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