In 1992, Mary V. Zeller, Ph.D., joined NASA to develop thin film sensors for aircraft and spacecraft. Zeller, a chemist, produced diamond films, oil-free turbomachinery, satellite lubrication, and helped establish a world-class research facility at NASA Glenn to study chemicals, metals, polymers, ceramics, and semiconductors with cutting-edge technologies such as optical, x-ray, and electron spectroscopy equipment.
Biochemist Virginia Anne Rice Williams helped develop more nutritious grains through her pioneering studies of rice; she conducted important research on the B-vitamin content of rice, on ways to keep rice from turning rancid in storage, and on the vitamin fortification of rice.
American chemist
During World War II, physical chemist Erika Cremer was working in Nazi-occupied Austria, developing solid-state gas adsorption chromatography.
Brisith geologist
Russian Academy of Sciences computational chemist Elena Galpern made the first computational prediction of C60’s stable structure. Her paper was published in Russia in 1973.
Marion Brickwedde held a B.S. in chemistry (1929) and M.S. in physics (1930), and went on to teach physics at George Washington University and Pennsylvania State University, and served on the research staffs of the U.S. National Bureau of Standards and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
1978 National Inventor of the Year (US) Barbara Askins waited until her children were in school to finish her chemistry Bachelors and Masters degrees, then went on to work for NASA, developing a new way to process film using radioactive materials. The astronomical and geological images she worked on held much more detail, making them significantly more valuable to scientists, and her process was also applied to x-rays and restoration of old photos.
1600s French chemist who published La Chymie Charitable et Facile, en Faveur des Dames (Easy Chemistry for Women)
Fang, who lived during the first century BCE, was the earliest recorded woman alchemist in China. She reputedly discovered a way to turn mercury into silver—one interpretation is that she used a chemical technique to extract silver from ores using mercury.