While the Pap test is named for Greek pathologist Georgios Papanikolaou, few people acknowledge that it was his wife, Andromachi “Mary” Papanikolaou, who spent more than 20 years having her own cervix scraped on a daily basis to provide the testing materials he needed, in addition to managing his laboratory and recruiting her friends to donate their own samples as well.
Lt. Col. Annie Graham was the highest-ranking army nurse serving in the Vietnam War to die in the line of duty.
Executed in 1461, Spanish healer Guirandana de Lay was a typical example of a witch hunt victim, who were often used as scapegoats for illness and other woes.
Immunologist Marian Koshland is known for discovering that the differences in antibodies’ amino acid make-up explain how efficient and effective they are at fighting off foreign elements.
Marthe Gautier was studying Down Syndrome when she noticed an extra chromosome while studying cell samples from a patient. Due to her poorly equipped lab—she had only a low-power microscope—she couldn’t identify or photograph the chromosome.
Françoise Barré-Sinoussi won a Nobel Prize for her role in discovering the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
The 1934 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three men—George Whipple, George Richards Minot, and William P. Murphy—for their research into the use of liver tissue in treatment of pernicious anaemia. Frieda Robscheit-Robbins, who had co-authored twenty-one papers with Whipple (almost his entire body of published work) on the topic, was left out.
One of China’s most famous women doctors, active in the 1400s and 1500s
Italian pharmacist Sabina Baldoncelli completed all the coursework to earn a degree in the subject circa 1807.
Neuroscientist Candace Pert discovered the opiate receptor—key to explaining how endorphins and opioids work chemically in the body—and was the first person to isolate the T cell receptor.