Women
Joan Constance Manning Anderson
🔍 Model
- her story was largely unknown until the 2018 documentary “Hula Girl,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival
- worked as a model after emigrating to the US with her American husband in 1946
- discovered the hula hoop while visiting Australia in the 1956 & noticing it was very popular there
- had her mother send her 1 of the hoops & she & her husband played with it for months before showing it to friends
- at an informal meeting with Wham-O president Arthur “Spud” Melin they struck a deal with just a handshake
- wham-O made millions from Hula Hoop & Anderson sued them & in 1961 settled for $6,000 after legal fees using the money to start a successful woodwork machine manufacturing business
- continued to keep the original wooden hoop her mother sent her from Australia in her living room & when interviewed at age 94 claimed she still occasionally used it
- her family remembers her as a remember her as a woman who didn’t let disappointment define her & who believed that happiness is the best revenge
- the film "Hula Girl" is available on platforms like Amazon Prime
- as a model worked with Marilyn Monroe
- as a swimsuit model known as the “Pocket Venus” because she was 5 feet 2 inches tall
- in 2016 Anderson’s daughter was recounting the story of her parents' involvement with the Hula Hoop to co-workers while dining at a restaurant in La Mesa, near San Diego when a woman at another table was eavesdropping; the woman the mother of Amy Hill, a filmmaker who subsequently the documentary Hula Girl with her husband Chris Riess
- at her retirement home she became a formidable bridge player, swam weekly & took ballroom dancing lessons to stay fit
Born: 1923
Country: Australia
Education: Unknown
_Monica.png)
Monica Anderson (AI, Swedish-American)
🤖 AI
- TBD
Born: Unknown
Country: Sweden
Education: Linkoping University MS Computer Science 1985
_Monica.png)
Monica Anderson (Robotics)
💻 Computer Science
🔍 Robotics
- Works on robotics with a focus on multi-agency systems, multi-robot systems & user interfaces
- Director of Distributed Autonomy Lab at Computer Science Dept of University of Alabama
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: Chicago State University BS Computer Science 1990; University of Minnesota PhD Computer Science/Engineering 2006
Ethel Percy Andrus
📚 Educator
✊ Activist
- founder of AARP & NRTA
- was a volunteer at Jane Addams' Hull House
- The Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center at USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology is named for her & is the oldest & largest existing professional school of gerontology
- 1944 retired from teaching to care for her ailing mother
- Her motto was "To serve, not to be served"
- decided to form NRTA after visiting a retired teacher who was living in a chicken coop because inflation & high health care costs had eroded her pension & she couldn't afford decent housing
Born: 1884
Country: USA
Education: University of Chicago BA Philosophy 1903; USC MA 1928 & PhD 1930; Lewis Institute (now Illinois Institute of Technology) BS 1918
Mary Anning
🔍 Paleontology
- Fossil collector, dealer, & paleontologist
- Located fossils in Jurassic marine fossil beds in cliffs along English Channel at Lyme Regis in Blue Lias & Charmouth Mudstone Cliffs
- Age 12, discovered 1st ichthyosaur skeleton, 1st two nearly complete plesiosaur skeletons & 1st pterosaur skeleton located outside of Germany
- Played a key role in discovering coprolites, known as bezoar stones, were fossilized feces
- Discovered belemnite fossils contained ink sacs like those of modern cephalopods
- Was not eligible for membership in the Geological Society of London because she was female
- Males were often credited with her discoveries
- 1793, lived in a house built on a bridge in Lyme; family once had to evacuate through a 2nd story window to avoid drowning
- 1 of 10 children born to her parents but only she & and older brother, Joseph, survived to adulthood with most dying before age 2
- Age 15/months, while being held by a neighbor talking to 2 other women under a tree, the tree was struck by lightning; the 3 women died but she survived
- Helped financially support her family by finding fossils & selling them to tourists outside her family home; eventually opened a shop on ground floor of the home (1826)
- 1833, while collecting, part of a cliff collapsed killing her dog who accompanied her on her searches & narrowly missing her
Born: 1799
Country: Great Britain
Education: learned reading & writing at a Congregationalist Sunday School; self-taught geology & anatomy
Kristi S. Anseth
⚛️ Biological Engineering
⚛️ Chemical Engineering
- Studies natural & synthetic hydrogels & the use of biomaterials to create an extracellular matrix to supply 3-D cells
- Is trying to create a polymer that will change from soft to hard in response to cues such as ultraviolet light & degrade predictably over time
- Looking at tissue engineering of biomaterials for the replacement of cartilage & heart valves; 1st engineer of either sex selected as Howard Hughes Medical Investigator
- Holds 17 patents
Born: 1968
Country: USA
Education: University of North Dakota-Williston-transferred to Purdue University to complete BS in Chemical Engineering, completed 1992; PhD, University of Colorado, 1994; post-doctoral work at MIT & Purdue
Susan B. Anthony
🔍 Social reform
- Was raised as a Quaker
- Organized Woman's New York State Temperance Society in approximately 1952
- 1872 was arrested for casting a vote in the presidential election in Rochester, NY, was convicted & fined $100 but refused to pay, case went no further
- 22020, President Trump pardoned her for the 1872 conviction
- 1920, the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote is known as the Susan B. Anthony amendment
- Was an active member of the Underground Railroad
- was invited to the White House to celebrate her 80th birthday by President William McKinley
Born: 1820
Country: USA
Education: Received education from District School in Battensville, NY & a school founded & run by her father; attended 1 semester at boarding school in Philadelphia
![Photo of Kathleen "Kay" Rita Mauchly Antonelli McNulty](/women_pictures/Antonelli McNulty_Kathleen "Kay" Rita Mauchly.png)
Kathleen "Kay" Rita Mauchly Antonelli McNulty
💻 Computer Science
- 1 of the 6 Women of ENIAC remembered as "Hidden Figures"
- on the night of her birth during the Irish War of Independence her father was arrested as a suspected IRA member & bomber, he spent the next 2 years in Derry Jail & the family emigrated to the US in 1924 about a year after his release settling in Philadelphia
- Irish was her 1st language & she recalled remembering prayers in Irish for the rest of her life
- attended parochial schools & an all-girls high school & college
- after college graduation was hired as a "human computer" to compute ballistics trajectories used for artillery firing tables at the Ballistic Research laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Grounds with a starting salary of $1,620 yearly
- each gun required its own firing table which had approximately 1,800 trajectories & computing 1 trajectory required 30-40hours of calculation with a calculator
- worked with differential analyser which cut the calculation time to 50 minutes for 1 trajectory, when using ENIAC could complete 1 trajectory in approximately 10 seconds but setting up the computer to run a new calculation could take 1-2 days
- in the very beginning ENIAC program was so highly classified the programmers weren't allowed in the room with it & had to use blueprints to work out the programming
- her team tested the feasibility of the H-Bomb
- at ENIACs launch the women who programmed it were instructed to act as hpostesses & greet those around them, they received no recognition for their work until decades later
- 1948 she married John Mauchly (died 1980) the co-inventor of ENIAC, quit her job at Aberdeen & continued to work with hi on software for other hardware he developed
- her parents, especially her mother, objected to the marriage
- Married 2nd husband Severo Antonelli 1985 & he died 1996
Born: 1921
Country: Ireland
Education: chestnut Hill college BA Mathematics 1942
Virginia Apgar
⚛️ Biomedical Engineering
🔍 Anesthesiology
- 1953, invented Apgar Score-a quick way to assess the health of a newborn infant to combat infant mortality
- With Allen Whipple, started Columbia University's College of Physicians & Surgeons Anesthesia Division
- From 1959 to 1974 worked for March of Dimes as Vice President for medical research
- Promoted universal vaccination for rubella & effective use of RH testing
- 1st to hold a faculty position in the field of teratology (study of birth defects)
- 1972, with Joan Beck, wrote, "Is My Baby All Right?"
- Played the violin & travelled with it, often joining in with amateur chamber quartets wherever she went
Born: 1909
Country: USA
Education: Mount Holyoke College, AB in Zoology, 1929; Columbia University of Physicians & Surgeons, MD 1933; John Hopkins School of Public Health, MPH 1959
Mary Arlene Appelhof
🔬 Biology
- hobbies included swimming and award-winning nature photography
- taught science in Michigan
- began experimenting with worms and organic waste in the 1970s
- known as the Worm Woman of Kalamazoo
- marketed worms on a commercial scale
- liked wearing tie-died shirts
- carried a rubber earthworm in her pocket
- holds 1 patent
Born: 1936
Country: USA
Education: Michigan State University BS 1958, MS 1959 both in Biology, MS Education
Leanna Archer
💼 Entrepreneur
- started her business in her basement after researching how to start & run a business on the Internet
- her parents eventually quit their jobs to help her run her business
- 2008 just shy of her 13th birthday she became the youngest CEO & person to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange
- was earning $100,000 by age 16
Born: 1995
Country: USA
Education: Unknown
Treena Livingston Arinzeh
⚛️ Biomedical Engineering
- Known for research in adult stem cell therapy
- Through Project Reads Program opens up her lab at Columbia University to economically disadvantaged High School students for summer internships
- Founded the 1st Tissue Engineering & Applied Biomaterials Lab at New Jersey Institute of Technology, 2001
- Discovered that mixing stem cells with scaffolding allows regeneration of bone growth & the repair of tissue damage
- Discovered one person's stem cells could be implanted in another persons without causing an adverse immune response
Born: 1970
Country: USA
Education: Rutgers University, BS in Mechanical Engineering, 1992; Johns Hopkins University, MSE in Biological Engineering, 1994; University of Pennsylvania, PhD in Bioengineering, 1999
Frances Hamilton Arnold
⚛️ Chemical Engineering
- 2018, recipient of Nobel Prize in Chemistry for pioneering the use of directed evolution to engineer enzymes
- Co-chair of President Biden's Council of Advisors on Science & Technology (PCAST) since 2021
- As a high school student, hitchhiked from her home in Pittsburgh to DC to protest the Vietnam War; lived on her own working as a cocktail waitress at a local jazz bar & as a cab driver
- Was very independent, skipped a lot of school & received low grades while scoring almost perfectly on standardized tests
- Applied to Princeton as a mechanical engineer because it was the easiest option to get into school
- After her 2nd year at Princeton, took a year off, went to Italy & worked in a factory that made nuclear reactor parts
- Founded GEVO to make fuels & chemicals from renewable sources; founded Provivi with 2 of her former students to research alternatives to pesticides for crop protection
- Is a breast cancer survivor
- Holds 56 patents
Born: 1956
Country: USA
Education: Princeton University, BS in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, 1979; University of California, Berkeley, MS, PhD in Chemical Engineering, 1985
Yasmine Alexandra Arrington Brooks
🔍 Millennial Influencer
- Father was in & out of prison since she was a toddler
- she & her 2 brothers were raised by their maternal grandmother after their mother died when Jasmine was 13
Born: 1993
Country: USA
Education: Elon University BA Strategic Communications & History 2015; Howard University School of Divinity Masters of Divinity 2018; NYU Faith, Innovation & social Impact ertification
Ellen Marie Arruda
⚛️ Mechanical Engineering
- Professor at University of Michigan since 1992
- Hobbies include running, cooking & knitting
- was taught crocheting by her mother & knitting by her mother-in-law
- holds 15 patents
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: Pennsylvania State University BS Engineering Science 1985 & MS Engineering Mechanics 1988; MIT PhD Mechanical Engineering 1992
Maria Alexandra Artunduaga
⚕️ Medicine
- Granted permanent US residency for research contributions to genetics in 2011
- in her free time enjoys flamenco dancing, singing, travelling & fostering diversity inside & outside the work place
- switched from being a surgeon to being an inventor/entrepreneur after her grandmother died of COPD & she sought a cure/better treatment & diagnostics for COPD
- had 1st child at age 42 after a 4-year IVF journey
- sued the University of Chicago Medical Center for country of origin discrimination & lost
- holds 7 patents (only 5 located)
Born: Unknown
Country: Columbia
Education: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana MD 2003; UC Berkeley MTM (Master of Transitional Medicine) 2018; University of Washington MPH 2016; Postgraduate work at Harvard & University of Chicago
Dorothy Emma Arzner
🔍 Motion Picture Director
- 1st woman to direct a talking film "Manhattan Cocktail" (1928).
- made a total of twenty films between 1927 and 1943 and launched the careers of a number of Hollywood actresses including Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, Lucille Ball, Ruth Chatterton, Sylvia Sidney, and Irene Dunne
- first woman to join the Directors Guild of America
- took 2 years of pre-med courses at USC before joining an ambulance company during WWI
- edited the Rudolph Valentino film Blood and Sand (1922) for Paramount using stock bull-fighting footage & saving the company money in the process but was never mentioned in the film credits
- many of her films had the theme of unconventional romance
- after 1932 left Paramount to work freelance & worked with RKO, United Artists, Columbia, and MGM
- left Hollywood in 1943
- made Women's Army Corps training films during World War II and declined an appointment to a position as an Army Major
- 1952 joined the staff of the College of the Arts of the Playhouse as the head of the Cinema and Television Department
- 1961 joined the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, in the Motion Picture division as a staff member, where she spent four years supervising advanced cinema classes before retiring in June 1965
- at UCLA taught Francis Ford Coppola
- her documents, files and films are preserved in Cinema and Television File in UCLA, thanks to Jodie Foster, who raised sufficient funds for their maintenance
- maintained a forty-year relationship with Marion Morgan, a dancer and choreographer who choreographed many of her movies
- her films are notable for the depictions of women's relationships & she typically reversed societal expectations of women, allowing them to find solidarity with one another
- her film "Dance, Girl, Dance" (1940) has been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant
Born: 1897 or 1900
Country: USA
Education: USC 2 years pre-med classes
Chieko Asakawa
💻 Computer Science
🔍 Accessibility
- Began losing her sight at age 11 after injuring her optic nerve; completely blind by 14
- Developed Netscape browser plug-in, the IBM Home Reader; it is the most widely used web-to-speech system available
- Has developed a word processor for Braille documents, a digital library for Braille documents, an app for improving accessibility of streaming services, & a system that enables sighted web designers to experience the web as blind people do
- Is working on a suitcase robot to help blind people navigate through complicated terrain; Holds 21 patents
Born: 1958
Country: Japan
Education: Otemon Gakuin University, BA English Literature, 1982; University of Tokyo, PhD in Engineering, 2004
Christie Aschwanden
🔬 Science Journalism
- as an athlete enjoys cycling (was a professional cyclist in college) & Nordic skiing (has raced on the Team Rossignol Nordic ski racing squad)
- live in western Colorado on a small winery & farm with her husband Dave (a vintner) & several animals
- winery produces Chill Switch Wines
- enjoys trail running, skiing, bicycling, reading novels, gardening, & raising heritage chickens
- blogs about science at "Last Word on Nothing"
- was a high school track star
- author of "Beautiful chickens" a coffee table book about chicken breeds
Born: 1971
Country: USA
Education: University of Colorado Boulder Biology; UC Santa Cruz Science Communication 1998
Valerie V. Sheares Ashby
🔬 Chemistry
- holds 8 patents & 2 pending in polymer chemistries critical for biomedical applications
- always wanted to be a teacher
- credits her parents with making her the leader she is today; father was a minister & mother was an English teacher who founded & ran a homeless shelter for 30 years after her retirement
- has 4 mentors she consults when needed
Born: 1966
Country: USA
Education: UNC Chapel Hill BA 1988 & PhD 1994 Chemistry
Barbara S. Askins
🔬 Chemistry
- invented a process that intensified underexposed photo negatives revealing details in images from deep space never detected before
- began her career as a teacher; returned to school to complete her BA & obtain an MA after her 2 children began school
- Began working at NASAs Marshall space flight Center in 1975
- was the 1st female recipient of the National Inventor of the Year Award
Born: 1939
Country: USA
Education: University of Alabama Huntsville BA & MA Chemistry
Tara Astigarraga
⚛️ Engineering
- Member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma
- is an IBM Master Inventor
- has been employed at IBM since 2001
- before an internship at IBM her senior year of college, wanted to be a bilingual teacher or social worker
- received her 1st patent in 2008
- likes solving real-world problem
- is very active in recruiting Native Americans to STEM & engineering careers
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: University of Arizona BA Spanish Linguistics & Communications 2001, MS Computer Information Systems
Estella Atekwana
⚛️ Biogeophysics
⚛️ Tectonphysics
- Grew up in Cameroon
- Switched her major from pre-med to geology after a teacher told her girls weren't suited for field work to prove that teacher wrong
- Is a pioneer in Biogeophysics which uses geophysics to understand the biochemical interactions occurring at contaminated sites
- Is involved in a program to use smartphones with geophysical sensors to potentially gather data for institutions that don't have access to expensive equipment
Born: 1961
Country: Cameroon
Education: 1983, BS in Geology, Howard University; 1986, MS in Geology, Howard University; 1991, PhD in Geophysics, Dalhousie University
Balanda Atis
🔬 Cosmetic Chemistry
- Develops makeup for women of color
- Is a 1st generation Haitian-American
- Developed the foundation makeup Lupita Nyong'o wore in ads for L'Oreal
- Holds 3 patents
- Is raising her godchild & adopted a child in Haiti;
Born: 1972
Country: USA
Education: BA in Biology, Rutgers University; MS in Cosmetic Science, Fairleigh Dickinson University
Priscilla Auchincloss
⚛️ Physics
🔍 Dance
🔍 Yoga
- wanted to be a ballerina & spent her early 20s in NY studying modern dance & ballet before deciding she would never master pirouettes & began studying physics
- spent 19.5 years on staff at the University of Rochester before studying Continuum & becoming a certified teacher of it in 2010
- now teaches yoga in Rochester NY
Born: 1952
Country: USA
Education: NYU BA Physics & Astronomy 1977; Columbia University PhD Physics 1987
Donna Auguste
💻 Computer Science
🤖 Artificial Intelligence
- At Apple developed Newton personal digital assistant (PDA)
- She & her 4 sisters were raised by her single mother
- As a child she liked to take things (doorbells & appliances) apart to see how they worked
- 1st female African-American to attend the PhD program at Carnegie-Mellon University
- After working at IntelliCorp on AI, she took 2 months off to bicycle through the countryside of Japan
- 1996, co-founded Freshwater Software Inc & took it from a small startup to a nationally recognized multimillion dollar software provider; 2001 sold the company to Mercury Interactive Corporation of California for $147 million
- Retired in 2001 & founded Leave a Little Room Foundation, LLC; it provides housing, electricity & vaccinations to poor & underprivileged communities around the world
- Holds 14 patents
Born: 1958
Country: USA
Education: BS in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley; PhD in Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
.png)
MeMe (also MiMi) Aung
⚛️ Electrical Engineering
- lead engineer on Mars Helicopter Ingenuity, the 1st extraterrestrial aircraft; creates sensor tech for space flight missions; Born in USA but family returned to Burma whebn she was 2; she returned to USA at 16 to continue education
Born: 1968
Country: USA
Education: University of Illinois Urbana-champaign BSEE & MS 1990
Elizabeth Alice Austen
🎨 Landscape design
📷 Documentary photography
- Was with her life partner, Gertrude Tate, for 56 years
- Her home on Staten Island, NY is a museum that fosters creative expression, explores personal identity, & inspires the public through interpretation of her photographs, life, & home; it is a nationally designated site of LGBTQ history
- She was introduced to photography at age 10
- Took over 8,000 pictures during her lifetime
- She was 1 of the 1st female photographers to work outside of a studio
- Was independently wealthy through birth until the crash of 1929
- was the 1st woman on Staten Island to own an automobile
- Mother's maiden name was Austen, was born Elizabeth Alice Munn but father abandoned the family when she was 3, preferred to use her mother's name; the museum at her Staten Island home houses approximately 7,500 of her pictures, approximately 500 of her pictures are available digitally for study through the Historical Society
Born: 1866
Country: USA
Education: unknown
Wanda Lena Austin
💼 Business Executive
⚛️ Engineering Aerospace
- none
Born: 1954
Country: USA
Education: BA in Mathematics, Franklin & Marshall College, 1975; MA in Systems Engineering & Mathematics, University of Pittsburgh, 1975; PhD University of Southern California, 1988
Stephanie Avery Taylor
🔍 Racial Justice
📚 Environmental Educator
💰 Finance
- has an extensive background in racial justice programming, environmental education and finance management
- has been employed at Working Films (company akes documentaries to advance social justice & environmental protection) as Director of Finance & Organizational Resilience since 2018
- occasionally teaches kids cooking classes centered on introducing cultures through food
- enjoys playing music, cooking, hiking, exploring and spending time with family
- personally built nature trails through the wetlands using the best practices of “Leave No Trace,” spearheaded the identification of the flora and fauna, and created a tent classroom
Born: 1975
Country: USA
Education: Coastal Carolina University Gerontology/psychology 1996-2000; UNC-Wilmington Religion-Asian Studies 2002-05; Landmark Learning Center Certification as an LNT Master Educator 2007
![Photo of Penina "Penny" Axelrad](/women_pictures/Axelrad_Penina "Penny".png)
Penina "Penny" Axelrad
⚛️ Aerospace Engineer
- at MIT was captain of the school fencing team
- has been on the faculty of the University of Colorado since 1992
- 1991 worked for Stanford Telecommunications building receivers which she believes increased her knowledge of GPS
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: MIT SB Aeronautical Engineering 1985 & SM Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering 1986; Stanford University PhD Aeronautics & Astronautics 1991
Virginia Mae Axline
🔍 Psychology
- taught elementary school for several years
- began collaborating with Carl Rogers at Ohio State University
- left her entire estate including future royalties from er books to diocesan child guidance Center (DCGC) in columbus, OH
- 1984 a guardian was appointed to handle her affairs after several strokes & medical issues made her unable to take care of herself
- was considered to be a very private person who was difficult to get to know
- her parents & her only sister were her closest friends until their deaths
Born: 1911
Country: USA
Education: Ohio State University BS English & Elementary Education 1931 & MS Psychology Administration 1940; Columbia University Teachers college PhD Education 1950
Katy E. Ayers
🔍 Mycology
- made a canoe (Myconoe) from mycelium;
- currently working on "bee hotels" because bees fed on mushrooms have lower incidents of viruses
- was a gas station attendant in 2013 & in 2023 was a Marshall Scholar finalist
- her goal is a PhD in metabolic engineering focused on mycology & help develop myco-engineering as a subdiscipline of bioengineering
- has 3 notebooks full of different ideas for mushroom builds
- Myconoe was on display aat the Nebraska State Fair for 3 years & holds the Guiness World Record for worlds longest fungal boat
- likes to crochet, hike, forage & read during her spare time
- had a summer internship at Nebraska Mushroom LLC where she learned about creating spawn & harvesting, processing & packaging mushrooms; grew Myconoe there with the help of owner Ash Gordon
Born: 1992
Country: USA
Education: Central Community College AS Biology/Mycology 2021; Washington State University Pullman BS Bioengineering & Biochemistry 2024
Hertha Ayrton
⚛️ Electrical Engineering
- was born Phoebe Sarah Marks & was known as Sarah growing up
- there are 2 stories about how she became known as Hertha; the 1st says she became an agnostic at age 16 & began calling herself Hertha after the heroine of a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne that criticized organized religion; the 2nd story says she was nicknamed Hertha by her friend Ottilie Hancock after the heroine of a novel by Swedish feminist Frederika Bremer
- father died in 1861 when her mother was pregnant with their 8th child, she was the 3rd child & helped by assuming responsibility for her younger siblings
- at age 9 was invited to live with her aunt Marion Hartog (an author) & her family in northwestern London & attend a school run by Marion & her husband
- by 16 was working as a governess
- George Eliot supported her application to Girton College in Cambridge where she studied mathematics, constructed a sphygmomanmeter (blood pressure meter), led the choral society, founded the Girton fire brigade, & with charlotte Scott formed a mathematical club
- 1880 passed her Mathematics Tripos but was not awarded a degree because Cambridge didn't give degrees to women; she then passed an external exam at the University of London which gave her a BS in 1881
- earned money teaching & doing embroidery, ran a singing club for working girls, & cared for her invalid sister
- 1885 married Professor William Edward Ayrton a pioneer in electrical engineering & physics education, helped him with his experiments in physics & electricity
- was an active supporter of the women's suffrage movement
- was a close friend of Marie Curie & gave her daughter Irene math lessons
- her daughter Barbara Bodichon Ayrton (named after her patroness Barbara Bodichon) became a member of Parliament for the Labour Party & her grandson was the artist Michael Ayrton
- the character Mirah Cohen in George Eliot's novel Daniel Deronda published in 1876 is based on Ayrton
- 1902 was nominated as a fellow of the Royal society but was denied because married women had no standing in Britain
Born: 1854
Country: United Kingdom
Education: Girton College Cambridge; University of London BS 1881
Sarah Tabitha Babbitt
💡 Inventor
🔍 Tool Maker
- 1793, became a Shaker
- Credited with inventing the circular saw, spinning wheel head, & improved false teeth
- Didn't patent her inventions & references to her accomplishments only exist in Shaker lore
- All of her inventions were claimed &/or attributed to men
Born: 1779
Country: USA
Education: Shaker schools
![Photo of Judith "Judy" Francisca Baca](/women_pictures/Baca_Judith "Judy" Francisca.png)
Judith "Judy" Francisca Baca
🎨 Visual Artist
- Her military father never knew of her existence
- was not allowed to speak Spanish in elementary school
- studied muralism at La Tallera in Cuernavaca, Mexico
- 1970 used rival gang members in her murals to bring community together
- in her mural Raspados Mojados used a street vendor cart as a sculptural installation to address immigration issues and the misrepresentations of Mexicans living in the United States
- included community in her artistic processes
- believed the first step to world peace was imagining it
- wanted to empower women of color and bring community together in Los Angeles
- her public artworks focus on revealing and reconciling diverse peoples’ struggles for their rights and affirm the connections of each community to that place
- taught Allied Art at her alma mater Bishop Alemany High School but was fired because she participated in public protests against the Vietman war
- taught art at UC Irvine 1980-94 & UCLA 1980-2018
Born: 1946
Country: USA
Education: California State University Northridge MFA 1969 & MFA 1979
June Esther Bacon-Bercey
🔍 Radar Meteorology
🔍 Aviation Meteorology
🔬 Geophysical Science
- none
Born: 1928
Country: USA
Education: BA in Meteorology, University of California, Los Angeles, 1954; Master of Public Administration (MPA), University of Southern California, 1979; studied Mathematics 2 years at Friends University before transferring to UCLA
Clara Gregory Baer
📚 Educator
- had a 38-year career as a physical education teacher & teacher trainer
- her women's basketbal rules prohibited dribbling, guarding, snatching the ball, & 2-handed passes; talking was not allowed, the goal had no backboard, baskets were changed after every goal, & points varied (4,3,2) depending on the distance from the goal
- her courts had 7 divisions & players couldn't move outside of their division; there were 2 players in each division-1 defensive & 1 offensive
- she described the jump shot as 1-handed
- she encouraged the wearing of bloomers during physical activity
- she was born in Algiers, LA at the time of the Union siege of New Orleans during the Civil War
- her nickname was "Dixie"
- she was a sickly child & was encouraged to participate in tomboyish activities to strengthen her body & health
- her mother died when she was young & she & her siblings were raised by their maternal grandmother
- was well versed in the Posse system of Swedish gymnastics
Born: 1863
Country: USA
Education: Nils Posse Normal School of Physical Education; Boston School of Expression; Emerson School of Oratory
Sarah George Bagley
🔍 Labor Reform
- born & raised in New Hampshire; moved to Lowell, MA at age 31 (1837) to work as a weaver at Hamilton Manufacturing Co
- wrote for the Lowell Offering a literary magazine written by female mill workers but overseen & partly funded by mill owners
- 1840 wrote "The Pleasures of Factory Work" an essay for thee Lowell Offering which argued cotton mill labor was congenial to "pleasant contemplation" & other noble purities but said the pleasures were like angel visits, "few & far between"
- 1845 with 8 other mill workers testified before the Massachusetts State Legislature about their demand for a 10-hour work day & ending the corporate abuses of female workers
- 1845 was a writer & short-time editor of the Voice of Industry founded by New England Workingman's Association (NEWA) & condemned the Lowell Offering as a "mouthpiece for the corporations"
- published her last piece for the Voice of Industry in 1846 & left the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association (LFLRA) which by then was known as the Female Labor Reform & Mutual aid Society
- 1848 left Lowell & never returned
- 1850 married James Durno (alternate spelling Dourno) a homeopathic doctor who sold medicines & she practiced as a rheumatic physician with him in Albany, NY for many years beginning in 1851
- couple eventually moved to Brooklyn, NY & opened s company that made snuff for catarrh a kind of cold remedy
- was one of the Merrimack Valley Lowell Mill Girls
- the Mill girls lived in company owned boarding houses, had to pay rent, observe a curfew,, & attend church on sundays
- 1845 organized the Industrial Reform Lycceum & created a lecture curriculum around women's rights & labor issues
- financially supported her aging parents & bought them a house; cared for her father when he was ill with typhus
Born: 1806
Country: USA
Education: Unknown
Florence Elizabeth Riefle Bahr
🎨 Artist
- she donated her painting, Homage to Martin Luther King, to the NAACP & it hangs in their headquarters, it depicts MLK giving his I Have a Dream speech
- created illustrations for children's books
- painted a mural for the Johns Hopkins Hospital's Harriet Lane Home for children under the WPA Program
- began exhibiting her art in the 1930s
- is the 1st woman artist recognized by Maryland's Women's Hall of Fame
- often said she & her husband (another artist) would rather paint than eat
- liked horseback riding, hiking & swimming
- died in a house fire which also damaged many of her sketches & they were salvaged by staff & curators from the Maryland State Archives where they are now housed & can only be viewed after obtaining permission due to their damaged state
- was arrested at a May Day anti-war demonstration at the Pentagon&sketched important events during the 20th century like the March on Washington, political trials,, demonstrations & marches along with portraits of people
- donated over 300 sketchbooks of her works to the Maryland State Archives before her death
- worked in multiple media & often incorporated natural elements she found like pebbles, shells & feathers in her work
- did sketches, oil & watercolor paintings, lithographs, sculptures, book illustrations, collages & constructions of found materials
- her art is held in private & public collections in Europe, Japan, & the US
- collected antique dolls & did over 200 watercolor paintings of dolls
- opened a museum in Ellicott City MD called Humpty Dumpty Museum of Dolls & Toys & was an antique dealer in the same city
Born: 1909
Country: USA
Education: Dickenson College 1 year 1927; Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) Costume Design Diploma 1930, Fine Arts Diploma 1931, BFA Painting 1962, MFA Education & Printmaking 1967; Catonsville Community College classes in German & Biology 1959
Page 2 of 35