Innovations

* Ancker-Johnson invented improved signal generator * Known for her research into instabilities that can occur in plasmas in solids * Invented a gigacycle range signal generator using semiconductor materials in magnetic and electric fields * Described plasma as a fourth state of matter after liquids, solids, and gases.

Earliest known named author in history

at age 67 published her widely read novel Iola Leroy or Shadows Uplifted (1892), placing her among the first Black women to publish a novel; wrote Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854) & it was a commercial success; her short story "Two Offers" was published in the Anglo-African in 1859, making literary history as the first short story published by a Black woman; 1896 helped found the National Association of Colored Women; her second book, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects was published 1854; 1858 she published her poem "Bury Me in a Free Land" in The Anti-Slavery Bugle, which became one of her best known works; 1859 Anglo-African Magazine published her essay "Our Greatest Want," in which she linked the common religious trope of oppression of African Americans to the oppression of the Hebrew people while enslaved in Egypt; published Sketches of Southern Life in 1872; from 1868 to 1888 had three novels serialized in a Christian magazine: Minnie's Sacrifice, Sowing and Reaping, and Trial and Triumph; 1854 began giving antislavery lectures; 1870 worked with the Freedmen's Bureau encouraging many freedmen in Mobile, Alabama, to "get land, everyone that can" so they could vote and act independently once Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment; 1883 to 1890 she helped organize events and programs for the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union; helped found the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA); 1896 helping found the National Association for Colored Women (NACW); her second small volume of poetry called Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects with an introduction by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison was completed in 1854; developed Sunday schools and YMCAs in the black community, as well as helping to rehabilitate juvenile delinquents and working for the security of the aged;

founder of Ann Bancroft Foundation (ABF) in 1991 (originally All Women's Expedition); is a spokesperson for Learning Disabilities Association, Wilderness Inquiries, & Girl Scouts of the USA; ABF provided curriculum based on her 1993 expedition & reached over 200,000 students worldwide; ABF now supports girls & women in the US with support, inspiration, & resources to help make their dreams come true; Dare to Dream is an ABF grant program for girls 10 to 10th grade designed to give them an experience that might transform them & give the girls mentors to help achieve their experience & dream; another program they offer is Let Me Play for girls age 6 to 10th grade that provides sports or fitness related grants that can be used for equipment, entry fees or other related expenses

1st female Secretary of State; Ambassador to UN;

founded Peace Links with other congressional wives in 1982 worked with "mainstream women" in the US, Russia & Europe to educate women about the consequences of nuclear arms race & campaigned for world peace, disbanded after end of Cold War in 2001 however some local chapters still function to promote world peace & understanding;1991 co-founder of Every Child by 2 with Rosalynn Carter & campaigned to have every state require immunizations before a child could attend school; with her husband, worked to implement desegregation in Charleston schools; also advocated for eradication of polio through vaccination; CDC adopted her Arkansas model for immunization as a national model

sought to improve political participation, economic opportunity, & equity for all; 1943 one of five women (with Kate Sheppard, Juanita Jackson Mitchell, Vivian Alleyne & Emma Dudley) who chartered the National Council of Negro Women in Baltimore; 1946 founded the Colored Women’s Democratic Campaign Committee, encouraging Black women to register to vote and run for public office; 1966 elected to Maryland’s House of Delegates; 1958 with Ethel P Rich founded Woman Power, Inc.; pushed for urban renewal, low- and middle-income housing, improved nursing homes and increased programs to help the elderly;1979 while on the Baltimore City Council partnered with Baltimore Gas & Electric Co to establish the Baltimore Fund which helped local families with fuel bills & became the model for other statewide similar programs; was instrumental in bringing a major SSA office building to West Baltimore

was a constitutional theorist whose writings justified Lincoln's actions leading up to & after the beginning of the Civil War; was a successful female lobbyist involved in politics which was traditionally a man's field; may or may not have been the driving force behind the Tennessee River Campaign depending on which historical version of it you believe; was friend, confident & alleged advisor to many political figures of her time

with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Gage helped found the National Woman's Suffrage Association in 1869; served as a top officer in the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) for twenty years; her childhood home was a stop on the Underground Railroad; wrote about the superior position of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) women and supported treaty rights and Native sovereignty; influenced by the Haudenosaunee egalitarian culture; is the eponym for the Matilda effect, which describes the tendency to deny women credit for scientific invention; 1878–1881 published and edited the National Citizen, a paper devoted to the cause of women; with Anthony & Stanton wrote the first three volumes of History of Woman Suffrage (1881–1887); also was the author of the Woman's Rights Catechism (1868); Woman as Inventor (1870) (;in which she credited Catherine Littlefield Greene with the invention of the cotton gin) Who Planned the Tennessee Campaign (1880); and Woman, Church and State (1893); broke with NWSA & founded founded the Woman's National Liberal Union when her ideas became too radical for NWSA; along with twenty-four other women composed The Woman’s Bible in 1895; with Elizabeth Cady Stanton drafted the “Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States,” which became an official part of the proceedings of the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876; 1880 with other activists formed the Equal Rights Party;

Mikulski introduced a bill in Congress that would reauthorize the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 1990 to provide block grants to the states to help low-income parents find child care for their children. In addition to reauthorizing the program, it also makes amendments to the law to try to improve it. Some of those improvements include required background checks on grant recipients and annual inspections. The Child Care and Development Block Grant is the main federal program to help families pay for child care. States use the block grants they receive from the federal government to subsidize child care, mostly through voucher programs. Mikulski also helped pass the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to guarantee equal pay for equal work. Spousal Impoverishment Act - helped elderly couples pay for care without first losing their homes. She worked to end gender discrimination in health care and guarantee women access to preventative care through the Mikulski Women's Prevention Health Amendment. In 1990 she helped establish Office of Women's Health and Resources at the National Institute of Health.

1985 patented a method for preparing PBO & PBT polymers; researched aramides (aromatic polyamides-a polymer that can be made into strong stiff & flame-resistant fabric; wrote the Nylon Rope Trick-demonstrating how to produce nylon fiber in a beaker at room temperature an experiment that continues to be used in H.S. chemistry classes; discovered a new branch of synthetics liquid crystalline polymers & prepared the first pure monomers used to synthesize polybenzamide; invented Kevlar; holds 29 patents

* Ashby does research in polymer chemistries critical for biomedical applications * designed & synthesizes materials for biomedical applications such as x-ray contrast agents & drug delivery materials.

* Ericsson has served as an engineer, technologist, instrument lead, and project and program manager at NASA for nearly 30 years, lending her technical and managerial expertise to projects including the James Webb Space Telescope, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), and the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2). * Under President Joe Biden, she served as Assistant Secretary of defense for science and technology.

* Hamburg co-authored the book Learning to Live Together: Preventing Hatred and Violence in Child and Adolescent Development" with her husband. * She had a long career in child and adolescent psychiatry. * Advocate of peer counseling for teens, and teaching children how to cope with hatred, violence & bullying in schools. *Recognized early adolescence as a distinct & critical developmental period.

Cotton’s dissertation studied how children with the condition spastic paralysis performed in cognitive tests compared to children matched similarly by sex, age, and mental age. The study found that spastic children had different test responses such as "bizarre or fantastic responses", more concrete than abstract, and more stereotypical compared to normal children. Their resulting hypothesis suggests that these tendencies were most likely due to cortical injuries from spastic children. Title of the study is concerned "A study of the reactions of spastic children to certain test situations."

Conducts research on race bias & inequality

Known for her work on social cognition sterotypes & prejudice; developed the stereotype content model ambivalent sexism theory power as control theory & the continuum model of impression formation; developed ASI with Peter Glick;

American psychologist. She is best known for her psychological work concerning students with special needs at Children's Provident Hospital School. She is one of the first African American women to earn a Ph.D. in Psychology.[1][2] Howard was an active participant in the American Psychological Association, the International Council of Women Psychologists, the American Association of University Women, the National Association of College Women (an African American-based group), and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.[1] She also received instruction from Florence Goodenough.[3]

educational psychologist who was the first woman president of the Association of Black Psychologists. Her interest in sports led her to teach physical education. While coaching, she became interested in psychology, gaining a PhD and doctorate in education from Temple University. She has worked for government and community organizations, as well as teaching at Federal City College and Howard University and consulting.

At the PNI Research Lab, Reed researches the connections between biological aging and health across the adult lifespan. How do these influence the onset and course of age-related diseases, including declines in cognition?

Taylor has been a leading researcher in the field of health psychology, in which health and illness are understood to be the product not only of biological processes, but also of psychological mindset, behavior, and social processes, for example socioeconomic status and ethnicity. By understanding psychological factors that influence health, and constructively applying that knowledge, health psychologists can improve health by working directly with individual patients or indirectly in large-scale public health programs.

introduced the field of self-psychology; invented the paired-associates technique for studying learning & memory; established the 1st psychology lab at an American woman's college for experimental psychology (1891); wrote books & articles on memory, dream analysis, self-psychology, consciousness & philosophy; was a suffragist & pacifist;

* Brigg’s earliest research led her to identify four main personality types in 1917 which later developed into the MBTI terms meditative, spontaneous, executive, and social. * Together with her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, they created the psychological test Myers–Briggs Type Indicator which identified four main personality types in 1917. * Using that they could identify 16 different personality types. * Briggs was primarily the driving force and inspiration behind the creation of the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and Isabel was the work force that created the physical test itself.

* Clark conducted with her husband the famous "doll study" showing a majority of Black children preferred white dolls, classified Black dolls as "bad" * Provided proof that segregation gave African-American children a sense of inferiority & exposed internalized racism. * Used as evidence in the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v Board of Education * This was the first time social science research was presented as evidence before the Supreme Court.

Baker and a group of nurses started to train mothers in how to care for their babies: how to clothe infants to keep them from getting too hot, how to feed them a good diet, how to keep them from suffocating in their sleep, and how to keep them clean. She set up a milk station where clean milk was given out. Commercial milk at that time was often contaminated, or mixed with chalky water to improve colour and maximize profit. Baker also invented an infant formula made out of water, calcium carbonate, lactose, and cow milk. This enabled mothers to go to work so they could support their families. Baker aided in the prevention of infant blindness, a scourge caused by gonorrhea bacteria transmitted during birth. To prevent blindness, babies were given drops of silver nitrate in their eyes. Before Baker arrived, the bottles in which the silver nitrate was kept would often become unsanitary or would contain doses that were so highly concentrated that they would do more harm than good. Baker designed and used small containers made out of antibiotic beeswax that each held a single dose of silver nitrate, so the medication would stay at a known level of concentration and could not be contaminated. In focusing her attention on older children, Baker worked to make sure each school had its own doctor and nurse, and that the children were routinely checked for infestations. This system worked so well that head lice and the eye infection trachoma, diseases once rampant in schools, became almost non-existent.

* Benjamin was chosen for the position of Surgeon General of the United States in 2009 * In her work, she made clear her dissatisfaction with the current health care system, in terms of accessibility as well as cost. * She noted the deaths of her brother, who died of HIV, as well as her father, who died of high blood pressure and diabetes, and her mother who died of lung cancer, all of which, she implied, were "preventable diseases."

Cannon-Alfred wrote "Medical Handbook for the Layman" together with her husband J. Tyrone Alfred.

* Elders served as Surgeon General of the United States from 1993 to 1994. * Forced to resign as result of her views on controversial issues such as drug legalization, masturbation, teaching sex education in schools, and distributing contraception in schools. * Vice admiral in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps * Board certified in pediatric endocrinology.

* During Grigsby's two years in Africa, she oversaw the smallpox inoculation of millions of individuals. * Grigsby was able to do this through the Smallpox Eradication Program from Howard University College of Medicine.

* Harris's media productions spotlight health issues of African Americans * Campaigning for the need for the early detection of breast cancer, the genetics of sickle-cell anemia and greater understanding of diabetes-related concerns * Other topics explored include AIDS, cervical cancer, colon cancer, hypertension and prostate cancer * Advocate for bridging the gap in transparency in public health education between government officials and scientists so that important health information is made available to the public.

Throughout the 1970s, Hearn worked on development programs to improve the health of at-risk children. In 1980 she began working at Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the largest healthcare philanthropy in the United States. Hearn spent the majority of her career at the foundation, where her program planning efforts focused on "maternal, infant, and child health; AIDS; substance abuse; and minority medical education." She also acted as the Foundation's liaison to the non-profit community. From 1983 to 2001, Hearn served as Senior Vice President of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Since retiring, she continues to act as Senior Vice President Emerita.

* First Indigenous woman to become a physician in the United States, Picotte founded the 1st independently funded hospital on a reservation in Walthill Nebraska. * The hospital was closed in 1940, and it became a community center & museum dedicated to her work & the history of the Omaha & Winnebago Tribes. * Picotte further campaigned for public health & the formal legal allotment of land to members of the Omaha Tribe. * She worked to increase sanitary conditions & prevent & treat tuberculosis on the reservation.

In 1944 Sabin came out of retirement to head a committee on public health measures for Colorado. The numbers showed that Colorado's morbidity and mortality rates to be unacceptably high, and its public health infrastructure to be antiquated and unacceptably poor. The Sabin Committee drafted public health bills to remedy the situation, and Sabin herself traveled around the state drumming up public support for new health legislation. She also effectively lobbied state legislators for their support. In 1947 the state legislature passed four of the six "Sabin Bills":

* Krim established AIDS Medical Foundation in 1983. * Dedicated herself to increasing the public's awareness of AIDS, with a better understanding of its cause, modes of transmission, and epidemiologic pattern.

* Barton founded the American Red Cross after seeing the same organization in Switzerland. * She became the representative for the American branch of the Red Cross. * She had been a hospital nurse in the American Civil War. Since nursing education was not very formalized, and she did not attend nursing school, she provided self-taught nursing care. * Barton is noteworthy for doing humanitarian work and civil rights advocacy at a time before women had the right to vote.

* Gantt and Sheriff started a mobile public health service in the southern Appalachians to bring vaccinations, nutritional education, prenatal care, dental examinations, and preventive health screenings to remote places in the rural south * Lobbied for state legislation requiring medical inspection of schoolchildren, which passed in 1920 * Pioneered public health, prevention of tuberculosis, medical inspection of schools, and social hygiene * Organized and headed the Spartanburg Health League * Their mobile health units focused on eradicating diseases, such as pellagra and diphtheria, which plagued the poor and marginalized communities of South Carolina * Made improvements to contraception, maternity care, and family planning practices.

* Hamilton authored the "Illinois Survey," a report that documented its findings of industrial processes that exposed workers to lead poisoning and other illnesses. * She discovered over seventy industrial processes through which workers became exposed to lead poisoning. * She also uncovered occupations, such as polishing cut glass and wrapping cigars in "tinfoil," that exhibited increased exposure to lead poisoning. * The commission's efforts resulted in the passage of the first workers' compensation laws in Illinois in 1911, in Indiana in 1915, and occupational disease laws in other states, requiring employers to take safety precautions to protect workers.

* Hanna was alerted in late 2015 to a lack of proper drinking water treatment in Flint, Michigan and an increased potential for lead in the city's water. * The water source had been changed from Lake Huron to the Flint River. * The lack of corrosion inhibitors in the new Flint water source was causing corrosion of water pipes and leaching of lead into drinking water. * She was at first decried by the spokesperson for the State of Michigan's Department of Environmental Quality as an "unfortunate researcher." * Later the State of Michigan acknowledged the lead-in-water crisis, and Department of Environmental Quality officials apologized to Hanna.

* Alexander founded the Aspiranto Health Home Hospital in her renovated Philadelphia home in 1930. * In her clinical practice she discovered disturbing divergences where Black infant mortality rates were more than twice of White infants, and the rate of deaths from TB was six times more for Blacks than for whites. * She observed that Black Americans often received sub-standard or no care at all in seeking medical help. * The field of public health gained popularity in the years leading up to World War II, and Alexander was one of the first people to acquire a master's degree in public health in 1937.

* Bath published the first scientific paper showing the higher prevalence of blindness among Blacks. * She also found that African American people had eight times higher prevalence of glaucoma as a cause of blindness. * Based on her research, Bath pioneered the discipline of community ophthalmology in 1976 after observations of epidemic rates of preventable blindness among under-served populations in urban areas in the US as well as under-served populations in third-world countries. * Community ophthalmology was described as a new discipline in medicine promoting eye health and blindness prevention through programs of public health, community medicine and ophthalmology to bring necessary eye care to under-served populations.