Science Archives - Page 184 of 197

Caroline Herschel

Caroline Herschel recorded the observations and did the calculations on the data of her astronomer brother William.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was a British mathematician and astronomer who did important work for her Ph.D. at Radcliffe College of Harvard University. She showed that stars were composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium but, although completely correct, it was rejected by astronomers at the time.

Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat

Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat is a French mathematician and physicist who made important contributions to the general theory of relativity. She was the first woman to be elected to the French Academy of Sciences.

Lene Hau

Lene Hau is a Danish physicist and mathematician. She has led a team at Harvard University who have slowed light and in 2001 succeeded in stopping a beam of light. This has important applications to quantum computing.

Henrietta Swan Leavitt

Henrietta Leavitt was an American astronomer who discovered the relation between the luminosity and the period of Cepheid variables. This was a vital step in measuring the distance to remote galaxies.

Nicole-Reine Lepaute

Nicole-Reine Lepaute was a French noblewoman who helped Lalande with astronomical calculations.

Émilie du Châtelet

Émilie du Châtelet was a French noblewoman who became important to mathematics as the translator of Newton’s Principia.

Agnes Macready

Agnes Macready should be regarded as the first Australian woman war correspondent, although there was no official system at this time for accreditation.

Kathleen McNulty Antonelli

Kathleen McNulty Antonelli was an Irish-born American computer programmer who was one of the first to work with the early ENIAC machine.

Tatiana Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa

Tatiana Alexeyevna Afanassjewa was a Ukrainian-born Dutch mathematician and physicist who made contributions to the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics.