Micro Circuits for Mega SolutionsActivity for World Science Day 2020
Female scientists who changed the world2020 – 2021
Students: Apostolia N, Alexandros Z, Alice O, Christos V, Cryssi S, Christina S, Evaggelia G, Giannis K, Giannis T, Georgia L, George T, Ilias
L, Kosntantinos S, Maria T, Thanasis G, Vasilis K
Responsible Teacher: Kokkinou Eleni
Marie Curie
Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, in Congress Poland in
the Russian Empire, on 7 November 1867.
● Her family struggled under a repressive Tsarist regime.
● Maria's paternal grandfather, had been principal at a
couple of schools and he brought much of the laboratory
equipment home and instructed his children in its use.
● She graduated a gymnasium on 1883 with a gold medal.
● As a teenager, Curie made a pact with her sister Bronya:
she would support Bronya while she was in a medical
school in Paris, and then Bronya would pay Curie’s way.
● From the age of 17, for six years, Curie worked as a
governess and tutor, while attempting to study in her spare
time.
● In late 1891, she left Poland for France., where she studied
physics, chemistry, and mathematics at the University of
Paris. In Paris she felt unprepared but exhilarated.Christos and Alexandros
Marie Curie
Discovery of polonium
Marie Curie decided to do her
thesis on radiation, recently
discovered in an element called
uranium (U) by Henri
Becquerei. Her realization that
an ore containing uranium was
far more radioactive than could
be explained by its uranium
content led her and her
husband, Pierre Curie, to the
discovery of a new element that
was 400 times more radioactive
than uranium. In 1898 it was
added to the Periodic Table as
polonium, named after Curie’s
birth country.
Marie and Pierre Curie with co-laureate Henri
Becquerel, 1898.
Glass plate positive of a specimen of
pitchblende, one of the primary mineral ores
of uranium, in which Marie Curie also
discovered polonium and radium.
Christos and Alexandros
Marie Curie
Marie Curie, chronomèter in hand, in the
process of measuring radioactivity in the
laboratory on Cuvier Street, 1904
Accomplishments
● For her research in “radiation
phenomena”, Curie became, in
1903, the first woman to
receive a Nobel Prize. French
academics originally proposed
only her husband and Henri
Becquerei, but Pierre Curie
insisted that his wife share the
honour.
● In 1911, for the isolation of
radium, she was awarded
another Nobel Prize, this time
in chemistry. She was and still
is the only person to be
awarded Nobel Prizes in two
scientific categories.
During World War I,
Curie promoted the use
of X-rays. She developed
radiological cars, which
later became known as
“petites Curies”.
Christos and Alexandros
Rosalind Franklin
Quick Facts
NAME
Rosalind Elsie Franklin
BIRTH DATE
July 25, 1920
EDUCATION
Newnham College, Cambridge
University
OCCUPATION
Chemist, X-ray crystallographer.
PLACE OF BIRTH
Notting Hill, London, England,
United Kingdom
PLACE OF DEATH
London, England, United
Kingdom
DEATH DATE
April 16, 1958
Georgia and Alice
Rosalind Franklin
Research and Discoveries
Rosalind Franklin was an English chemist and X-
ray crystallographer. She concentrated to the
understanding of the molecular structures of DNA,
RNA viruses, coal, and graphite.
Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray
diffraction images of DNA, which led to the
discovery of the DNA double helix .
She continued her research on the molecular
structures of viruses.
Georgia and Alice
Rosalind Franklin
Later life and Honors
Her work received a Nobel award, but she did not take
credits for the radical discovery of hers .
A lot of research awards were named after her. She has
been honored by the science society till now.
In 1956, she discovered that she had ovarian cancer.
Franklin died at April 16, 1958 at the age of 37.
Rosalind Franklin made a huge contribution to science.
Georgia and Alice
Rita Levi-Montalcini
● Rita Levi-Montalcini, who was born on 22 April 1909, was an Italian Nobel laureate, honored for her work in neurobiology. She was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with colleague Stanley Cohen for the discovery of nerve growth factor.
● From 2001 until her death, she also served in the Italian Senate as a Senator for Life. This honor was given due to her significant scientific contributions. On 22 April 2009, she became the first Nobel laureate to reach the age of 100 and the event was feted with a party at Rome's City Hall. At the time of her death, she was the oldest living Nobel laureate.
Viktor Hamburger and Rita Levi-Montalcini examining the Fidia-Georgetown Award
Evaggelia and Giannis
Rita Levi-Montalcini
● At age 20, Levi-Montalcini decided that she wanted a life different from the one imagined for her by her father; specifically, she wanted to go to medical school and study to be a doctor. She explained in her 1988 autobiography, In Praise of Imperfection, “My experience in childhood and adolescence of the subordinate role played by the female in a society run entirely by men, had convinced me that I was not cut out to be a wife.”
● In 1939 she made the difficult decision to end her work at the University of Turin, not wanting to endanger colleagues by their association with a Jewish scientist. She continued her research in Belgium, where she had received an invitation to perform research at a neurological institute. But this respite was not to last. As Hitler’s influence in Europe spread, she feared for her family, and returned home to Turin in early 1940.
Evaggelia and Giannis
Rita Levi-Montalcini
Levi-Montalcini was intrigued by a 1934 paper from Viktor Hamburger, in which he tested the requirement of different tissues for development and migration of nerve cells destined for this same tissue.The chicken embryo is an excellent model system for these experiments because it has a very consistent pattern of neuronal migration.
Levi-Montalcini was curious, and wanted to look more closely at these nerve cells in limb-bud deficient chick embryos and healthy embryos.Levi came to a conclusion distinct from that of Hamburger. Instead of a peripheral organizer that promoted growth of neuronal cells, Levi-Montalcini concluded that the limb bud produced a pro-survival factor, which an overabundance of developing neurons compete for to survive and innervate the developing wing. Neurons that fail to make strong connections, and do not innervate, die as a normal part of neural development.
Barbara McClintock
Barbara McClintock, born as Eleanor
McClintock, was an American scientist and
cytogeneticist.
➢ She was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1902.
➢ She studied botany at Cornell’s College of
Agriculture.
➢ She received her PhD in botany in 1927.
➢ After that, she started her career as a special figure
in the development of maize cytogenetics, the
focus of her research for the rest of her life.
➢ She never married or had children.
➢ She died in Huntington, New York, in 1992.
McClintock was almost prevented
from starting college, but her father
allowed her to just before registration
began!
Evaggelia and Giannis
Barbara McClintock
Achievements
Due to
skepticism of
her research and
its implications,
she stopped
publishing her
data in 1953!Ilias and Kosntantinos
Barbara McClintock
★ In 1947, McClintock was awarded the Achievement Award by
the American Association of University Women.
★ She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences in 1959.
★ In 1970, she was given the National Medal of Science by
Richard Nixon.
★ Most notably, she received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or
Medicine in 1983. Thus, she became the first woman to win
that prize unshared and the first American woman to win any
unshared Nobel Prize.
★ Τhe McClintock Prize is named in her honour.
Honors
Ilias and Kosntantinos
Flossie Wong-Staal
Flossie Wong-Staal plays an
important role at the grading of women
who made history. This brilliant
scientist and molecular biologist, is
mostly well-known to the world as the
first person to clone HIV (Human
Immunodeficiency Virus) and
determine the function of its genes.
Chryssa and Maria
Flossie Wong-Staal
Her research is remembered as instrumental in developing
better treatments and improved quality of life for people
living with HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C and moreover helped
lay the foundations for investigating treatments for emerging
infectious diseases such as COVID-19.
A famous quote of this remarkable
personality was: “It adds to the joy
of discovery to know that your
work may make a difference in
people’s lives.”.
Chryssa and Maria
Flossie Wong-Staal
Among her first big successes in the Gallo
lab, Flossie provided the definitive molecular
evidence that human T-lymphotropic virus
(HTLV) can cause cancer. Flossie soon rised
to the rank of senior scientist and, in 1982,
became section chief of the NCI Laboratory
of Tumor Cell Biology. When HIV, a newly
discovered retrovirus, emerged in the early
1980s, she was poised to make significant
discoveries with Bob and a host of others in
NCI and NIAID.
Chryssa and Maria
Katherine Freese
Katherine freese
Katherine Freese is a theoretical astrophysicist. She is
currently a professor of physics at the University of Texas
at Austin, where she holds the Jeff and Gail Kodosky
Endowed Chair in Physics.
Freese was born in Freiburg, Germany in 1957.She has
written a review for the general educated public on dark
matter and energy as they relate to recent research in
cosmology and particle physics, titled The Cosmic
Cocktail: Three Parts Dark Matte
Giannis and Vasilis
Katherine Freese
Freese received her BA from Princeton University, one of the first women to major in
physics at Princeton. She obtained her MA from Columbia University, and her PhD at the
University of Chicago from advisor David Schramm. She moved to the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she was the George E. Uhlenbeck Professor of Physics.
From 2007-2014 she was Associate Director of the Michigan Center for Theoretical
Physics. In September 2014, she assumed the position of Director of Nordita, the Nordic
Institute for Theoretical Physics. Freese has contributed to early research on dark matter
and dark energy. She was one of the first to propose ways to discover dark matter.
Freese has also worked on the beginnings of the universe, including the search for a
successful inflationary theory to kick off the Big Bang.
Her work
Giannis and Vasilis
Katherine Freese
Simons Foundation
Fellowship (2012)
Lilienfeld Prize (2019)
Member of the National
Academy Sciences (2020)
Freese was elected Fellow of the American
Physical Society in 2009. She received a Simons
Foundation Fellowship in Theoretical Physics in
2012. In September 2012, Freese was awarded an
Honorary Doctorate (Honoris Causa) from the
University of Stockholm. She was awarded the
2019 Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize from the
American Physical Society "For ground-breaking
research at the interface of cosmology and particle
physics, and her tireless efforts to communicate
the excitement of physics to the general public." In
2020 she was elected to the National Academy of
Sciences.
Her Awards
Giannis and Vasilis
Gertrude Elion
Born in 1918, Gertrude Elion had
a happy childhood in New York
City, with her brother, her
Eastern European Jewish
parents, and her grandfather.
At age 19, with a degree in
chemistry, she looked for work.
She took jobs as a secretary, a
chemistry teacher, and an unpaid
worker in a lab. Finally, when
World War II diminished the
ranks of male chemists, Elion got
her break.
The stock market crash of 1929
bankrupted Elion’s family, casting a
pall on her prospects. With her high
grades, she got into Hunter College,
which was free, but after college
Elion simply did not have the money
to go on to graduate school. She
needed a fellowship, but those didn’t
often go to women, especially not
during the Depression.
Giorgos, Dimitris and Thanasis
Gertrude Elion
Though Elion officially retired in 1983, she helped
oversee the development of azidothymidine (AZT),
the first drug used in the treatment of AIDS.
Don't be afraid of hard work. Nothing worthwhile
comes easily. Don't let others discourage you or
tell you that you can't do it. In my day I was told
women didn't go into chemistry. I saw no reason
why we couldn’t.”
—Gertrude B. Elion
She also find cure about these
diseases:
Leukemia (anticancer drug)
Urinary-tract infections
Malaria (pyrimethamine)
Autoimmune disorders (azathioprine)
Gout (allopurinol)Viral herpes (acyclovir)
Giorgos, Dimitris and Thanasis
Gertrude Elion
•Garvan-Olin Medal (1968)
•Sloan-Kettering Institute Judd Award (1983)
•American Chemical Society Distinguished Chemist Award (1985)
•American Association of Cancer Research Cain Award (1985)
• Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1988)
•American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award (1989)
• American Cancer Society Medal of Honor (1990)
•National Medal of Science (1991)
• Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award (1997)
Giorgos, Dimitris and Thanasis
Jane Goodall
Some words about Jane Goodall
1)Full Name:Jane Morris Goodall
2)Birth Date:3 April 1934
3)Place Of Birth:Hampstead,
England
4)Studies:Newnham College,
Cambridge
5)Professional Qualification:
Anthropologist,Primatologist,Writer,,Environmentalist,
University Professor,Ethologist
6)Husbands:Baron Hugo van Lawick,
Derek Bryceson
7)Children:Hugo Eric Louis van
Lawick
Apostolia and Chistina
Jane Goodall
Her project
➔ Best known for her study of chimpanzee social and family life in Gombe Stream National
Park,Tanzania.
➔ Instead of numbering the chimpanzees she observed them names and unique and individual
personalities.
➔ Observation of behaviours,that we consider "human" actions.
➔ Discovery of similarities between humans and chimpanzees in emotion,
➔ intelligence,family and social relationships.
➔ Finding an aggressive side of chimpanzee nature.
➔ Reversal of the belief that only humans can use tools and chimpanzee
are vegetarian.
➔ Τo this day,she is the only human ever accepted into chimpanzee society.
Apostolia and Chistina
Jane Goodall
Up to this day
● Εstablishement of the Jane Goodall Institute,which supports her project.
● Former president of Advocates for Animal.
● Patron of population concern charity Population Matters.
● Ambassador for Disneynature.
● Supporter of Australian animal protection group Voiceless, the animal protection
institute.
● Board member for the world's largest chimpanzee sanctuary outside of Africa, Save
the Chimps in Fort Pierce, Florida.
● Acquisition of a lot of awards and recognition.
● One of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2019.
Apostolia and Chistina