Women
Angella Dorothea Ferguson
🔍 Pediatrician
- Developed a blood test to detect sickle cell at birth & by 2010 the test was standard in 40 US States
- Discovered infants of African-American descent learned to sit & stand earlier than their European counterparts; theorized this was because they didn't have as many playpens & highchairs
- Determined that if infants drank a glass of water a day before the age 5 the increase in blood volume reduced their chances of a sickle cell crisis
- Recommended increased oxygen during surgery on sickle cell patients because it decreased their symptoms
Born: 1925
Country: USA
Education: Howard University BS Chemistry 1945; Howard University College of Medicine MD 1949; Bethesda Naval Hospital Postgraduate training in effects & uses of radioisotopes
Sarah A. Collins Fernandis
🔍 Social Work
- wrote the lyrics to the Hampton Institute alma mater
- taught school for about twenty years, in Virginia, Maryland, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida, sometimes under the auspices of the Women's Home Missionary Society of Boston
- during World War I she organized a War Camp Community Center for Black soldiers stationed in Pennsylvania
- 1920 became the first Black social worker employed by the Baltimore public health department; retired from the city health department in 1933, but opened a National Youth Administration office in 1936, to help place homeless young women in employment and housing; lectured for the National League of Women Voters, lobbied for compulsory school attendance laws and for quality low-income housing
- published two volumes of poetry, Poems and Vision, in 1925 and her poems were often published in the Southern Workman
- a room at the YMCA in Baltimore named for her
- 1905 she inaugurated “Baby Day,” an excursion down the Potomac River to Somerset Beach for 1,300 children
Born: 1863
Country: USA
Education: New York School of Philanthropy MSW 1906; Hampton Normal & Agricultural Institute (later Hampton Institute, the Hampton University) BA 1882
Joan Feynman
⚛️ Astrophysics
⚛️ Space Physics
🔍 Climate Change
- elder brother Richard Feynman was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist
- was an inquisitive child and exhibited an interest in understanding the natural world from an early age
- mother & grandmother dissuaded her from studying science because they felt the brains of women were "too feeble" to study it
- was encouraged in scientific pursuits by her brother
- during her graduate years took a year off to live with her husband in Guatemala, where they studied the anthropology of the Maya peoples who lived there
- first elected female officer of the American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- organized an AGU committee charged with advancing the fair treatment of women within the geophysics community
- 1957 with husband Richard Irwin Hirshberg & Betty J. Meggers wrote an anthropology paper
- later in her career studied climate change & was especially interested in transient solar events & solar cycle variations
- when her brother was 14 he built an electronics lab in his bedroom and hired her as his assistant for pennies a week
- she found sexism pervasive at Syracuse University
- credited a figure attributed to Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin for proving to her that women could indeed have a career doing science
- she once infiltrated a “men only” dining room at a National Science Foundation meeting
Born: 1927
Country: USA
Education: Oberlin College BS Physics 1948; Syracuse University PhD Physics 1958; Columbia University postdoctural studies
Evelyn Juanita Fields
🔍 Oceanography
- none
Born: 1949
Country: USA
Education: Norfolk State University BS Mathematics 1971; Armed Forces Staff College to study hydrography
Eleanor Finch
🔍 Librarian
- was a schoolteacher from Iowa
- spent her savings on purchasing a decommissioned barge & with 2 of her friends refurbished it & christened it The Knowledge Belle, loaded it with shelves, books, kerosene lamps, and a hand-cranked printing press that produced small pamphlets of local poetry and news & the women taught reading lessons right on deck
- 1 harsh winter after the river froze she walked miles across icy banks carrying sacks of books on her back, ensuring no child missed their reading
- no information about her personal life was found
Born: Unknown
Country: Unknown
Education: Unknown
Ann K. Finkbeiner
🔬 Science Journalist
- To pass the Finkbeiner test, an article about a female scientist must not mention: that she is a woman, her husband's job, her childcare arrangements, how she nurtures her underlings, how she was taken aback by the competitiveness in her field, how she is a role model for other women, how she's the "first woman to ..."
- for 20 years taught and directed a graduate science-writing program at Johns Hopkins University
- often writes about topics in cosmology & astronomy
- taught at & ran The Writing Seminars' graduate program in science writing at Johns Hopkins University 1988-2013
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: Johns Hopkins University MA The Writing Seminar
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Miriam Dvorah (Dorothy) Posner Finkel
🔍 Radiologist
- grew up in Davenport, Iowa
- signed the Szilárd petition, drafted and circulated in July 1945 by scientist Leo Szilard, and signed by 70 scientists working on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, Illinois -it asked President Harry S. Truman to inform Japan of the terms of surrender demanded by the allies, and allow Japan to either accept or refuse these terms, before America used atomic weapons
- held 2 patents
Born: 1916
Country: USA
Education: University of Chicago BS 1938 & PhD 1944 both in Zoology
Susan Tufts Fiske
🔍 Social Psychology
- Her father was a psychologist, mother a civic leader in chicago, Brother an anthropologist, Grandmother & Great-grandmother were suffragettes
- Was a leader in the field of social cognition
- 1st social psychologist to testify in a gender discrimination case
Born: 1952
Country: USA
Education: Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study BA Social Relations; Harvard University PhD 1978
Ellen Eliza Fitz
💡 Inventor
📚 Educator
✍️ Author
- spent most of her time as a teenager translating classical texts, such as the Eclogues of Virgil and publishing poetry
- had a passion for map making
- wrote and published a guidebook to go with the Fitz globe mounting system titled "Handbook of the Terrestrial Globe or Guide to Fitz's New Method of Mounting and Operating Globes" which she wrote in order to make the globe understandable and user friendly, whilst promoting her innovations
- most of her adult life was spent in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada where she worked as a governess and educator
- a copy of her original patent for the Fitz globe mount is held with the Ellen Eliza Fitz papers at the Watertown Free Public Library in Massachusetts
- her globe was displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia
- first woman involved in the design and manufacturing of globes
Born: 1835
Country: USA
Education: West Newton State Normal School 1853
Nancy Burr Deloye Fitzroy
⚛️ Engineer for Heat Transfer
- 1 of the 1st female helicopter pilots
- 1st female to study chemical engineering at RPI
- Worked at GE for 37 years
- 1st female president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
- 1st female to head a major national engineering society
- Holds 2 patents
Born: 1927
Country: USA
Education: Rensselear Polytechnic Institute (RPI) BA Chemical Engineering BA 1949
Edith Marie Flanigen
🔬 Chemistry
- Invented molecular sieves or zeolites
- Co-inventor of synthetic emeralds; were used in jewelry for a while & marketed as "Quintessa Collection"
- 1st female recipient of the Perkin Medal
- 42 year career at Union Carbide & UOP
- She & her 2 sisters all studied/majored in chemistry
- Invented or co-invented over 200 different synthetic substances
- Holds 116 patents
Born: 1929
Country: USA
Education: D Youville College BA Chemistry 1950; Syracuse University M.S.Inorganic-Physical Chemistry 1952
![Photo of Abigail "Abbey" M. Fleck](/women_pictures/Fleck_Abigail "Abbey" M..png)
Abigail "Abbey" M. Fleck
💡 Inventor
- her invention made her a millionaire before attaining adulthood
- since 2017 has been fighting to remove fake copies of her pan from being sold on Amazon because the fakes tend to melt in the microwave; holds 2 patents
Born: 1985
Country: USA
Education: Unknown
Williamina "Mina" Paton Stevens Fleming
🔭 Astronomy
- Astronomer at Harvard University Observatory
- was a single mother
- helped develop a common designation system for stars and cataloged more than ten thousand stars, 59 gaseous nebulae, over 310 variable stars, and 10 novae and other astronomical phenomena
- one of the founding members of the Harvard Computers
- 1878 she & her husband James Orr Fleming emigrated to Boston MA
- after her husband abandoned her & their son she worked as a domestic for Professor Edward Charles Pickering, the director of the Harvard College Observatory who later upon the recommendation of his wife taught her how to analyze stellar spectra & hired her to work at the Harvard College Observatory
- 1898 appointed Curator of Astronomical Photographs at Harvard-the first woman to hold the position
- at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago she openly advocated for other women in the sciences in her talk "A Field for Woman's Work in Astronomy" where she openly promoted hiring female assistants in astronomy
- until 1908 her name was omitted from the discovery of the Horsehead Nebulae in 1888 & it was attributed to Prof. Pickering only
- notable publications include A Photographic Study of Variable Stars (1907), a list of 222 variable stars she had discovered; and Spectra and Photographic Magnitudes of Stars in Standard Regions (1911)
- became a US citizen in 1907
- Commemorated on the Dundee Women's Trail
- Fleming lunar crater was jointly named after her and Alexander Fleming
- asteroid 5747 Williamina is named after her
- discovered 94 of the 107 unusual Wolf-Rayet stars known at the time
- enjoyed cooking and needlework, and often sewed dolls costumed in Scottish Highland dress for her employees
- 1879 returned to Scotland to be with family when her son was born
Born: 1857
Country: Scotland
Education: attended public schools in Dundee until she was 14 & was a student teacher from 14-20 when she married
Sally Jean Floyd
💻 Computer Science
- 1975 was a computer systems engineer at Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)
- joined the Network Research Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1990
- 1999 joined the International Computer Science Institute, a research organization affiliated with UC Berkeley, as a research scientist
- retired in 2009
- diagnosed with multiple sclerosis2007
- was an advisor to members of the CS Reentry Program, a department project which prepared “older” women and minorities, who had bachelor’s degrees in non-technical fields, for competitive admission to graduate STEM programs
Born: 1950
Country: USA
Education: University of Michigan-1969 attended 1 year before transferring; University of California-Berkeley BA Sociology 1971, MS 1987 & PhD 1989 both in Computer Science; Merritt College 2 year electronics course
Irmgard Flugge-Lotz
📊 Mathematician
⚛️ Aerospace Engineer
- 1961 first female engineering professor at Stanford University
- first female engineer elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
- mother's family was involved in construction for several generations & she was encouraged to pursue technical subjects by her mother from an early age on
- often visited construction sites with her uncle and attended half-price matinee shows for technical films
- worked for the Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt (AVA) in Göttingen, one of the most prominent aeronautical research institutions in Europe
- she & her husband were banned from academic positions due to Nazi policies but were allowed to continue their research efforts under the protection of Hermann Göring; 1947 the couple moved with many of their colleagues to Paris to join the Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aerospatiales (ONERA)
- 1948 the couple got jobs at Stanford University but due to university policy that didn't allow married couples to both hold professional rank in the same department he became a professor & she was just a lecturer
- 1960 was the only female delegate from the United States at the first Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control in Moscow
- was appointed a full Professor in both Engineering Mechanics and in Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1961; after her retirement in 1968 continued to conduct research on satellite control systems, heat transfer, and high-speed vehicle drag
- after WW1 began & her father was drafted she tutored mathematics and Latin to help the family financially
- became a US citizen in 1954
- while at Stanford established graduate programs in mathematical aerodynamics and hydrodynamics
- 1971 was the first woman to be selected to give the prestigious von Karman Lecture
- has been called the first woman of control engineering
- the Lotz Method is a method for the calculation of the spanwise lift distribution on wings
Born: 1903
Country: Germany
Education: Leibniz University Hannover Diplom-Ingenieur in Applied Mathematics & Fluid Dynamics 1927; PhD in Engineering 1929
Clara Shortridge Foltz
⚖️ Lawyer
- 1st female admitted to the California Bar
- 1st female lawyer on the entire west coast of the US
- Authored a State bill in California known as the "Woman Lawyer Bill" which replaced "white male" with "citizen person"
- Pioneered the idea of the Public Defender
- Criminal courts Building in downtown LA was renamed the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in 2002
- Eloped at age 15 (1864)
- During her 57-year law career, pushed for several progressive legislations for women's rights in voting & the legal field
- In California was the 1st female clerk in the California State Assembly Judiciary Committee, 1st female appointed to the Board of Corrections, 1st female licensed Notary Public, 1st female named the director of a major bank, 1st female to run for Governor of California (at age 81).
- 1910, 1st female Deputy DA in the US
- Raised 5 children as a single parent after her husband abandoned the family in 1876
- Founded the San diego Daily Bee & the New American Women Magazine
- 1881, 1st female to prosecute a murder case
Born: 1849
Country: USA
Education: nothing formal-studied law at her father s law practice
Eunice Newton Foote
⚛️ Physics
- 1st scientist to discuss the Greenhouse Effect
- Signer of the Declaration of Sentiments in Seneca Falls & 1 of the editors of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention
- Published the 1st scientific paper in a science journal by a female in the field of physics
- Her contributions to science were forgotten for almost a century before being re-discovered by female academics in the 20th century
- Her works pre-dated those of John Tyndall by 3 years; he was previously credited with discovering the Greenhouse Effect
- She was a distant relative of the scientist Sir Isaac Newton
- Was educated at Troy Female Seminary, a pioneering women's prep school
- Designed & built a lab in her own home
- Held 6 patents in her husband's names as women of that time were not allowed to hold patents
Born: 1819
Country: USA
Education: Emma Willard School/Troy Female Seminary; Rensselear School
Ida R. Forbes
💡 Inventor
- little is known of her life except the filing of her patent
- was living in Los Angeles CA when she filed her patent
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: Unknown
Hazel Tietjen Forbis
💡 Inventor
- manufactured her cotton swabs in her home
- called her swabs Baby Nose-Gay
- sold her patent assignment in 1925 to Leo Gerstenzang Co & he is often mistakenly identified as the swab inventor after watching his wife add cotton to toothpicks to clean their infant's ears
- little is known about her with the exception being her patent applications-she was living in Missoula Montana when she applied for 2 of her patents (#1652108 in 1925 & #1681031 in 1927) & in California for her 3rd patent (#2261058)
Born: Unknown
Country: assumed to be USA
Education: Unknown
![Photo of Loretta "Lee" C. nee Pflingstel Ford](/women_pictures/Ford_Loretta "Lee" C. nee Pflingstel.png)
Loretta "Lee" C. nee Pflingstel Ford
⚕️ Nursing
- believed that educators should be at the bedside, taking care of patients as well as teaching in the classroom and identifying research opportunities
- known as the “Mother of nurse practitioners”
- 1972 joined the University of Rochester as founding dean of the nursing school where she developed the unification model of nursing
- 1942 joined the US Army Air Force
- wanted to be a teacher as a child but poor family finances caused her to seek a less costly education path
- worked as a nurses' aid after graduating from high school at age 16 & lived with nurses who encouraged her to study nursing when she turned 18
- earned a full-professorship at the University of Colorado School of Nursing in 1965
- retired in 1985 & moved to Florida but continued to consult
Born: 1920
Country: USA
Education: Robert Wood Johnson University Nursing Degree 1941; University of Colorado School of Nursing BS Nursing 1949, MS Public Health Nursing Supervision 1951, EdD 1961
Thea Christiansen Foss
💼 Transportation Entrepreneur
- was the real-life person on which the fictional character "Tugboat Annie" (originally portrayed on film in 1933 by Marie Dressler) may have been very loosely based
- The Thea Foss Waterway, a 1.5-mile (2.4-kilometre) mile inlet in Tacoma's industrial area, and connected to Puget Sound, is named after her
- was particularly known for her skill with Norwegian pastries
- she & her husband smoothed the way for dozens of immigrants, providing employment, explaining American customs, and helping them prepare for citizenship exams
- had a lifelong fear of being on the water
- although boats built by her family usually bore the names of family members she preferred to remain out of the public eye & no boat was named after her until she was dead
- her funeral procession was the largest ever seen in Tacoma
- immigrated to the US in 1881
- The Thea Foss was the only yacht purchased & refurbished by her company & was relaunched in 1933
- 2004 the Thea Foss Lodge of the Daughters of Norway was instituted in Chimacun WA
- a 6524-foot mountain in the Tatoosh Range of Mount Rainier National Park is named Foss Peak after her
- she left school at 14 to work & financially help her family
- she & her husband (Andreas later known as Andrew) Oleson changed their last name to Fossen (Norwegian for waterfall) & later shortened it to Foss
- she created the company's motto "Always Ready"
- 2006 a documentary titled "Finding Thea" about her life was released & won some rewards
- 1889 learned English while traveling from Minnesota to Tacoma by train with her 3 children to reunite with Andrew
- purchased her first rowboat for $5, repaired it & painted it white with green trim-colors still used on all the companies boats
- treated employees as family, cooking for them & eventually building a boardinghouse onto their home to house employees
- reduced her role in the company in 1914 after the death of her 25 year-old daughter from tuberculosis
- has been called The Mother of Tacoma Shipping
- always had coffee brewing on her stove & would often stop to have a cup & conversation with her customers & employees
- lived on the houseboat Andrew built in Tacoma from 1889 to 1914 when he built her a home on dry land
- 1915 the original boathouse was towed to Salmon Beach where it was used as a family retreat cabin but there is no longer any trace of it
Born: 1858
Country: Norway
Education: dropped out of school at age 14
![Photo of Caroline "Cara" Rose Foster](/women_pictures/Foster_Caroline "Cara" Rose.png)
Caroline "Cara" Rose Foster
🔍 Farmer
🔍 Philanthropist
- beginning in 1910 challenged gender roles of the Progressive Era by wearing men's clothing including men's hats, pants, shoes, and tuxedos
- was skilled in fishing, writing, local politics, and carpentry
- The Temple of Abiding Peace is a cottage and garden in Fosterfields and both were designed, constructed, and established by her
- April 1917 her uncle, Sheriff William H. Thompson (1914–16), appointed her as the first female deputy sheriff in Morris County
- 1921 was elected to the Morris County Republican Committee and held the position until 1961
- was very frugal & insisted her relatives should pay for her farm's dairy products like any other consumer
- 1965 received a permit to purchase a handgun, although she was blind by this time
- 1972 donated 120 acres of land to the Morris County Park Commission but she retained the right to hay the field
- 1986 the Friends of Fosterfields & Cooper Mill was formed to help preserve the farm and honor Foster's memory
- father refused to allow her to attend college
- in her 40s her eyesight began to deteriorate & eventually left her totally blind
- 1955 she collaborated with historian Barbara Hoskins on the book "Washington Valley: An Informal History" published in 1960 & she had to hire an assistant to read documents to her because she was blind by then
- Fosterfields has been a working farm since 1760 & her father purchased it from a grandson of Paul Revere
- she lived at Fosterfields for 98 of her 102 years
Born: 1877
Country: USA
Education: Miss Dana's School for Young Laddies 1886-1896
![Photo of Evelyn "Evvy" Ruth Fowler](/women_pictures/Fowler_Evelyn "Evvy" Ruth.png)
Evelyn "Evvy" Ruth Fowler
⚛️ Chemical Engineering
- volunteered for Meals on Wheels, the Tandet Center, the Smith House, and various chamber music groups
- became a vegetarian in the 1970s
- brought the New York Times crosswords to a new art form with her multicolored puzzles
- was turned down for admission to Columbia University because she was a female & from Brooklyn Polytech (now Polytechnic University) because they had no bathrooms for females so she returned to Pratt for her chemical engineering degree
- designed the original logo for the Society of Women Engineers (SWE)
- hobbies included painting, swimming & yoga
Born: 1921
Country: USA
Education: Art School of Pratt Institute 1942; Stevens Institute mechanical drawing classes; Pratt Institute Chemical Engineering degree
Sally V. Fox
🔍 Cotton Breeder
- 1988 at Texas Tech University she successfully produced her first species of naturally colored cotton that could be spun on a machine
- obtained Plant Variety Protection Certificates (the equivalent of patents for plants) and trademarked her cotton brand: FoxFibre
- each color of cotton takes approximately ten years of cross-breeding before it can be sold on the market
- was not the first person to invent nor harvest naturally colored cotton but was the first to invent a species of naturally colored cotton that could be spun into thread via machine
- grows all her cotton without pesticides or chemical pesticides
- also sells yarn, fabric, and her own grown heirloom wheat on her website
- is one of the top hand-spinners in the country
- originally cross-pollinated all her plants on her 40-acre farm by hand
- her life-long goal is to protect and preserve the environment
- some of the sustainable practices used on her farm include rotating wheat with cotton production in the field, integrating animals by having sheep graze her fields, and planting black-eyes peas next to the cotton and these practices are sinking carbon into the soil
- worked her way through college by teaching, spinning, and handweaving
- became interested +in fiber at age 11 or 12 & bought her 1st spindle at a renaisance fair using it to create threads of cotton from things like dog hair & linen
- joined the Peace corps after college & went to Gambia West Africa where she was exposed to the dangers of pesticides like DDT & became so ill she had to return home
- her 160-acre farm in the Capay Valley of California (northeast of San Francisco) is called Viriditas Farm
- she used to gather musk-ox hair from the San Francisco Zoo & spin it into yarn
Born: 1955
Country: USA
Education: University of California Riverside MSc Entomology/Integrated Pest Management 1981; California State Polytechnic University BSc Biology, minor in Entomology 1979
Yvette Fayá Francis-McBarnette
🔍 Pediatrics
- none
Born: 1926
Country: Jamaica
Education: Hunter College BA Physics; Columbia University MA Chemistry; Yale School of Medicine MD 1950
Louise Frankfurt
🎨 Design
🔍 Philanthropy
- founded the dance troupe "Always on Sunday Line Dancers"
- was responsible for introducing yoga breaks at Page Boy Maternity Wear, a company founded by her 2 older sisters Edna & Elsie where she was the head of the design studio
- was the facilitator in persuading Hutchins State Jail to raise fresh produce for the food bank
- always had a deep interest in holistic medicine and was constantly looking for new and innovative ways to improve health and well-being
- established the Louise Gartner Hyperbaric Oxygen Center at Baylor Hospital in 2002
Born: 1920
Country: USA
Education: University of Illinois 1940s
Elsie Frankfurt Pollock
🎨 Clothing Design
- the new Page Boy skirt was constructed with a window over the area of the expanding abdomen which allowed the hemline to remain stable rather than to hike up as the woman's abdomen increased in size
- a maternity-wear conglomerate acquired Page Boy in 1993 but decided to discontinue the brand
- their first Page Boy store was within view of passing pregnant patients in Dallas’s Medical Arts Building
- among the Page Boy customers were: Jackie Kennedy, Princess Grace, Lucille Ball, Judy Garland, Eva Marie Saint, & elizabeth Taylor
- in the early 1960s se introduced yoga to the manufacturing plant, closing it down for 15 minutes every afternoon for relaxation
- Hired mostly women for her company
- 1982 President Reagan appointed her to serve on the National Advisory council on continuing Education
- was a staunch supporter of women's rights
Born: 1911
Country: USA
Education: Southern Methodist University BA Mathematics & Design
Edna Frankfurt Ravkind
🔍 Fashion
🔍 Textiles
- was the inspiration for her sister Elsie to design a stylish maternity suit with a hem-line that stayed parallel to the ground throughout pregnancy
- she kept the factory & shops running & selling while her sister Elsie was the public face of the company & sister Louise ran the design studio
- was named as co-inventor of the patented pregnancy skirt
- 1st retail store was in Dallas' Medical Arts building where most of the cities obstetricians were located so potential customers were exposed to their clothing displays each time they visited their doctor during their pregnancies
- sold Page Boy in 1993 & the new owners discontinued the brand
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: Unknown
Rosalind Elsie Franklin
🔬 Physical Chemistry
🔍 X-ray crystallography
- Confirmed Watson-Crick DNA model with Photo 51
- Was never awarded a Nobel Prize because it's not given posthumously & she died at age 38
- Her biographer, Brenda Maddox, called her "The Dark Lady of DNA"
- Was an expert in x-ray diffraction photos
- Discovered B-DNA-a 2nd type of DNA that forms after DNA is exposed to high levels of moisture
- An asteroid roughly between the orbits of Mars & Jupiter is named Rosfranklin in tribute to her
- Helped lay the foundation for the field of structural virology
Born: 1920
Country: Great Britain
Education: Newnham College, Cambridge Natural Sciences Degree 1941; University of Cambridge PhD Physical Chemistry 1945
Njema Frazier
⚛️ Nuclear Physics
- none
Born: 1974
Country: USA
Education: National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
Helen Murray Free
🔬 Chemistry
- She & her husband Alfred invented dip-stick tests
- She originally wanted to be an English teacher but WWII made it possible for more women to study science
- After graduating, began a career at Miles Labs where she & her husband improved & developed new strip testing
- After retiring, spent her time promoting science education with programs such as "Kids & Chemistry" & "Expanding Your Horizons"
- Held 6 patents
Born: 1923
Country: USA
Education: College of Wooster BS Chemistry 1945; Central Michigan University MA Management 1978
Elizabeth Jane Poorman French
⚕️ Galvanic Medicine
🔍 spititualism
- she contended electrical currents were the medium for the spiritual world
- maintained in 1833 a stroke of lightening killed her brother and sister and paralyzed one-half of her mother’s body; she then reportedly used “certain rude batteries” and “restored to life” her mother’s disabled side
- during the last decade of her life last decade of her life she turned away from galvanic medicine and became a Christian Scientist
- mentored Emma Harding (later professionally known as Dr. Emma Hardinge Britten) & together they opened free clinics in New York city & Philadelphia where poor women could receive electrical treatment for illnesses
- was a strong advocate for temperance & in 1874 was installed as president of a Temperance Union Home for alcoholics in Philadelphia
- fraudulently claimed to be a docyor &/or a professor during her life
Born: 1821
Country: USA
Education: Unknown
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
🎨 Art
🤖 Painting
- see link :: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260325-the-artworks-by-women-where-men-got-the-credit
Heather Friedli Ratzlaf
🎨 Art - Snow Sculpting
- is captain of Team Kwe, the only Indigenous snow sculpting team in North America
- 2010 thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail
- is certified as a Wilderness First Responder
- her trail name is "Crafty"
Born: 1982
Country: USA
Education: Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) BFA Fiber, Textiles & Weaving Arts 2005
Adena T. Friedman
💰 Finance
- none
Born: 1969
Country: USA
Education: Williams College BA Political Science & Government; Vanderbilt University s Owen Graduate School of Management MBA 1993
Elizebeth Smith Friedman
🔍 Cryptography
- over the course of her career for the United States Treasury, Coast Guard, Navy and Army, and the International Monetary Fund
- has been called "America's first female cryptanalyst"
- dropped out of Wooster college in 1913 because her mother was ill & transferred to Hillsdale College
- began working at Riverbank Laboratories in Geneva, Illinois, in 1916; it was one of the first facilities in the U.S. established to study cryptography
- at Riverbank worked on a project to prove Sir Francis Bacon had written Shakespeare's plays and sonnets
- during WWI she & her husband William developed many of the principles of modern cryptology
- 1921 the Friedmans went to work for the War Department in Washington DC
- 1971 she donated her own papers, which are now known as The Elizebeth Smith Friedman Collection at the Marshall Foundation
- worked on behalf of statehood for the District of Columbia
- signed an oath with the U.S. Navy promising to keep her role in World War II secret until her death & her papers weren't declassified until 2008
- is known to have been a hairdresser, seamstress, and fashion consultant
- her mother didn't want her to be nicknamed "Eliza" & hence the odd spelling of her 1st name
- in college also studied Latin, Greek, and German
- 1916 was recruited by George Fabyan to work on his 500-acre estate at Riverbank, his private "think tank" to prove Bacon really wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare
- 1931 she convinced Congress of the need to establish a cryptology department within the government
- introduced her husband who is better known for his cryptology skills to the field after they married
- after her husband's death compiled all his cryptology works (including hers) into the largest library of cryptology works known to man & donated them to the George C. Marshall Research Library in Lexington, Virginia
- 1937 used her code-breaking skills to assist the Canadian government in breaking an opium operation in Canada
- was the youngest of 10 children born into a Quaker family (1 of the children died in infancy)
- was only the 2nd child in the family allowed to attend college
- although her father was opposed to her attending college (he felt women had no need for an education) he agreed to fund her college classes after she agreed to pay him back with 6% interest
- by 1931 led the Coast Guards first official codebreaking unit
- during WWII her unit broke the codes on about 50 Nazi radio circuits, including at least two protected with Enigma machines but J. Edgar Hoover took credit for her accomplishments which weren't really released to the public until 2008 when her documents were declassified
- 1958 the NSA sent agents to the Friedmans’ house on Capitol Hill and confiscated dozens of papers from their library, even old papers going all the way back to World War I & labelled them national security threats-a move they were humiliated by given their loyalty & work for the government during 2 World Wars
- was also a poet, a scholar of both Shakespeare and Mayan archaeology
- 1st code they broke for the military was the Zimmerman Telegram sent to Mexico from Germany suggesting an alliance against the USA in exchange for the return of Texas & other property ceded to the USA
- during WWII her supervisor was a navy lieutenant who received most of the credit for her work, it was only after her work was declassified that her initials, esf, were noted on the bottom of her work that enabled her to finally receive credit
Born: 1892
Country: USA
Education: College of Wooster 1911-13 transferred to Hillsdale College; Hillsdale college BA English Literature 1915; American University MA Archaeology
Charlotte Friend
🔬 Microbiology
🔍 Virology
- Her techniques and characterisation studies allowed the future isolation of the human immunodeficiency virus & improved research on HIV
- 1956 discovered a particular virus caused leukemia in mice
- was an outspoken critic of sexism in science & defended Rosalind Franklin's contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA
- 1975 helped create the Israeli Cancer Research Fund
- was renowned for her generosity in distributing Friend virus and Friend cells to those who wanted to work with them and for providing the necessary guidance and assistance
- loved to travel & her sabbatical years (1963 and 1975) were spent in laboratories in Australia, Israel, France, and Italy
- wrote a paper titled "Why I Want to Become a Bacteriologist" when she was 10
- although hired as a professor she avoided classroom teaching in favor of pure research
- spoke and wrote in favor of the rights of blacklisted colleagues during the 1950s McCarthy trials
- was the 1st female president of the New York Academy of Sciences
- was extremely close to her mother & lived with her until she died in 1961
- father died when she was 3 leaving mother alone to care for the 4 children & they went on "relief"
- enlisted in the US Navy after graduating in 1944 & was assigned to work in the hematology lab at US Naval Hospital Shoemaker in California
- 1966 began working as a professor & the director of the Center for Experimental Cell Biology at Mount Sinai Hospital
- diagnosed with lymphomas on her 60th birthday & insisted the diagnosis remain secret, she died 5 years later
- worked at Sloan Kettering Institute 1950-1966
- published 163 papers
Born: 1921
Country: USA
Education: Hunter College BA 1944; Yale University PhD 1950 Microbiology/Bacteriology
![Photo of Sonia "Sunny" Pressman Fuentes](/women_pictures/Fuentes_Sonia "Sunny" Pressman.png)
Sonia "Sunny" Pressman Fuentes
⚖️ Lawyer
✍️ Author
- was a Holocaust refugee escaping from Germany to Belgium then the US (1934) at age 5
- author of a memoir, Eat First—You Don't Know What They'll Give You, The Adventures of an Immigrant Family and Their Feminist Daughter (1999)
- was the first woman to address the Rotary Club of Chiang-Mai,Thailand on Women's issues
- was considered an “American specialist” on women’s rights for USIA
- is a breast cancer survivor
- testified in Congress in favor of passage of the 1963 Equal Pay legislation
- served as an attorney with the DOJ, NLRB, and HUD
- was at GTE Service Corporation and TRW as an attorney and executive
- retired in 1993 & subsequently moved to Sarasota Fla
- graduated first in her class at the University of Miami School of Law
- stood for the aggressive enforcement of the gender discrimination prohibitions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
- one of six permanent exhibits at the Red Star Line (RSL) Museum, dedicated to immigration and the RSL, that opened in Antwerp, Belgium, on September 28, 2013, is about her
- English was her 4th language
- was the staff person who was identified with enunciating the EEOC’s interpretations of the sex discrimination prohibitions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the law that prohibits employment discrimination
- was a consultant to the Women’s Department and the Department of Labour for the Province of Ontario when Ontario was considering the passage of such legislation, which legislation was also subsequently passed
Born: 1928
Country: Germany
Education: Cornell University BA Liberal Arts or Psychology 1950; University of Miami School of Law LLB 1957
Almyra Oveta Fuller
🔍 Virology
- none
Born: 1955
Country: USA
Education: UNC Chapel Hill BA Biology 1977, PhD Microbiology & Immunology 1983
![Photo of Mary Wallace "Wally" Funk](/women_pictures/Funk_Mary Wallace "Wally".png)
Mary Wallace "Wally" Funk
🔭 Astronautics
- none
Born: 1939
Country: USA
Education: Stephens College AA 1958; Oklahoma State University BS Secondary Education
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