50 Inspirational Women In STEM - Part 2

Be it in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM), several women have not only accomplished the unthinkable, but also broken gender barriers along the way. Their work has pioneered inventions and discoveries that shape the very core of our existence, inspiring more young women to pursue careers in the lesser chosen paths. Let’s take a look at 10 such trailblazers.

Tessy Thomas, Scientist

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In 1998, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam appointed Thomas for the Agni Project. In 2011, she was appointed the Project Director for the Agni-IV and Agni-V missile in Defence Research and Development Organisation. She is the first ever woman scientist to head a missile project in India.

Nandini Harinath, Rocket Scientist

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Since 2000, Nandini has worked on 14 missions in her 20 years of work at ISRO. In 2009, she was appointed the Deputy Operations Director for the Mangalyaan mission. Nandini is also the Mission System Leader of the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission - a joint project between NASA and ISRO to co-develop and launch the first radar imaging satellite to use dual frequencies.

Sunetra Gupta , Epidemiologist

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She has undertaken research on the transmission dynamics of various infectious diseases, including malaria, HIV, Influenza, Bacterial Meningitis and COVID-19, using mathematical models. Gupta is a professor of theoretical epidemiology in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford, where she leads a team of infectious disease epidemiologists. Gupta has received the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society of London and the Rosalind Franklin Award of the Royal Society. She is also a novelist and a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award.

Zubaida Bai, Design Engineer and Entrepreneur

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Zubaida Bai is recognised as an expert and a leader in the field of engineering design for making low-cost health products customised for the developing world. In 2010, she co-founded her company ayzh, to provide women in rural India cleanliness and sterility through their Clean Birth Kit in a Purse, ensuring a safe and sanitary delivery. Many NGO’s, clinics and hospitals in Asia and Africa use these birth kits, which are recommended by the WHO for a safe and hygienic birth.

Anna Mani, Physicist & Meteorologist (23 August 1918 - 16 August 2001)

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Mani is renowned for her contribution in the field of meteorological instrumentation, and has conducted research and published numerous papers on solar radiation, ozone and wind energy measurements. She worked on the development of an apparatus to measure the ozone. In due course, she standardised the drawings of close to 100 different weather instruments. A member of the International Ozone Association, during1957-58, she set up a network of stations to measure solar radiation and set up a meteorological observatory and an instrumentation tower at the Thumba rocket launching facility, Kerala. In 1976, she retired as the Deputy Director General of the Indian Meteorological Department and further served as a visiting professor at the Raman Research Institute, Bengaluru.

Grace Hopper, Computer Scientist (9 December 1906 - 1 January 1992)

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She is best known for her idea that computer code could be written and read like language. She was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I, one of the earliest electromechanical computers. She was a pioneer in computer programming who invented one of the first linkers (a computer system program that takes one or more object and combines them into a single executable file, library file, or another 'object' file.) During the war in 1943, Hopper obtained a leave of absence from Vassar and was sworn into the United States Navy Reserve; she was one of many women who volunteered to serve in the WAVES - the women's branch of the United States Naval Reserve during World War II.

Annie Easley, Computer Scientist, Mathematician, and Rocket Scientist (3 April 1933 - 25 June 2011)

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Easley was one of the first African-Americans to work as a computer scientist at NASA. In the mid-1960s, she developed and implemented code used in researching energy-conversion systems, and analysing alternative power technology—including the battery technology that was used for early hybrid vehicles, as well as for the Centaur rocket stage (a launch vehicle that uses two or more rocket stages, each of which contains its own engines and propellant.)

Janaki Ammal, Botanist (November 4, 1897- February 7, 1984)

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In the early 1920s, the sweetest sugarcane in the world was the Saccharum officianarum variety from Papua New Guinea and India imported it from Southeast Asia. In a bid to improve India’s indigenous sugarcane varieties, through her research on plant breeding, cytogenetics and phytogeography, Ammal fashioned a high yielding strain of the sugarcane that would thrive in Indian conditions. She took an interest in plants of medicinal and economic value. There is herbarium with over 25,000 plant species in Jammutawi named after Janaki Ammal. Two awards were instituted in her name in 1999: EK Janaki Ammal National Award on Plant Taxonomy and EK Janaki Ammal National Award on Animal Taxonomy. The John Innes Centre offers Janaki Ammal Scholarships to overseas postgraduate research students, who are nationals of eligible developing countries, to enable them to study for a PhD in Biology.

Mary Allen Wilkes, Computer Programmer and Logic Designer

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She is mainly known for her creditable work on the LINC computer, which today, is considered, the first-ever personal computer in history. Wilkes left the field in 1972 to attend the Harvard Law School. She practiced as a trial lawyer for many years. In 2001, she became an arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association, sitting primarily on cases involving computer science and information technology.

Adele Goldberg, Computer Scientist

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Goldberg is a pioneer in software industry. She helped build the Smalltalk-80 programming language, used in computer programming to implement algorithms which paved the way for overlapping windows on displays, and the ever-popular graphical user interface (GUI).