Women
Giovonnae Anderson Dennis
⚛️ Electrical engineering
- 1979, one of the 1st African-American females to earn a PhD in Electrical Engineering & one of the few at a primarily white institution rather than a HBCU
- Worked at Hewlett-Packard designing microwave test equipment
- Founder of Software Tailoring, a company that uses 3-D body scans to provide patterns for tailoring & custom clothing design
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: UC Davis BA Physics, MA & PhD Electrical Engineering 1978
Olive Wetzel Dennis
⚛️ Civil Engineering
- Worked for the B&O Railroad 1920s; invented & patented several items to improve passenger comfort
- Held 2 patents in her name; remainder were assigned to the railroad
- Among her improvements were: the Dennis Ventilator, dimming overhead lights, reclining individual seats, stain resistant upholstery, air conditioning in coach cars, dressing rooms; designed a "shroud" that covered the front of locomotives & made it easier for mechanics to work on the engines
- B&O created the position of "service engineer" just for her
- Designed the Cincinnatian, a train containing all her innovations for B&O; Her name doesn't appear in any of the publicity materials for the train even though she was the designer
- When she was 10 her father gave her a set of tools & she built a scale model of a streetcar for her younger brother; it was complete with the seats capable of turning over & the steps moved up & down
- it is estimated she travelled between one-quarter & one-half million miles on trains, identifying & solving passenger problems along the way
Born: 1885
Country: USA
Education: Goucher College BA 1908; Columbia University MA Mathematics 19090; Cornell University MA Civil Engineering 1920
Sheila Hobbs DeWitt
💼 Entrepreneur
🔍 chemist
- 1st generation high school graduate
- Whike at Park-Davis, used robots in her lab
- Has founded 4 pharmaceutical companies Researches chirality in drugs to improve the therapeutic benefits & reduce side-effects
- Became interested in the business side of scientific research after a friend asked her for help in developing a business model & eventually asked her to run the company
- Holds 31 patents
Born: 1960
Country: USA
Education: Cornell University BA Chemistry 1982; Duke University PhD Synthetic Organic Chemistry 1986
Jackie Diaz
💡 Inventor
- in 1983 wanted to create an ice cream cake where the ice cream didn’t melt before you could eat it and discovered you could insulate the ice cream by completely surrounding it with cake & designed a molded pan to accomplish this
- received her patent for the pan system in late 1990's (patent not located)
- product debuted on QVC in June 2000 and the entire stock of 2,000 units was sold within 7 minutes
- no additional personal information was found about her
Born: 1959
Country: USA
Education: Unknown
Wanda Diaz-Merced
🔭 Astronomy
- Was awarded the 1st Google scholarship for people with disabilities
- Lost her sight in her early 20s; now uses audio to study space science telemetry through sonification
- Has collaborated with Gerhard Sonnert on a music album based on her audio representations, "X-Ray Hydra" includes 9 pieces of music derived from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory rendered as sound
- A classmate who was an amateur astronomer was participating in a NASA program called Radio Jove, recording & analyzing radio transmissions from Jupiter, the Sun, & galaxy using a small make-it-yourself antenna; he had her listen to a radio signal from a solar flare & she was hooked, joining the program
Born: Unknown
Country: Puerto Rico
Education: University of Puerto Rico BS Physics; University of Glasgow PhD Computer Science 2015
Gladys Rowena Henry Dick
🔬 Microbiology
⚕️ Medical doctor
- 1911, contracted scarlet fever while working at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago; began studying the disease after recovering
- 1923, she & her husband George F. Dick, discovered the cause & developed a skin test for scarlet fever
- Patented the toxin & antitoxin production methods in 1924 & 1926, which produced criticism in the medical field but they argued the patents helped them maintain quality control
- Was also active in polio research
- Was an advocate for adoption & founded the Cradle Society in Evanston, IL
- Devised the Dick Aseptic Nursing Technique to prevent cross-infection among infants with strict sterilization & aseptic procedures Held 3 patents
Born: 1881
Country: USA
Education: University of Nebraska-Lincoln BS Zoology 1900; Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine MD 1907; 1 yr of post-graduate work at University of Berlin
Lizzie H. Dickelman
💡 Inventor
- no information was located on her or the Dickelman Manufacturing Company with the exception of 12 patents filed for or granted between 1917 & 1946
- her patents indicate she resided in Forest Ohio when she filed for her patents
- all patents were assigned to the Dickelman Manufacturing Company
- patents were filed under the name L. H. Dickelman or Lizzie Dickelman
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: Unknown
Helen Octavia Dickens
🔍 Obstetrics
🔍 Gynecology
- see https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/cancer-detectives-helen-dickens/?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_12023174&utm_Newsletter=American_Experience
Born: 1909
Country: USA
Education: Crane Junior College; University of Illinois BS 1932; University of Illinois College of Medicine MD 1934; University of Pennsylvania Medical School Master of Medical Science 1943
Susanna Wilkerson Dickinson
🔍 Alamo Survivor
- none
Born: 1814
Country: USA
Education: none-illiterate
Tawanna R. Dillahunt
💻 Computer Engineering
💻 Human-computer interactions
- Her research has been cited more that 2,700 times according to Google Scholar
- She has received multiple grants from NSF to study, design, & evaluate technologies related to unemployment, environmental sustainability, & technical literacy
- Has a grant to study transportation barriers in underserved urban & rural communities in Michigan
- Holds 4 patents
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: N. Carolina State University BS Computer Engineering 2000; Oregon Graduate Institute at Oregon Health & Science University MS Computer Science 2005; Carnegie Mellon University MS 2010 & PhD 2012 Human-Computer Interaction
Rosanne DiStefano
⚛️ Astrophysics
- Leader of a group that may have located an exoplanet the size of Saturn in the WhirlpoolGalaxy capable of sustaining life; it is 31 million light years away from Earth
- She researches stars interacting within dense stellar environments, the evolution of supernovae, x-ray astronomy, & gravitational microlensing.
- Sigma Xi National Lecturer
- Her artwork can be found at rosanne-distefano.org/art/gallery/index.html
- Confirmation of her findings about the possible M51 planet are made difficult because the exact nature of the orbit is unknown. It is believed the observed phenomenon will not occur again for another 70 years.
Born: unknown
Country: USA
Education: CUNY Queens College BA 1973; Columbia University MA 1976; SUNY Stony Brook PhD 1982
Dorothea Lynde Dix
🔍 Social reform
- at age 12 she & her 2 younger brothers were sent to live with their wealthy paternal grandmother in boston to escape her alcoholic parents & abbusive father
- began teaching at an all-girls school she started in worcester, MA at age 14 & emphasized ethical living & the natural sciences in her lessons
- approximately 1821 opened a school in boston for well-to-do families & taught poor & neglected children in her grandmother's barn
- 1840-41 conducted a statewide investigation into the treatment of the mentally ill poor in Massachusetts & taught classes to female inmates in East Cambridge publishing a report known as a Memorial to the state legislature which ultimately led to a bill to expand the state's mental hospital in Worcester
- conducted similar investigations & wrote reports in other states & 13 European countries
- during the civil War set the guidelines for volunteer nurses & preferred they were 35 to 50 years old, plain-looking, wore black or brown unhooped dresses & wore no jewelry or cosmetics
- was very anti-Catholic & didn't get along with nurses who were Catholic
- often fired volunteer nurses she didn't personally train or hired thus angering many other groups such as the US sanitary commission
- raised funds for the monument to deceased soldiers at Fort Monroe in Virginia, established a war memorial at Hampton Roads in Virginia, & a fountain for thirsty horses at the Boston Custom Square
- 1983 the US Postal service issued a 1-cent stamp bearing her likeness
- is 1 of the 6 women featured on panels erected in 1999 at the Massachusetts State House
- a WWII US Navy transport ship was named in her honor
- a crater on venus is named after her
- her nickname during the Civil War was Dragon dix due to her strictness
- her most famous & widely read book was "Conversations on Common things" published in 1824 & in its 60th printing in 1869
- sponsored an 1848 congressional bill to grant over 12 million acres of Federal land to be used to benefit & treat the mentally ill, blind & deaf which was passed by both houses of congress but vetoed by President Pierce in 1854
- her grandmother died in 1837 & left her financially independent
- in 1841 there were 13 mental hospitals in the US which were increased to 123 at the time of her death largely due to her efforts
Born: 1802
Country: USA
Education: was taught to read & write by her father, received no formal education
Mary Bartlett Dixon Cullen
⚕️ Nursing
✊ Social Activist
- the 1st hospital she established in Easton MD burned to the ground less than 1 year after it opened in 1906
- received $43,000 to rebuild the hospital & it reopened as Easton Memorial Hospital in 1907
- was part of the delegation of women who met with President Wilson to discuss the suffragist movement
- the Principal of Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, Adelaide Nutting, wanted to reduce the number of hours student nurses worked during the week so she admitted dixon to the nursing program because her father was President of the hospital & she believed he would reduce the hours when he saw how overworked his daughter was
- Nutting pushed Dixon harder than any other student & gave her more hours even though she told Dixon she expected her to drop out of the program
- Dixon graduated even though she was extremely overworked & her father decreased the hours of nurses
- 1917 Dixon & 40 other Silent Sentinels were arrested after picketing the White House for suffrage issues & was sentenced to the Occoquan Workhouse for 2 days
- was a Quaker
- wrote regularly for the Maryland Suffrage News & edited a regular column for the Baltimore Sun titled "What the Suffragists Are Doing"
- in her later years when she began losing her hearing she became a "leading spirit" for the League for the hard of Hearing
Born: 1873
Country: USA
Education: Johns Hopkins School of Nursing 1903
Lavinia Lloyd Dock
⚕️ Nursing
🔍 Suffragist
- wwas 1 of 6 children who became independently wealthy after their parents inherited land which provided an income
- 1888 worked with Jane Delano, the nurse who later founded the American Red Cross Nursing Service, at a Florida hospital during a yellow fever outbreak
- 1889 worked with Clara Barton helping victims of the Johnstown Pennsylvania flood
- her father financed the 1st edition of her book, "Materia Medica for Nurses
- left Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in 1896 & joined the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side of Manhattan working as a visiting nurse for 20 years
- withdrew from nursing around age 50 & focused on contemporary social matters like gender equality & woman's suffrage
- 1909 participated in the New York shirtwaist strike
- moved to Washington DC in 1917 & joined the advisory council of the National Woman's Council
- 1912 walked in the suffrage hike from New York city to Albany which began with over 200 women & was 1 of the 5 women who finished
- was arrested after militant demonstrations in June & August 1917 & August 1918
- 1917 coined the phrase "The young are at the gates" which became the banner slogan during picketing at the White House
- 1922 retired to the family farm in Pennsylvania & lived with her 4 unwed sisters
- became deaf in her later years
- the American Association for the History of Nursing gives a yearly awardin her name
- was arrested in 1896 after attempting to vote in New York
- served 30 days in the Occuquan workhouse in Virginia in 1917
Born: 1858
Country: USA
Education: Bellevue Hospital School of Nursing 1886
Abbey Donnell
💼 Entrepreneur
- is a Certified Lactation Counselor
- Work & Mother offers its members several private pumping rooms, private pumping office spaces, a kitchen area, member lockers and a small retail section where members can buy pumping and wellness equipment
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: University of Colorado-Boulder BS, BA Advertising, Spanish 2007; Rice University Jones Graduate School of Business MBA 2017
Mary M. Donnelly
🔬 Food Sciences
- nothing was found on her except her invention of the corn-fork
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: Unknown
Marion O'Brien Donovan
💡 Inventor
💼 entrepreneur
- Inventor; holds 32 patents in the US, UK, Spain, Germany, & Canada
- Most notable inventions are the disposable diaper & DentaLoop
- Was raised by her father after her mother died when she was 7; spent a great portion of her time at his manufacturing plant; father & his brother invented many tools including a lathe to make auto gears & gun barrels
- In elementary school, invented a new kind of tooth cleaning powder with her father's help; he encouraged her to be inventive
- For several years she was an assistant beauty editor at Vogue Magazine
Born: 1917
Country: USA
Education: Rosemont College BA English Literature 1939; Yale University MA Architecture 1958
Jennifer Anne Doudna
🔬 Biochemistry
🔬 Molecular Biology
🔍 CRISPR
🔬 RNA Biology
🔍 gene editing
Jennifer Anne Doudna
🔬 Biochemistry
🔬 Molecular Biology
🔍 CRISPR
🔬 RNA Biology
🔍 gene editing
- 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Emmanuelle Charpentier for CRISPR & Ras9
- Holds 109 patents
- One of the 1st women to share a Nobel Prize in the sciences
- Also known for the 1st x-ray based structure of catalytic RNA
- While in the 6th grade, her father gave her a copy of James Watson's 1968 book, The Double Helix, which was a major inspiration for her
- 2017, co-authored, "A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing & the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution" a 1st person account of a major scientific breakthrough aimed at the general public
Born: 1964
Country: USA
Education: Pomona College, BA Biochemistry 1985; Harvard University MA & PhD 1989 Biological Chemistry & Molecular Pharmacology; University of Colorado-Boulder Postdoctoral Scholar in Biomedical Science 1991-1994
Marjory Stoneman Douglas
✍️ Journalism
🔍 conservationist
- known as the Rachel Carson of the Everglades, the Mother of the Everglades & the Guardian of the Glades
- several schools & parks in Florida are named after her
- wrote over 100 short stories & several books
- one of her earliest memories was of her farher reading her the Song of Hiawatha & crying when she learned the tree had sacrificed itself so Hiawatha had wood for his canoe
- her 1st book was Alice's Adventures in wonderland& she kept it "until some fiend in human form must have borrowed it & not brought it back (Wikipedia)
- suffered from night terrors after her parents divorced when she was 6 & she & her mother went to live in Massachusetts with her maternal aunt & grandparents who were contentious & often disparaged her father
- was 1st published at age 16in St. Nicholas Magazine & in 1907 received a prize from the Boston Herald for a story she wrote about a boy watching a sunrise from a canoe
- her father founded & was publisher of a newspaper that later became The Miami Herald, she joined the staff in 1915
- 1917 was the 1st Florida woman to join the Naval Reserved, was discharged after 1 year & joined the Red Cross & was stationed in Paris
- 1930s wrote some 1 act plays for the Miami theater
- Mother had mental health issues & was institutionalized on several occasions
- had 3 episodes of nervous exhaustion/breakdowns with the last occuring in 1941
- was blind & almost totally deaf in her older years
- never learned to drive or owned a car
- with the help of friends designed her home in Coconut Grove & it had no air conditioning, electric stove, or a dishwasher
- was married for approximately 1 year to a mann 30 years her senior who was after her father's money, served time in custody for writing fraudulent checks with her signature, & was already married when he married her
- the Florida Dept of Environmental Protection headquarters in Tallahassee is named after her as is an award given by the National Parks conservation Association
- 1991 was visited by Queen Elizabeth & gave her an autographed copy of her book, The Everglades: A river of Grass
- for her birthday would request people planted trees instead of giving her gifts & this resulted in 100,0-00 trees being planted across Florida
- a wilderness area in the Everglades National Park was named after her in 1997 & her ashes were scattered there
- 2015 her Coconut Grove home was designated a National Historic Landmark
- donated her Medal of Freedom to Wellesley College
Born: 1890
Country: USA
Education: Wellesley college BA English 1912
Mildred S. Dresselhaus
⚛️ Applied Physics
- Known as "The Queen of Carbon Science"
- In grade school she was a tutor for a special needs student & earned 50 cents weekly
- As a young child she did paperwork assembly tasks at home & worked in a zipper factory in the summer to help provide income for her family
- Worked at MIT for 57 years
- Several physical theories are named after her including: Hicks-Dresselhaus Model. Saito-Fujita-Dresselhaus Model, Dresselhaus Effect
- She & a colleague organized the 1st Women's Forum at MIT in 1971 to explore the roles of women in science & engineering
- 1st female Institute Professor at MIT
- 1st female president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
- 1st female recipient of the IEEE Medal of Honor
- Held 17 patents
Born: 1930
Country: USA
Education: 1951 BA Liberal Arts, Hunter College; MA Radcliffe College; PhD University of Chicago 1958; Uiversity of Cambridege Fullbright Fellowship, postgraduate work; Cornell University Postdoctorate work 2 years
Clara Pierce Wolcott Driscoll
🎨 Glass artist craftsman
- Was head of Tiffany Studios Women's Glass Cutting Dept known as the Tiffany Girls in NYC
- Designed over 30 Tiffany Lamps including the Wisteria, Dragonfly, Peony, & the Daffodil (her 1st)
- Hired by Louis Comfort Tiffany in 1888 & worked for him on & off for over 20 years; had to quit in 1889 when she married because Tiffany didn't allow married women to work for him; returned in 1892 after her husband died & remained until her marriage in 1909
- Was one of the highest paid women of her time earning $10,000 annually
- Books published in 2002 & 2006 brought to light the contributions of the Tiffany Girls whose work was previously attributed to Tiffany & his male employees
- NY Historical Museum has 132 Tiffany Lamps & 63 are attributed to her
Born: 1861
Country: USA
Education: Western Reserve School of Design for Women (now Cleveland Institute of Art); Metropolitan Museum of Art School
![Photo of Denyse "Denny" Clair DuBrucq](/women_pictures/DuBrucq_Denyse "Denny" Clair.png)
Denyse "Denny" Clair DuBrucq
📚 Educator
💡 Inventor
- learned to play golf with her sister Ginny at an early age & enjoyed playing
- taught science at Aquinas Montessori School in Alexandria VA
- her 1st invention was a teaching puzzle with labeled parts of plants
- was a pilot with an instrumental rating
- was a huge fan of the Wisconsin Badgers & Green Bay Packers
- held 10 patents
Born: 1937
Country: USA
Education: University of Wisconsin BS Home Economics-Textiles 1963; University of Northern Colorado EdD Science Education 1977
Esther Duflo Banerjee
💰 Economics
- was the 2nd female & youngest person (age 46) to win a Nobel in economic sciences
- most of her research has been situated in Africa & India
- has been on the faculty at MIT since 1999
- became an American citizen in 2012
- spent 10 moths (1993-94) in Moscow as a French teaching assistant
- grew up in a Paris suburb the middle child & noted her home was filled with freedon & joy
- in 2019 J-PAL had 998 on-going or completed projects in their database running in 84 countries & at least 450 million people had been effected by policies scaled up after a J-PAL evaluation found them effective
- before having children was an avid climber but now only climbs indoors & likes running, playing tennis & hiking
- when she was 5 her father taught her how to ride the train by herself so she could visit a cousin who lived closer to Paris on weekends
Born: 1972
Country: France
Education: Ecole Normale Superieure BA History & Economics 1994; MA 1995 from DELTA (now Paris School of Economics) in conjunction with the Ecole Normale Superieure, Ecole Polytechnique & ENSAE; MIT PhD Economics 1999
Joyce Conseen Dugan
📚 Education - Native American Traditional Knowledge
- active in environmental issues and health
- was called "the white Indian" when growing up
- during her tenure as Chief, the tribe recovered the property on which the “mother town” of Kituwah was located
Born: 1952
Country: USA
Education: Western Carolina University BS 1974 & MS 1981 both in Education
Regina Elvira Dugan
⚛️ Mechanical Engineering
- worked at DARPA 1996 to 2000 & returned as Director in 2009
- 2014 when Motorola Mobility was acquired by Lenovo she remained at Google
- left google in 2016 to work at Facebook leaving there after approximately 18 months
- in a NY Times article titled "New Force Behind Agency of wonder" she was "credited with having a knack for inspiring, & indeed insisting on, creative thinking"
- was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at age 9 & given a 10% chance of survival & her family moved from chicago to Baltimore so she could receive treatment at Johns Hopkins
- one of her favorite poems is "Joy & Sorrow" by Kalil Gibran
- whenshe traveled to CalTech for her PhD she & some friends in 2 VW camper buses took 3 months to go from Houston to British Columbia, the Yukon, across Alaska to the Arctic circle, fished for salmon in Valdez, then down the West Coast to CalTech
- is certified to fly a helicopter
- holds 11 patents
Born: 1963
Country: USA
Education: Virginia Tech BS 1984, MS 1985 both in Mechanical engineering; CalTech PhD Mechanical Engineering
Charlene Mickens Dukes
🔍 Academic Administration
- is the 2nd oldest of 9 children
- was raised in a 2-bedroom home until she was 15
- attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania for 1 year before leaving due to racism but return later to complete her degree
Born: 1953 or 1954
Country: USA
Education: Indiana University of Pennsylvania BS Secondary Education 1980; University of Pittsburgh M.Ed 1987 & PhD 1992 both in Administrative & Policy Studies
Bonnie Jeanne Dunbar
⚛️ Engineering
🔭 Astronaut
- flew on five Space Shuttle missions between 1985 and 1998, including two dockings with the Mir space station
- trained in Russia as a cosmonaut
- spent 50days 8hours 24miutes
- left NASA to become the president and chief executive officer of the Museum of Flight in Seattle
- grew up on a farm in Washington State and could drive a tractor when she was about nine years old
- helped her father repair tractors
- Future Farmers of America did not accept girls so when she was nine her father started a 4-H club so she could show cattle, which she did until she was eighteen & was the only girl in the club
- in high school was a member of the math club, debate club, speech club, and Latin club & played sports (was on the baseball team) and was a cheerleader for three years
- her high school career guidance counselor advised her that since she grew up on a farm, she should marry a farmer and have children
- wanted to join the University's Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC) unit but they didn't accept females so she joined Angel Flight, a coeducational military support-oriented organization
- became a fully-fledged NASA astronaut on August 21, 1981
- worked with Walter Cronkite on the CBS television coverage of the STS-2 mission
- wasthe first female graduate student in the UW’s Department of Mining, Metallurgical, and Ceramic Engineering (now Material Science Engineering)
- was the first woman to hold a fulltime professional position in the computer services division at the Boeing Space Center in Kent
- was first woman from Washington state to go into space
- while training in Russia she was not allowed to use the cosmonauts’ gym because there was no dressing room for women but was finally given a tiny changing closet in an upstairs room.
- At the age of 10, she was hit in the eye with a baseball but refused to come out of a game
- first woman assigned to a laboratory mission to operate the Spacelab, its subsystems and experiments
- family didn’t have indoor plumbing until she was a teenager
- growing up H.G. Wells and Jules Verne were her favorite authors
- joined NASA 1978 as a flight controller/payload specialist & retired as an astronaut 2005
- lived in Germany for 7 months to coordinate the Spacelab D-1 mission
Born: 1949
Country: USA
Education: University of Washington BS 1971 & MS 1975 both in Ceramics Engineering; University of Houston PhD Mechanical/Biomedical Engineering 1983
Angela Isadora Duncan
🔍 Dance
🔍 Choreography
- Began using her middle name when she was 16
- died when her scarf became entangled in the wheel and axle of the car in which she was travelling in Nice, France
- is known as "The Mother of Modern dance"
- dropped out of school when she was 10 because she found it too restrictive
- was tutored by poet Ina Coolbrith
- after parents divorce (either when she was an infant or up to 3 years ole depending on your source) she & her 3 siblings struggled with poverty
- depending on your source, she & her siblings, especially her sister Elizabeth, began giving dance lessons to other children when she was 6 or as old as 10
- family moved to Chicago, then London in 1898, and then Paris so she could dance
- 1902 she toured Europe with Loie fuller & her dance company
- influenced many other artists including dancers, composers, painters, & authors of her time
- she opened her 1st dance school in Berlin-Grunewald Germany in 1904 & it was the birthplace of the "Isadorables" with 6 of them becoming her star proteges who she adopted (although no documents confirming this have been found) & they took her last name in 1919: 3 of the Isadorables continued teaching her dances & style to others after her death
- retrned to the US in 1914 & opened a school in NYC
- 1921 moved to Moscow & opened a school there with Lenin becoming oneof her supporters
- believed movement originated from the solar plexus
- her 2 children & their nanny died in 1913 when the car they were riding in fell into the Seine & they drowned
- gave birth to a 3rd child in 1914 but he died shortly after birth with some sources maintaining he was stillborn
- Married Russian poet Sergei Yesenin in 1922 but separated in 1023, he was found the apparent victim of suicide in 1925
- her career declined due to her depression over the deaths of her children
- spent her finaal years moving between Paris the Mediterranean, running up debts, struglling with poverty, public drunkenness & what were considered to be scandalous affairs
- was a Russian citizen at the time of her death & her will was the 1st of a Soviet citizen to undergo propbate in the US
- the Duncan Dance Guild was formed in the 1950s, the Duncan Centenary Company was established in 1977, the Isadora Duncan Heritage Society & the Isadora Duncan Archives were created in her honor
- in medicine, the Isadora Duncan Syndrome refers to injury or death consequent to entanglement of neckwear with a wheel or other machinery
- 1915-18 photo studies of her were made by Arnold Genthe in NYC
- when she & her husband returned to the US in 1922 they were detained at Ellis Island & suspected of being Bolshevik agents, after their release she swore she would never again return to the US & she never did
- she didn't like being filed & as a result there is only 1 short film clip of her dancing
- her dances/choreography is passed down from teacher to student & dancer to dancer, creating many variations in performances which goes along with her theory that dance is very individualized & springs from the dancer's soul
- was constantly defying social norms of the day having 3 chikldren out of wedlock from 3 different fathers, dancing barefoot & in flimsy, flowing costumes whichr revealed much of the body, dancing naked, being vocal about her love of ?Russia & all things Russian
- there are over 40 books, 2 major movies, at least 12 documentaries, several plays & poems, countless drawings, paintings, photos & sculptures of her
Born: 1877
Country: USA
Education: dropped out of school age 10
Katherine Mary Dunham
🎨 Arts
🔍 Dance
- while a student at the University of Chicago, formed a dance group (Ballet Negre in 1930) that performed in concert at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1934 and with the Chicago Civic Opera company in 1935–36
- was intent on tracing the roots of Black culture
- sometimes wrote & published under the pseudonym Kaye Dunn
- has been called the "matriarch and queen mother of black dance"
- father was the descendant of slaves
- mother died when she was 4 (1913) & she & her brother were sent to live with a paternal aunt, a custody battle with members of her mothers family resulted in unrest in the family, she & her brother were returned to their father after he remarried in 1915
- became a mambo (Priestess) in the Vodun religion
- Dunham technique introduces rhythm as the backbone of various widely known modern dance principles including contraction and release, groundedness, fall and recover, counterbalance, and many more including a strong emphasis on anatomical alignment, breath, and fluidity
- refused to hold a show in one theater after finding out that the city's black residents had not been allowed to buy tickets for the performance
- October 1944, after getting a rousing standing ovation in Louisville, Kentucky, she told the all-white audience that she and her company would not return because "your management will not allow people like you to sit next to people like us." (Wikipedia)
- in 1950 after she & her troupe were not allowed to stay in a hotel in Sao Paulo Brazil she made sure the press was aware off the racial discrimination & the negative publicity led to the 1951 passage of the Afonso Arinos law that made racial discrimination in public places a felony in Brazil
- credited with introducing international audiences to African aesthetics and establishing African dance as a true art form
- was always a formidable advocate for racial equality, boycotting segregated venues in the United States and using her performances to highlight discrimination
- maintained the Katherine dunham Dance Company for over 30 years & it was the only self-supported American Black dance troupe at the time
- 1921 a short story she wrote when 12, "Coming Back to Arizona" was published in volume 2 of The Brownies Handbook
- played baseball, tennis, basketball & ran track, was VP of the French club & on the yearbook staff inhigh school
- age 15 organized "The Blue Moon Cafe" a fundraiser for her church in Joliet, IL & performed in public for the 1st time
- opened a dance school for young Black children while still in high school
- never completed her coursework for her MA but did submit a thesis in 1938, leaving academia for the stage because she believed she could reach more people that way
- toured on 6 countinents & to 38 with her dance company
- 1957 due to poor health spent 1 year basically in isolation in Kyoto Japan to write her memoirs
- 1964 was artist-in-residence at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville Illinois
- officially retired in 1967
- 1965 appointed by President Johnson as technical cultural advisor to Senegal & later established a home there
- 1949 she & 2nd husband John Pratt adopted a 14-month old daughter they named Marie-Christine in Paris
- 1977 the Katherine Dunham Museum & Children's Workshop opened in East Saint Lois
- 1993 the Government of Haiti awarded her citizenship
Born: 1909
Country: USA
Education: Joliet Junior College 1928; University of Chicago Ph.B Anthropology 1936
Kelli Dunn
💡 Inventor
- In college studied court reporting
- in high school was a member of the school's softball, volleyball, basketball, and track teams, as well as the student council
- is also a model
Born: 1974
Country: USA
Education: Unknown
Vanessa Dunn
🎨 Makeup artist
💡 Inventor
✍️ Author
- In high school was a member of the school's softball, volleyball, basketball, and track teams, as well as the student council
- studied finance in college
- is also a model & makeup artist
Born: 1974
Country: USA
Education: Unknown
Frances Dunne
🤖 Airplane Mechanic
🔍 Explosives Tech
- little is known of her personal life, not even her date of birth (1903 & 1910 have been cited) or place of birth (most likely Canada)
- was orphaned at approximately age 4
- spent years at boarding schools
- unknown when she came to the US
- several sources state she attended numerous colleges but the only records reflect classes at Swarthmore College with no degree
- was living in New Mexico & working as an aircraft mechanic at the outbreak of WWII & was recruited for Los alamos because of her mechanical knowledge & small, dexterous hands
- it was rumored she worked for the FBI after the war but this has not been substantiated
- it was also rumored she worked as a fashionmodel in New York & wasa professional singer with Guy Lombardo's band before the war but this also has not been substantiated
- it is known she spent her years after the war until her death living in New Mexico
- was the only female in the Manhattan Project's Explosive Assembly Group
- 2018 the Los alamos National Lab opened the Frances Dunne Test Firing Facility for explosives testing, diagnostics, & data analysis
Born: 1903 or 1910
Country: Canada
Education: Swarthmore College-no degree
Georgia Mae Dunston
🔍 Human Genetics
- Founder of Whole Genome Science Foundation
- Did research on tumor immunology
- Consulted for the Job Corps Sickle Cell Anemia Program for the US Dept of Labor
- 1st African-American female to receive a PhD in Genetics
Born: 1944
Country: USA
Education: Norfold State University BS Biology 1965; Tuskegee University MS Biology 1967; University of Michigan PhD Human Genetics 1972; National Cancer Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship 1075-1976
Cheryl Dunye
🎨 Art
🎬 Film
- "Watermelon Woman" was briefly the source of controversy in 1997 when Michigan Republican senator Pete Hoekstra spoke out against the National Endowment for the Arts funding what he perceived as pornographic material because Dunye received an NEA grant of $31,500 to make her film
- born in Liberia but raised in Philadelphia, PA
- had a crush on a high school friend & when she came out to her as gay, the friend's mother volunteered to pay for a doctor so she could have someone to talk to about her problems, she portrayed the experience in her documentary, Janine, in 1990
- was often the lead actress in her early works
- a restored version of The Watermelon Woman was re-released in 2016 & is now part of the permanent cinema collection at MoMA in NYC
Born: 1966
Country: Liberia
Education: Temple University BA; Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts MFA
Nguyet Anh Duong
💻 Computer Science
⚛️ Chemical Engineering
- is known as The Bomb Lady
- by 2001 was director of Insensitive Munitions Advanced Development at the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s Indian Head Division, in Charles County, Md
- is noted as the "Scientist who developed the bomb that ended the war with Afghanistan" by the Vietnamese American National Gala
- her advice is attitude comes first, then aptitude, and finally, altitude, or success
- wanted to be a doctor until a H.S, zoology class & a required dissection showed her she was afraid of blood so she dropped the class to preserve her perfect GPA
Born: 1960
Country: South Vietnam
Education: University of Maryland, College Park B.S. Chemical Engineering & B.S. Computer Science 1982;
Cynthia Dusel-Bacon
🔍 Geology
- joined the USGS Branch of Alaskan Geology, headquartered in Menlo Park, California, in 1975 & retired 2014
- 1977, during her third field season of geologic mapping in east-central Alaska, she was mauled by a black bear and lost both arms as a result of her injuries
Born: 1946
Country: USA
Education: San Jose State University BA Geology 1975; San Jose State University Secondary Teaching Credential (Spanish) 1969; University of California Santa Barbara BA Spanish 1968
Kathleen Eagan
💰 Finance
🏛️ politics
🔍 conservation
- enjoys skiing, fly-fishing, and backpacking
- is president of the Truckee River Habitat Restoration Group, which was founded in 1997 to promote watershed restoration in the area
- works with the Truckee River Watershed Coordination Resource Management and Planning group, an effort get everyone coordinated to actively restore the watershed
- ran for City Council of Truckee against 26 other candidates in 1993, received the most votes & 5 top electees were seated as the Council
- was the 1st mayor of Truckee 1996
- was a bank vice president before retiring to Truckee in 1986 after several years of visiting there to enjoy skiing, fishing & hiking
Born: 1943
Country: USA
Education: Unknown
Amelia Mary Earhart
🔍 Aviation
- none
Born: 1897
Country: USA
Education: attended 1 year at Columbia University, no degree
Sylvia Alice Reade Earle
🔬 Marine Biology
- Founder of Mission Blue in 2009, organization dedicated to protecting the oceans from threats like climate change, pollution, habitat destruction, invasive species, & dramatic decrease in ocean fish stock
- 1st female chief scientist at NOAA; left because she felt she could accomplish more working independently of the government
- 1968, discovered undersea dunes off the coast of the Bahamas
- 1969, discovered a new red algae she named Hummbrella hydra
- Holds the record for deepest walk on the sea floor
- Holds the depth record for a solo dive-1,250 feet
- Known as "Her Deepness" or "The Sturgeon General"
- Has spent almost 7,000 hours underwater, written 180 publications, & led over 100 ocean expeditions
- 1970, led the 1st all-female team of aquanauts in Tektite II
- 1982, she & Graham Hawkes (later her husband) founded Deep Ocean Engineering to design, operate, support, & consult on piloted & robotic subsea systems; 1985, team designed & built Deep Rover research submarine; left company 1990 to be chief scientist at NOAA
- 1992, founder Deep Ocean Exploration Research (DOER Marine) to further advance marine engineering; company now run by her daughter Elizabeth; designs, builds, & operates equipment for deep-ocean environments
Born: 1935
Country: USA
Education: St. Petersburg Junior College AA 1952; Florida State University BS Botany 1955; Duke University MS Botany 1956, PhD Botany 1966
Charity Edna Adams Earley
🔍 Army Officer
📚 Educator
- enlisted in WAAC in 1942 & retired as a Lt Col in 1946
- was the oldest of 4 children
- was a gifted student & entered elementary school as a 2nd grader
- graduated as valedictorian of her high school class
- in the Army was initially a training supervisor in charge of improving efficiency & job training plus surveying officer (in charge of finding lost property) & summary court officer (handling women's minor offenses)
- overseas was in charge of a postal directory service unit
- improved morale by creating beauty parlors where women could relax & socialize
- battled against segregation in the Army & refused to head a segregated regiment
- rejected a segregated recreation center from the Red Cross
- encouraged her battalion to socialize with whites (civilians & service personnel) & wanted to create comradeship between enlisted personnel & officers & ease racial tensions
- worked as an educator or educational administrator after the war
- an elementary school in Dayton Ohio is named after her
- 2023 Ft. Lee in Virginia was renamed Ft Gregg-Adams after her & Lt General Arthur J. Gregg
- 1938-42 taught math & science in junior high school
- lived in Zurich Switzerland 1949-52 while her husband completed medical school there
- attended the Minerva Institute in Zurich for 10 months to learn German
- took classes at the University of Zurich for 2 years & during the 2nd year at the Jungian Institute of Analytical Psychology but didn't pusue a degree
- was given 6 months to organize & deliver 6 airplane hangers of undelivered mail while stationed in England but she & her team completed the assignment in 3 months by working 3 shifts & was promoted to Lt Col (highest rank for a female) for her efforts
- Tyler has made a movie, Six Triple Eight, about Adams & her unit which is expected to be released sometime in 2024
- a superior officer once announced he was going to send a white officer to her unit to improve their workings & she replied, "Over my dead body, Sir"
Born: 1918
Country: USA
Education: Wilberforce University BA Math, Latin & Physics 1938; Ohio State University MA Vocational Psychology 1946
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