Hail to Women’s History Month

By Renée

March is Women’s History Month–that special month out of the year, in which we remember the incredible feats of the women that came before us. Women that can now serve as paragons for all of us, regardless of gender, that show us we can overcome any challenges and make significant changes in the world around us. So, to honor the culmination of Women’s History Month, here is a list of seven underappreciated women whose contributions forever changed the world.

Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace. King was a mathematician and a writer. She was mostly known for her work on Charles Babbage’s proposed Analytical Engine. King was the first to recognize that the machine had practical use beyond pure calculation and published the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine. She is often considered to be the first computer programmer.

Amalie Emmy Noether, a German mathematician known for her keystone contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. She developed the theories of rings, fields, and algebras. Noether’s theorem explains the connection between symmetry and conservation laws.

Anne Boleyn, second Queen consort of Henry VIII. She is one of the most important characters in English history. She won the heart of the king. She was the the reason why Henry VIII decided to cut relations with the Pope; therefore creating the Church of England. Boleyn was also the mother of Elizabeth I of England.

Bertha Van Hoosen, first president and one of the founders of the American Medical Women’s Association, first woman to be head of a medical division at Loyola University Medical School. Dr. Van Hoosen, besides running her private practice, taught sex ed, advocated for the use scopolamine-morphine anesthesia for childbirth, and was a prevalent activist against the discrimination of women in the medical industry. She also is known for developing the “buttonhole” surgical technique, and advocating for the importance of hygiene and sterilization of medical instruments to prevent infection. [1]

Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin, Order of Merit, Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of Royal Institute of Chemistry, won the Nobel prize for Chemistry in 1964 for developing protein crystallography. Dr. Hodgkin advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography. Among her most influential discoveries are the confirmation of the structure of penicillin as previously surmised by Edward Abraham and Ernst Boris Chain and the structure of vitamin B12, for which she became the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. [2]

Mary Wollstonecraft, was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children’s book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She argued that both men and women should be treated “as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.”

Wangari Maathai, an environmental political activist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, advocated environmental conservation and  pushed for women’s rights. She became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Maathai was also elected as Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources in Kenya’s ninth parliament. She was appointed Goodwill Ambassador to the Congo Basin Forest Ecosystem by the eleven Heads of State in the Congo region, UN Messenger of Peace, Millennium Development Goals Advocacy Group. She founded the Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace and Environmental Studies (WMI).[3]

Editor: Makena Behnke

[1] surgical technique to perform an appendectomy

[2] method used to determine the three-dimensional structures of crystals

[3] a panel of political leaders, business people and activists with the aim to impel worldwide support for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals