Women
Raquel Graham Crayton
💼 Entrepreneur
💡 Inventor
- founded ROQ Marketing Group in 2009 & they offer strategic marketing solutions to corporations looking to develop their reach and brand awareness
- was a financial analyst at JP Morgan after college
- invented NEKZ because she couldn't find a scarf her children would wear & launched it on HSN in 2016
- launched Headlightz on HSM in 2017
- aooeared on Season 13 episode 11 of Shark Tank & formed a partnership with Kevin O;Leary & Peter Jones
- is a past VP & head of Marketing for Ebony Magazine
- was in the process of launching Handy Lightz (a lightweight glove with 2 LED lights so you didn't have to hold a flashlight) when COVID hit & switched her focus to designing & making facemasks (had 16 models) that allowed for the insertion of a filter in her Face Maskz
- before beginning her alliance with HSN she spent 3 months in the hospital with a misdiagnosed doses before a correct diagnosis of fungal pneumonia was made, she was given a 20% chance of survival, suffered from a stroke, lung failure twice & cardiac failure, it took her 1 year to recuperate fully
- toured with a dance company at age 9
- is an active runner & exerciser; holds 2 patents
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: Wesleyan University BA History with a minor in Economics 1990; Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management MBA Marketing 2009
Kimberle Williams Crenshaw
✊ Civil Rights Activist
🔍 Legal Scholar
- is a regular commentator on NPR's The Tavis Smiley Show
- has written 10 books & numerous articles on her theories
- has been on the faculty of UCLA since 1986
- clerked for Justice shirley Abrahamson of the wisconsin supreme court
Born: 1959
Country: USA
Education: Cornell University BA Government & African Studies 1981; Harvard University JD 1984; University of wisconsin-Madison LLM 1985
Jeanne Lee Crews
⚛️ Aerospace Engineering
- NASA aerospace engineer who designed a flexible multi-shock shield to protect spacecraft from debris; still in use on ISS (Space Bumper)
- 1 of the 1st female engineers to join NASA
- 1 of the 1st women at NASA to participate in a zero-G flight
- Is working on a balloon to gather & accumulate orbital debris that will return to Earth once full
- Created the hyper velocity lab
- At Nasa she was allowed to fly some of the training simulators as long as no reporters saw her enter or exit the machines because they didn't want anyone to think there were female astronauts
- Worked on Apollo Missions & Skylab
- Holds 3 patents
Born: 1940
Country: USA
Education: University of Texas began BS in Aerospace Engineering but transferred to University of Florida for final year
Lisa F. Crites
⚕️ Medical Journalist
⚕️ Media Strategist
💡 Inventor
- created her shower shirt following her breast cancer diagnosis and bi-lateral mastectomy surgery because she didn't want to shower using a plastic garbage bag to protect her surgical drain sites
- was the original Health/Medical television anchor/reporter for Central Florida News 13 (Channel 13) in Orlando Florida
- consults with Gannett News Service as a broadcast media coach and works for both CNTV and NADA-TV as a medical television correspondent
- had multiple complications after her mastectomy including 2 hospital obtained infections, 4 months of hyperbaric oxygen treatments, & 7 surgeries
- her brother (an engineer) helped her design the architectural schematic and her aunt and cousin helped sew the initial prototype
- there were seven prototype variations of the shirt before it was ready for manufacture
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: Murray State University BS Journalism/Marketing 1989; University of Barcelona MBA & MS Digital Marketing & ECommerce
Marian Rogers Croak
🔍 Digital Messaging
💻 computer science
- holds 213 patents
Born: 1955
Country: USA
Education: 1977, BA Princeton University; 1982 PhD Quantitative Analysis & Psychology, USC
_Caresse ((born Mary Phelps Jacob) "Polly".png)
Caresse ((born Mary Phelps Jacob) "Polly" Crosby (born Jacob)
🔍 Publisher
✊ activist
✍️ writer
💡 inventor
Caresse ((born Mary Phelps Jacob) "Polly" Crosby (born Jacob)
🔍 Publisher
✊ activist
✍️ writer
💡 inventor
- time called her the "literary godmother to the Lost generation of expatriate writers in Paris"
- childhood nickname was "Polly"
- 1914 was presented to the King of England at a garden party
- was photographed by Charles Dana Gibson of "Gibson girls" fame as a child
- grew up in an upper-class environment living on estates in Manhattan & New Rochelle New York & Connecticut
- 1910 fashioned her 1st bra from 2 handkerchiefs & some pink ribbon to replace an uncomfortable corset cover to attend a debutante ball
- her autobiography was titled "The Passionate Years"
- sold her bra patent to Warner Brothers Corset Company for $1,500
- had an open marriage with her 2nd husband Harry Crosby
- she & Harry lived a bohemian lifestyle in Paris as expatriates in the 1920s living in the "here & now" with no concern for their future
- Harry believed there could be no greater expression of love than a willingness to die with ones beloved &, at one point, the couple had a suicide pact to jump out of an airplane on October 31, 1942 but he committed suicide with 1 of his lovers in 1929
- the documentary "Always Yes, Caresse" is about her life & was produced shortly prior to her death
- her great granddaughter, Tamara Colchester wrote a biography of her titled "The Heart is a Burial Ground"
- she lived in Washington DC 1937-1950 & opened an art gallery, Caresse Crosby Modern Art Gallery & exhibited paintings by Henry Miller
- starred in several experimental dance films & wanted to be an actress
- is rumored to have ghost written pornography for Henry Miller who was a close friend
Born: 1892 or 1891
Country: USA
Education: none formal
Diane B. Croteau
🎨 Industrial Design
- her CPR mannequin is light weight, compact and inexpensive model, features artificial lungs that can be pushed down to stimulate a real life emergency & has a target for hand placement
- holds 5 patents
Born: 1962
Country: Canada
Education: Carleton University BA Industrial Design; Domus Academy Master in Design
Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin
🔬 Biochemistry
🔍 x-ray crystallography
- was banned from entering the US 1953-90 due to her left-wing views & associations with members of the Communist Party (including her husband) & required authorization from the CIA to enter the US
- both parents worked in North Africa & the Middle East & were involved in archaeology
- until she was 4 she lived with them in Cairo Egypt during winters & in England during the summer
- sent to live with maternal grandparents 1914 to attend school & only saw her parents when they returned to England
- at age 10 became very interested by crystals & by 13 was studying pebbles found in rivers near their homes & analyses them with a portable mineral analysis kit given to her by a family friend
- 1921 was 1 of 2 girls allowed to study chemistry at sir John Leman grammar School in Beccles England
- 1928 joined her parents at a dig in what is present-day Jordan & spent a year documenting the patterns of mosaics from several churches dating to the 5th & 6th centuries & conducting chemical analysis of glass tesserae tiles at the site, her drawings from that period are achieved at Yale University
- Margaret thatcher was a student of hers & hung a portrait of Hodgkin in her office when she was Prime Minister
- 1936-1977 was the 1st fellow & tutor of chemistry at somerville College at Cambridge
- 1934 was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis that over time created deformities in her hands & feet, causing great pain & difficulty using her lab equipment to the point where she had to design & install special levers so she could use the machines
- in her later years spent a great deal of time in wheelchairs but remained active in her lab until retiring
- was known as dorothy Crowfoot until 1949, 12 years after she married
- 1982 an asteroid was named after her
- 1996 honored by a stamp issued by the British government
- 2010 honored on a stamp issued by the royal society & they also award a Fellowship in her name
- Buildings & a school in England are named after her & plaques are erected at various places she lived & worked to honor her
- it took her 4 years to map penicillin's 17 atoms, 8 years for the 181 atoms of vitamin B-12 & 34 years for the 788 atoms of insulin, she considered the last to be her crowning achievement
- was a lifelong advocate for world peace after the death of 4 maternal uncles in WW1, campaigning against nuclear weapons & the Vietnam war
- in the headlines of UK papers announcing her Nobel Prize she was referred to as "a mother of three" & a housewife noting she was involved in an "unhousewifely" career
- retired from the public in 1988
- is the 1st & only British woman recipient of a Nobel Prize in science
Born: 1910
Country: Egypt
Education: Somerville College Oxford BA Chemistry 1932; University of Cambridge PhD Chemistry of Sterols 1937
Rebecca Lee Crumpler
⚛️ Physician
⚕️ nurse
- none
Born: 1831
Country: USA
Education: New England Female Medical College, 1864 MD
Celia Cruz
🔍 Singer
🏛️ political activist
- her signature catchphrase is Azucar which translates to sugar
- she is known as the "Queen of salsa" or "the Queen of Latin American Music"
- a high school & nearby street in the Bronx New York is named for her
- she would always answer her fan mail by hand
- a replica of her dressing room & a video loop of her putting on her make-up are on display at the "Celia Cruz Forever" exhibit in Miami's Tower theater & the displays contain numerous items she always traveled with including her statues of The virgin, her birth certificate, a rosary, a photo of her mother & her champagne glasses, other items on display there are her make-up, her favorite perfume (Shalimar) & her collection of fans
- at the time of her death she had over 100 dresses including 1 she named El Sol or The Sun that weighed 42 pounds
- approximately 40 of her dresses have been donated to the Smithsonian American Art Museum including a silver one she wore while performing at Cuba's famous tropicana cabaret over 70 years ago
- 22 of her dresses have been donated to the future American Latino Museum which is still in the planning stage
- she had over 100 wigs & often wore one she named Maria Auxiliadora & an orange one that sold in a 2022 auction for $3,000
- was not allowed to return to Cuba after touring in Mexico in 1960
- Fidel Castro denied her permission to return to Cuba for her mother's funeral
- was eventually allowed to return to Cuba in 1990 & before she left she gathered some Cuban soil & took it with her back to the US & it was buried in her coffin pursuant to her final wishes
- 2 of her rumba dresses & a pair of custom-made gold platform shoes are part of the "Entertainment Nation"exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Museum of american History
- was ranked #18 in Rolling Stone's list of 200 Greatest Singers
- became an American citizen in 1965
- performed in Zaire as part of the Rumble in the Jungle (boxing match between Muhammed ali & George Fraiser)
- 2011 US Postal Service issued a stamp with her picture
- 2015 Telemundo premiered an 80-episode docu-drama based on her life
Born: 1925
Country: Cuba
Education: Normal School for Teachers Havana Cuba; Havana's National Conservatory of Music
Marie Skłodowska Curie
⚛️ Physics
🔬 chemistry
- Many of her possessions (including her work notebooks & recipes) are still radioactive because she carried radioactive materials inher pockets, unaware of the negative effects at the time
- 1st female to win a Nobel Prize & only person to win Nobles in 2 different sciences
- Named the element "polonium" after Poland, the country of her birth
- Created & transported over 200 x-ray machines to field hospitals during WWI with her daughter Irene; they were known as petite curies
- Due to her work, contracted radiation poisoning which eventually killed her
- Carried out most of her work in a shed behind the school where her husband Pierre worked
- Opened research centers in Paris & Warsaw
- She & Irene are the only mother & daughter to win Nobels
- Was reburied in The Pantheon (Paris' mausoleum for France's most revered dead) in 1995; 1st female awarded a place there for her own achievements
- 1906, 1st female professor at the Universite of Paris
Born: 1867
Country: Poland
Education: Flying University (an underground university in Poland); University of Paris, undergraduate degrees in 1893 & 1894, Phd 1903
Jamie Lee Curtis
💡 Inventor
🔍 Actress
✍️ children s book author
✊ activist
- Known for her roles in horror & slasher movies
- Has won numerous awards for her film & TV roles, including an Oscar in 2022
- Has written 13 childrens books & was on the NY Times Best Seller list
- Studied law for 1 semester
- Refused to allow her modified diaper to be manufactureds until companies began selling biodegradable diapers
- Was a blogger for the Huffington Post 2011-2017
- Helped finance the rebuilding of the Great Synagogue in Budapest, Hungary to honor her father's (Tony Curtis) Jewish heritage
- Helped refurbish the synagogue in Mateszalka, Poland where her grandparents worshipped
- Is a recovering alcoholic & was once addicted to painkillers after a surgical procedure
- Holds 2 patents
Born: 1958
Country: USA
Education: 1 semester at University of the Pacific
Canan Dagdeviren
🔬 Materials Science
- her family was forced to leave their home in Izmit Turkey after an earthquake in 1999
- is the 1st Turkish scientist elected as a Junior Fellow at Harvard
- joined the faculty at MIT in 2017
- likes to read historical biographies of key people to learn about their obstacles & successes
- hobbies include running, composing music & asking questions
- sings in 7 languages; holds 5 patents
Born: 1985
Country: Turkey
Education: Hacettepe University (Ankara) BS Physics Engineering 2007; Sabanci University (Istanbul) MS Materials Science & Engineering 2009; University of Illinois Urbana-champaign PhD Materials Science & Engineering 2014; MIT Postdoc
Shaundra Bryant Daily
💻 Computer Science
- none
Born: 1979
Country: USA
Education: Florida State University College of Engineering, BS 2001; Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University, MS; MIT, SM 2005 & PhD 2010
Marie Maynard Daly
🔬 Biochemistry
- none
Born: 1921
Country: USA
Education: Queens College, 1942 BS Chemistry; New York University, MS Chemistry 1943; Columbia University, PhD Chemistry 1947
![Photo of Klara "Klari" Dan von Neumann](/women_pictures/Dan von Neumann_Klara "Klari".png)
Klara "Klari" Dan von Neumann
💻 Computer coding
💻 Programming
- At 14, became a national champion in figure skating
- she immigrated to the United States in 1938 after her marriage to her 3rd husband John who was a professor at Princeton University
- John went to work on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos in 1943 & she remained at Princeton joining him in 1947 when she was contracted to work there
- her job at Los Alamos was to translate mathematical instructions into a language the computer could understand
- after her husband's death from cancer in 1957, she wrote the preface to his Silliman Lectures
- wrote an unpublished memoir entitled "A Grasshopper in Very Tall Grass"
- 2022, was the subject of a multi-episode season of the Lost Women of Science podcast
- married oceanographer and physicist Carl Eckart in 1958 and moved to La Jolla, California
- died in 1963 when she drove from her home in La Jolla to the beach and walked into the surf weighing down her dress with 15 pounds of sand and drowned, the San Diego coroner's office listed her death as a suicide
- was a self-taught engineer & computer scientist
- had a dog she named Inverse
- only had a high school diploma with algebra & trigonometry classes, took calculus at Columbia University in 1947 at her husband's suggestion
- worked at Princeton University's Office of Population Research investigating population trends during WWII & learning her mathematical skills
- 1962 asked to be removed from a computer magazine's mailing list because "I no longer work with computers"
- became a US citizen in 1942
Born: 1911
Country: Hungary
Education: Veres Pálné Gimnázium Budapest 1929.
Theda M. Daniels-Race
🔍 Nanotechnology
- TBD
Country: USA
Education: Rice University, BS Electrical Engineering 1983; Stanford University, MS Electrical Engineering 1985; Cornell University, PhD Electrical Engineering 1990
Theresa (Teri) A. Dankovich
🔬 Chemistry
🔬 Textile Science
- Invented germ-killing water filters as a graduate student
- Initially distributed the filters in Safe Water Books that had enough filters for a family of 4 for a year
- In response to COVID 19, used the same filters to create an antiviral 3-ply mask
- Uses sustainable materials in her masks & filters
- Has a patent pending for microwavable paper food packaging embedded with metal nanoparticles that absorb microwave radiation & convert it into heat
- Co-founder & CTO of Folia Water (2016)
- Holds 4 patent with others for face masks & Microwave food paper pending
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: Cornell University BS Textile & Apparel-Fiber Science 2003; UC-Davis MS Agricultural & Environmental Chemistry 2006; McGill University PhD Chemistry (Materials) 2012
Christine Mann Darden
⚛️ Aeronatical engineer
- 1st African-American female at NASA Langley to be appointed to top management rank of Senior Executive Service
- Worked at NASA for 40 years & helped make supersonic planes quieter
- One of NASA's Hidden Figures
- Started school at age 4
- As a child liked taking things like her bicycle apart & putting them back together to learn how they worked
- Psarticipated in numerous sit-ins during the early years of the Civil Rights Movement
- Designed a computer program to simulate sonic booms
Born: 1942
Country: USA
Education: 1962, Hampton University, BS Mathematics Education; 1967, MS Applied Mthematics, Virginia State University; 1983, PhD Mechanical Engineering, George Washington University
Geraldine Claudette Darden
📊 Mathematics
📚 teacher
- none
Born: 1936
Country: USA
Education: Hampton Institute, BA Mathematics 1957; University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign MS Mathematics 1960; 2nd MS 1956 & PhD 1967 Mathematics
Grace Horsley Darling
🔍 Lighthouse Keeper s daughter
- none
Born: 1815
Country: Great Britain
Education: home schooled
Ingrid Daubechies
⚛️ Physics
📊 Mathematics
- Is a Baroness
- Developed image processing technology used to establish the age & authenticity of some of the world's most famous works of art
- 1st female president of the International Mathematics Union (2011-14)
- On the Board of Directors of EDGE, an organization that helps women enter graduate studies in mathematics & science
- As a child didn't count sheep to fall asleep, multiplying numbers by 2 & familiarizing herself with the properties of exponential growth instead
- 1st female full professor of mathematics at Princeton
- 2020 & 2021, with Dominique Erhmann, led a team of mathematicians & artists who built the touring art & math installation known as Mathemalchemy
- Worked on the team restoring the Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert & Jan van Eyck
- She & her team were able to decipher the text of the polyptych attributed to Thomas Aquinas
- 1st female recipient of the National Academy of Sciences Award in Mathematics (2000)
- 2023, 1st female recipient of the Wolf Prize in Mathematics
- 1st female recipient of the William Benter Prize (2018)
- Holds 1 patent
Born: 1954
Country: Belgium
Education: Vrije Universiteit Brussels, 1975 undergraduate degree in Physics, 1980 PhD Theoretical Physics
Ruth A. David
⚛️ Electrical Engineering
🔍 Homeland Security
- 1975 began her career at the Sandia National Laboratories & held several positions there
- 1986 became supervisor of the Data systems Development Organization
- 1989 trasferred to the FAA & managed the Dept of Non-Destructive Test, Electromagnetic Test & Optics program on aging aircraft
- 1995 was appointed Deputy director for Science & Technology at the CIA & left in 1998
- is the co-author of 3 books on signal Processing Algorithms
- Retired from ANSER in 2015
Born: 1953
Country: USA
Education: Wichita State University BS Electrical Engineering 1975; Stanford University MS 1976 & PhD 1981 both in electrical Engineering
Rebecca Davies
🎨 Glass Art
🔍 conservation
- bottle Underground collects bottles & jars from businesses & community members in Philadelphia & a potion of the glass is selected for Remark Glass that turns them into upcycled useable items for the home
- the companies partner with companies like Rabbit Recycling (another Philadelphia female owned & run business) to recycle operational waste like bottle caps & use discarded cardboard & packaging from other local companies
- they have diverted 311,639 ppounds of glass from landfills according to their website
- Remark Glass is Philadelphia's 1st zero waste certified business
- they are working with scientists from Penn State for material studies developing new products
- some of their creations are available for purchase through the MoMA Design Store
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: New Hampshire Institute of Art 2005; Glasgow School of Art Painting & Printmaking 2008; Smith college BA Studio Art-Painting & Printmaking 2009; University of the Arts MFA Fine Arts Printmaking 2011
Jennifer Davis
⚛️ Mechanical Engineering
- Invented & patented a novel approach for thermoplastic cascades, the vent-like structures that redirect airflow & help decelerate aircraft efficiently
- Holds 6 patents & has 14 pending
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: UC San Diego BS & BA Structural Engineering & Urban Studies & Planning 2015; UCLA MS Mechanical engineering 2019; UC San diego Extension Leadership & Management Program (LAMP) 2020
Charmine Davis
🔍 Clinical Psychologist
- currently the Just Us app is only available for IOS users
- they have filed for 501 (c)(3) status
- the app can be downloaded in the Apple App Store & the basic program is free
- she created the app to give her peace of mind when her children go out, especially when they drive
- used her own funds to develop the app
- the app can also be used by anyone who feels they are in or might be in a dangerous situation
- it is voice activated & a police response can be activated without alerting the person causing the danger
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: The Chicago School PsyD Clinical Psychology 2020; Pacific Oaks College Masters of Marriage & Family Therapy with a Specialization in African-American Families; Argosy University BA Psychology 2006; Harvard University Public Policy 2019
Margaret Bryan Davis
🔍 Paleoecologist
- spent her childhood and early adolescence in the greater Boston area
- had to threaten the University of Michigan with a civil rights suit in order to obtain a salary consistent with the males at the University
- brought quantifica tion, hypotheses-testing, modeling, and statisti cal validity into pollen analysis, and with a small group of co-workers, has built paleoecology into a leadership role in the current debates on global environmental change
- on staff at the University of Michigan 1961-1973
- 1976-1981 was head of the Dept of Ecology & Behavioral Science at the University of Minnesota then remained as a professor emeritus until retiring in 2000
Born: 1931
Country: USA
Education: Radcliffe College BA Biology 1953; Harvard University PhD Biology 1957
Dorothy Day
🔍 Social Justice
- wrote 4 autobiographies with the most popular, "The Long Loneliness" pyblished in 1952
- 1917 was imprisoned as a member of Alice Paul's Silent Sentinels movement
- Pope Benedict XVI used the story of her conversion to Catholicism as an example of how to "journey towards faith. . .in a secularized environment"
- in an address before the US Congress Pope Francis included her in his list of 4 exemplary Americans who "built a better future"
- a move to canonize her is under investigation so she is referred to as a Servant of God by the Church
- had 3 brothers & 1 sister
- her family was not religious but she was interested in the Church & began attending an Episcopal one at the age of 10 while living in Chicago
- left college after 2 years & moved to NYC
- lived a bohemian lifestyle when younger & regretted writing a novel about those years
- was close to several known & active communists
- Abbie Hoffman (of chicago 7 fame) told her she was the original hippie
- 1972 the Jesuit magazine America marked her 75th birthday by devoting an entire issue to her & the Catholic Workers Movement
- was a supporter of Cesar Chavez & in 1973 picketed with him & was arrested subsequently serving 10 days in jail
- her father (also a journalist) tried to sabotage ger early career as a journalist by advising his friends in the field not to hire her
- the FBI monitored the Catholic Workers Movement 1940-70 & Day was jailed 4 times during this period
- Marquette University Press published her diaries & letters edited by Robert Ellsberg in 2008 & 2010 respectively
- a movie about her life, "Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story" was released in 1996 & the full-length documentary "Dorothy Day: Don't Call Me A Saint" was shown at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival
- "Revolution of the Heart: The Dorothy Day Story" aired on PBS in 2020
Born: 1897
Country: USA
Education: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (no degree)
Clair de March
🔬 Microbiology
- TBD
Born: Unknown
Country: France
Education: Universite Versailles St-Quentin FR BS Chemistry 2007; Pierre & Marie Curie Universite MS Molecular Chemistry 2011; Universite of Nice Sophia Antipolis Universite Cote d'Azur PhD 2015; ISIPCA Versailles FR Pro MS Chemistry
Aida deAcosta Root Breckinridge
🔍 Aviation
🔍 Socialite
- daughter of Ricardo de Acosta, a steamship company executive of Cuban descent
- was 1 of 7 children
- had only 3 lessons before flying solo
- lost sight in 1 eye to glaucoma & became an advocate for better eye care
- her flight was kept a secret until 1932 because her parents feared the scandal of it would preventher from marrying well & she never flew again
- served as chairman of the Municipal Art Committee in NYC 1935-40 & was editor of the art magazine "Exhibition"
- Liberia issued a 2-cent postage stamp in her honor
- Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute awards a yearly award in her name since 2012
Born: 1884
Country: USA
Education: Unknown
Mary Lovenia Deconge-Watson
📊 Mathematics
📚 educator
- none
Born: 1933
Country: USA
Education: BA Mathematics & French, Seton Hill College 1959; MA Mathematics, Louisiana State University, 1962; PhD Mathematics, St. Louis University, 1968
Catharine Deiner
🔍 Homemaker
- no information about her personal life was located
- the only source of information is her patent application & an add for her rolling pin
- she was living in Lebanon PA when she applied for the patent
Born: Unknown
Country: Uncertain
Education: Unknown
Mary A. Delaney
💡 Inventor
- she was living in New York when she filed her patent
- she may have been a dog-walker
- the only facts known about her are where she was living when she filed her patent on January 12, 1907, it was granted on May 12. 1908 & expired May 12, 1925
- according to the patent application the lead was meant for women to use on their dog pets
Born: Unknown
Country: Believed to be USA
Education: Unknown
Jane Arminda Delano
⚕️ Nursing
- was related to Franklin Delano Roosevelt
- her father died of yellow fever before she was born while fighting as a Union soldier during the Civil War
- while superintendent of nursing at Sand Hills Hospital in Jacksonville Florida insisted on placing mosquito netting over the windows, patient care areas & nursing quarters even though the relationship between mosquitos & the disease hadn't been established yer
- took care of patients in bisbee Arizona during a typhoid epidemic for 3 years
- die in France while on an inspection trip of nurses & hospitals & was buried there for approximately 17 months before her body was exhumed & reburied in the nurses section of Arlington National Cemetery
- approximately 500 nurses were in her funeral cortege in France
- there is a statue of her with a commemorative plaque on the hill above the nurses section at Arlington National Cemetery
- a number of her awards, medals & personal items are on display at Schuyler County Hospital in Dix New York
- 1990 the National Nursing Advisory Committee formed the Jane Delano society to ensure active nursing involvement at all levels of the Red Cross & to preserve artifacts that document the history of Red Cross nursing
- 1906-08 took 2 years off from her professional duties to care for her dying mother
- 1896 briefly attended medical school in buffalo New York but dropped out when she decided she would rather remain a nurse
- 1891-96 was Superintendent of Nurses at University Hospital in Philadelphia PA
- 1900-02 was superintendent at the House of Refuge, a home for wayward girls on Randall Island in New York city
- 1902-06 was Superintendent of the Training School for Nurses at Bellevue Hospital
Born: 1862
Country: USA
Education: Bellevue Hospital Training School for Nurses (now Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing) 1886
Mary Jones DeLeon
🔍 Food services
💡 Inventor
- her invention featured several compartments, each with its own heating element, allowing different dishes to be kept at different temperatures & it used dry heat & steam to keep food warm
- was living in Baltimore when she applied for her patent
- little is known about her personal life but she might have been born in Ireland & immigrated to Toronto as a child before eventually settling in Baltimore
Born: 1838
Country: might be Ireland
Education: Unknown
Lisa Seacat DeLuca
💻 Software Engineer
💡 Inventor
- is the most prolific inventor in the history of IBM
- worked at IBM over 16 years before moving to Unstoppable domains
- played on the women's basketball & volleyball teams at Carnegie Mellon University
- grew up in Montana
- loved storytelling & would type up scripts to be acted out by her stuffed animals & younger sister
- wrote her book "A Robot Story" with her children to get them excited & interested in technology
- has applied for more than 1000 patents with approximately 650 being granted & the remainder are pending
Born: Unknown
Country: USA
Education: Carnegie Mellon University BS Computer Science 2005; University of Texas McCombs School of business MS Technical Commercialization 2010
Jody W. Deming
🔍 Oceanography
🔍 Marine microbiologist
- Has been involved in over 50 nautical research expeditions
- As an Undergraduate received a piano scholarship
- 1970s, developed microbial detection systems for unusual habitats for NASA The bacterium Colwellis demingiae is named after her
- Helped develop the 1st graduate training program in Astrobiology
Born: 1952
Country: USA
Education: Smith College, BA Biological Sciences with a specialization in Botany, 1974; University of Maryland, PhD Microbiology, 1981
Inez Michon Demonet O'Brien
⚕️ Medical Illustration
- only artist in residence at the Hygienic Laboratory (now the NIH) in 1926, working her way up to chief of the Medical Arts department in 1938, the first person to hold that position
- did illustrations for journals like the Journal of the National Malaria Society & the book, Manual of Microscopical diagnosis
- occasionally did non-medical illustrations like The Anatomy & Physiology of the Light Organ in Fireflies which was published in the journal Bioluminescence in 1948
- 1960-65 worked as a Fine & Applied Arts consultant for Medical Arts working on interiors of buildings in the Washington DC area
- the Association of Medical Illustrators (AMI) awards a yearly scholarship in her name endowed by money she left them in her will
- worked at NIH 1926-1965
- moved to Green Valley Arizona in 1971
- her hand-colored etching, Rickshaw Coolie-Shanghai, is in the Smithsonian American Art Museum
- 2 of her etchings are held by The Bloom Family Center for Special Collections at Georgetown University
- some of her etchings were purchased by Eleanor & Franklin D. Roosevelt
- began experimenting with etchings in the 1930s
- did watercolor landscapes before switching to etching
Born: 1897
Country: USA
Education: Corcoran School of Art; National School of fine & Applied Arts; School of Industrial Art & Technical Design for Women
![Photo of Ellen "Nell" Louise Curtis Demorest](/women_pictures/Demorest_Ellen "Nell" Louise Curtis.png)
Ellen "Nell" Louise Curtis Demorest
🔍 Fashion
- was trained as a milliner & dressmaker
- with her husband, William Jennings Demorest, she established a company to sell the patterns, which were adaptations of the latest French fashions, and a quarterly magazine (Mme Demorest's Mirror of Fashions) to promote them in 1860
- was inspired to make tissue-paper patterns after seeing her African-American maid cut out a dress pattern from brown paper
- her sister Kate helped with the design patterns
- also started a monthly magazine, Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly Magazine
- was a founding member of Sorosis, the first professional women's club in the United States
- often featured the dresses worn by Empress Eugenie in her magazines
- 1863 designed the wedding trousseau of Lavinia Warren the wife of Tom Thumb
- when Jenny Lind toured the US she wore dresses created & sold by the Demorest Emporium
- her magazines featured patterns stapled inside them
- she hired blacks to work on the same terms as whites long before integration was generally considered acceptable, and minority employees were welcome on equal terms at gala occasions at her Emporium
- her publications initiated simplified instructions for creating fashionable looks with products designed to ease the demands on time and money for being well-dressed
- 1887 sold the pattern business & turned to advocacy for civil rights, abolition, & anti-slavery issues
- by 1876 her company & agents were selling approximately 3 million patterns yearly
- served as treasurer of the New York Medical College for Women
- suffered a stroke in 1895 & became bedridden
- 1860’s she branched out with a network of shops nationwide called “Madame Demorest’s Magasins de Modes” & in the mid-1870’s she had 300 shops that employed nearly 1,500 sales agents that were mainly women
- was known as queen of 19th-century American fashion
- she was an ardent abolitionist and women's rights advocate
- was board chair of a women's shelter, the Welcome Lodging House for Women and Children
Born: 1824
Country: USA
Education: Schuylerville Academy
Leila Alice Daughtry Denmark
⚕️ Medicine
- retired at age 103 after 73 years as a pediatrician; by the time she retired she was treating grandchildren and great-grandchildren of her first patients
- was 114 at the time of her death & considered a supercentenarian
- was the older sister of Clyde Daughtry, who is known for shooting the only known authentic color footage of the attack on Pearl Harbor
- was the first physician on staff when Henrietta Egleston Hospital, a pediatric hospital, opened on the Emory University campus
- was among the first doctors to object to adults smoking cigarettes around children, and to pregnant women using drugs
- believed that drinking cow's milk is harmful
- recommended children and adults eat fresh fruit rather than drinking fruit juices, and drink only water
- lived independently in her Cumming, Georgia home until age 106 when she moved to Athens, Georgia to live with her only child, Mary (Denmark) Hutcherson
- was the third of their twelve children
- grew up in a farming community
- attend high school at an agricultural and mechanical school
- her patients reported she could often determine exactly what was wrong with a child when they first walked into the office, just by looking at them
- promoted common sense preventive medicine and therapy over pharmaceutical remedies wherever possible
- ran an office out of a farmhouse near her home until her retirement in 2001
- kept costs down by leaving a sign-up sheet for patients instead of hiring a receptionist and charging just $10 for the first visit and $8 for every visit thereafter
- in her first book placed responsibility for a child’s health and happiness solely with the parents
- believed in getting to the root causes of illness and laughter and a sense of humor were keys to long life
- when she originally applied to medical she was told to become a nurse instead but she fought with the administrators until they admitted her to the medical school in 1924
- enjoyed her family, going to the opera, gardening, sewing, reading, and the occasional game of golf
- she made most of her own clothes
- retired because her eyesight became poor but continued to give medical advice over the phone until she was 110
- called her patients "little angels"
Born: 1898
Country: USA
Education: Tift College AB 1922; Mercer University studied chemistry & physics for 2 years; Medical college of Georgia (later Georgia Health Sciences University) MD 1928
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