Tag Archives: female scientists

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History’s Hidden Heroes: Dr. Patricia Bath

Dr. PAtricia BathTime for my favorite blog feature – History’s Hidden Heroes, where we talk about scientists who may not get the recognition they deserve, especially outside of their field.  This month we are talking about Dr. Patricia Bath.  If you’ve had cataracts, and you’ve had those cataracts treated, you can think Dr. Bath for saving your eyesight. Patricia Bath, an opthamologist, was the first African-American female doctor to patent a medical invention.  Her patent was for the Cataract Laserphaco Probe.  This terrifyingly named device was a method to remove cataracts from people’s eyes.  Dr. Bath owns four patents and also developed new strategies of delivering eye care to underserved populations.

Dr. Bath was born in Harlem in 1942.  Her parents encouraged her academic career.  While serving as a fellow at Columbia University, she began a life-long campaign to bring eye care to poor patients and to people of color who were often not receiving the same care as whites.

It seemed that at the Eye Clinic at Harlem Hospital, half the patients were blind or visually impaired. In contrast, at the Eye Clinic at Columbia . . . there were very few obviously blind patients. That observation fueled [a] passion . . . to conduct a retrospective epidemiological study . . . which documented that . . . blindness among blacks was double that [among] whites. I reached the conclusion that the cause for the high prevalence among blacks was due to lack of access to ophthalmic care. This conclusion led me to propose a new discipline, known as Community Ophthalmology, which is now operative worldwide.

The Laserphaco method and technology that Dr. Bath developed has restored sight to people who had been missing it for decades.You can find more about Dr. Bath, including more amazing quotes, at inventionsmithsonian.org  Here’s the concluding quote from the Smithsonian webpage:

While her career has been marked by many “firsts” as a scientist, a woman, and an African-American, she looks forward to the day when a person’s work will speak for itself. “Hopefully, our society will come to that point. Sometimes I want to say to people, just look at my work. . . . I’ve had technological obstacles, scientific obstacles, and obstacles being a woman. Yes, I’m interested in equal opportunities, but my battles are in science.”

 

 

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History’s Hidden Heroes: Margaret E. Knight

Maggie KnightWelcome to History’s Hidden Heroes, the feature where we look at scientists who are not well-known in the United States outside of their field.  We feature people of color, women, and LGBT scientists both historical and current.  Today we’re looking at the life and inventions of inventor, Maggie Knight, who lived from 1838 – 1914.  She was awarded The Decoration of the Royal Legion of Honor by Queen Victoria herself.

Maggie was raised by a single mother (her father died when Maggie was young).  Maggie left school at the age of twelve to work in a cotton mill.  Her first invention was a device that would automatically turn a machine off if something was caught in it.  A common cause of injury in the mills was getting caught in the machinery, and Maggie’s device was quickly put into use.

Maggie’s most famous invention was created in 1868, while she was working in a paper bag plant in Massachusetts.  Her invention was a device that would automatically glue and fold the bottom of a bag, so the bag could be stored perfectly flat and then unfolded.  Every time you use a paper bag at the store you are using a variation on Maggie’s invention.  It may not seem like a glamorous invention, but it’s one that’s had a huge impact on every day life.  And, in the 1800s, paper bags (the size you might put your lunch in) were a big industry, so her invention had an economic effect as well.

Charles Annan tried to copy and take credit for her invention, but Maggie took him to court.  His argument was that no woman could invent such a great thing.  She was able to prove that she was the inventor, and she won her patent.  Female inventors faced discrimination in and out of court.  The first known U.S. woman inventor, Sybilla Masters, invented a means of grinding corn in 1715, but she was forbidden by law to have a patent issued to her – it had to be issued to her husband.  Maggie is sometimes listed as the first U.S. woman to have a patent in her own name, but this is incorrect.  The first was Hannah Slater, who was awarded a patent in 1773 for developing cotton sewing thread.

While the paper bag folding machine is the invention that made Maggie Knight famous, it wasn’t her last.  She came up with over 100 different inventions and ended up with over 20 more patents.  You can see her patents at wikipedia.  Here’s a picture of the 1879 patent model of the paper bag machine – isn’t it beautiful?

paper bag folding machine

You can find out more about Maggie Knight at women-inventors.com.  PBS.org has a small but interesting feature about colonial female inventors.

 

 

 

 

 

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History’s Hidden Heroes: Chien-Shiung Wu

047aWhen you think of The Manhattan Project, you probably think of white men such as Robert Oppenhiemer and Richard Feynman.  Chien-Shiung Wu was the only Chinese American scientist to work on the project.  Chien-Shiung Wu went on to design and carry out the experiments that proved that the Law of Parity, which involves forces at the quantum level (gravity, electromagnetism, and strong nuclear force) does not apply to weak nuclear force.

Wu was born in China in 1912.  Her father was an advocate for women’s education and he sent Wu to boarding school at the age of eleven.  Wu moved to the United States in 1936 to attend graduate school.  She intended to go to school in Michagan. but ended up studying at the University of California, Berekely, where she completed her Phd and married a fellow physicist, Luke Chia-Liu Yuan.

Wu_Chien-Shiung

As part of the Manhattan Project, Wu developed a procedure that separated uranium into different isotopes.  One of the earlier Hidden Heroes entries in this blog was about the women of Oak Ridge Tennessee, also known as Atomic City.  That thing they spent the war doing?  It was the process developed by Wu.

After WWII, Wu was approached by two physicists, Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang.  They theorized that the law of parity did not apply to weak nuclear forces but they couldn’t figure out how to test it.  Wu designed and carries out the experiment that proved that the law does not apply to weak nuclear forces.  while Lee and Yang were awarded a Nobel Prize, Wu’s was shamefully not included.

Wu’s later work included work on the molecular changes invoked in sickle cell anemia, publication of a book (Beta Decay), and an experiment that further experimental work in physics.

I am greatly indebted to Wikipedia for giving me something of a cheat sheet regarding Chien-Shiung’s, life, and I recommend this page for a list of her many accomplishments.  Seriously, the list of “Honors, Distinctions, and Awards” is epic.  Here’s a couple of highlights:

  • first female instructor in the Physics Department of Princeton University
  • first female President of the American Physical society
  • first living scientist to have an asteroid named after her

I’m also grateful to listverse.com for explaining the law of parity in short words that I could understand!

chien-shiung-wu

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History’s Hidden Heroes: Roger Arliner Young

young_roger_airlinerRoger Arliner Young was the first African-American woman to receive a doctorate in zoology.  This is especially noteworthy because she earned the degree in 1940, which was a difficult time for women and for African-Americans, and she lacked most of the economic and social support systems that most scientists rely on.

Dr. Young was born in 1889.  She was 32 years old when she took her first science course, and she got a C.  But her teacher, Ernest Everett Just, an African-American biologist, encouraged her to pursue science and became her mentor for many years, until they had a bitter falling out in 1935.  Her family struggled with poverty and during her adult life Dr. Young cared for her disabled mother.  Dr. Young struggled with logistical issues and serious mental health issues throughout her career.  Despite the challenges of gender, race, economic hardship, and family obligations, she contributed greatly to her field.

Young was best known for her teaching career and for her research, which involved the effects of radiation on marine life, the way paramecium are able to manage salt intake, and the hydration and dehydration of cells.  She was the first female zoologist to publish in the journal Science.

We like stories with a steady arc – person is born with some sort of disadvantage, they have a dream, they pursue it, they succeed.  Young’s life was not that kind of story.  She had ups and downs.  She gave up her academic studies for a while she lost jobs and got jobs, she struggled with her mental health, and she does not ever seem to have had a happy personal life.  But she held on to science against every obstacle and made significant contributions in her field.  She put herself through school and was the sole support of herself and her mother, and she struggled with finances and mental health issues until the day of her death at the age of 75.  I find her story to be, in a way, more inspirational than many with happier endings.  When it came to science, you just could not keep Roger Arliner Young down.

For more detailed information, check out this article – they so very politely included a full citation for me to cut and paste that I’ll leave the whole thing here instead of just a link:

Hodges, Fran. “Young, Roger Arliner 1899–1964.” Contemporary Black Biography. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. 1 Jan. 2014<http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

I also used this source, which provides hours of reading about women in science:  Women in Science, from the San Diego Supercomputer Center.