Margaret Cochran Corbin
A hero of the American Revolution, Margaret Cochran Corbin was the first woman to receive a military pension.
Category Archives: Science > Medicine
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Aileen Cole Stewart
The same year the United States entered the first World War, Aileen Cole Stewart passed her exams to be a nurse in Maryland and Washington, DC. Her dedication and courage helped her climb the ranks to become one of the first African American women to serve in the Army Nursing Corps. She helped establish a field hospital in Cascade, West Virginia. Stewart was also certified by the American Red Cross and served with 17 other African American nurses during the influenza epidemic of 1918.
Dr Patricia Era Bath
Cataract surgery pioneer Patricia Bath was the first African-American to complete a residency in ophthalmology, after obtaining her MD at Howard University and her fellowship in ophthalmology at Columbia University.
Dr Teodora Krajewska
Dr Teodora Krajewska was a physician, writer and teacher who was one of the first women to practice medicine in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Austria-Hungary.
Divna Veković
Divna Veković was the first female medical doctor in Montenegro. In addition to serving as a physician during World War I, she continued her work as a medical doctor until her death prior the end of World War II. Veković was also a humanitarian and a literary translator who was the first to translate the well-known Montenegrin poem and play The Mountain Wreath (also known as The Mountain of Wreath) from Serbian into French. Veković also translated other poems such as the work of the Serbian poet Jovan Jovanović Zmaj.
Anastasia Golovina
Anastasia Golovina was Bulgaria’s first woman doctor, earning her doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1878.
Tebello Nyokong
South African chemist and professor Tebello Nyokong is helping to pioneer a safer method of cancer detection and photodynamic therapy, a treatment without the harmful side effects of chemotherapy.
Dr Yvonne Sylvain
Dr Yvonne Sylvain was the first female doctor from Haiti and the first woman accepted into the University of Haiti Medical School, earning her medical degree in 1940. She played a vital role in providing improved medical access and tools for Haitian citizens and was a leading advocate for the physical, economical, social and political equality of Haitian women.
Dr Vera Peters
Canadian oncologist and clinical investigator Dr Mildred Vera Peters was told to “go do women’s work” after upstaging the medical community in her treatment of Hodgkin’s disease. So she revolutionized breast cancer treatment through years of painstaking, meticulous work.
Tsai Ah-hsin
Tsai Ah-hsin was the first female physician in colonial Taiwan’s first female physician. She graduated from the Tokyo Women’s Medical College in 1921, then completed her residency at the Taihoku Hospital in Japanese Taiwan and founded her own hospital at Taichu in 1925. She created a seminar to train midwives in obstetrics, which was offered through her hospital. She had to end the seminar in 1938 as the Japanese, who had invaded northern China in 1937, came to her seminar and forced some of her students to work for them as nurses on the front lines.
The serial drama “Wave Washing Sands,” based on her life, won Best Serial Drama at the Golden Bell Awards (celebrating Taiwanese television) in 2005.