In todays lecture, we learned about various women that had influences in science. The first was Margaret Cavendish who was the first woman to be invited to a Royal Society meeting. We next discussed Caroline Herschel who helped her brother build telescopes and she developed a mathematical approach to astronomy, as well as nebulas, star clusters and comets. Mary Anning discovered various fossils and dinosaur bones. Elise Widdowson helped determine the rations during WWII which is very interesting to me because I took a class about WWII and the Holocaust last semester. Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin pioneered protein crystallography and solved the structures of many common proteins that I have learned about. We also reviewed Rosalind Franklin which I have learned about many times. We learned about Anne McLaren who helped with in vitro fertilization. Then we moved onto French ladies in science. The first we talked about was Emilie du Chatelet who translated Newtons Principia into french and added her own derivation of the conservation of energy. Next we learned of Marie-Anne Lavoisier who helped her husband Antoine out in the lab. Marie Curie won two Nobel prizes for radioactivity. There are not many famous women in science compared to men because of their social positions and the view that they were “helpers”. We also went over some things to do before we leave for the travel portion of this class. This was a very helpful thing to go over.
Yes, hopefully, we will have much more time to plan our trip and go over some of the things that will maximize the experience. If you guys have any questions in the meantime, do not hesitate to ask!