Women of Science

Last Wednesday; Mankind achieved the unthinkable when astronomers captured the 1st ever image of a black hole thru the "Event Horizon Telescope" or EHT for short. The EHT is a network of telescopes that are scattered through out earth, from the US to Spain to Chile to Antarctica etc. All of these telescopes captured image data that was later assembled together as a giant jigsaw puzzle by a sophisticated computer algorithm.

This was such a milestone that the world of science is still buzzing with excitement and paying homage to human ingenuity and Einstein in particular, who rightfully predicated the existence of black holes so many years ago. But something was missing from all of it, nobody was praising, initially, the person that made it all possible...Three years ago; Katie Bouman, then a grade student in computer science and artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, led the creation of a computer algorithm that went thru millions of gigabyte data and pieced together image of the black hole that we see today.

Here is a clip of Katie Bouman, from 2017, explaining how it works;

How big is the achievement? Just look at the facial expressions of Katie Bouman where she is in awe at her own work 

But this might as well be an expression of shock at the general lack of knowledge or appreciation for women pioneers in the field of science.

Let me take you to 1969 when the famous moon landing of Apollo 11 occurred: many of us know, by heart, the famous line “one small step of man, one giant leap for mankind” by Neil Armstrong but how many of us know that NASA was only able to land Apollo 11 on the moon because of Margaret Hamilton, a talented female mathematician & a pioneer in computer science.

Hamilton and her team of software engineers developed the software that was instrumental in the safe landing and flight of Apollo 11, to moon and back.

Furthermore if we travel back to the year 1912; we will come across a talented female astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt whose ground breaking work made it possible for human beings to measure the distance b/w Earth and cepheid stars.

After her death; her methods were used by the famous astronomer Edwin Hubble who latter came up with “Hubble’s Law” that declared that our universe is constantly expanding. In modern times “Hubble’s law” serves as very important piece of evidence for the “Big Bang” model.

But Astronomy is not the only area where female scientists have excelled.

A major new discovery in the field of Biology happened a few years back which took the world by storm and it is called CRISPR CAS or CRISPR for short. CRISPR is a powerful gene editing technology that can perform DNA DNA modification with ease, it can delete, tweak or completely replace the genes of any organism.

This very important milestone in human history is credited to two females scientists namely Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier.

Likewise in the field of Anthropology; there is a female name that commands respect; the British Primatologist Jane Goodall.

In 1960 A 26 years old Jane Goodall arrived in Tanzania to study behavioral and social pattern of Chimpanzees. At the time she had no prior field work or college degree on her credit but decades latter Goodall is now the world foremost authority on human beings closest cousins, the Chimps.

Same is the case in the field of Physics; where another female scientist takes the cake. Marie Curie was the 1st female to win a noble prize in physics and then in chemistry, making her the 1st person ever to win the Noble prize twice.

Her studies into Radioactivity and the discovery of Radium were significant in the development of X-Ray and other medicinal disciplines. Unfortunately Marie Curie was killed due to high exposure to radiation.

There are many more names like these who remain obscure till this day because of the lack of interest from the mainstream media, even women rights activists don’t promote these names in their rallies or on social media which is a sorry side to see. These women dedicated their lives for the betterment of mankind’s future, the least we can do is give them their due credit!