Sadly she died suddenly and unexpectedly after an operation for an ovarian cyst in 1935. The world lost one of its most perceptive and creative mathematicians and although her findings are widely used today she is mostly forgotten by the world of science and almost completely unknown by our chattering classes.
For more about Emmy Noether:
•
Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born 1920 in London, England and died in the same city in 1958. Her most famous and controversial contribution to science was her work on the structure of DNA for which Watson and Crick received the Nobel Prize after using her research findings without her knowledge or permission.
She graduated from The University of Cambridge with a degree in physical chemistry. In 1941 she received a Cambridge fellowship to conduct research in physical chemistry but it was interrupted by WWII. She found work with the Coal Research organization where she studied the physical chemistry of coal and carbon. This work led to her being awarded her PhD in 1945. From 1947 to 1950 she studied the applications of X-ray diffraction technology. This led to her taking up a position as a research fellow in King’s College, London in 1951 where she used X-ray crystallography to study the structure of DNA in collaboration with Maurice Wilkins.
It was during this period that she produced the crucial X-ray diffraction photographs that led to the structure of DNA being identified as a double helix after her supervisor Max Perutz showed her photographs to Watson and Crick. Her colleague Wilkins later shared the Nobel Prize with Watson and Crick.
In 1953 Franklin’s relationship with her director John Randall and with Wilkins had deteriorated so badly that she left Kings College and took up a position at Birkbeck College. Where in addition to working on DNA and RNA she studied the structure of viruses including the Polio virus. She died of ovarian cancer in 1958 four years before Watson, Crick and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize for deducing the double helix structure of DNA. It has long been claimed that Franklin was not included in the Noble Prize because they typically do not award to more than three recipients or posthumously. However the story of how Watson and Crick got a peek at Franklin’s work and published without including her as an author has caused controversy ever since. She certainly did not receive the recognition she so richly deserved.
For more about Rosalind Franklin:
